Privacy Policy
The short version: we need an email address to sign you in and your gameplay to run the galaxy; if you choose to upload a picture, ask VEGA a question or use chat, we keep those too, for as long as this policy says. Chat is not end-to-end encrypted: your messages stay readable on our servers until they expire, after 7, 30 or 90 days depending on the room. Moderators can read any message that someone reports, staff of our Discord server can read private VEGA threads held there, and Universe and Help messages, with those of any galaxy connected to our Discord server, are copied to Discord, where Discord's own policy applies to them. We run no ads, no analytics and no trackers, and we never sell or rent personal data. Three outside services handle these features: OpenAI checks the names, bios and pictures you make public and every chat message before we save them, Anthropic writes VEGA's answers, and Discord carries the shared rooms. When you delete your account all of your personal data goes, and section 9 says exactly what stays, including the limit on what we can remove once it is on Discord. What stays of your game is the galaxy itself: your empire is abandoned to its own people rather than deleted, because the map is never edited on one player's behalf. The long version follows, and it is the version that counts.
- Who we are and what this covers
- What we collect
- What we never collect
- Why we use it, and on what legal basis
- What other players can see
- Who processes data for us
- Where data is stored and international transfers
- How long we keep it
- Deleting your account, and what remains
- Your rights
- Security
- What stays on your device
- Children
- Changes to this policy
- Contact
1. Who we are and what this covers
Astral Sovereignty is made and operated by Space Junk Industries LLC, a Delaware (United States) limited liability company ("we", "us"). This policy covers the personal data we process when you visit our websites, play the game in a browser or in the Android app, use the game's Discord features, or contact us. It also covers members of our Discord server who talk in a channel shared with in-game chat, whether or not they have an account here. It does not cover Discord, Google, Cloudflare, OpenAI, Anthropic or Backblaze's own services, which have their own policies.
2. What we collect
| Category | What, exactly | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Your email address; the account name you choose; one-time sign-in codes (stored hashed, valid for minutes); your active sessions (a token per device); a support code we generate so you can identify your account to us without revealing your email. | You, when you register and sign in. |
| Google Sign-In (optional) | Your Google account's email address and its permanent Google identifier — nothing else: not your name, picture or contacts. We ask Google for the narrowest permission that exists. A Google address that already has an account here joins that account rather than making a second one. | Google, only if you choose Sign in with Google. |
| Gameplay | Your empire's name and everything it does: orders, colonies, fleets, ship designs, research, reports, standings, alliance membership, the names you give things, the bio you write for your empire's public profile, private map notes and tags, and your automation settings. Also the "seen" markers and dismissals that keep your interface tidy. | You, by playing. |
| Empires played and left | To enforce the limits on leaving a galaxy and to spot abuse, we keep a record of the empires each account has played and left, on which galaxy and when, which our operators can see. | Created by the game when you found or leave an empire. |
| Pictures you upload (optional) | If you choose your own emblem or portrait for an empire, a crest for an alliance you lead or officer, or a profile picture, we keep that picture as a small square image (256 by 256 pixels, at most 150 KB) with its metadata removed, together with a fingerprint of it (its SHA-256 hash) and which account uploaded it. Your device does the shrinking and stripping before anything is sent; the original file never leaves it, and the server refuses a picture that still carries metadata. Every picture is public: it is served from a plain address that anyone can open without signing in, because every player sees emblems on the map. | You, when you upload one. At most ten uploads a day. |
| Chat messages and direct messages (optional) | Every line you send in Universe, a galaxy room, Help, your alliance's room, a custom room or a direct message: its text (plain text, at most 1,000 characters), the room, the time, the call sign you had when you sent it, the line it replies to if any, whether it came from the game or from Discord, and the outcome of its content check. A direct-message request also holds the introduction you write. Chat carries no attachments, and the game does not open links in it. Chat is not end-to-end encrypted: the text is stored readable on our servers until it expires (section 8). A line you remove yourself, or one that a moderator or room owner removes, has its text cleared at once and leaves a "removed" marker. | You, when you send a message. |
| Call sign and chat picture | Your call sign is the public name other players see in chat instead of your account name: one we generate for you ("Commander" and a random code) and, where the game offers it, one you choose. An old call sign stays reserved for 90 days after you change it, so that nobody can take it and pose as you. Your chat picture is your profile picture (the row above): there is no second upload, and without one chat shows a built-in placeholder. We also give you an opaque public identifier that stands for you in chat, never your account id, and keep your direct-message setting (requests, existing conversations only, or nobody) and your badge setting. | Generated by us; you, if you choose your own. |
| Chat settings and rooms | The Public or Private setting you choose for each empire (section 5); the players you have blocked; the rooms you belong to and your role in them; which rooms you follow or have muted, and how far you have read; custom rooms you create, with their name, description and audience; and the invitations you send and receive. | You, by using chat. |
| Reports you file | The reason you choose and your optional explanation (up to 300 characters). The server, not your device, then saves a snapshot of the reported line for moderators: its full text, with recognised passwords, tokens and email addresses removed; its room; when it was sent and when it was reported; the author's call sign at both moments; the account ids and support codes of the author and of you; the outcome of its content check; and a hash of the line. For a line posted from Discord, the snapshot also holds the Discord message's ids and the author's internal Discord record, and if the author has no linked account, the name they posted under takes the place of the account fields. A report saves its snapshot even from a private room. | You, when you report a line; the server, from the line you reported. |
| Chat restrictions and moderation records | A record of each mute, ban, removal or other moderation action: who it applies to, who acted, its scope and reason, when it was made and when it ends, and whether it was mirrored to or from Discord. | Moderators, the owners and moderators of custom rooms, alliance officers, and our Discord server's staff and safety tools. |
| Questions you ask VEGA (optional) | VEGA, the shipboard AI, answers questions about the game, one at a time in Settings or as a conversation (next row). In the Help room, a line starting @VEGA is answered for everyone in the room. That answer is kept for the room's 7 days and removed with your question, and VEGA receives only the words of that question, nothing about you or your empire. If nobody replies within about two minutes, VEGA also answers a line in Help that looks like a question, from a game account or an actively linked Discord account. You can turn this off for yourself in the Help room, and that choice covers your linked Discord account. For every question we keep a record for 90 days: when it was asked, by which account and empire or, on Discord without a linked account, which internal Discord record, how long it was and what it cost us. While chat is on, this record holds none of the words of your question. At any other time it can hold the first 500 characters of what you typed, and a record made before chat went live may hold them until its 90 days are up. A question asked in Settings is answered on its own and VEGA remembers nothing between those questions: its answer, and the summary of your empire that went with it, are not kept. | You, when you use Ask VEGA. |
| VEGA conversations (optional) | VEGA can also hold a private conversation, in chat (one for each galaxy you choose, or a guide-only one), in a private thread on our Discord server, or in a direct message to our Discord bot, which is general help and never sees your empire. We keep what you asked and what VEGA answered as a transcript for 30 days from each message, so that VEGA can follow up. This is separate from the 90-day question record above. The summary of your empire is not kept here either. VEGA reads only that one conversation, never your other conversations, your direct messages or any room. Deleting a conversation in the game removes its transcript and VEGA's memory of it at once. | You, when you talk to VEGA; the answers come from Anthropic (section 6). |
| Hails to computer-run empires (optional, where a galaxy offers them) | When you hail a computer-run empire you pick a request and may add a short message (up to 240 characters). We keep that message and the reply you received for 14 days as your private conversation history. Where a galaxy offers enhanced replies, the record of what a reply cost and how it was checked holds no text. | You, when you hail. |
| Content checks | For every name, tag, bio or picture checked before it is saved, and every chat message, call sign, room name or description, VEGA question and VEGA answer that is checked, we keep one line for 90 days: the account and empire it came from where there is one, which kind of thing it was, the outcome and category, the model that checked it, and a fingerprint (a hash) of the text or picture. When a public name, tag or bio is refused, or could not be checked, the line also keeps the first 200 characters of it so a wrong refusal can be reviewed. Chat is different: a line for a chat message, call sign, room name or description, VEGA question or VEGA answer never keeps any words, only the hash, even if it was refused. Pictures are never kept on these lines, only their hash, and a hail message is never kept on them either. | Created by us when you save a public name, tag, bio or picture, send a chat message, choose a call sign, name a room, ask VEGA a question, or send a hail message to an empire that answers with an enhanced reply. |
| Support | Tickets you file in the game and emails you send us, with their subject and content. | You, when you contact us. |
| Discord (optional) | Your Discord user ID and username, the link between it and your account, and the commands you send the game's bot. If you link with the button in the game, Discord's own page asks your permission first. We then read your Discord ID and username once and add you to our Discord server, using a token we discard straight away. | Discord, only if you link it or use the bot. |
| Messages from our Discord server | If you post in a Discord channel shared with in-game chat or in a private VEGA thread there, or send our bot a direct message, we receive your Discord user ID, the name Discord shows for you on that server, the message and its Discord ids, whether or not you have an account here. A direct message is not copied into the game. With a linked account your message appears in the game under your call sign. Without one it appears as "name (Discord)": we clean that name and check it like any other (section 6), use "Discord guest" and a short code if it fails, and store it on the line for as long as the line is kept. We never take your Discord picture. A message with an attachment or sticker, or one that fails the checks, is not copied into the game and is removed from Discord; editing a copied message removes it from both places. We also keep one internal record of your Discord user ID, an opaque identifier for it and when you last used the bridge, so that allowances and restrictions follow you. | Discord, when you post in one of those channels. |
| Chat delivery records | Records with no message text that let a line reach Discord or your phone, be retried safely or be taken back: which Discord message a line became, with a hash of the original; the queue of deliveries and removals; and a short record of each send, so that a retry after a lost connection does not post twice. | Created by us. |
| Notifications (optional) | Your email notification preferences and, if you turn on push notifications, the push subscription your browser gives us (an endpoint URL and keys) or, in the Android app, the device token that Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging issues to your app install. A token identifies one app install, not you; we keep at most eight per account. Alerts for direct messages are a separate setting, off unless you turn them on. | You, when you turn them on. The app's token comes from Google when you allow notifications. |
| Technical and security | IP addresses, request logs, rate-limit counters, and an audit trail of account events (sign-in, sign-out, changes to the account) that records the event, when it happened and a non-reversible hint of the email involved. | Your device, automatically, whenever it talks to our servers. |
3. What we never collect
No advertising identifiers, no analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers, no location, no contacts, no device fingerprinting, no payment details (there is nothing to buy). The game client talks to our game servers and to no one else. We do not sell, rent or trade personal data, and we do not build profiles of you for anyone. Our servers pass data on only to the service providers in section 6, and only what that section names. We never read your photo library or camera: the only picture we ever hold is one you chose and uploaded yourself, and you can remove it at any time.
4. Why we use it, and on what legal basis
| Purpose | Data used | Legal basis (GDPR / UK GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Running your account and the game you asked to play: signing you in, resolving your orders every tick, showing you your reports | Account, gameplay, technical | Performance of our contract with you (the Rules of Play) |
| Keeping the service and other players safe: rate limits, abuse and cheat detection, debugging defects, the account audit trail | Technical and security, gameplay, empires played and left | Our legitimate interest in a fair, working game, which we judge does not override your interests because we keep only what those tasks need |
| Answering you when you contact us | Support | Performance of our contract; legitimate interest in keeping a record of what we told you |
| Optional features you switch on: Google Sign-In, Discord play, email and push notifications, including alerts for direct messages | Google Sign-In, Discord, notifications | Your consent, which you withdraw by switching the feature off or unlinking it |
| Checking the names, tags, bios and pictures you make public, so they keep to the Rules of Play | Gameplay (public names, tags, bio), pictures, content checks | Our legitimate interest in a game other players can safely share, and performance of our contract with you (Rules of Play, section 5) |
| Carrying your chat: delivering your messages, keeping your rooms, blocks and settings, showing your call sign and picture beside what you write | Chat messages and direct messages, call sign and chat picture, chat settings and rooms, chat delivery records | Performance of our contract with you: you chose to use chat, and you can play without it |
| Keeping chat safe: checking messages before they are posted, handling reports, applying mutes and bans, and mirroring a restriction between the game and our Discord server | Chat messages and direct messages, messages from our Discord server, content checks, reports, chat restrictions and moderation records | Our legitimate interest in a game other players can safely share, which we judge does not override your interests because checks see the text alone, moderators work from reports, and these records expire on the schedule in section 8; and performance of our contract with you (Rules of Play, section 5) |
| Sharing Universe, Help and connected galaxy rooms with our Discord server, in both directions | Lines in those rooms, call signs, messages from our Discord server, chat delivery records | Our legitimate interest in one conversation across the game and its community, which we judge does not override your interests because only those rooms are shared, no empire or account details go with a line, and alliance rooms, Help, direct messages and custom rooms stay out of it |
| Showing the pictures you upload where you asked them shown | Pictures | Your consent, which you withdraw by removing the picture |
| Answering your questions through VEGA, keeping a VEGA conversation so that it can follow up, and wording a computer-run empire's reply to your hail where a galaxy offers enhanced replies | Questions you ask VEGA, VEGA conversations, hails, gameplay (the empire summary) | Your consent, given each time you ask or hail; you can simply not use them, and you can delete a conversation. VEGA answering an unanswered question in Help rests on our legitimate interest in helping players, and you can turn it off |
| Announcing changes that affect you (releases, maintenance, changes to these policies) | Account (email), Discord | Legitimate interest; legal obligation where notice is required |
| Complying with the law and responding to lawful requests | Whatever the request lawfully requires | Legal obligation |
We do not use your data to make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on you. The tick engine applies the same game rules to every empire; that is game logic, not profiling. The content check is automatic too: it can refuse a name, tag, bio, picture or chat message, which only stops that one thing from being saved or posted. A refusal on its own never mutes or bans anyone. You can choose another name or say it differently, and if you think a refusal was wrong, email us and a person will look at it.
5. What other players can see
Astral Sovereignty is a multiplayer game, so some of your gameplay is visible to others by design: your call sign and chat picture, your empire name, the bio you wrote for it, its emblem and portrait, your standing in the power rankings, your alliance and its name, tag and crest, the names of colonies and fleets that other empires have actually met or scouted, and anything your fleets do where other fleets can see them. Every player whose colonies appear on another player's map is listed to that player with their empire name and marks. Any picture you upload is public in the fullest sense: it is served from a plain web address that anyone who has it can open, with or without an account, so choose pictures you are content for anyone to see. Your email, account name, Google identity, support history, private map notes, tags and automation settings are never shown to other players, and neither is your Discord identity, apart from the one case under "Shared with Discord" below. Rivalry, deception and alliances between empires are part of the game; abuse of the person behind an empire is not (Rules of Play, section 4).
Chat. Every line you send shows your call sign and your chat picture, never your account name or email address. Anyone who can read the line can open your player profile, which shows your call sign, your picture and whichever of your empires the settings below allow them to see. Who can read a line depends on the room:
- Universe and Help: every player using chat. Both are also shared with our Discord server. A question written to VEGA in Help, and VEGA's answer, are public like any line there.
- A galaxy's room: the players of that galaxy. If the galaxy is connected to our Discord server, which only a public, listed galaxy can be, everyone there who can see its channel reads it too, whether or not they play in that galaxy.
- Your alliance's room: its current members. Someone who leaves loses access, and on rejoining reads only what is said from then on.
- Custom rooms: the members. Anyone can join a public room and read what it still holds; a member of an invite-only room reads from the moment they join. A room's owner and moderators can remove lines and mute or remove members.
- Direct messages: the two of you, and only once the other person accepts your request. Until then they see only your introduction, among their requests.
- VEGA conversations: in the game, only you. In a private thread on Discord, you and our Discord server's staff, as explained below. In a direct message to our bot, you and the bot.
Your empires are private by default. Each empire has its own Public or Private setting, which you can change at any time; if you never choose, it is Private. Private means the empire's name appears beside your call sign only in that galaxy's room and your alliance's room, and only to players who are themselves in that galaxy. Public also lists it on your player profile for people in every galaxy, if that galaxy is public and listed. Universe, Help, direct messages and custom rooms never show an empire beside your name, and neither do the lines we send to Discord, whichever you choose. Your pictures stay public either way, and changing the setting cannot recall what people have already seen or what you have written about yourself.
Shared with Discord. Universe, Help and connected galaxy rooms are one conversation with channels on our Discord server. A line you send from the game appears there as a message from our bot with your call sign and the text, visible to everyone on that server who can see the channel, whether or not they play. A line from Discord appears in the game under the sender's call sign if their account is linked, and as "name (Discord)" if it is not. If you have linked Discord and post from Discord, your Discord name and your call sign are on the same words, so anyone who reads both places can connect them; if you only post from the game, nothing shows the link. Alliance rooms, direct messages, custom rooms and in-game VEGA conversations never go to Discord.
What moderators and staff can read. Moderators can read any message that has been reported, including one from a direct message, an alliance room or a custom room, in the snapshot section 2 describes; opening a case is logged. Their tools work from reports and offer no general view of private rooms, and private-room text is never posted to a Discord channel. Staff of our Discord server can read private VEGA threads on Discord: a thread is private from other players, not from them, so use VEGA in the game if you want it off Discord. Chat is not end-to-end encrypted, so the people who administer our database could also read stored messages; we use that access only for the purposes in section 4.
Blocking and restrictions. Blocking someone stops direct messages and invitations between you in both directions and hides their lines from you in rooms you share; they are not told. It does not hide their empire, emblem, portrait or profile elsewhere in the game, and it changes neither alliances nor gameplay. If your account is linked to Discord, a chat mute is also a timeout across our whole Discord server and a chat ban is a ban from that server, and a timeout or ban on that server applies to your chat in return, so other members may see there that you were restricted.
6. Who processes data for us
We use a small number of service providers, each bound to process data only to provide their service to us. The exception is what appears on Discord, which follows Discord's own policy, as its entry says:
- Cloudflare, Inc. — sits in front of the game and the websites, delivering them and protecting them from attack. It processes visitor IP addresses and request metadata to do that.
- Brevo (Sendinblue SAS) — delivers our sign-in-code and service emails to your address, and so processes your email address and the content of those emails.
- Google LLC — verifies your identity if, and only if, you use Sign in with Google; distributes the Android app through Google Play, where Google's own policies apply to the store; and, if you turn on push notifications in the Android app, delivers them through Firebase Cloud Messaging, which processes your device token and the content of each notification (a battle result, a fleet contact, a warning) in order to deliver it. Browser push goes through your browser's own push service instead. An alert for a direct message says only "New message" and links to the room: no sender and no text.
- Discord Inc. — carries the game's Discord features if you use them. It also receives every line sent in Universe, in Help and in any galaxy room connected to our Discord server: the sender's call sign and the text, with no empire, picture, account name or email address. Our bot posts them in channels on that server. Discord also holds what members post there, the text of VEGA conversations held in private threads and direct messages with our bot, and the timeouts and bans that mirror chat restrictions. All of that appears in a third-party service and follows Discord's own privacy policy: Discord keeps its own records of it, and what people do with it there is outside our control. Section 9 says what we can remove.
- OpenAI, L.L.C. — checks the words and pictures you put where other players can see them before we save them: account, empire, alliance and colony names, alliance tags, your empire bio, call signs, custom room names and descriptions, and any emblem, portrait, crest or profile picture you upload. It also checks every chat message before it is posted, in every room, private rooms and direct messages included, with the name of any Discord member who has no linked account, and it checks the questions you ask VEGA and VEGA's answers. Where a galaxy offers enhanced replies from computer-run empires, it also checks the message you add to a hail and the reply before you see it. OpenAI receives the text or the picture and nothing else: no account, empire, email address, IP address, room, call sign of the sender or surrounding conversation goes with them. The check runs only while we hold a key for it and within its daily limit. Without it, the word filter and our moderators are the only check, and a chat message is posted on the word filter alone.
- Anthropic, PBC — writes VEGA's answer when you ask the shipboard AI a question in Settings, in a VEGA conversation in chat in a private VEGA thread on our Discord server, in a direct message to our Discord bot, or in the Help room. In the Help room it receives only the question, the instructions and the guide. Anthropic receives the question you typed, VEGA's own instructions and game guide, and a short summary of your empire on that galaxy: the galaxy's name, current tick and settings, your empire's name, how many colonies and fleets you have and up to twelve colony names, what you are researching, and the language and screen you asked from. In a conversation it also receives the earlier questions and answers of that same conversation: at most the latest six completed exchanges and 8,000 characters. A guide-only conversation goes without the empire summary; that is what you get before you have an empire, and on Discord unless you have linked your account and chosen a galaxy. It never receives your email address, account name, account id, support code, Discord name or id, or IP address, your other conversations or chat rooms, or anything about another player beyond what you typed yourself. Please do not put personal details in a question. Where a galaxy offers enhanced replies from computer-run empires, Anthropic also receives the request you picked, the message you added and what the two empires can already see of each other, and writes one or two sentences of reply. Both are available only while we hold a key for them.
- Backblaze, Inc. — holds an off-site copy of each nightly database backup for ten days in a private bucket, which Backblaze encrypts at rest, so that the game survives the loss of its database server.
- Our hosting provider (currently netcup GmbH, Germany) — runs the servers the game and its database live on.
OpenAI and Anthropic process what they receive under their API terms and may keep their own short-lived records of it under those terms; deleting your account here cannot reach those copies, which is one more reason to keep personal details out of questions and messages.
Beyond them, and what other players can see under section 5, we do not share personal data with anyone, except where the law requires it or where it is necessary to protect the service or other players from harm — and then only what is necessary.
7. Where data is stored and international transfers
The game servers and database are hosted in Germany, in the European Union. Cloudflare, Google, Discord, OpenAI and Anthropic operate globally, and Discord, OpenAI and Anthropic are United States companies, so data that passes through them, which now includes chat messages, VEGA conversations and the lines copied to Discord, may be processed outside the EEA and the United Kingdom; the off-site backup copy is stored with Backblaze in the United States; each of them provides recognised safeguards for such transfers (for example standard contractual clauses or an applicable adequacy decision). If you play from outside the EU, your data is transferred to the EU to be processed. Space Junk Industries LLC is a United States company, so our own operator access to those servers is access from the United States; we make it under the same safeguards, and only for the purposes in section 4. Lines on our Discord server can also be read from anywhere by anyone who can see the channel.
8. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Account (email, account name, sessions) | As long as your account exists. Sessions end when you sign out or they expire. |
| Sign-in codes | Usable for ten minutes; once a code has been used or has expired, its hashed record is deleted by the nightly cleanup when it is 7 days old. |
| Gameplay records | For the life of the galaxy they belong to. A retired galaxy's world is archived or removed on our schedule. Reports, and the history of orders that have been carried out, are kept for 14 days and then removed each night; an order that is still waiting for a tick is never removed. |
| Pictures you upload | While they are in use. A picture you replace or remove, or that a moderator takes down, is deleted 30 days later. On account deletion your profile picture and every picture only you used are deleted at once; a crest stays with its alliance, and a picture another account also uses stays for that account. |
| Chat messages | Universe, galaxy and Help rooms: 7 days. Alliance and custom rooms: 30 days. Accepted direct messages: 90 days. Each line's time runs from when the server accepted it, whatever happens afterwards, so a busy room or an open report does not extend it. When the time is up the line stops being readable, and the nightly cleanup then deletes it. A line removed sooner leaves a marker with no text until the same date. Lines in a closed custom room can no longer be read and go when their 30 days are up; deleting a custom room clears its lines at once. A report already filed keeps its own snapshot (below). |
| Direct-message requests and custom-room invitations | 7 days. Declining or blocking clears an introduction's text at once. An introduction keeps its 7 days even if the request is accepted; the conversation after it keeps its 90. |
| Copies on Discord | When a Universe, Help or galaxy line reaches its 7 days, or is removed sooner, we ask Discord to remove its copy, including a member's own message if that is where the line came from. We retry for 7 days; section 9 says what happens if Discord does not accept. |
| Reports and their snapshots | 180 days from filing, even if the case is unresolved, then deleted. |
| Mutes, bans and moderation records | A mute or ban is kept for as long as it is in force and then for 180 days after it ends or is lifted. A permanent ban has no end date, so it stays until it is lifted. Records of other moderation actions: 180 days. |
| Old call signs | Reserved for 90 days after you change them, then released. Cleared at once on account deletion. |
| Blocks, chat settings and room memberships | Until you unblock, change them or leave, or delete your account. A record of a room you left goes 7 days later. A custom room with no members is deleted after 30 days, as is a closed one; the empty shell of a direct-message conversation both people have closed goes 7 days after its last line. |
| Your Discord record | While your account is linked, as long as the link lasts. Otherwise 90 days after you last used the bridge, then deleted. An active restriction keeps it until the restriction ends. |
| Chat delivery records | These hold no message text. Send records: 7 days. The link between a line and its Discord copy, and queued deliveries and removals: gone within about three weeks of the line being sent. |
| Questions you ask VEGA | 90 days. While chat is on these records hold none of your words; an older one may hold the first 500 characters. On account deletion the question text and your identity are removed from the record at once; an anonymous cost line stays until the 90 days are up. |
| VEGA conversations | 30 days from each message, in the game and on Discord, separately from the 90-day question record above. Deleting a conversation in the game clears it at once. On Discord our bot also removes thread messages older than 30 days and deletes the whole thread after 30 days without activity. |
| Hail messages and replies | 14 days; cleared at once on account deletion. The cost and check records of an enhanced reply hold no text and are kept 90 days, without your identity after account deletion. |
| Content checks | 90 days. Lines for chat, call signs, rooms and VEGA hold no words to begin with. On account deletion your identity and any stored text are removed from the lines at once; the anonymous outcome and hash stay until the 90 days are up. A name refused when you first signed up, before any account existed, is linked to no account, so its line, with any stored text, simply expires at 90 days. |
| Support tickets and emails | While we are helping you, plus a reasonable record afterwards; deleted with your account. |
| Discord link, notification preferences, push subscriptions, app device tokens | Until you unlink or switch them off, unregister the device, our staff end the link, or you delete your account. A link does not expire by itself. Older app tokens are replaced once an account has eight. |
| Your record of empires played and left | As long as the account, then erased when the account is deleted. |
| Account audit trail | 180 days, then aged out. On account deletion its identity is scrubbed immediately: what remains is the fact that an event happened and when, linked to nothing. |
| Request logs and rate-limit counters | Days, on a rolling basis. |
| Database backups | 14 days on the database server and 7 days in the off-site copy, both on a rolling basis, then deleted. A backup taken before your deletion may hold your data until it expires; backups are never restored to bring back a deleted account. |
9. Deleting your account, and what remains
You can delete your account at any time from inside the game (More → Account → Delete account) or by email; the exact steps are on the account deletion page. Deletion begins immediately and is complete within 30 days, usually within the hour.
Deleting your account removes all of your personal data: your email address, account name, sign-in codes and sessions, your Google identity and your link to Discord, support tickets and correspondence, notification and push settings, private map notes, fleet and design tags, the notes you wrote about other empires, the empire bio you wrote, your profile picture and every emblem, portrait or other picture that only you used, the text of any question you asked VEGA, your VEGA conversations, your call sign and its reservations, your chat settings, blocks, room memberships and invitations, the text of every chat line and direct message you wrote and your identity on them, your hail messages and the replies to them, the stored text of any content check, and your empire's name. The audit trail, the VEGA usage record and the content-check record are stripped of anything that identifies you. A sign-in, Discord link or profile change that was still in progress when you asked cannot bring any of it back. Your email address is released and can be used for a fresh account, which starts from nothing like everyone else's.
Your empire is abandoned, not deleted. The galaxy is a shared world that other players have acted in, and under the Rules of Play the map is never edited on any one player's behalf; deleting an empire would hand its neighbours free territory and erase the history of everyone who dealt with it. Instead its citizens take over: the empire is given a new, system-generated name and is run from then on by the same computer players that run every other non-player empire, under the same rules as everyone. Its colonies, fleets, designs and battle history remain part of the map as anonymous game records. Your old empire name is rewritten to the new one wherever other players' reports and notes quoted it. The names you gave colonies, fleets and ship designs remain with the map; they are not linked to you, and if one of them identifies you we will rename it on request. Its built-in catalog emblem, flag and portrait stay; any picture you uploaded for it is removed, and if you set an alliance's crest the crest stays with the alliance, no longer linked to you.
Your chat lines are cleared, not just hidden. At once, every retained line you wrote loses its text and your identity, in every room. What remains is an anonymous "removed" marker, with no call sign, picture or profile link, until that line's own time is up. In a direct-message conversation the other person keeps their own lines and those markers, and nothing of yours. Your VEGA conversations are deleted outright. A custom room you own passes to its longest-serving eligible moderator, or closes if there is none. If you are the author or the reporter of a reported line, that report's snapshot and explanation are emptied and its account links cleared; what remains until its 180 days are up is the case itself: the reason, status, dates, internal ids of the line and the room, and a hash of the line. Moderation records about you or made by you lose the names and the reason. What other people wrote stays until it expires, even if it mentions you.
Copies already on Discord are the limit. Universe and galaxy lines you sent from the game exist on Discord as messages from our bot, and lines you sent from Discord exist there as your own messages. Deleting your account cancels anything not yet delivered, asks Discord to remove every copy we hold a record of, and asks it to delete any private VEGA thread bound to your account. It also deletes our bot's answers in a direct message with you; your own messages there stay until you delete them. That is Discord's service, so we cannot promise the result. If Discord does not accept a removal we keep retrying for 7 days and alert our staff; after that the automatic attempts stop, the record of where the copy is goes soon after, and the copy can stay on Discord until our staff remove it by hand or Discord does. If you find one, email us the link and we will remove it. We also cannot recall what people have already read, quoted or screenshotted, or the records Discord keeps for itself. Our Discord server's staff logs can hold a copy too: when a member's message is edited or deleted in a channel the game does not bridge, the bot may post its text and author to a staff log channel, where it stays until staff delete it; bridged chat channels and private VEGA threads are excluded from those logs. And lines you posted from Discord before you linked your account, and VEGA threads you opened before linking, are tied to your Discord record rather than your account, so deleting the account does not reach them: they expire on their usual schedule, or sooner with the command below.
The /chat-delete-data command. On our Discord server, /chat-delete-data erases what we store from your Discord use, with or without an account here. It clears the text of every retained line you posted from Discord and of your VEGA conversations there, however many there are; asks Discord to remove those messages and to delete your VEGA threads, with the same 7-day limit as above; deletes our bot's answers in a direct message (a bot cannot delete your own messages there, so those stay until you delete them); strips your question records of your identity; and empties the snapshot of any report about a line you posted from Discord. It does not delete an account here or anything you typed in the game, for which you delete your account. It does not lift restrictions or reset allowances. Your Discord user ID stays on that one internal record for 90 days, counted from the command itself because using it is activity, and for longer if an active restriction needs it.
A few records stay for a limited time: the anonymous VEGA cost lines and content-check lines until their 90 days are up; a picture a moderator took down for breaking the Rules of Play, kept for its 30 days as evidence and then deleted; report cases emptied of their content, until their 180 days are up; your Discord user ID on that one internal record, no longer tied to your account, until 90 days after you last used the bridge; and, if you are muted or banned when you delete, the restriction itself, on an internal identifier with no login details or content, until it ends and for 180 days after (a permanent ban until it is lifted), so that deleting an account cannot be used to escape it. A mirrored timeout or ban stays on Discord until it ends or is lifted. Backups expire as section 8 says, and copies OpenAI, Anthropic and Discord keep under their own terms are outside our reach (section 6). Apart from the Discord record, none of what remains can be linked to you by us or by anyone else, which is why it can stay when everything else about you has gone.
10. Your rights
Wherever you are, you can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, and object to or ask us to restrict a particular use of it. Email [email protected] from your account's email address — that is how we know a request is yours, because there are no passwords to check — and we will answer within 30 days.
If you have no account here and only post on our Discord server, /chat-delete-data there erases what section 9 says. For any other request, email us with your Discord username and we will ask you to confirm it from that Discord account.
If you are in the EU/EEA or the United Kingdom, these are your rights under the GDPR / UK GDPR (access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection, and withdrawal of consent), and you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. If you are in California or another jurisdiction with its own privacy law, the same rights apply to you through the same address; we do not sell or share personal data for advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of.
11. Security
All traffic is encrypted in transit. There are no passwords to leak: sign-in codes are single-use, expire in minutes and are stored hashed. Inside the service, each component reaches the database through its own least-privilege role, so for example the game's tick engine has no access to your support history and the public API cannot rewrite the map. Chat is encrypted in transit but not end-to-end, so messages are readable on our servers until they expire; the tick engine and the computer players have no access to chat at all, and the nightly cleanup sees expiry dates but not message text. Backups are copies of the database, kept on the database server for 14 days, readable only by the operator, and, as a safeguard against losing that server, also in a private bucket with our backup-storage provider for 7 days, encrypted at rest there; both expire on a rolling schedule. No system is perfectly secure; if we ever discover a breach that affects your personal data we will tell you and, where required, the authorities.
12. What stays on your device
We set no cookies. The browser and the app keep a session token (so tomorrow you are still signed in) and interface preferences (your language, collapsed cards, dismissed notices, map settings) in your device's local storage. Signing out or clearing your browser data removes them.
13. Children
Astral Sovereignty is for players aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13; if you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will delete it.
14. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the game's What's New and on Discord before it takes effect. The effective date at the top of this page always tells you which version you are reading.
15. Contact
Space Junk Industries LLC · registered in the State of Delaware, United States · [email protected]