Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 5, 2026

ValueBattles ("we", "us") is a game: you show things to your camera and an AI estimates what they're worth. This page explains, in plain words, what we collect, why, who else sees it and how to get it deleted. Questions: support@valuebattles.com.

What we collect

• Account: your username, your password (stored only as a one-way bcrypt hash, so nobody, including us, can read it) and, if you give one, your email address.
• Profile: your avatar picture, your country flag and the tags you pick. When you sign up we guess your country from your connection's location or your device's time zone and language. You can change it or remove it any time in Settings → Country.
• Game records: for each game: the mode, scores, who won, the names, categories and prices of the items the AI recognised, and the time. From these we keep your stats (wins, losses, streaks, best game, best item, points), achievements, your Value Tokens balance and the tags you've unlocked.
• Consents: when you accepted these terms and when you saw the camera notice.
• Technical: a login cookie (vgpt_session) that keeps you signed in for up to 60 days, and your settings (sound, haptics, voice chat, which camera) kept in your own browser's storage. Your IP address is held in memory for up to 30 minutes to slow down password guessing and is not saved in our database (our hosting provider may keep standard access logs). We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.

Your camera

• During a game, still frames from your camera are sent to our server and on to our AI provider, Anthropic (the Claude model), only so it can name and price what you're showing.
• Small live preview frames are passed through our server to your opponent and, in public battles, to spectators. Private rooms are never shown to spectators, and Settings → "Let people watch my games" turns spectating off.
• We don't save camera images. They exist only for the moment they're being appraised or shown. Anthropic processes them under its commercial terms, which don't allow it to train its models on them; it may keep them for a limited time for safety and abuse monitoring.
• Round clips, best-item cards and highlight videos are made on your device and are never uploaded unless you share them yourself.
• Please don't show anything private on camera: documents, bank cards, or people who haven't agreed to be on it.

Voice chat

• In 1v1 battles (Quick Match and private rooms) you can talk with your opponent. Your browser asks for the microphone first. You can mute yourself or your opponent with the buttons on the cameras, or turn voice chat off in Settings.
• Your voice goes directly from your browser to your opponent's (a WebRTC call), so it doesn't pass through our server. To set that call up, the two browsers exchange network addresses, which means your opponent's browser learns your IP address. Public "STUN" servers run by Cloudflare and Google help the browsers find each other; they see your IP address but not the audio.
• In public battles, a lower-quality copy of your voice is passed through our server to spectators, the same way as your camera. Private rooms never have spectators, and "Let people watch my games" turns this off too.
• We don't record or save voice chat. It isn't sent to our AI provider and isn't part of round clips.

Safety: content filter, reports and blocks

• Content filter: when a camera frame is sent to the AI for pricing, the same request checks it for nudity, gore, hate symbols and children; avatars are checked the same way when you upload them. If something is flagged we record only that it happened (what kind, when) on your account, never the image. Several flags in a day suspend the account for 24 hours.
• Reports: if you report a player we store who reported whom, the reason, your optional note, the battle and the time, and a person reviews it. The reported player isn't told who reported them.
• Blocks: we store who you blocked, so you're never matched again.
• Suspensions and bans: we store the end date and reason on the account.

What other players can see

Your username, avatar, flag, tags, rank, stats, most valuable item, achievements and recent games are public to other logged-in players (profiles and leaderboards). The best single game and most wins leaderboards also appear on the public home page. Your email address is never shown to anyone.

Why we use it

To run the game (accounts, matches, scoring, leaderboards), to keep it safe (rate limits, the content filter, reports, blocks, stopping cheating and abuse) and to let you reset your password. Your email is used only for login and password-reset messages: no newsletters, no marketing, never sold.

Who else processes it

• Anthropic: AI appraisal and the safety check of camera frames and avatars.
• Render: hosts our server and database.
• Resend: delivers password-reset emails.
• Cloudflare: runs our domain name (DNS) and our email forwarding, and may carry the site's traffic.
• Google Fonts: your browser downloads the site's fonts from Google, which sees your IP address.
• Cloudflare and Google STUN servers: help set up voice chat calls (they see your IP address, not the audio).

These providers are based in the United States, so your data may be processed there.

How long we keep it

• Your account and game records: until you delete your account.
• Login sessions: up to 60 days. Password-reset links: 30 minutes.
• Reports (once closed) and content-filter records: 12 months, then deleted. Blocks: until you unblock or delete your account.
• Database backups: kept for 14 days, then overwritten, so deleted data disappears from backups within 14 days.

Your choices and rights

• Download your data: Settings → Account → Download my data gives you everything we hold about you as a file.
• Correct it: change your email, password, country, tags and avatar in Settings and on your profile.
• Delete your account: Settings → Account → Delete account. Your profile, stats, achievements and solo/practice games are removed straight away. Ranked games you played against someone stay in their history, with you shown as "Deleted player".
• Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or California) you may have further rights, such as objecting to processing or complaining to your data protection authority. Contact us at support@valuebattles.com.

Adults only

ValueBattles is for adults only: you must be 18 or older to make an account, and children must not appear on camera. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you think a child has made an account, contact us and we'll delete it.

Security

The site runs over HTTPS. Passwords and login tokens are stored only as hashes, and login attempts are rate-limited. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a password you don't use anywhere else.

Changes

If we change this policy we'll update the date above, and for important changes we'll tell you in the game.