Privacy policy

1. Controller

Gino Markutt, Principality of Liechtenstein
Contact: gino.markutt [at] gmail.com

This privacy policy applies to the website and platform seedmyserver.com. This project is not required by law to appoint a data protection officer and has not appointed one; please send any questions to the contact address above.

2. Legal basis

We process personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies directly in Liechtenstein as an EEA member, and the Liechtenstein Data Protection Act (DSG). For users from Switzerland we additionally observe the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (revFADP). Depending on the processing, the legal basis is performance of the contract / use of the platform (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR), consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) or legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)), in particular in secure and fraud-free operation.

3. Hosting, server logs and Cloudflare

The platform runs on a server operated by Hetzner Online GmbH (Gunzenhausen, Germany) in the Falkenstein data centre (DE). Every request is recorded in server logs: IP address, date and time, requested page, HTTP status, bytes transferred, referrer and browser/operating system. The same applies to the application's error logs and the server's security logs (e.g. blocked requests with their IP address). Server and security logs are used solely for operation, security and troubleshooting and are deleted automatically after 14 days (legitimate interest).

The website is delivered through the network of Cloudflare, Inc. (San Francisco, USA; for the EEA: Cloudflare Germany GmbH) for CDN, DNS and DDoS protection. Cloudflare necessarily processes your IP address in doing so. Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; standard contractual clauses apply in addition. Cloudflare sets no cookies on this site. Via Network Error Logging (NEL) your browser may also send Cloudflare technical error reports (e.g. about failed connections); no cookies are involved. Details: cloudflare.com/privacypolicy.

4. Cookies and local storage

We only use strictly necessary cookies. We do not use analytics, statistics or marketing cookies, so there is nothing you need to consent to. The cookie notice tells you about this on your first visit; you can open it again or reset it at any time:

Open cookie settingsReset cookie notice

Push notifications (section 8) additionally use a service worker and your browser's Push API; this is not cookie usage and only becomes active when you enable it on the Connections page.

Campaign links. If you arrive through a link with a campaign code (e.g. ?ref=reddit1 in an ad or a post), we keep the code in your session and only count totals per code and day: visits and clicks on copying a server ID, the Discord link and the Steam sign-in. So that single devices cannot inflate the numbers, a hashed value of your IP address is counted in the cache for at most one day. If you create an account in the same session, we store the code with your account to see how many sign-ups and active seeders a campaign brought; it is deleted with the account. No further cookies are set for this and no data is sent to ad networks. Legal basis: legitimate interest in measuring our advertising (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

5. Sign-in with Steam

An account is created exclusively through Sign-in with Steam (OpenID) provided by Valve Corporation (Bellevue, USA). Steam transmits your 64-bit Steam ID, your public display name and your avatar image to us. We never receive a password or your Steam credentials. We store the Steam ID, display name, avatar URL, chosen language and the time of your last login. We copy the avatar image to our server at login and serve it from there; visitors' browsers make no requests to Steam for it. Legal basis: use of the platform (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Valve's processing is governed by the Steam Privacy Policy.

Minimum age for consent-based features. Features that rely on your consent (push notifications, Discord linking and showing your community as a role on Discord) are meant for users aged 16 or older. Younger users may only use them with the consent of a parent or guardian.

6. Seed calls and presence verification on game servers

The core of the platform is verifying that you were actually present on a game server. When you take part in a seed call, we query that game server through the interface the server owner registered (e.g. RCON / query API) for its player list and match your Steam ID against it. We store: participation, join and leave times, result (credited / rejected with reason), points earned, streaks and ranks. This data is required for the reward system and fraud prevention (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).

Data source: the player list comes from the interface the server operator registered — depending on the server, the game server's RCON or the API of the Warcon panel; plain count queries (e.g. A2S query, BattleMetrics) contain no personal data. Of the player list we only store matches with registered seedmyserver accounts; we do not store the Steam IDs of other players on the server.

Leaving a community: when you leave a community, we store the community and the time for 30 days. For the first 7 days, seeds on its servers still count as own seeds — this stops people from leaving and rejoining for points (legitimate interest in fraud prevention, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Sharing with server operators: if a server operator has enabled queue priority, your Steam ID is transmitted as an active seeder to that game server's reserved list so that you can join it with priority. Server operators are themselves responsible for processing on their game servers.

Public information: display name, avatar, rank, points, seed minutes and number of seeds may be publicly visible on the platform (e.g. community member lists, the leaderboard). The name shown is your Steam display name, which you set yourself on Steam and can change at any time. Legal basis: legitimate interest in a public leaderboard that recognises seeding (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Seed-call feed on Discord: public seed calls of Verified servers are published in the public #seed-calls channel of the seedmyserver Discord (Discord Inc., San Francisco, USA); community operators can additionally have them posted automatically to their own Discord server. This transmits the server and community name, game, join hint and player count — never the names of individual seeders (for the thanks in #seed-wins see section 8).

Flare servers and «I'm helping»: for servers on the «Flare» tier, the operator only enters the public WARDOGS server ID, no credentials. We read the player count at most once a minute from the public server list on wardogservers.com (a third party, not an official WARDOGS service). Only server-level data is requested (name, player count, map) — no personal data, and we send no data about you. Flare calls have no presence verification and no points. If you click «I'm helping» while signed in, we store your user ID, the seed call and the time, to show the operator how many people are helping, to thank you once the round starts and to count your helps (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Others only see the number, not who is helping. The entries are deleted with your account.

7. Communities and servers

Whoever creates a community stores its name, description, website, Discord invite and optionally a Discord webhook and credentials for game server interfaces. Webhooks and credentials are stored encrypted and never displayed again. Name, description, links, servers and the community's balance are publicly visible.

Pact board. Whether a seed pact appears publicly on the pact board (/pacts) is decided by the pact's founder community (its owner or an admin) with the switch «Show on the pact board»; we do not ask individual people for consent for this. Shown are the pact name, the names of its member communities, the details the founder community entered (looking for partners, languages, region, requirements) and activity figures we aggregate per pact (number of members, active seeders in the last 14 days, seeds within the pact, typical play time). With fewer than 3 members or active seeders we show «fewer than 3» instead of the number, and with fewer than 3 active seeders neither the seeds within the pact nor the play time. Names, Steam IDs or the activity of individual players are not shown there. The legal basis is the communities' legitimate interest in finding partners for mutual seeding (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). The switch is off by default; without it nothing appears. If it is switched off or the founder community changes, the pact disappears from the pact board immediately. A partner community that does not want to appear there can leave the pact at any time. Communities under review are never shown.

Seeding times and pact info. Owners and admins of a community can enter preferred seeding times (up to two windows) and a short note. We store them with the community and show them only to the partners of its seed pact: in the seed pact section of the dashboard, which owners, admins and callers of the pact communities see. For every member community we also show the pact partners its active servers with the public server ID, whether a call is open right now, and the typical play time, which we calculate from counted seeds like on the pact board (with the same floor: no play time with fewer than 3 active seeders) — never player names, Steam IDs, IP addresses or credentials. Nothing new becomes public. The legal basis is the communities' legitimate interest in seeding together (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Our bot also keeps a pact info card with these details up to date at the top of the private pact channel on Discord. If you delete or change the details, the card follows at the next sync (usually within 10 minutes); when the pact ends, the card is archived and deleted together with the channel.

Whether a community's seed calls ping the @Seeder role depends automatically on its balance of seeds given and received over the last 30 days; only the community's totals count, not the behaviour of individual people.

8. Browser push notifications and Discord

The switches for notifications and Discord linking are on the Connections page after signing in; you can also delete your account there (section 10).

Optionally, you can enable push notifications for new seed calls on the Connections page. Your browser then creates a subscription address with the push service of your browser vendor (Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft). We store this address, its keys, the browser type and the language. Delivery happens through the vendor's push service; the content is only the seed-call notice. Legal basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), revocable at any time on the Connections page or in your browser settings; invalid subscriptions are deleted automatically.

Discord linking (optional). On the Connections page you can link your Discord account. Discord Inc. (USA) shows its sign-in page; with your consent we receive your Discord ID, display name and a one-time access token that we use to add you to the seedmyserver Discord (scopes «identify» and «guilds.join»). We do not store the token. We store the Discord ID, display name, the time of linking and whether you want pings for seed calls. Our bot uses this to assign the roles «Server Owner» (if you are an admin of a community with a verified server) and «Seeder» (only on request). Community roles: communities get their own role «Community · Name» on the seedmyserver Discord. If you own a community, you always receive its role while your account is linked — the owner is public on the website anyway. For communities you are only a member of (including admin or caller), you receive the role only if you turn on «Show my community as a role in our Discord»; your membership is then visible to other members of the seedmyserver Discord. The switch stays off until you turn it on yourself — when linking, via a checkbox that is not pre-ticked, or later on the Connections page. You can turn it off there at any time; the roles are then removed within about 10 minutes. Under the same conditions, #seed-wins shows the name of your primary community next to your mention when it thanks you for a seed. Legal basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), revocable at any time via «Unlink» on the Connections page, which removes the roles and deletes the stored Discord data. Your membership on Discord itself is governed by Discord's terms. On the seedmyserver Discord, «administration» means the roles Admin and Moderator, «support team» the role Support.

Thanks in #seed-wins. When a seed call is complete, our bot thanks the credited seeders in the public #seed-wins channel of the seedmyserver Discord and mentions up to 20 seeders with a linked Discord account (the mention shows your Discord name and notifies you); all members of the Discord can see it. This is on for every account. With the switch «Thank me by name in #seed-wins» on the Connections page you can turn it off at any time; we then no longer mention you there. Legal basis: legitimate interest in visibly recognising seeders (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); switching it off counts as an objection.

Seed pacts on Discord. Every seed pact gets its own role «Pact · Name» and a private text channel on the seedmyserver Discord that only the role, our bot and the administration (Admin, Moderator) can see. Your participation in a pact is therefore visible as a role to other members of the Discord. If you own a pact community, you always receive the role while your account is linked and not locked (legitimate interest in operating the pact, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). As an admin or caller of a pact community, you receive the role only with the switch «Show my community as a role in our Discord» on the Connections page (consent, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, revocable there at any time). Plain members get no pact role; pact calls on the website and as push only reach owners, admins and callers of the pact communities. The bot also posts pact calls into that channel. When a pact ends (dissolved or without eligible members), we keep the last 500 messages of the channel (time, display name, text, embed titles/descriptions and attachment links — the links expire; files are not archived) as an archive in the log channel that only admins and the support team can see (roles Admin and Support), and then delete the channel and the role; like ticket transcripts, the archive is deleted automatically after 90 days.

Lock after a ban on Discord. For linked accounts our bot regularly checks whether the Discord account is banned from the seedmyserver Discord and reads the ban reason. While the ban lasts, we store its date and reason on your account; when the ban is lifted, we delete both. A ban locks your account on the website (no seed calls, pacts, promotion or invites; seeds do not count) and the communities you own and their servers. The lock and its reason are recorded in the administration's internal log and sent to the admin team. Locks of communities and servers are only lifted by the administration. If you delete a locked account, we keep a keyed hash (HMAC) of your Steam and Discord ID together with the ban date and reason so that nobody can register again after a ban — until the ban is lifted, at most 3 years. A locked account can send an appeal on the website; we store the message and the decision and delete them 12 months after the decision. A new appeal, including its text, is announced to the admin team in our internal Discord log channel (Discord Inc., San Francisco, USA, as recipient); replies in the conversation are announced there without their text. While the appeal is open, you and the administration can exchange messages about it; this conversation (messages both ways) is stored with the appeal and deleted together with it 12 months after the decision, or earlier when the account is deleted. Legal basis: legitimate interest in protecting the network from abuse (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

9. Contact and support via Discord

Requests to us — help, bug reports, game requests, abuse reports, offers to help out — go exclusively through our Discord server (Discord Inc., San Francisco, USA); there is no contact form on the website. In the #support channel you open a ticket: a private thread that only you, the administration and the support team (Admin, Moderator, Support) can see. We process your Discord ID, display name and the details and messages you provide in the ticket. When the ticket is closed we keep a transcript in the log channel that only admins and the support team can see (roles Admin and Support); it is deleted automatically after 90 days. We delete the ticket thread itself as soon as the transcript is saved; only if that fails does it stay closed and archived. Notices from the website to the admin team in the same log channel (e.g. new servers, locks, appeals) are also deleted after 90 days. Feature ideas can be posted in the public #ideas forum; those posts are visible to all members of the Discord server.

Legal basis: handling your request (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR). Discord's privacy policy also applies to processing on Discord. The e-mail address in the legal notice, which the law requires, remains available for legal matters.

Requests received earlier through the website forms, which have since been removed, are deleted automatically 12 months after receipt.

10. Retention

Account data is kept for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account yourself at any time on the Connections page (or ask us to): this deletes your profile, the cached avatar image, participations, «I'm helping» clicks, points, community memberships, push subscriptions and the Discord link including the roles we assigned. Earlier form requests remain, no longer linked to your account, until they are deleted automatically; tickets on Discord are not covered by account deletion — ask us in a ticket or by e-mail. Aggregated statistics (e.g. seeds per community) remain without any personal reference. If you own a community, you first transfer it to a member or delete it (both on the community's edit page); the Connections page lists the communities concerned.

Server, security and application logs: 14 days. Ticket transcripts, pact channel archives and admin notices in the log channel: 90 days. Earlier form requests: 12 months. The administration's internal log (actions of admins and support, automatic locks): 24 months; if you delete your account, we remove your name from its entries (also as the acting admin or support member) as well as free-text notes and reasons from the entries about your account. Hashes of deleted locked accounts: until the ban is lifted, at most 3 years. Backups are stored encrypted (daily; 7 daily, 8 weekly and 12 monthly versions are kept); deleted data remains in them until those versions rotate out — after 12 months at the latest. Additional database backups taken before platform updates are deleted after 14 days.

11. Recipients and third countries

Recipients are only the service providers named above (Hetzner, Cloudflare, Valve/Steam, Discord for the seed-call feed, the thanks in #seed-wins, support tickets, notices of ban appeals to the admin team and, for linked accounts, account linking, browser vendors' push services; wardogservers.com only receives requests for public server IDs from us, with no data about you) and — for queue priority — the respective server operators. Transfers to the USA rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses. We do not sell data and do not run advertising.

12. Your rights

You have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability and objection, as well as the right to withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future. Please use the contact address above; we need your Steam ID to identify your account. You may also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in Liechtenstein with the Data Protection Authority of the Principality of Liechtenstein.

Right to object (Art. 21 GDPR). Where we process data on the basis of our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), you may object to this processing at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation. We will then no longer process the data unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. Send your objection to the contact address above; some processing you can end yourself directly, such as the mention in #seed-wins on the Connections page.

13. Security

All traffic is encrypted (TLS). Game-server credentials and webhooks are stored encrypted; server access is restricted to the administration.

14. Changes

We update this policy when the platform or the legal situation changes. The version published here applies.