Privacy policy

Paintballer is a free paintball game for everyone, including kids. We collect as little as we can. You can play without an account, and we never sell data.

The short version

• No account is needed to play. No email, phone number, real name, photo or birthday is ever asked for.
• Your profile (name, level, coins, cosmetics, settings) lives in your browser’s local storage.
• If you choose to sign in with Google, we store only a scrambled (hashed) version of your Google account id. Not your email, not your name, not your photo.
• We count visits and matches anonymously so we know whether the game works. No third-party analytics, no advertising trackers, no ads.
• There is no free-text chat. Players can only send fixed quick-chat pings.
• We never sell or rent data.

What stays on your device

The game saves your profile in your browser’s local storage: the name you pick, a random player id, your level and XP, coins, the cosmetics you own and wear, your loadout, your settings and key bindings. It also keeps a random key that proves to our server that the player id is yours. Clearing your browser’s site data deletes all of this.

We do not use advertising cookies or cross-site tracking.

What reaches our servers

Playing online

When you play online, your browser connects to our game server and sends your chosen name, your random player id, your look and loadout, your rating and your inputs (movement, aim, shots) so the match can run. Other players in the match see your name, look and actions.

Your online profile

If you play online, our server keeps a profile for your random player id: your name, level, ranked rating and division, match counts and results, recent matches (mode, map, place, outs), league and cup entries, your team, your friend list, the cosmetics you wear and a creator code if you entered one. It also keeps a one-way hash of your device key.

Country

Our hosting provider (Cloudflare) tells us which country a request comes from. We store a two-letter country code with your online profile for the country leaderboards. We do not store your IP address in our database. You can hide your country from your public profile.

Anonymous metrics

The game sends simple counts: your random player id, a random id for this visit, which step happened (visit, match started, match finished, played again, still playing), seconds played and matches finished. That is all. Automated test browsers never report. We use these counts only to see whether the game works and whether people come back.

Play recordings to train bots

To teach our computer players to behave more like people, the server records a sample of public matches: for each moment, what a player’s screen showed as numbers (for example, where opponents were relative to the crosshair) and which controls were pressed. Recordings contain no names, player ids, account ids, IP addresses or anything typed; a player is just a seat number. Friend rooms are never recorded. Recordings are stored privately and deleted after at most 180 days.

Highlight clips

If you share a highlight clip, the video and its caption (with player names as shown in the match) are uploaded so that the share link works. A clip is deleted after 30 days unless people liked it, and three reports take it down.

CREATE (made maps)

When you use CREATE, the words you type are checked by our filters and then sent to an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) to design the map. Published maps show the name you played under. Please do not type personal information into a map prompt.

Server logs

Like every website, our hosting providers (Vercel for the website, Cloudflare for the game server) process technical data such as IP addresses to deliver pages and protect against abuse. These logs are kept briefly by those providers under their own policies.

Optional sign-in with Google

Signing in is optional and only used to keep your progress safe and sync it across devices. When you sign in, Google tells us a unique account id. We store only a salted one-way hash of that id, so we can recognise you next time. We do not receive or store your email address, name or profile photo. When you sign in on a device where you already played, that device’s progress is merged into your account.

What other players can see

Your public profile page (at https://paintballer.io/u/your-name) shows your player name, level, division and rating, match stats, the cosmetics you wear, recent matches, your team and, unless you hide it, your country. Leaderboards show names, ratings and countries. Names are filtered, and names that break our rules are hidden.

AI in Paintballer

• Bots fill every match. They are computer players, and some are trained on anonymous play recordings (above).
• Voices: the referee and caster voices were generated with ElevenLabs. They are not real people.
• Maps: some maps were designed with the help of AI, and CREATE maps are designed by an AI model from a player’s prompt.
• No AI system makes decisions about you that have legal or similar effects.

Children

Paintballer is made to be safe for kids. We do not ask for or knowingly collect personal information such as names, emails, addresses, phone numbers or photos from anyone, including children. The game works fully without an account, and there is no free-text chat. Optional Google sign-in is subject to Google’s own age rules for Google accounts.

Note for review: confirm our position under COPPA (US), the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, and GDPR Article 8 (EU member-state ages of digital consent), including whether the random player id, device key and hashed Google id count as personal information and what parental notice or consent is required.

Parents can ask us to delete their child’s online profile at any time (see below).

How long we keep things

• Browser profile: until you clear your browser data.
• Online profile: while you keep playing; profiles with no sign-in and no activity for 24 months may be deleted.
• Anonymous metrics: daily counts, kept as long as they are useful.
• Play recordings: at most 180 days.
• Highlight clips: 30 days unless liked, removed at once when taken down.

Your choices and rights

You can play without ever signing in. You can change your name at any time. You can ask us to see, correct or delete your online profile and sign-in link by writing to hello@paintball.ai with your player name (and, if you can, the friend code shown in the game) so we can find it. Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or California), you may have further rights, including to complain to your data protection authority.

Who runs Paintballer and who helps us

Paintballer is an Exile Games game. We use these service providers: Vercel (website hosting), Cloudflare (game server, storage and databases), Google (optional sign-in) and Anthropic (the AI model behind CREATE). Voice lines were made in advance with ElevenLabs; no player data is sent to ElevenLabs.

Note for review: add the legal entity name, address, data controller details, international transfer basis and any EU/UK representative.

Contact and reports

Email hello@paintball.ai. To report a player name, a team, a made map or a clip, use the report buttons in the game or on the page (they send a report to our server), or email us. We aim to review reports within a few days.

We may update this policy. We will change the date at the top when we do, and tell players in the game about important changes.