Privacy Policy

This explains what Got Game collects, why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it. It was written from the database, not from a template, and where something is awkward it says so.

1. The short version

• We need your mobile number, because it is how you sign in.
• We need your location, because the whole app is games near you. Only while you are using it — never in the background.
• We ask your date of birth once, to check you are 18 or over. We keep it and never show it to anybody.
• Other players see your name, photo, bio, level and the area you play in — not your address.
• If you enter one of our leagues, your name and points are on its table, and the final table is kept.
• Every photo you add is checked by Google for sexual or violent content before anybody else can see it. Google does not keep it.
• If you pay or get paid in the app, Stripe handles the card and bank details. We never see your full card or bank account number.
• We do not sell your data, we do not run ads, and there is no advertising or tracking SDK in the app.
• You can delete your account from inside the app, and it is a real deletion.

2. Who we are

Got Game is operated by Hype & Swagger Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, which is the data controller for everything described here.

For anything about your data — a question, a correction, a copy of what we hold, or a deletion — email support@gotgamenow.com. That address reaches us, and it is the right one for every kind of contact. Paul Caruana is the person responsible for data protection here.

3. What we collect, and why

What you give us

What the app records as you use it

What we do not collect. We do not collect your full card or bank account number (Stripe holds those — see §7), advertising identifiers, your IP address, your browsing, or anything from your photo library beyond the individual pictures you choose. There is no advertising SDK, no analytics SDK, no attribution SDK and no session recording in the app. Nothing tracks you across other apps or websites.

There is one third-party SDK and it is Sentry, which reports crashes. It is set up to send as little as possible: automatic personal data off, performance tracing off, session replay off. The only thing in a crash report that points at you is your account id.

Your contacts, when you ask us to look

Got Game can tell you which of your contacts already play. This happens only when you tap Search contacts — never automatically, never at sign-up, never in the background. If you never tap it, your address book is never read.

When you do, the numbers in your address book are turned into fingerprints on your phone before anything leaves it. We compare those against the numbers registered to accounts and show you who matched. We store nothing from this — not the numbers, not the fingerprints, not who matched and not who did not. The comparison happens inside a single query and nothing is written down. The one thing kept is a count of how many times you used the feature that day, which exists to stop it being used to test numbers in bulk, and which contains no contact data.

4. Why we are allowed to (lawful bases)

5. Location, in detail

Location gets its own section because it is the most sensitive thing we hold.

• Only while you are using the app. There is no background location, no location tracking and no movement history. The app asks for "while using" permission and nothing more.
• Roughly, not exactly. The app asks the phone for a balanced-accuracy fix — about a hundred metres, not a doorstep.
• You can refuse. The app still works: you set your area by hand and drop pins yourself.
• We store a point for your home area and for each game's venue. Your profile shows other players a place name and a distance, such as Bishopton, Scotland — not an address.
• The place name comes from your own phone. Turning the coordinates into a town name is done by the operating system, not by an outside service.
• "I'm here" at a court is one row that expires within a couple of hours and is overwritten each time, so there is no record of where you have been. Friends see your name on it; everyone else sees a count.

You can hide from the map and from search entirely, at any time, in Settings.

6. What the app decides automatically

Two numbers on your profile are worked out by the system rather than typed in by a person.

Your level moves when a result is recorded — on who won, not by how much. Where the number came from is always shown next to it, so a figure you set yourself reads as exactly that, next to somebody else's brought over from another platform. A level never stops you joining a game. A game can suggest a band, and you can ignore it. What a level does affect is search: if you have Public skill ratings on, somebody filtering by level can find you, and if you turn it off, they cannot.

Attendance counts finished games where a register was taken and you were on the roster. It is counted, not voted on, and it shows nothing at all until you have at least three such games. It does not stop you joining anything.

Neither of these is a decision with a legal or similarly significant effect on you, and neither is used to profile you for advertising, because we do not advertise. If you think a number is wrong, email us and a person will look at it.

7. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data and we do not share it for advertising.

Your mobile number and text messages. We do not sell or share your mobile number, your SMS opt-in data or your consent to receive texts with any third party or affiliate for marketing or promotional purposes. Twilio, below, receives your number only to deliver your sign-in code.

We use these processors to run the service:

Transfers outside the UK. Several of those are in the United States. Where personal data leaves the UK we rely on the UK Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or on the UK–US data bridge where the provider is certified under it. If you would like to know which applies to a particular provider, ask us.

We will also disclose data where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to protect somebody's safety.

8. How long we keep it

We would rather be plain than reassuring here.

• While your account exists, we keep it. There is no automatic expiry on your profile, your games, your messages or your photos. They are there until you delete your account or ask us to remove something.
• When you delete your account — Settings → Account settings → Delete account — your profile disappears from the app immediately and the account is erased after 30 days. The delay is so you can undo an accidental deletion and so any open safety report can be dealt with. Undoing it is the Keep my account button on that same screen; signing back in does not cancel it on its own.
• What survives, and why. Anything you shared with other people stays, with your name taken off it: messages and photos you sent in a chat, photos you added to a game or a club, documents you added to a club, votes you cast, games you hosted, your line on the final table of a league that has ended, and the record of a league's prize offered to you. Deleting those would rewrite other people's record of games they actually played. Everything that is only yours goes.
• Payment records — who paid what, to whom and when, and any refund — are kept for six years after the payment, even if you delete your account, because UK tax law requires a business to keep them.
• A record that a deletion happened and when. That is how we can show we did it.
• Any abuse report naming you, because an account that can erase the reports against it is not a safety system.

If you want something removed sooner than any of this, email support@gotgamenow.com and say so.

9. Security, honestly

• Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our hosting provider.
• Access rules are enforced by the database, not just by the app, so a rule cannot be bypassed by anything other than the app.
• Messages, and photos sent in a chat, are not end-to-end encrypted. We can technically read and see them, and we will if a safety report requires it. Do not use Got Game for anything you need to be private from us.
• A club's quick-join code is a shared word an organiser reads out, like a wifi password. It is not a credential and it is not your account password. Do not reuse a real password there.
• No system is perfect. If you find something wrong with ours, email us and we will take it seriously.

10. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to be told what we hold about you, to get a copy of it, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to have it given to you in a portable form.

Several of these you can exercise yourself, immediately:

• See and correct your profile — Settings → Edit profile.
• Hide your level, and come out of level search — the Public skill ratings switch.
• Hide yourself from the map and from search — in Settings.
• Turn off notifications, one kind at a time or all of them, including Leagues and prizes — in Settings, or at the operating-system level.
• Withdraw location or contacts permission — in your phone's settings.
• Delete your account — Settings → Account settings → Delete account.

For the rest — a copy of your data, a correction we cannot make ourselves, an objection, or a restriction — email support@gotgamenow.com. There is no download-my-data button in the app yet, so a copy is something we put together by hand when you ask. We will respond within one month.

If you are not happy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.

11. Children

Got Game is for adults. The minimum age is 18, your date of birth is checked at sign-up, and the check is enforced by the database rather than only by the sign-up screen. We do not knowingly collect anything from anybody under 18. If you believe somebody under 18 has an account, email us and we will deal with it.

12. This website

gotgamenow.com is a plain set of pages. It sets no cookies, has no analytics, and runs no tracking of any kind — there is nothing here to opt out of.

The one thing it collects is the email address you type into the early-access form, which is stored so we can tell you when the app opens where you play. We use it for that and nothing else, we do not pass it on, and you can have it removed at any time by emailing support@gotgamenow.com. The lawful basis is your consent, given by submitting the form.

The page loads its typefaces from Google Fonts, which means your browser makes a request to Google and Google sees your IP address in the course of serving them. Nothing else on the page talks to anybody but us.

13. Changes

If we change this in a way that materially affects you, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top is always the current version.

14. Contact

Email support@gotgamenow.com for anything at all — questions, corrections, a copy of your data, a complaint.