Privacy Policy

1.Who we are

Parallel Crossing is made by Swanky Rat Studios LLC, a South Dakota limited liability company in the United States(“we”, “us”). We are responsible for the personal information this policy describes; under European law, we are its “controller”.

This policy covers the game on every device, our game servers, this website and our support. It doesn’t cover other companies’ services, such as the app stores or Discord, which have their own privacy policies.

2.What we collect

Your account

Your username and password, when you signed up and when you last played. We store your password only as a salted one-way hash (PBKDF2-SHA256), so nobody, including us, can read it. We don’t ask for your email address, phone number or real name.

Your age

The month and year you were born, which the game asks for once, before you first chat. We use it to apply our age rules (see Children and teens). We don’t ask for the day.

How you play

Your character (its name, class, level, skills, looks and gear); what you own (items, gold and Echoes) and a record of every trade, purchase and reward, which keeps the economy honest; your flags, buildings, house, pets, quests, collections and leaderboard standings; the cities and realms you belong to and your roles in them; your friends and the players you’ve blocked; your chat settings; and when you accepted the code of conduct.

Where you are in the game

The game world is the real map, so where your character stands, where you move it, and where your flags and buildings are, are all real-world places (map coordinates). We store them to run the world.

Your device’s location

Only if you tap “Use my location” to choose where to start or move to. Your device asks your permission first, and you can say no and pick a spot on the map instead. We use that location once, to put your character there, and keep it only as your character’s position. We never track your device’s location in the background.

Chat and messages

What you write in Messages (Support, General, Region, your city’s and realm’s chats, and direct messages) and what you say out loud in the world, with who wrote it, where and when. Before anyone sees a line, our servers mask email addresses, phone numbers, map coordinates and street addresses in it. We don’t read direct messages unless one is reported to us.

Reports and moderation

When you report someone: the reason, your note, and a copy of the reported line with up to 20 lines before it (for a report about a player, their recent lines nearby and their direct messages to you from the last day). We also keep a log of what moderators do: removals, mutes and bans, who did them and why.

Technical information

Your IP address and basic details of each request to our servers: the time, what was asked for, and your app’s or browser’s version. We use them to keep the game secure and running, for example to limit how many requests one address can make and to stop attacks. The game also keeps a sign-in token so you stay signed in.

When you contact us

If you email us: your email address and what you write.

Purchases

Nothing can be bought with real money yet. When it can, Apple or Google will take your payment, and we’ll receive a confirmation of what you bought and when, never your card details.

3.What we don’t do

We don’t show ads, use advertising identifiers, or put third-party analytics, advertising or tracking tools in the game or on this website. We don’t sell your personal information or share it for targeted advertising, and we don’t use it to make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you. If we ever add a tool such as crash reporting, we’ll update this policy first.

4.What stays on your device

The game keeps your settings, your sign-in, and copies of the map you’ve seen (fetched again after 30 days) on your device, so maps work when your signal drops. Sound files you add yourself stay on your device too. Deleting the game removes them. If you point the game’s settings at a different map server, your device fetches the map from that server under its own terms.

5.This website

This website uses no cookies, analytics or trackers, and loads nothing from other companies: even its fonts come from our own site. Like any website, the servers that deliver it record basic details of each request (the IP address, the page asked for, the time and the browser) for security and to keep it working. Links to Discord or the app stores take you to those companies’ services.

6.What other players see

Parallel Crossing is a multiplayer game, so some of what you do is public:

• your username, character, looks and level, and your places on leaderboards;
• your flags and buildings on the real map, and where your character stands to players nearby;
• the cities and realms you belong to, and your rank or role in them;
• what you write in public channels and in your city’s and realm’s chats, and what you say out loud in the world.

Your friends see whether you’re online and, if you’re an adult who chooses to share it, the city or town of the flag you’re on. They never see where you stand, and players under 18 never share their area.

Because the world is the real map, a flag you plant shows that place to everyone. If you’d rather not show where you live, don’t plant your flags there, and never share personal details in chat.

7.How we use it, and why we may

We use personal information only for the purposes below. If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the law asks us to name the legal basis for each, so we do.

8.Who we share it with

• Other players, as What other players see describes.
• Service providers that run parts of the Services for us, such as the companies that host our servers and store our data. They may use it only to provide their services to us, under contract.
• App stores, when you buy something, to complete the purchase.
• Authorities and others, when the law requires it, or when we believe in good faith that it’s needed to protect someone’s safety (for example after a report that a child may be at risk), to investigate cheating or fraud, or to protect our rights and our players.
• A buyer or successor, if Swanky Rat Studios or the game is sold, merged or reorganized. We’ll tell you before your information falls under a different privacy policy.
• Anyone else only with your permission. We may also share statistics that can’t identify anyone.

9.How long we keep it

• Your account and game data: as long as your account exists. When you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymize it within 30 days, except what we must keep for the reasons below.
• Chat lines and messages: 30 days, then deleted automatically.
• Reports, with the lines they copied: until 1 year after the report is closed.
• The moderation log and records of bans: as long as needed to handle appeals and stop repeated abuse.
• Records of trades and purchases: as long as needed to keep the economy honest, settle disputes and meet tax and accounting laws; after your account is deleted, without your name.
• Server logs: a short time, for security and troubleshooting.

10.Your choices and rights

In the game

You can turn the word filter on or off (it stays on under 18), choose who may message you, choose whether friends see your area, block anyone, and refuse to share your device’s location.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you, and give you a copy, including in a portable format;
• correct it;
• delete it, together with your account;
• stop or limit some uses of it, or object to them;
• withdraw a consent you gave, without affecting what we did before.

How to ask

Write to us in the game, in Messages, then Support: that shows us the request really comes from your account. Or email support@parallelcrossing.com; because we don’t have your email address, we may ask you to confirm an emailed request from inside the game. We answer within 30 days, or sooner where the law requires, and we won’t treat you differently for asking. If we turn a request down, we’ll tell you why, and you can appeal by replying.

Deleting your account can’t be done from inside the game yet; until it can, ask us and we’ll do it for you. Deleting is permanent: your character, belongings, land and progress are gone for good.

Europe and the United Kingdom

You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

United States

If you live in a state with a consumer privacy law, such as California, Colorado, Connecticut or Virginia, you have the rights above as your state’s law gives them, including the right to appeal a refusal. We don’t sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of.

11.Children and teens

Parallel Crossing is for players 13 and older. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we close it and delete its information. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child under 13 has an account, email us at support@parallelcrossing.com and we’ll delete it.

Players aged 13 to 17 get extra protection: they receive direct messages only from friends, their word filter stays on, and friends never see their area. The game’s own moderators are adults.

12.Security

We protect your information with safeguards that fit the risks: passwords stored only as salted hashes, signed sign-in tokens, encrypted (HTTPS) connections for signing in, chat and your account, databases that can’t be reached from the internet, and limits on how many requests can be made. No system is perfectly secure, so use a password you don’t use anywhere else. If a breach affects your personal information, we’ll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

13.Where it’s stored

We’re based in the United States, and we and our service providers process your information there and in other countries where they operate, whose data protection laws may differ from yours. When we transfer personal information from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we use safeguards the law recognizes, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

14.Changes to this policy

We’ll update this policy when the game or the law changes. We’ll post the new version here with a new date, and tell you in the game or on this website before a significant change takes effect. Our Terms of Service explain the rest of how the game works between us.

15.Contact us

Questions, requests or worries about your privacy? Write to us.