Privacy and cookies
This page explains what GamersGuild stores, why, and how to change or remove it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.
What we store
Account. When you join we store your email address, your username, a display name, an optional location and bio, and the date you joined. There is no password: signing in means receiving a four-digit code at that address, and each code is kept only as a hash, only until it is used or runs out (ten minutes). Your email address is used to sign you in and — only if you switch it on, with the box on the join page or on your account page — to send the digest. The date you switched it on is kept next to it, so a mailing can be shown to be covered. The address is not shown on the site and is not shared with anyone.
What you publish. Posts, titles, tags and profile text you submit are stored and shown publicly. Deleting them removes them from the site.
Comments and reactions. A comment you write is stored with your account, the post it belongs to and the time it was written, and is shown publicly with your display name. A reaction is stored as one row per account per post (which of the six it was, and when), so it can be counted and so you can change or take it back; nobody sees who reacted to what. Comments can be edited or deleted by their author for fifteen minutes after writing; after that, ask us and we will take one down. Deleting your account removes your comments with it.
Cookie consent. Your choice is stored in a first-party cookie and, mirrored, in your browser's local storage, under the key cookie_consent_status. It records the zone you were served (Europe, United States or rest of world), which categories you allowed, and when you decided.
Theme preference. Whether you use the light or the dark theme is kept in your browser's local storage under gg_theme. It never leaves your device.
Statistics. If analytics is allowed we count page views on our own server: the page path, a truncated hash of the IP address that changes daily, the referrer and the browser's user-agent string. We do not store the raw IP address, we do not build profiles across sites, and we do not sell or share this with anyone. If you are signed in, the site also stores the date of your last counted visit and your XP total — one point for the first visit of a day, fifteen for a published post and five for a comment or a game rating that went on the page — which is what the member list shows. A click from an advertisement carries its own marker in the address (Google Ads adds gclid, other networks add their own, and a campaign may add utm_*); if analytics is allowed we store that marker with the page view, so an advertising click can be told apart from an ordinary visit, and it is erased after 90 days while the page-view count itself stays.
Advertising. If, and only if, you switch the marketing category on, the site loads the Google Ads tag (AW-18477812206). Google then sets its own cookies in your browser and receives the address of the page you are on, its title, the browser string, the screen size and your approximate location; conversion and remarketing data is processed by Google under its own terms. Nothing is loaded, and no Google cookie is written, until you allow that category — and you can switch it off again at any time.
Messages you send us. Contact-form messages and support email are kept so we can answer and follow up.
Cookies we use
| Name | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
gg_session | Keeps you signed in. Set only after you sign in. | 30 days, or until you sign out |
cookie_consent_status | Remembers your cookie choice so the banner does not ask again. | 12 months in Europe, 24 months elsewhere |
gg_csrf | Short-lived token that protects forms against cross-site submission. | Session |
Google (_gcl_au, IDE, NID, _gcl_*) | Set by the Google Ads tag and shown in the marketing category. Written only if you allow advertising; used for conversion measurement and remarketing. | Up to 13 months, set by Google |
| The ad network that fills the advertising slots (the right column, and the lists between their entries) | Shown in the marketing category. Its cookies are its own and start only if you allow advertising; they are used to pick the banner and to count how often it was seen. | Set by the network |
Those Google cookies and the ones the ad network that fills the advertising slots sets are the only third-party cookies here. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland they appear only after you allow advertising, and until then no third-party request is made at all. Elsewhere the advertising banners load straight away and you can stop them at any time - in the United States with the "Do not sell or share my personal information" control, anywhere in the cookie settings; switching advertising off stops the banners on the next page you open. The Google Ads tag follows the same rule, and /account/ and /moderation/ never load it at all.
Your choices
Strictly necessary cookies cannot be switched off — without them the site cannot keep you signed in or remember your consent. Analytics, marketing and functional categories are opt-in in Europe and can be switched off anywhere by opening — the same item sits in the GamersGuild group of the menu on every page.
Legal bases
Account data is processed to perform our agreement with you (running the account you asked for). Statistics and any optional category run on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time; conversion and remarketing data goes to Google only on that same consent. Contact messages are processed to answer your request. We keep data only as long as the account or the request needs it.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for the account and its content to be deleted. Write to [email protected] from the address on the account and we will respond within 30 days. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.
Children
The site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly keep accounts for them. If you believe a child has registered, write to us and the account is removed.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we store, the date at the top changes and, where the change is significant, the consent banner asks again.
Contact
Data questions and requests: [email protected].