Who we are
Power Boat Racing is made by MelDEV. Questions about this page, or requests to see or delete your data: info@meldev.se.
What we keep
- A random profile id. The first time the game starts, it makes a random id and keeps it in your save. The game sends it with everything below so that our server can tell your results and boats from other players'. It is not your name, your device's id or any account, and it is never shown to anyone. Other players' games get a code made from it (a handle) so that they can block or report you; the id can't be worked out from the handle. When the game shows an online leaderboard, it sends the id too, to show your own place; nothing is kept from that.
- Your driver name and boat names. They are shown on the leaderboards, on this web site, in ONLINE BOATS and in free roam. On the PC, the game suggests your store account's display name as the driver name the first time it starts; you can change it in Settings.
- Results. Once you have accepted the online rules: your best lap, race and run times and trap speeds on each course, with the boat and the game's version, kept until you ask us to remove them.
- Who is playing. Once you have accepted the online rules, about once a minute while the game runs with an internet connection: your driver name, the boat, the course, whether you are in the menus, racing or in free roam, and the game's version. This makes the "on the water now" list; we keep when you were first and last seen, for counts such as "drivers today".
- Shared boats. When you share a boat: its design, its name and your driver name as its author, with its likes and builds, until you take it down (or we do).
- Free roam chat. The lines typed on our online lake are kept 14 days, with the driver name and the id, so that our moderators can check reports. Then they are deleted automatically (the lake server's own log has them too: see below). Voice chat goes live to the players near you and is not recorded.
- Reports. When you report or block a player: your id, what you reported (the boat, the player or the course), the reason and the chat lines your game showed you (on our online lake, the last lines said there). Our moderators get reports by mail. A report is deleted 180 days after it has been dealt with.
- Bans. The id of a banned player, until the ban is lifted.
The players you block are kept in your save, on your device.
IP addresses
Our server's database keeps no IP addresses. The web server in front of it keeps standard access logs (the IP address, the time, what was asked for, and the browser or game version) to keep the service safe and to find faults; they are deleted after about two weeks. To limit abuse, the server also counts each address's requests over the last minute, in memory only.
While you are on our online lake, its server sees your IP address, as any online game's server does, and its log records the connection and the chat. That log is kept for finding faults and deleted on a rolling basis.
When you join a session another player hosts, your game connects to theirs, and the host's game can see your IP address. We are not part of that connection.
In an online session the other players' games also get your game's session id, which ties your boat, chat and voice to you in that session. On the iPhone and on a PC without Steam it is a new random number each time the game starts, never your device's name or id; with Steam it is your Steam id, which Steam shows other players too.
What we don't do
There are no accounts and no ads in the game, we put no tracking or analytics in it, and we never sell or share your data. The store you get the game from, and its in-app purchases, work under the store's own privacy policy; we never see your payment details.
The forum
The forum has its own accounts: a user name, the email address you register with, and what you post, which is public. Like most forums, it records the IP address a post is made from. Mail us to have your forum account deleted.
Backups
The server's database is backed up every night (and before each update of the server), and each backup is deleted when it is 14 days old: something that has been deleted from the database is gone from the backups about two weeks later. Chat older than 14 days and reports dealt with more than 180 days ago are deleted every night before the backup is made.
Seeing or deleting your data
Mail info@meldev.se with your driver name and the names of any boats you shared (the id is anonymous, so we find your data by those), and say what you want to see or delete. We answer within 30 days.
You can also take your shared boats down yourself in ONLINE BOATS and change your driver name in Settings. Deleting the game's save gives you a new random id; what was kept under the old one stays anonymous until it is deleted as described above.
Changes
We update this page when the game's online features change what they send or keep. The date at the top says when it last changed.