The Realm

Privacy

Last updated 4 October 2026

The Realm keeps track of the games you play and runs a few daily games. It is made by one person. This page says what The Realm stores about you, who can see it, and how to delete it.

The short version

  • No ads. No third-party analytics or trackers. Nothing about you is sold.
  • The Realm counts which screens and features are used, tied to your account, with no content, titles or location, and how often a screen hit an error (a count, never the message). You can turn it off in Settings.
  • If you type your own mood into the Backlog picker (Realm Pro), that sentence, and a short list of your backlog games, are sent to a language-model provider so it can answer. Nothing else about you is sent. See "Services that help run The Realm".
  • I only keep what the app needs to work.
  • Other members see your name, picture, scores and the things you choose to share. They don’t see your email.
  • You can delete your account, and almost everything with it, any time.

What The Realm stores

  • Your account: your display name, your email address if you add one, and your password. The password is stored only as a salted, one-way hash. Nobody can read it back, including me.
  • How you sign in: if you sign in with Apple, The Realm receives Apple’s ID for you (a random code that means nothing outside The Realm) and, if you share it, your email address, which may be a private relay address that forwards to you. Apple shares your name only once, the first time, and it is used only as your account’s name. If you sign in with Discord, The Realm receives your Discord user ID, your username and display name, and your email address if Discord has confirmed it. Nothing else is asked for, and the sign-in token Discord hands over is used once and thrown away. If you make a passkey, The Realm stores only its public key, a counter and the name of the device it was made on; the private key never leaves your device or your password manager. Signing in with Discord here does not turn on play tracking; that is a separate choice (see "Connected accounts").
  • Your profile picture: an emblem you pick, or a photo you upload. Photos are shrunk to a small square, and hidden data such as location is removed from JPEG and PNG files before they are stored.
  • Your games: your library and wishlist, with ratings, hours, progress and the dates you finished things. Also the takes (short reviews) you write and the takes you like.
  • How you play: play sessions, daily snapshots of your play time, your answers and scores in The Ten and Crossplay, XP, streaks, levels, season awards and monthly Wrapped summaries.
  • Your crew: who you are connected to, invite links you make, and games you recommend to each other.
  • The Wire (news): which stories you opened or upvoted, which news alerts were sent to you, and whether you want them.
  • Feedback you send: your message, and only if you add them, your device info (app version, iPhone/Android/web, time zone) and a way to reach you. See "Feedback and feature requests" below.
  • Blocks and reports: who you have blocked, and any profile photo you report, with the reason you picked.
  • Purchases: if you buy Realm Pro or Founder, which plan you have, whether it is active, when it renews or ends, and the store’s transaction ID. See "Purchases" below.
  • Notifications: if you turn them on, a push address for each device (from your browser, Apple or Google), so alerts reach it.
  • Which features you use: The Realm counts which screens and features are used (for example, that you opened the Ledger or finished the quiz), tied to your account, with no content, titles or location; you can turn it off in Settings and it is deleted if you delete your account or turn it off. It is a running count per day for each feature, not a log of what you did when. That includes how far you got through setting up, and how many times a screen or the server hit an error (a number per screen, with no message, no page content and no address). The only other thing kept with it is the day you were first counted and whether that was on iPhone, Android or the web. It is kept by The Realm itself, is never sent to anyone else, and is used only to see what is working. It is on by default: Settings › Count which features I use. Before you have an account, the sign-up screen only adds one to a daily total for everyone, with nothing about you.
  • Backlog picker use: a count of how many times you have used the mood reader, so it can stay within a monthly limit. The sentence you type is not kept by The Realm.
  • Settings: your choices in the app, and your time zone offset, so the daily games reset at your midnight. The Realm does not store your location or your IP address.

Connected accounts

Each one is optional. Nothing is sent to these services, or read from them, unless you connect them. Any sign-in token The Realm keeps is encrypted. You can disconnect any of them on the Connect page.

  • Steam: your Steam ID. The Realm reads your games, play time and, if you ask, your wishlist. If you paste a Steam Web API key, it is used for that one request and never stored.
  • PlayStation: your PlayStation account ID. The Realm reads your games and play time. If you turn on trophies, you paste a sign-in code (an "npsso" token) from PlayStation’s website, and it is stored encrypted.
  • Xbox: your gamertag, Xbox user ID, and a Microsoft sign-in token. The Realm reads your games, achievements and minutes played. Older Xbox connections may use a key from OpenXBL (xbl.io), an outside Xbox data service, instead.
  • Nintendo: you sign in to your Nintendo Account through the Nintendo Switch Parental Controls service. The Realm keeps an encrypted sign-in token, your Nintendo account name, the names of your consoles, and the nicknames of the player profiles on them. Those profiles may belong to other people in your home, so you choose which ones count as you. The Realm reads daily play time per game. It is read-only: it cannot change any parental control setting.
  • Discord: your Discord user ID and display name. Connecting adds you to the official The Realm Discord server, because that is where our bot can see your status. The bot looks only at the "Playing" status of members who connected their account: the game’s name and when you started and stopped. It ignores everyone else, and it never reads or sends messages. Each finished session is saved as play. Games that aren’t in your library yet are kept as suggestions for you to add. The bot runs on a small server I rent from Oracle Cloud, which holds a session only until it reaches The Realm.

Who can see what

  • Other members of The Realm can see your display name and profile picture, your level, total hours and XP, your quiz and Grid scores on leaderboards, and an activity feed of things like finishing a game, rating one five stars, wishlisting one or recommending one.
  • Realm scores: the ratings you give are combined with other members' into an anonymous Realm score for each game. Nobody sees who gave which rating.
  • Takes: you choose who sees each take: your crew, or every member.
  • Your crew also sees the games you recommend to them.
  • Share links: when you share your library, a game, a take, a month of Wrapped or a streak, anyone with that link can open it. It shows only what you chose to share. Deleting your account stops all of your links working.
  • Blocking: if you block someone, you stop seeing their photo and their takes, and you are removed from each other’s crew. You can unblock them in Settings.
  • Me, the developer: I can see account data when I need to run the app, fix a problem, or deal with a report. I don’t look through people’s data for any other reason.
  • Your email address, your connected-account tokens and your feedback are never shown to other members.

Profile photos, reports and blocks

An uploaded photo is stored with Cloudflare R2, at a web address that is hard to guess. It shows wherever your name does, to other members and on things you share. You can remove it in Settings › Profile picture, and the stored file is deleted too.

Any member can report a photo as inappropriate, impersonation, spam or something else. I review every report. If a photo breaks the rules, I remove it and delete the file. Your report is not shown to the person you reported. Reports and blocks are deleted when either account is deleted.

Feedback and feature requests

When you send feedback, The Realm stores your message with your account, so I know who to follow up with. Device info and a reply contact are saved only if you add them. A copy is emailed to me so I see it quickly.

An idea only appears on the public feature request list if you tick the box to share it. Even then, the list shows the idea, its status and its votes, never who sent it. Bug reports and other notes are never shown to anyone else.

Purchases

Realm Pro, Founder and Legend are bought through the App Store or Google Play. Apple or Google take the payment. I never see your card or bank details. The store tells The Realm what you bought and whether it is still active, and The Realm keeps that, along with the store’s transaction ID. Founders get a serial number. Numbers are never reused, even after an account is deleted. Buying Pro does not add ads, tracking or anything else to how your data is used.

Apple and Google subscriptions: you manage or cancel a subscription in your App Store or Google Play account settings, not in The Realm. The Realm only receives its status. Deleting your Realm account does not cancel a store subscription, so cancel it in the store first.

Services that help run The Realm

These companies hold or move data for The Realm. They don’t use it for anything else.

  • Vercel runs the app and website.
  • Turso stores the database.
  • Cloudflare R2 stores uploaded profile photos (and some game art).
  • Resend sends email: confirming your address, resetting your password, and passing your feedback to me.
  • Oracle Cloud hosts the Discord bot.
  • OpenAI reads the mood you type into the Backlog picker (Realm Pro). To do that it receives the sentence you typed. To choose the final picks it also receives, for up to 30 games from your backlog, each game’s title, length, critic score, genres, themes, play modes, release year and whether you own it or have it on your wishlist. It is not sent your name, email, account ID, play history or anything else, and it never puts a game or a fact on your screen: every title, length and score you see comes from The Realm’s own game data. OpenAI handles what it receives under its own privacy terms. Free members’ weekly pick uses a preset sentence read by The Realm itself and sends nothing to OpenAI.
  • Apple, Google and your browser’s push service deliver notifications. Android alerts go through Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging.
  • Apple and Google handle purchases, as described above.

Game info

To show details, art, prices and news about games, The Realm looks things up by game title or ID, never with anything about you. Sources include IGDB, Steam’s public store, RAWG, Wikipedia, OpenCritic, SteamGridDB, GameTDB, IsThereAnyDeal, GG.deals, and public news feeds and Bluesky posts.

Some "where to buy" and deal links can carry a store’s affiliate code. If you buy something after tapping one, the store or deal site may pay a small commission. That is tracked by the store on its own site. The Realm never sends it anything about you.

Things your device loads directly

Cover art, screenshots and news pictures load straight from the sites that host them, such as IGDB, Steam and news sites. Game trailers play from YouTube in its privacy-enhanced mode, and can start (muted) when one scrolls into view. Like any website you visit, these services see your device’s IP address. Fonts are served by The Realm itself.

Cookies and storage on your device

The Realm uses a few small cookies: one keeps you signed in, one remembers your time zone, one guards the Xbox sign-in while it is in progress, and two hold a round of The Ten you played before making an account. It also keeps a handful of display preferences on your device, such as light or dark mode. None of these are used for advertising or tracking.

Widgets, Live Activities and Apple Watch: if you use them, your phone keeps a private key that lets them fetch a small summary of your day: quiz and Grid progress, streaks, what you’re playing, countdowns, and the day’s quiz leaderboard. The key is stored in your device’s secure keychain and shared with your watch. The watch can also send a quiz answer or a play session. Signing out or deleting your account turns the key off.

How long it is kept

Your data stays while your account exists, so your history keeps working. Sign-in links, password reset links and invites expire on their own. Notification addresses are dropped when a device stops accepting them.

Deleting your data

You can delete your account any time in Settings › Account › Delete account. That permanently erases everything listed above that is tied to you, in one go. That includes your photo file, your feedback, your feature counts, your share links, your crew links, your blocks and reports, your notification addresses, your connected accounts and your plan. If our bot added you to the Discord server, it removes you.

A few things are kept, and none of them can be traced back to you:

  • Your past Crossplay answers, because other players' scores for those days were counted from them.
  • Reports you sent about a Grid answer, because they are about the game’s facts, not about you.
  • A marker with your old account number (not your name or email), so any device still signed in is signed out and the number is never given to someone else.
  • The Founder counter, so serial numbers are never reused.

Emails you send me, and the email copy of any feedback, stay in my inbox. Ask and I’ll delete them. Our database provider keeps short-term backups, which age out on their own. Apple and Google keep their own records of purchases, under their own privacy policies.

You can also disconnect Steam, PlayStation or Xbox at any time on the Connect page. That removes the games they brought in. Disconnecting Nintendo or Discord stops tracking and forgets their sign-in and suggestions. Play they already logged stays in your history until you delete it or your account.

Unofficial connections

The Realm is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Valve, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Discord or Epic Games. Their names are used only to say which accounts you can connect.

Children

The Realm isn’t meant for children under 13, and I don’t knowingly collect their information. If you think a child has an account, email me and I’ll delete it.

Changes and contact

If this changes, this page will say so and the date at the top will move. Questions, or a request to see, fix or delete your data: therealmgamesinfo@gmail.com.