PRIVACY POLICY

Duskflare Studios (“we,” “us,” or “our”) makes and operates Wave Breakers, a browser-based game designed for children, teenagers, and families. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why we use it, how child accounts and parental approval work, and the choices available to players and parents or legal guardians.

1. Who We Are

Wave Breakers is developed and operated by Duskflare Studios, based in the United Arab Emirates. Privacy questions, parental requests, or requests concerning personal information can be sent to duskflarestudios@protonmail.com.

2. Guest Play

Wave Breakers can be played without creating a cloud account. In Guest mode, game progress is stored locally in the browser or device and is not tied to a Wave Breakers cloud account. Guest progress may be lost if browser data is cleared, the browser is changed, or the player moves to another device.

Guest players cannot make real-money purchases. A player who later becomes eligible for an approved cloud account may be offered a way to migrate compatible Guest progress into that account.

Like other websites and online games, the services used to deliver Wave Breakers may process limited technical information such as IP address, browser or device information, security logs, and approximate region where reasonably necessary to deliver, secure, troubleshoot, and protect the Game. We do not describe Guest play as involving no personal information at all.

3. Information We Collect

• Age or age-band information — used to determine whether parental approval is required for a cloud account. We do not need a full date of birth for this purpose unless the Game is later changed and applicable law requires it.
• Username and Game PIN — used for account sign-in and cloud saving. Game PINs are stored in hashed form rather than as plain text.
• Parent or guardian email — collected when a player under 16 asks to create a cloud account, and where needed for parental account management and purchase authorization.
• Parental consent records — such as consent status, date and time, consent method, the versions of the notices or terms shown, confirmation status, withdrawal status, and related audit information needed to demonstrate and manage parental approval.
• Parent PIN / Purchase PIN — used for parental controls and purchase authorization. PINs are stored in hashed form rather than as plain text.
• Game progress — such as Coins, Credits, unlocked content, achievements, entitlements, and difficulty or wave progress.
• Purchase information — Paddle processes real-money transactions as merchant of record. We may retain a transaction reference, date, product, amount or status, and information needed to deliver or revoke purchased content, provide support, prevent fraud, handle refunds or disputes, and meet legal or accounting obligations. We do not receive or store full card numbers or full payment credentials.
• Basic technical and security information — such as browser type, device information, IP address, approximate region, authentication information, and security or abuse-prevention logs where reasonably necessary.

4. How We Use Information

We use information to provide Guest play and cloud-account features; determine whether parental approval is required; request, record, confirm, manage, or withdraw parental approval; save, restore, and migrate eligible game progress; authorize, process, deliver, refund, or revoke purchases and paid entitlements; operate, secure, troubleshoot, maintain, and improve the Game; prevent fraud, cheating, abuse, and unauthorized access; and comply with legal, tax, accounting, consumer-protection, and regulatory obligations.

We do not sell personal information. Wave Breakers does not currently use third-party advertising or behavioral advertising/tracking networks. We do not use children’s information for targeted advertising.

5. Children, Age Checks, and Parental Approval

Wave Breakers is intended to be accessible to children and teenagers. Our launch rule is simple: players under 16 may play as Guests, but a cloud account for a player under 16 is activated only after the required parental-approval process has been completed. Players aged 16 or older may create their own cloud account, subject to applicable law.

For an under-16 cloud-account request, we may ask for a parent or legal guardian’s email address. The parent or guardian receives information about the requested account and the information we process, and must affirmatively approve the account. The process may include confirmation that the person is the parent or legal guardian, creation of a separate Parent PIN, a confirmation message, and a recorded consent/audit trail.

Where applicable law requires a stronger or different method of parental or age verification than the method Wave Breakers offers, we may not activate the child’s cloud account until those requirements can lawfully be met. The player may continue to use Guest mode where permitted.

A parent’s approval of a child’s cloud account does not itself authorize real-money purchases. Purchase authorization is handled separately.

6. Child-Safe Account Design

Wave Breakers is designed to minimize the personal information and public exposure of younger players. At launch, the Game does not provide public leaderboards, public player profiles, player-to-player chat or voice chat, or targeted advertising. We do not ask a child to provide a real name, personal email address, phone number, school, home address, photograph, or precise location in order to play or create the standard Wave Breakers account.

Duskflare Studios does not require a passport, Emirates ID, selfie, or biometric scan as part of the standard Wave Breakers parental-approval flow.

7. Parental Controls and Rights

Parents or legal guardians may contact us, or use any parental-management tools we provide, to review what they approved, disable purchases, withdraw parental approval, request access to or correction of a child’s information, or request deletion of the child’s account, subject to reasonable verification and applicable law.

If parental approval is withdrawn and no other lawful basis permits continued operation of the child’s account, we may close the cloud account and delete or anonymize information that we are not legally required to retain. We may keep limited transaction, fraud-prevention, security, accounting, or legal records where required or reasonably necessary.

8. Purchases and Parent Authorization

Guest players cannot make real-money purchases. For an under-16 account, approval to create the account is separate from approval to spend money. Before a real-money purchase by an under-16 account holder is completed, the required parental purchase-authorization step must be completed, such as entry of the separate Parent/Purchase PIN. The product and price are shown before checkout.

Paddle processes payment information as merchant of record. Paddle’s own terms and privacy practices apply to the payment transaction.

9. Service Providers and Sharing

• Supabase — database hosting, authentication, cloud saves, and related backend functions.
• Paddle — payment processing and merchant-of-record services.
• Lovable — the platform used to build and/or host Wave Breakers.

We may share information with these and other necessary service providers only to the extent reasonably required for their role, and may disclose information where reasonably necessary to prevent fraud or security incidents, protect rights or safety, resolve disputes, or comply with a valid legal obligation.

Some providers may process information outside the United Arab Emirates. Where applicable law requires safeguards for international transfers, we will use the safeguards required for the relevant processing.

If Wave Breakers is distributed through a third-party store or platform such as itch.io, that platform may process information under its own privacy terms. Duskflare Studios does not control independent processing performed by that platform.

10. Cookies, Local Storage, and Authentication

We use browser local storage for Game settings and Guest progress. Signed-in accounts may use authentication tokens or similar technical storage to keep the player signed in and protect the account. We do not currently use advertising-tracking cookies.

11. Retention

We keep cloud-account and game information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide and secure the account. Following a valid deletion or parental-withdrawal request, we delete or anonymize information that we are not legally required to retain within a reasonable period. Limited purchase, accounting, fraud-prevention, security, dispute, or legal records may be retained for longer where required or reasonably necessary.

12. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards appropriate to the Game, including access controls, hashed PIN storage, server-side controls for paid entitlements, and security measures provided by our hosting and payment providers. No online system can be guaranteed completely secure.

13. Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you or your parent/legal guardian may have rights concerning access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection, withdrawal of consent, or other handling of personal information. Contact duskflarestudios@protonmail.com. We will respond as required by applicable law.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when the Game, our practices, or legal requirements change. For meaningful changes, we will update the date and, where appropriate, provide notice in the Game or to a parent or account holder.

15. Contact

Privacy and parental requests: duskflarestudios@protonmail.com