Privacy Policy

Your stories are yours. Machines screen every turn for safety; a person reads a turn only when it is flagged, when you ask us for help with it, or when you agreed to playtest, and every read is logged. Encrypted at rest. Delete anytime.

That is the short version. The rest of this page says what it means: what we collect, who can read a turn and when, which companies see your words, and how long we keep things. We wrote it in plain language on purpose.

Who we are

Branching Skies is a mobile interactive-fiction game. It is made by BB Creatives LLC, a Georgia limited liability company, doing business as Midnight Gremlins. This policy covers the branchingskies.com website, the beta waitlist and the game. The game is for adults, 18 and older.

What we collect

On the website. If you join the beta waitlist, we collect the email address you type into the signup form. It is sent to and stored by Beehiiv, the email service we use to run the list and send updates. We also measure basic website traffic through Vercel Analytics. It is cookieless, it does not follow you across other websites, and it gives us aggregate figures like page views and referral sources. When you submit the signup form, we process your IP address briefly to protect the form against abuse. That check runs through Upstash, and the IP is not attached to your email or used to profile you. The signup form also asks you to pass a bot check from Cloudflare (Turnstile). The pages that carry the form, the home page and the blog, load Cloudflare's check as soon as the page opens, so Cloudflare sees your browser's connection on those page views whether or not you submit the form, as any site you load does. Our server then sends Cloudflare only the check's result token to confirm that it passed. Cloudflare handles that data under its own privacy policy.

Your account. You sign in with an email and password, or with Google or Apple. We keep your email address and your plan, and we count how many turns and AI calls you use each day. Your account also holds a lifetime turn count, the time you were last active and whether it has been flagged for review. A bot check from Cloudflare (Turnstile) runs when you sign up, sign in, reset your password or ask us to resend the confirmation email.

Your stories. We store what you type, what the story says back, your character, and the state of your world, such as what you carry, where you are and how the people you met feel about you. Each turn also records which AI model wrote it and what it cost. This is private. It is encrypted at rest. The next sections say who can read it.

Safety records. When a turn is flagged for safety, we keep a record that names your account, the kind of flag and the turn. If you earn a strike, a warning or a ban, or you file an appeal, we keep those records too.

Your reports. When you report a story turn or an Ask reply with the report flag, we keep the reason you chose, the note if you wrote one, and which turn or Ask reply it names, together with your account ID. A person reads it.

Error reports. When the app or the website breaks, it can send an error report to Sentry. We turn off Sentry's automatic collection of personal details. The report carries your account ID so we can find the problem. A failure response from our email provider can also appear in a report while we diagnose a problem. Sentry also receives timing measurements for a sample of activity, about one in five.

Machines screen every turn

AI models read your words before the story runs, and they read the story before you see it. They look for content the game does not allow and for signs of a real-life crisis. The end of a day and the X-Card are checked just after the story is shown. If a screen cannot answer in time, the turn goes ahead. A screen can flag a turn. The screen alone never bans anyone.

When a person reads a turn

A person reads a turn on three paths and no others:

One. The turn was flagged, by a screen or by you with the report flag. The reviewer reads the flagged turn and the turns around it. Every crisis flag is read this way. If you report an Ask reply, the reviewer reads your question to Algus and his answer.

Two. You asked us for help with the turn, and the reviewer reads it to answer you.

Three. You agreed to playtest. Beta testers consent to the studio reading their sessions to find and fix defects. Players after launch are not covered by this path.

Each read is done by a named reviewer through one reader, and every read is logged. A refused read is logged too.

The AI providers that see your words

To write the story and to screen it for safety, we send what you type, together with the story so far and details of your character and world, to AI providers. Three companies can receive it: Google (Gemini), Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI. OpenAI is a backup that takes over when the others cannot answer. Each company handles the text under its own terms and privacy policy, and you can read them on its website. We do not control what those companies do with the text beyond the settings we choose.

The other companies that run the service

Supabase stores your account and your stories and handles sign-in. Vercel hosts the website and the game's server and provides the cookieless analytics. Upstash provides the rate-limiting checks. Sentry provides error monitoring. Beehiiv runs the email waitlist. Cloudflare runs the sign-up bot check. If you sign in with Google or Apple, that company confirms who you are to us. Each one handles data on our behalf to keep the service working.

What we do not do

We do not sell your personal data. We don't train AI models on your stories. We do not record your screen or your browsing session. We previously ran Microsoft Clarity, a session-replay tool, on the website, and we removed it. No other tracker, pixel, session replay or tag manager loads on the website. The only scripts that watch a visit are the cookieless analytics and the error monitoring named above.

Cookies

This website does not set tracking or advertising cookies. The analytics we use are cookieless, as described above.

How long we keep things

Your account and your stories stay until you ask us to delete them. The waitlist email stays until you unsubscribe.

Safety flag records are deleted after 90 days. They are kept longer while a review case about your account is still open, and while a ban on your account stands and for 90 days after it is lifted. After 90 days, the words you typed on a crisis turn are blanked, unless one of those exceptions applies. A report you file with the report flag is not one of them. The log of who read what is kept for 2 years.

When the daily clean-up deletes a crisis flag record, it first adds it to a count by month with no user, no turn and no other identifier.

A report you file with the report flag is a review record, not a safety flag record. The daily clean-up does not delete it, and the note you wrote stays with it. It stays after an account is deleted, like the other review records, but it no longer names the turn or the reply.

A possible crisis

If a line sounds like a real-life crisis, the story pauses and the app shows referrals to free crisis lines. A person reads the flagged turn. A crisis flag is never a strike. The crisis protocol page gives the details.

Rule breaks, bans and appeals

The Terms say what is not allowed and what happens after a rule break. A banned player can appeal once, in the app. When an account is banned, we keep the ban record, including the email address and the sign-in details on the account, so the same person cannot sign up again clean. That record is not removed when an account is deleted.

Deleting your data

The delete button inside the app is not built yet. Until it is, write to us at privacy@mail.branchingskies.com and ask us to delete your account and your stories. We will delete them and confirm by email. A few records stay: the ban record, a warning record if one was issued, the review records, a technical log of how each turn was routed to an AI model, and the log of who read what. The routing log keeps your account ID, not your story. It holds a short note from the routing model, cut to 60 characters, and a malformed note could repeat a few of your words. Deleting an account also deletes its safety flag records. Before we delete it, any crisis flags on it are added to the count by month.

Your rights

You can unsubscribe from the waitlist at any time using the link at the bottom of every email we send. You can ask us what data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to us at privacy@mail.branchingskies.com and we will help.

Why we use your email

For the waitlist, we use your email for one purpose: to tell you when the beta opens and to send occasional updates about Branching Skies. The legal basis is your consent. You give it when you subscribe, and you can withdraw it whenever you want. For your account, we use your email to sign you in and to reach you about your account.

Age

Branching Skies is for people 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you think someone under 18 has made an account, write to us.

Changes to this policy

Branching Skies is still before launch. As the game ships and the ways we handle data change, we will revise this policy and update the effective date shown above.

Contact

For privacy questions, write to privacy@mail.branchingskies.com. To report a problem with a story turn or an Ask reply, tap the report flag in its corner in the app, or write to support@mail.branchingskies.com. We reply within 2 business days.