Privacy, in plain language.

Last updated 2026-09-14. VibeArena is operated by VibeArena. Contact contact@vibearena.app about privacy or your data.

What we collect

When you register, we store your name, username, email address, hashed password and acceptance of our terms. You can add a bio, avatar, game descriptions, screenshots and links. Your public profile, published games, visible comments and creator replies can be seen by other visitors and search engines. Your email address is not displayed publicly.

If you choose Google sign-in, Google provides your account identifier, name and email verification information. We store the identifier to connect your account; we do not retain Google access or refresh tokens. Connecting an existing email account requires its VibeArena password. Google also processes your sign-in under Google's privacy policy.

Favorites, genres and private messages

Your saved favorites are private to your account. Saving a game subscribes you to its approved updates in your notification bell. We store those notifications and their read status for up to 180 days. Removing a favorite removes its notifications; this does not send email or enable browser push notifications. Creators' approved release notes appear on their public game pages. Suggested genres and the administrator's decision are available to the creator and moderators; approved genres become public catalog categories.

We store private messages, their participants, timestamps, read positions and blocking preferences to provide your inbox. Conversations are available to the two participants. A participant can report an individual message and share that message and their explanation with moderators. The administration interface does not offer general access to conversations. Messages are protected in transit by HTTPS but are not end-to-end encrypted; authorized server operators can access stored data when necessary to operate or secure the service. Do not send passwords or other secrets through chat.

We record account and community actions such as registrations, submissions, votes, comments and moderation. For audience reports we collect game page visits, Play clicks, website-link clicks, timestamps, a hashed session identifier and a traffic-source category. We may retain the hostname of a referring website; we do not store its full URL or query string in audience analytics. Signed-in events can be associated with your account. Hashed identifiers are pseudonymous, not anonymous.

Cookies and audience measurement

Session cookies support login, form security and session-based counts. A remember-me cookie is used if you choose that login option. Our own audience measurement honors Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals; essential account, security and moderation operations continue to work. Session records may include an IP address and browser information, and server/security logs may contain request information.

Creator dashboards show aggregate counts, not visitor names or email addresses. Repeat page loads and Play clicks are filtered, but these counts are estimates. Cookies, devices and privacy preferences can affect them.

Advertising and your choices

When advertising is enabled, public Discover and game pages can display Google AdSense ads. Game pages may include a creator’s own ad unit and a separate VibeArena unit. Google and its advertising partners may process IP addresses, browser information, cookies and similar identifiers to deliver, measure and protect ads. Google’s Privacy & messaging tools present the applicable consent and privacy choices. Use Ad privacy choices on an ad-enabled page to revisit European consent, or Google’s displayed US privacy options where applicable. How Google uses information from sites that use its services.

VibeArena skips its integrated ad requests when your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. Advertising is not loaded in account pages, private messages, drafts or build previews. External games operate under their hosts’ own policies. Creators who connect AdSense provide a public publisher ID and ad unit IDs, which appear in their ad markup and, where eligible, the site’s public ads.txt. We do not collect their AdSense password, banking details or Google payment history.

Hosted games

Uploaded builds run on a separate game domain after you choose Play. Our server receives file requests including IP addresses and browser information. Each build may save progress in browser storage on its own origin; these saves are not linked to your VibeArena account, and availability can change between builds. Private previews use a short-lived, build-specific cookie. The game domain does not receive your VibeArena session cookies.

External games and websites

Games published with an external URL run on their creators' or third-party hosts. Clicking Play or loading an embedded game can share your IP address and browser information with that host, which has its own policies. We load embedded games only after you choose Play. Follow the game website's privacy policy for activity there.

Why we use this information

We use it to provide accounts, publish your content, send verification and password-reset emails, calculate rankings, help creators understand their audience, investigate reports and protect the community. Service providers for hosting, storage and email process the information necessary to operate those services. We do not sell your personal information.

Retention and deletion

Detailed audience events and play records are retained for up to 180 days in the active database. Lifetime play totals can remain as aggregate counters. Moderation history and closed reports are retained for up to 365 days. Public content remains until you or a moderator remove it. Messages remain until either participant deletes their account; disabling messages or blocking someone does not delete the conversation. Genre decisions remain with the game so its creator can consult the review.

You can export your account data, including your sent messages and favorites, update your details, or delete your account from Account settings. Google-only accounts can first set a password using the email setup link in those settings. Deletion removes your games, uploaded builds and images, comments, votes, favorites, suggested genres and linked analytics from the active service. It also deletes your conversations, including the other participant's messages in those conversations, and their message reports. Minimal moderation records may remain without your account identifier until their retention period expires. Backup copies expire according to our operational backup retention; restoring a backup requires reapplying subsequent deletion requests. Content already copied by other people or indexed by third parties is outside our direct control.

Questions and requests

Contact us to request access, correction or deletion, report a concern or ask about applicable privacy rights and our service providers. We may need to verify account ownership before acting. We will update this page when our practices change.