Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Sero is a mobile game made and run by Sxr, an individual developer. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean Sxr, and "the game" means the Sero app and the servers it connects to.

For anything in this policy, contact supportsero@gmail.com

2. What we collect

When you sign in

Sero has no passwords. You sign in with Google or with Apple, and we receive the following details from them:

• Google: your Google account identifier, your email address, your account name and the address of your profile picture.
• Apple: your Apple account identifier, your email address, which may be an Apple private relay address, and your name. Apple only gives us your name the very first time you sign in, and never gives us a profile picture.

We do not receive your password, your contacts, or anything else from your Google or Apple account.

Your email address is never shown to other players, and it is never sent to any copy of the game. It stays on our server and is used to identify your account and to contact you about it.

While you play

Your account keeps track of your progress:

• Your level, XP, coins and total time played
• Skins you own, and the customizations you have selected
• Your personal best record in each game mode, and 2v2 matches played and won
• Your friends list and friend requests
• A locked/reserved username, if you have one
• When your account was created and when you were last online
• Whether you are banned or muted, and the reason, if a moderator has acted on your account

What we do not collect

Worth stating plainly, because a lot of mobile games do collect these:

• No advertising ID and no ads of any kind
• No device identifier, device model or operating system version
• No location or ip address
• No contacts, camera or microphone access
• No analytics, usage tracking or attribution
• No crash or performance reporting

IP addresses

Your IP address is used while you are connected, to limit repeated sign-in attempts and to block abusive connections. It is never stored in our database. It can appear in server log files, which are deleted after 30 days.

Server chat

Sero has one global chat per game server. There is no private or direct messaging anywhere in the game, so anything you type is visible to every other player on that server.

Server chat messages are not stored. They are passed between the players on that server as they are sent, and are not written to disk on our servers.

Please still be sensible about what you type. Anyone on the server can read, screenshot and report what you say.

Photos and your gallery

Sero asks for gallery permission in two places, and only at the moment you use the feature that needs it:

• Saving a replay video. When you export a replay, the game needs permission to write the finished video into your gallery. This one is write-only, and it happens only for the replay you chose to export
• Choosing your own map background. If you set a custom background, the game opens your phone's own image picker and receives only the single image you pick. That image is copied into the game's storage so your background keeps working even if you later delete the original from your gallery

Sero cannot browse, search or scan your gallery. The picker belongs to your phone's operating system, not to us, and the game never sees anything except the one file you choose to hand it.

No photo you pick is ever uploaded. Your custom background stays on your phone and is never sent to us or to anyone else. You can refuse gallery permission, or take it away later in your phone's settings, and the only thing that stops working is these two features.

3. What stays on your device

Some things never reach us at all:

• Your session token, the thing that keeps you signed in, is stored on the device itself
• Your game settings, your chosen HUD layout and your custom background
• Your replays. These are recorded and played back entirely on your phone. They are never uploaded to us. If you export one as a video, it goes to your gallery, and only because you asked for it

Uninstalling the app removes all of it

4. Who else is involved

• Google for signing in, and Google Play for distributing the game and handling payments
• Apple for signing in on iOS
• Your phone downloads your profile picture directly from Google's servers, so that image request goes to Google rather than through us

That is everything. We do not use any advertising network, analytics provider or data broker. We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for advertising.

We may disclose account information if we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to investigate abuse, fraud or a threat to someone's safety.

5. Purchases

Sero Gold and Sero Platinum are subscriptions billed through Google Play.

Payment is handled entirely by Google. We never see or store your card details, your billing address or your payment history. What we store is which subscription your account currently holds, so the game knows what to unlock.

Coins and skins are in-game items only. They are not money, they cannot be cashed out, and buying them involves no payment details reaching us.

6. Security

Everything your account does is encrypted. Signing in, your profile, friends, leaderboards and purchases all travel over HTTPS. Your email address, your password for anything and your payment details never leave that protected connection.

Game server traffic, which is your in-game name, your movement and server chat runs over a separate connection that is not yet encrypted. Treat everything there as public and do not type anything into it that you would not want a stranger to read. Encrypting gameplay traffic is on our to-do.

7. Children

Sero is for players aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 13, and we do not target the game at them.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has an account, email supportsero@gmail.com and we will delete it and the data attached to it.

8. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• See a copy of what we hold about you
• Correct anything that is wrong
• Delete your account and its data
• Take it elsewhere, as a machine-readable copy
• Object to how we use it

To delete your account, use Settings > Delete account in the game. The account deletion page explains exactly what happens and how long it takes.

For anything else, email supportsero@gmail.com. We will reply within 30 days.

Sero is run by one person, so if something looks wrong, please email us first. We would much rather fix it ourselves. If you are in the EU or the UK, you can also raise it with your national data protection authority

9. Why we are allowed to hold this

For players in the EU and the UK, our legal bases are:

• Performing our contract with you. We cannot run an account, save your progress or show you a leaderboard without storing the things listed above
• Our legitimate interests in keeping the game fair and safe, which covers anti-cheat, rate limiting and moderation
• Legal obligations, where a law requires us to keep or hand over something

10. How long we keep data

• Your account data: for as long as your account exists. When you delete it, it is deactivated for 31 days and then permanently erased
• Server logs: 30 days, then deleted automatically
• Database backups: 30 days
• Server chat messages: not stored at all

11. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change actually affects what we collect or what we do with it, we will tell you in the game rather than hoping you check back here.

12. Contact

supportsero@gmail.com

We are a one person operation, give us a few days to reply.