BYOND Privacy Policy

BYOND is more than a gaming engine: It is a community of game developers and players, and we want to provide a safe space for people to participate. A large part of that is protecting your privacy. We created this document to explain, in as few words possible, the information we collect and how we use it to better your experience here on BYOND. If you have any questions about the policy, feel free to contact us!

BYOND Accounts

Registration with BYOND requires you to input the following pieces of information:

Account name

We recommend that you choose an account name unrelated to your real name, as this identifier cannot be changed without deleting the account.

Password

Your password is not visible or known to BYOND Staff, as it passed through a one-way encryption (or a "hash") before being stored in the database.

Gender

This is strictly used to set the appropriate pronoun when your avatar is used in any games you may play. It needn't correspond to your "in real life" gender and is not, therefore, personally identifying information.

Email address

This is used to validate your account at signup, and for account recovery. This address will not be shared, either within the BYOND community or with outside parties, except as described in the "Protection of your information" section below. We may contact you at this address to provide alerts to game or community activity; however, you may opt-out of this behavior by visiting your Account Settings.

You may modify any of the above information (outside of the account name), access more optional settings, or deactivate your BYOND Account at any time by visiting your Account Settings. Account deactivation hides your public profile (which displays your account name, gender, game and developer creations, favorite games and resources, and any other information you have chosen to share with the community). It also clears your password from the database. Forum posts are not deleted, although you may contact us for assistance with that (or anything else!)

Purchases

Purchase of a BYOND Membership or any other services on the website may require the input of personal information, such as your real name, mailing address, and credit-card information. All of this information is processed securely and off-site by third-party providers (currently PayPal and Stripe). We do not store any of this information and have very limited access to it, only as provided by the aforementioned third-parties.

For some purchases we may ask you to confirm if you are a resident of New York state. This is for tax purposes only and is not shared.

Site and software usage

When you login to the website or use the software client, our servers will create a log entry including your account name, your IP address, and the game you are playing (if applicable). This information is used to enforce the Terms of Service; specifically, to block violating users from "spamming" the network or website through multiple accounts or IP-addresses. As BYOND does not store personal information about its users (such as real name or address), this practice only correlates anonymous accounts.

When you use the software client, our servers will also collect an additional piece of information known as a "hardware-ID". This is a unique numerical value for your computer that has no meaning outside of BYOND. As with the IP address, its sole purpose is to correlate accounts (users playing BYOND games from the same computer) who are known to be violating the TOS.

Games hosted via the BYOND software have access to this same IP-address and (when applicable) hardware-ID information of any users who connect to them. They may also transparently query our servers to block correlated accounts. We have no control or jurisdiction over games hosted with the software and their individual policies.

Game information is collected for the following purposes:

• Getting an accurate count of the total number of players online each day.
• Getting accurate stats about how many unique players play each game and for how long.
• Displaying a user's current or recent games-played activity to their friends or to the general public, depending on their privacy preferences.
  

The information listed in this section is never shared with third parties, except for the limited cases described in "Protection of your information" below.

Information about which games a particular account has played is stored only for a limited period (currently, about 2 weeks). Login information may be stored for a longer term, and is used for purposes of maintaining the ban system and account recovery.

Analytics

As with most hosted sites, our server's access logs contain technical information about your website visits. This includes, but is not limited to, your browser, operating system, and IP address. Aside from the information outlined in the "Site and software usage", we do not correlate this data with your account.

The BYOND website makes use of Google Analytics in order to collect traffic statistics about the userbase. This includes (but may not be limited to) the IP address and geographic location. This data is only accessible to us in an aggregate view, and contains no personal identifying information about you.

Cookies

The BYOND website uses "cookies" to store temporary user information, primarily to prevent the need to repeatedly enter login credentials to use the site.

Advertisement

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit the site or use the associated software. These companies may use information about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements. We do not have access to, nor control over, these third parties' data collection practices and we do not assume any liability related to their collection or use.

User-generated content

All of the forums on BYOND should be treated as public, and as such, you should avoid the posting of any personal information. You are free to edit or delete any posts you have made. You may send a message to a moderator or contact us if you feel your privacy is violated in any way on the forums or elsewhere.

You may send messages to other BYOND users through the software client or the website. These messages are stored in the database for a short time (approximately a week) and then automatically deleted. Only you, the recipient, and BYOND Staff have access to these messages, and BYOND Staff will only review them if alerted, in order to enforce the the Terms of Service.

Correlated Accounts

BYOND moderators may be able to access limited information regarding logins, for the purposes of determining if two accounts belong to the same person. The BYOND hub may also report to game servers if a user matches another person on their ban list.

The suspicion or likelihood that two or more accounts belong to the same person is not regarded, broadly speaking, as private information, because of the impact such a correlation has on hosting games and on website administration. The fact of a correlation may be disclosed at the discretion of BYOND staff. Typically, this is mostly when a Terms of Service violation or habitual violator is involved.

Protection of your information

Aside from the cases mentioned above, BYOND will never disclose any information we collect about you, except:

• as designated by applicable law; e.g., if we are issued a court order.
• for technical reasons; eg, if we are moved to new ownership or otherwise need to transfer our data.
• to protect our network, website, or individual users as per the Terms of Service; practically speaking, this may for example mean (but is not limited to) filing a report with a user's ISP and/or the relevant authorities.

Any third-party advertising or traffic measurement services used by BYOND are individually responsible for whatever limited information they may collect (e.g., your IP address, or cookies created by these services), subject to their respective privacy policies. BYOND does not share your personal information with these third parties.

Regarding payment processing, all information used in transactions is collected and handled by the payment processor themselves, not by BYOND. We do not collect or store this information, although we may choose to store non-identifying transaction tokens that may be used to look up transactions via the payment provider.

Privacy policy changes

We may update this policy from time to time as we introduce new features or modify existing ones. We encourage you to review this document periodically.