This ForthStar Limited Privacy Policy ("Privacy Policy") describes how and when we collect, use, secure, and share information collected in connection with our games, mobile applications, websites, content, products, and any related services (collectively, the "Services"), and your choices and rights in relation to the same. For purposes of this Privacy Policy, "ForthStar Limited" (or "we" or "us" or “our” or similar) refers to ForthStar Limited, a private limited company incorporated in England and Wales (Company Number: 14677456) and its representatives, affiliates, officers, and directors for websites and applications that link to this Privacy Policy or otherwise make it available to you.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. We may update it from time to time by posting a new version on our website, www.forthstar.com. If we make any material changes, we will notify you through the Services. It should also be read in conjunction with our Terms of Service and definitions therein shall also apply to this Privacy Policy to the extent not defined separately herein.
Before you can use our Services, we ask you to read and accept our Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy. By accepting, you enter into our Terms of Service — a contract between you and us — and you confirm that you have read and understood how we process your personal data. This lets us process your personal data where that is necessary to provide the Services to you under that contract, and to comply with our legal obligations. Accepting is not, by itself, your consent to every type of processing: we rely on different legal bases depending on the activity, as set out in the "Legal Basis for Processing Personal Information" section below. Where a purpose requires your consent — for example, targeted advertising or other non- essential tracking — we ask for that consent separately and you may withdraw it at any time; and where we rely on our legitimate interests, we identify that in this Privacy Policy.
If there is any difference between the English version and any other language version of this Privacy Policy, the English version will apply (to the extent of the difference and to the extent permitted by applicable law).
We may collect various types of information, including information you provide or make available to us directly, information collected from your mobile devices, and information collected from other sources, like social networking sites and gaming partners. Some of this information may be considered “personal information” or “personal data” under applicable privacy or data protection laws.
You may provide information directly to ForthStar Limited when you:
● Use or access any of the Services, including when you create a ForthStar Limited Account (as defined in our Terms of Service) or make in-app purchases;
● Create a ForthStar Limited Account for logging in across multiple games or Services;
● Connect with or access our Services using a third-party ID or log-in, such as an ID for a social networking site or gaming service;
● Communicate with or contact others using our Services, including when you use chat, “invite a friend,” “email this page,” or use other similar features;
● Contact us, including for customer or technical support;
● Participate in ForthStar Limited offers, contests, or special events;
● Subscribe to newsletters or sign up to hear about current or upcoming products; and/or
● Complete surveys offered by us or on our behalf.
Depending on how you choose to use the Services, we may collect the following types of information:
● Contact information such as your first and last name, username or handle, third-party service ID, email address, phone number, home address or shipping address, and other contact information;
● Images such as your photo, avatar, or other image;
● Biographic and Demographic information such as your date of birth, gender, and time zone.
● Transaction information such as purchase or payment information; and/or
● Other information such as chat records, friends' names and contact information, and location information you choose to share (for example, when you connect with our Services through social features);
● Audio recordings and feedback when you grant microphone permissions to provide feedback on our games during gameplay and we may make this available to other users of our Services. If you do not want your recordings and feedback to be used in this way, please reach out to us at privacy@forthstar.com.
When you access or use our Services, we collect information from and about you and your mobile device(s). This may include the following information:
● IP address, unique device identifiers, advertising identifiers, device serial numbers, and similar identifiers;
● Device information such as hardware model, device software platform/OS and firmware, mobile carrier, preferred languages, device motion information, mobile network information, and in some cases, browser type and version, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages and URLs, or clickstream information;
● Approximate location inferred from IP address;
● In-game purchase information;
● Any of our Services or Games that you use when at the same time we are also testing those Services or Games even though you may not know we are testing;
● Game scores and achievements, and other information as reasonably required to offer and enhance our Services; and/or
● Inferences, such as those drawn from any of the personal information we collect, to better understand your preferences.
We and our partners use various tools to collect information when you use our Services, including cookies, pixels, software development kits, advertising identifiers, and other similar technologies. Some of these technologies store information on your mobile device. Other technologies may use network-related or other information to recognize your device (e.g., IP address). Our Services use these technologies, for example, when you first use our mobile app and information is then stored on your mobile device so the app can access information when you use the Service again. These technologies may also be used to collect and store information about how you view and use the Services, such as pages you have visited, your search history, and content you have viewed, and to connect your activity with other information we store about you. This information is generally used to make content, our Services, and advertising more relevant and useful during future visits.
The use of these technologies helps us serve you better by understanding what you're interested in, tracking trends, measuring the effectiveness of ads, saving your preferences, and storing information you may want to retrieve on a regular basis. One of these technologies is Google Analytics. For more information about how Google uses your personal information (including for its own purposes, e.g., for profiling or linking it to other information), please visit Google Analytics’ Privacy Policy. To learn more about how to opt-out of Google Analytics’ use of your information, please click here. We also allow specific, approved partners to collect information from your mobile device for advertising and measurement purposes using their own similar tools.
You can control the use of similar technologies through your mobile device settings. However, if you choose to disable some or all tracking technologies, please note that this may limit access
to certain features, content, or personalization available through our Services. For information about how you can manage your cookie and similar technologies preferences, please review the section of this Privacy Policy titled "Interest-Based Advertising."
We may use the information we collect for a number of business and commercial purposes, including to:
● Perform internal operations necessary to develop, provide, maintain, and improve our Services, including troubleshooting, providing customer and technical support, and conducting data analysis, testing, and research;
● Understand how you interact with our Services and personalize the product experience and content (including advertising and messaging campaigns), as well as offer discounts or personalized pricing in accordance with applicable law;
● Maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our Services, for example by authenticating players and providing account security and fraud detection;
● Send you news and/or marketing communications (by email, phone, or text) subject to your marketing preferences and choices, including information about ForthStar Limited or third-party offerings we think may be of interest to you;
● Administer contests, surveys, and sweepstakes you enter, notify contest winners, and award prizes;
● Fulfill a purchase or send you order confirmations or other requested product or Service information;
● Facilitate your communication with friends and other players, and enable features that allow you to share information with other people (for example, if you choose to use friend invite features); and/or
● Comply with legal requirements and/or investigate or address claims or disputes relating to your use of the Services.
● Operate automated systems, including artificial-intelligence and machine-learning tools, that support the Services — for example, to check the account name you choose for offensive or inappropriate content, to analyse recordings of gameplay in order to generate 'ghost' opponents and to detect cheating or abuse, and to make other automated decisions while you play. Some of these tools are operated on our behalf by third- party providers. These automated processes do not produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you. Where any automated decision would produce such an effect, we will tell you, and you may request human review of the decision, express your point of view, and contest it.
To provide opponents to play against, we record gameplay sessions — the on-screen action and your control inputs only (no camera, no audio) — and use them to create 'ghost' opponents that other players may face, including in other countries. A ghost may be shown to other players together with the username and avatar you have chosen. We rely on our legitimate interest in providing an engaging and competitive game for this processing, and we have assessed that this interest is not overridden by your interests or rights. We keep ghost recordings only for as long as they are needed to provide opponents and to maintain game balance, and we delete or irreversibly anonymise them when they are no longer used for that purpose. You can object to this processing or ask us to delete your ghost data at any time — see Your Rights and Choices — by contacting privacy@forthstar.com, and we are able to locate and delete an individual player's ghost data on request.
At ForthStar Limited, we are in the business of creating great games, not selling information. Subject to your legal rights, we may disclose the information we collect about you, and may enable you to share this information, with a variety of third parties in various ways, including:
● With our affiliates, who provide data processing services necessary to provide you with our goods and services (for example, to support the delivery of, provide functionality on, or help to enhance the security of our website and app across the world) or who otherwise process personal data for purposes described in this Privacy Policy. Our affiliates, to which we transfer your personal data, operate within our sector;
● With vendors, consultants, development partners, business partners, payment processors, and other third-party service providers as necessary to carry out work on our behalf and otherwise provide the Services, including, but not limited to, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, SendGrid, Okta, Meta Platforms (Facebook SDK), Snowflake, OpenAI, and Datadog. We may also share some of your information only with your consent or at your direction, for example, we may share your personal information if you opt in to receiving information from ForthStar Limited's business partners;
● With other players, to enable you to interact with them and to share gameplay-related information such as high scores and other leaderboard information;
● With the general public, if you choose to share information when contributing content to our Services through a forum, blogs, social features, or the like;
● Where you choose to take advantage of social sharing features or related tools that let you share games and other actions you take on our Services, with the public, social media platforms, and/or your social media friends or contacts;
● With others who share your device, if you make your Account available to them through that device;
● With other parties engaging in sponsorships and co-branded opportunities and promotions;
● With specific third parties if we believe disclosure is required by applicable law, regulation, or legal process;
● With law enforcement officials, government authorities, or other third parties if we believe your actions are inconsistent with our terms or other policies, and/or are fraudulent or in violation of applicable law, or as we determine necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of ForthStar Limited or others;
● In connection with an actual or proposed merger, consolidation, restructuring, sale of company stock and/or assets or other corporate change, including during the course of any due diligence process; and/or
● In an aggregated or pseudonymous form or otherwise in a form that cannot reasonably be used to identify you.
In some cases, we may enable you to access third-party websites, products or services through our Services. Other websites may also reference, advertise, or link to ForthStar Limited. Please note that those links, the content of such other websites, products or services are offered by people or companies not affiliated with or controlled by us, and we are not responsible for their actions, their terms, their privacy practices and use of information, or their products or services. If you submit your information to a third party, that third party’s treatment of your information is governed by their privacy policy, which may differ from this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review the applicable privacy policy of any third party you access through the Services.
You can log in to certain ForthStar Limited Services using third-party authentication solutions (e.g., sign-in authentication via Facebook, Google, and Apple). If you choose to log in using one of these methods, you allow us to temporarily transfer you to an authentication log-in experience provided by the third party. You will be asked to input your login credentials for that third-party application and that third party will authenticate and sign you in via their solution. Note that your use of any third-party solution for sign-on, and the personal data you provide to that third party or data collected by them, will be explained by that third party and access to their sign-on services is governed by their terms of use, privacy policies, and other policies. We encourage you to read and review those documents carefully. They will also explain more about information that may be shared back to ForthStar Limited in order to support the authentication experience.
We may share some of your information with certain third-party partners to make advertising more relevant, to measure its effectiveness, and to help recognize your devices and serve ads. We or they may also employ cookies or similar technologies, as described above, to ensure you receive appropriate advertising and personalized experiences. These third-party advertising partners include, but are not limited to Singular for attribution and analytics, Google for advertising services, and their partners. Click each partner's name for more information regarding their privacy practices.
Note: ForthStar Limited is in early development stages and our advertising partnerships may change. We will update this list as our partnerships evolve. If you have questions about our current advertising partners, please contact us at privacy@forthstar.com.
If you prefer to opt out of having your web viewing behavior used for interest-based advertising, you can learn how to do so by clicking here, or if located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, by clicking here. If you would prefer to opt out of having information about your mobile app usage used for interest-based advertising, you may also do so through your device settings such as (“Allow Apps to Request to Track” on iOS and “Opt Out of Ads Personalization” on Android). Please note that even if you disable personalized advertising, you may continue to receive ads that are not based on your preferences.
The specific personal information we process and our reasons for doing so often vary depending on how you use the Services. Therefore, the length of time that we retain personal information can also vary. We generally retain personal information for as long as we reasonably need it for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy (such as complying with our legal obligations, where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so, managing internal records, enforcing our contracts and terms, fraud prevention, resolving disputes, and for safety reasons), unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. We will not though retain personal information for longer than we are permitted by law to do so.
The primary factors we consider in determining retention periods can include minimum requirements under applicable law, relevant industry standards, the types of data in question (such as its level of sensitivity), relevance to potential litigation or similar proceedings (such as defending ourselves against legal claims), and whether the personal information is required to prevent fraud or similar abuse of the Services (including to enforce prohibitions against cheating and other unauthorized behavior and to prevent banned players from using the Services).
To learn more about how to request deletion of your personal information, please see “Your Rights and Choices” below.
You may be able to access, delete, modify, and/or correct certain personal and other information available to you in your Account or in-app. Depending on where you reside, you may have additional rights, including those listed below in the sections called "Additional Information for Residents of the EEA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Brazil" and "Additional Information for US Residents."
To protect the privacy of your information, ForthStar Limited verifies your identity and processes rights requests through our in-game help ticket system. If you wish to exercise any of the rights described above, please follow the instructions below and do not delete the game until your request is fulfilled:
● Open the ForthStar Limited game(s) for which you wish to exercise your rights;
● Visit the game’s settings menu;
● Select “Contact Us,” “Support,” “Help,” or equivalent option to submit a support ticket via the chat icon;
● Follow the prompts as provided by the Support team; and
● Choose the applicable request.
If you have trouble with any of the steps described above, you can contact privacy@forthstar.com for help. We may contact you to confirm your choices and to ask for additional information as needed to verify your identity and process your request.
Email and text: In order to opt-out of email communications, please click the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email or contact us at privacy@forthstar.com. If you receive an unwanted text message from us, you may opt out of receiving future text messages from us by following the instructions in the text message you have received from us or by otherwise contacting us as set forth below in the "Contact Us" section.
Push Notifications: In connection with certain Services, you may choose to opt in to receiving push notifications. If you no longer want to receive them, you can turn them off at the device level.
Do Not Track (“DNT”) and Global Privacy Control (“GPC”) are privacy preferences that can be set in certain web browsers. Like most services, we do not respond to DNT signals. Our Services are provided primarily as native mobile apps, which do not send or receive browser signals such as these. To limit interest-based advertising in the apps, use the controls on your device — “Ask App Not to Track” on iOS or “Opt out of Ads Personalization” on Android — which prevent the collection of your device advertising identifier. You can also exercise the choices described in the “Interest-Based Advertising” and “California privacy rights” sections, or contact us at privacy@forthstar.com.
We follow generally accepted industry standards and maintain reasonable safeguards designed to secure the information in our possession, and take steps to ensure only those at ForthStar Limited with a legitimate business need to access your personal information are permitted to do so. We also take reasonable steps to assure that third parties to whom we transfer information will provide protections appropriate to that type of information. We also have in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. If you have reason to believe that your personal information is no longer secure, please immediately contact us as set forth below in the “Contact Us” section.
Our Services are intended for adults aged 18 and over, and we require all players to be at least 18 as a condition of access. BlastLeague is not directed at anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe someone under 18 has provided us with personal data, please contact privacy@forthstar.com and we will delete it.
Additional Information for Residents of the EEA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Brazil
If you are a resident of a member country of the United Kingdom, EEA, the United States, Switzerland, or Brazil, then in accordance with applicable law, you may have the following rights (some of these rights apply generally, while others will only apply in certain circumstances:
Information: to be provided with clear, transparent, and easily understandable information about how we use your information, which is why we are providing you with this Privacy Policy.
Access: to obtain a copy of the personal information we have collected about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. This right only applies to personal information relating to you, and not to any other player or person.
Rectification: to correct your personal information where it is inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated.
Erasure: to request that ForthStar Limited remove or delete your personal information, for example when it is no longer necessary to fulfill the purposes for which ForthStar Limited collected it. This right may be limited to the extent that ForthStar Limited is permitted or required by applicable law to retain your information. Note that if you request deletion of your personal information, you may no longer be able to use or access the Services. If you share devices with someone else who uses the Services, that person may also lose game progress or related Account information and access. If you decide to use or access the Services again, ForthStar Limited may consider this a new Account and may collect personal information associated with that Account in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Restriction or objection to processing: to object to ForthStar Limited's processing of your personal information, or request that ForthStar Limited restrict (block or suspend) that processing. Because the information that ForthStar Limited collects is generally required to provide the Services to you, if you object to the processing of your personal information, this may have the same effect as requesting deletion of this information. This right may be limited to the extent that ForthStar Limited is permitted or required by applicable law to continue processing the information. Note that if you object to the processing of your personal information, you and others who use your devices to access the Services may no longer be able to use or access the Services.
Portability: to receive a copy of your personal information in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format so that you can transmit it elsewhere.
Withdraw consent: if we have collected and processed certain types of personal information with your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time as described above. This includes your right to withdraw consent to us using your personal information for marketing purposes. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing conducted prior to then, nor will it affect any processing based on lawful grounds other than consent.
Complain: to file a complaint with your national data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.
To exercise these rights, please see “Your Rights and Choices” above.
For all rights, we usually act on requests and provide information free of charge, but, where allowed under the law, we may charge a reasonable fee to cover our administrative costs of providing the information for baseless or excessive/repeated requests, or further copies of the same information. Alternatively, we may be entitled to refuse to act on the request in some circumstances. We’ll try to respond as soon as we can. Generally, this will be within one month from when we receive your request but, if the request is going to take longer to deal with, we’ll come back to you and let you know.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
If you are from the the United Kingdom, EEA or Switzerland, our legal basis (i.e., the reason) for collecting and using your personal information will depend on the type of information and the context in which we collect it. In general, we collect personal information for the different activities and purposes described above, as follows:
● Where we have your consent to do so, such as before we use or share your information for advertising that is targeted based on your browsing history, online behaviour, or other personal information that we or third parties may have collected about you. If you consent to our use of your personal information for any purpose, you have the right to withdraw consent at any time by contacting us, as explained above;
● Where we need it to perform a contract with you (i.e. our Terms of Service), between you and us and/or taking steps, at your request, to enter into such a contract, which for instance, allows us to provide you with the Services, to respond to inquiries, and to administer contests and promotions;
● Where it is in our legitimate interests and this is not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information, for example, for the following purposes:
- Product and Service development, management, delivery, and enhancement
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Network and system security
- General corporate operations
- Compliance with applicable foreign laws
- Communications regarding your purchases
- Non-targeted marketing and advertising.
● Where we have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you or may otherwise need it to protect your vital interests or those of another person. If you have questions about the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us at privacy@forthstar.com
Your personal information might be transferred to a country outside the United Kingdom, EEA or Switzerland, including, but not limited to, the United States or other countries, which may have data protection laws that are different from the laws where you live.
Our Services are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure primarily located in the AWS US East region, which means your personal information will be processed and stored in the United States. We endeavor to safeguard your information consistent with the requirements of applicable laws.
Where we transfer personal information which originates in the United Kingdom, EEA and/or Switzerland to a country that has not been found to provide an adequate level of protection under applicable data protection laws, we put an appropriate safeguard in place for that transfer. Depending on the recipient, this is either the recipient's certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension, or the UK/EU Standard Contractual Clauses (or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement) together with, where necessary, further technical and organizational measures. Please contact us at privacy@forthstar.com if you would like details of the safeguard that applies to a particular recipient.
US residents may have additional privacy rights under applicable state laws, including the right to access, delete, or opt out of the sale of personal information. To exercise these rights, please contact us through the methods described in "Your Rights and Choices" above.
For questions about state-specific privacy rights, please contact privacy@forthstar.com.
If you are a California resident, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use and disclose it; to request deletion or correction of your personal information; and to opt out of the 'sale' or 'sharing' of personal information and of targeted advertising. We do not sell personal information for money; however, our use of advertising or measurement identifiers (for example via the Meta SDK) may be considered a 'sale' or 'share' under California law. You can opt out by limiting ad tracking in your device settings (for example, “Allow Apps to Request to Track” on iOS and “Opt out of Ads Personalization” on Android) or by contacting us at privacy@forthstar.com. Because our Services are intended for players who meet our minimum age (see "Use By Minors"), we do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone below that age. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.
Your Duty to Inform us of Changes
It is important that the information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed as soon as possible if your personal information changes or is inaccurate during your relationship with us by using the contact details below.
Changing this Privacy Policy
We may amend this Privacy Policy by posting the amended versions on our website. By continuing to access or use our Services after we post amended versions, you confirm your agreement to our Privacy Policy as amended. If you do not agree with any of the changes, you must immediately stop accessing our Services.
If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy and our use of your personal information, you can contact us by email at privacy@forthstar.com, or by postal mail at the addresses clarified further below. If we receive a formal written complaint from you, we will attempt to contact you directly to resolve your concerns. Our address is as follows no matter in which country you reside:
ForthStar Limited, Foundation, 2 George Street Altrincham, England, WA14 1SG
To comply with our obligations under UK, EU and all other data protection legislation, we have appointed Matt Begley as our Data Protection Officer (DPO). For data protection inquiries, please contact our DPO at privacy@forthstar.com or by mail using the details provided above.
For the purposes of EU/UK data protection legislation, ForthStar Limited, registered in England and Wales under company number 14677456, is the controller of your personal information collected by ForthStar Limited pursuant to this Privacy Policy.
