Parents & guardians guide

1. Who we are

1. Isles of Calamity (the Game) and the website at islesofcalamity.com (the Site) are operated by Pixel Glitch Studios (we, us), trading as Pixel Glitch Studios.
2. Postal address: Postal address: to be published (business mailbox pending) — contact support@islesofcalamity.com. Company number, if applicable: None — unincorporated sole proprietorship.
3. Contact for every purpose in this guide, including privacy requests: support@islesofcalamity.com. Our automated messages are sent from no-reply@islesofcalamity.com; that address is not monitored.
4. We are the data controller for the personal data described in clause 5.

1.5 How to read this guide

1. This guide is addressed to you as a parent or guardian. In the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, you means the person who holds the Account — the player. To avoid confusion here, this guide says your child for that person and speaks to you directly. This guide does not change the meaning of any term defined in those documents.
2. Account means the registered account, identified by an email address and a display name. Character means one of the in-game characters held in an Account's slots. Membership and Membership Credits are explained in clause 8.
3. Where this guide and the Terms of Service disagree, the Terms of Service prevail. Nothing in this guide grants rights beyond them, and nothing in it takes any away.

2. What the Game is

1. The Game is a free-to-play online role-playing game. Players build Characters, train skills, gather, craft, trade and explore.
2. The Game is online-only. There is no offline or single-player mode. If our servers are unavailable, the Game cannot be played.
3. The world is persistent and shared. Other Characters your child encounters are controlled by other real people, in real time.
4. The Game is played through a downloadable game client. A licence agreement is presented inside the client the first time it runs, and must be accepted to play.
5. The Site carries hiscores, public player profiles, a player-run market (the Tideboard), news, guides, polls, a world list and support and reporting forms.
6. Registration is currently invite-only: an invite code is needed to create an Account. We may switch this off at any time without notice.

3. Age

1. The minimum age for an Account is 13. This is checked on our servers against the date of birth given at registration, not merely in the browser. A registration below 13 is refused.
2. A date of birth is easy for a determined child to misstate. We do not verify it against any document or third-party source, and we do not claim the check is more than it is.
3. If your child is under 13 and holds an Account, tell us at support@islesofcalamity.com and we will remove it.
4. A disclosure for parents in the EU and EEA. In some countries the age at which a child can consent to an online service on their own is higher than 13 — up to 16. We have not built a mechanism to obtain or verify parental consent, so we cannot offer one, and our age gate does not vary by country. If your child is under the age of digital consent where you live, they should not hold an Account, and you may ask us to remove one under clause 3.3.
5. If your child is over 13 but under the age of majority where you live, the Terms of Service require your consent for their use of the Game.

4. What your child can say, and who can see them

4.1 Messaging between players

1. The Game does not currently carry messages between players. The chat box shows system messages — level-ups, quest progress, loot — and repeats your child's own typed lines back onto their own screen. Those lines are not sent to our servers and no other player receives them.
2. The chat box displays tabs labelled Local, Private and Clan. These carry no player-to-player traffic today. They are part of an unfinished feature. We mention them because you will see them and would reasonably assume otherwise.
3. There is consequently no profanity filter, no chat log and no chat moderation, because there is currently no player chat to filter, log or moderate.
4. We intend to add player messaging. When we do, this guide will be updated at the same time as the feature ships, not before, and the protections that apply to it will be described here then. Until you read it here, assume it does not exist.

4.2 What is public about your child

1. The Account display name is public. It appears on hiscores and on a public player profile page on the Site. It is visible to anyone, including people who are not logged in and search engines.
2. The Account display name is normally permanent. It is chosen once, at registration. Your child cannot change it as a preference. Staff can force a one-time reset when a name breaks the rules: the name is replaced with a placeholder, your child must choose a replacement, and a name-offense mark remains active for 3, 6 or 12 months according to severity. The expired row remains as audit history but is no longer an active mark. This is an enforcement action, not a rename service. Please help your child choose a name that does not identify them — not their real name, school, town or year of birth. This is the single decision in the Game that cannot be undone.
3. Character names are also public, and unlike the display name they can be changed by your child.
4. Character skills, experience, levels and achievements are public on hiscores and profile pages. Activity on the Tideboard, the player market, is part of the Game's shared economy.
5. Your child's email address, date of birth, and the contents of their Account are not public.

4.3 Other real people

1. Because the world is shared, your child will encounter other players' Characters, their names and their conduct. We moderate that conduct under clause 5, but we cannot pre-vet it.
2. Some news articles on the Site embed YouTube or Twitch video. Those embeds are only present on articles that contain one, and content on those platforms is governed by those platforms, not by us.

5. Reporting and moderation

1. Anyone can report a player from islesofcalamity.com/report under one of seven categories: harassment or abuse, cheating or exploiting, botting, scamming, real-world trading, an offensive name, or something else.
2. Reports are reviewed by our staff. We do not commit to a response time and we do not currently notify a reporter of the outcome.
3. The Game Rules set out what is not allowed. They form part of the Terms of Service.
4. Where the Rules are broken, staff may mute or ban an Account, for a stated period or permanently, on one world or across all of them, with a reason recorded. A banned Account is refused at login and is told why.
5. Sanctions are issued by people, not by software. Our anti-cheat raises flags for staff to look at; no flag bans an Account by itself. There is no automated decision-making that produces a legal or similarly significant effect on your child.
6. Appeals go to support@islesofcalamity.com under the "appeal" category. Be aware that this is a general support form: there is no dedicated appeals process, and your child cannot see a history of their own offences anywhere in the Game or on the Site.

6. What we collect about your child, and why we may

1. To create and run the Account — email address, display name, date of birth, and a password (stored only as an Argon2 hash; we never hold the password itself). Legal basis: performance of our contract with your child.
2. Gameplay — Characters, skills, experience, achievements, and market and trading activity. Legal basis: performance of our contract.
3. Optionally, at your child's choice — a phone number (held separately and verified by one-time code), answers to security questions (stored hashed), and a two-factor secret. Legal basis: performance of our contract, and consent where the feature is optional.
4. Security and abuse prevention — IP addresses, browser and device information, sign-in history, session records and an audit log. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in keeping Accounts secure, enforcing the Game Rules, preventing cheating and fraud, and operating an age-restricted service.
5. Age — date of birth is used to enforce the minimum age in clause 3. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in operating an age-restricted service and in complying with children's privacy law.
6. Support and reports — anything your child (or you) writes into the support or report forms, plus the email address given. Support may be submitted without an Account. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in answering enquiries and in maintaining a safe Game.
7. Moderation — staff notes and any sanctions. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in enforcing the Game Rules.
8. Payments, only if a purchase is made — see clause 9.6. Legal basis: performance of our contract, and our legal obligations for tax and accounting records.
9. Analytics — only with consent, and only on our public pages. See clause 6.13.
10. Newsletter — only if the email address is confirmed twice (double opt-in). It is kept separately from the Account and can be unsubscribed from every message. Legal basis: consent.
11. Passwords are screened against known breaches. When a password is set, we check it against the Have I Been Pwned service using a method that sends only the first five characters of a hash of it. The password itself, and your child's email address, never leave our systems for this purpose.
12. We do not sell your child's personal data, and we do not currently share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

6.13 Cookies and analytics

1. We use Google Analytics on our public pages only, and only if analytics is accepted in the consent banner. Decline and nothing is loaded or stored. The choice can be changed at any time via Cookie preferences in the footer.
2. Analytics never runs on the account, sign-up, recovery, billing, developer or status pages.
3. The rest of our storage is functional: the sign-in token, a cookie holding the display name so the Site can greet your child by name across its pages, a short-lived sign-out cookie, and the record of the consent choice itself. None of it tracks your child across other websites.

6.14 Advertising

1. The Game and the Site currently show no advertising. We may introduce it. If we do, we will update this guide and the Privacy Policy first, and we will ask for consent before any advertising cookie is set.

7. Who else handles the data

1. Amazon Web Services — hosting, database, storage, content delivery, email delivery and telemetry, in the us-east-1 region in the United States.
2. Stripe and PayPal — payments, only if a purchase is made.
3. Cloudflare — an "are you human" challenge on registration and recovery. This is built but switched off, so nothing reaches Cloudflare today. If we turn it on, it will run on those two pages and no others, and we will say so here.
4. Have I Been Pwned — breached-password screening, as described in clause 6.12.
5. Google — analytics, only after consent, and only on public pages.
6. Google, Apple, Discord or Steam — linking one of those accounts for sign-in. No provider is switched on today, so this is not something your child can currently do and none of those companies receive anything. If we enable it, it will stay optional: nothing is shared unless your child chooses to link an account.
7. YouTube or Twitch — only on the news articles that embed a video.
8. We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to establish or defend legal claims.

7.9 Data leaving the EU and UK

1. We are based in the United States and our systems run in the United States. If you are in the EU, the EEA or the UK, your child's personal data is transferred to the United States and is processed there.
2. We do not yet have our own transfer safeguard in place; this is under review. In the meantime, we rely on the safeguards our hosting, payment and analytics providers publish for the data they process — such as EU–US Data Privacy Framework certifications and standard contractual clauses. You can ask us about this at support@islesofcalamity.com.

8. How long we keep it

1. While the Account is active, we keep the Account and its Characters. Accounts are designed to last.
2. After 3 years with no sign-in, we delete the phone number, the security-question answers and the stored sign-in IP addresses, and we release the Account's Character names so other players may take them. Your child can re-enter those details next time they sign in.
3. Financial records: 7 years after a payment, the billing details (payer email, postal code, card last four digits) are anonymised. Amounts, dates and the payment provider's reference are kept, because tax law requires it.
4. On deletion: see clause 10.
5. Sign-in history, the security audit log, support tickets, player reports and moderation notes do not have a fixed period today. We keep them for as long as they are needed to secure Accounts, investigate abuse, enforce the Game Rules and defend legal claims, and we review them against that standard. We would rather tell you the criteria than quote a number we do not actually enforce.

9. Spending

1. The Game is free to play. Nothing in this clause is necessary to play it.
2. Membership unlocks additional content. It is sold as Membership Credits: one-off blocks of 7, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 180 or 365 days. Buying more adds days to what is already there.
3. Nothing renews automatically. There is no subscription. Each purchase is a single, separate transaction that your child must make deliberately. When the days run out, the Account simply reverts to free. No card is charged again unless someone buys again.
4. You may see an "autopay" switch in the billing pages. It stores a preference and nothing more — no automatic payment is taken today. We intend to build real recurring billing. If we do, it will be opt-in, we will tell you before it starts, and cancelling it will be as easy as starting it.
5. Membership is not currently on sale at all. Every purchase path is switched off. If that changes, this guide will say so.
6. Card details never reach us. Payment happens on a page hosted by Stripe or PayPal. We receive only: the payer's email, postal code, the card's last four digits, the card brand, the wallet used, and the country. We never see or store a card number.
7. Refunds. Our staff can issue full or partial refunds and remove the corresponding Membership Credits. Contact support@islesofcalamity.com. If you are in the EU or the UK, you have statutory cancellation rights that apply whatever any policy of ours says; those are not affected by this clause.
8. In-game items, currency and Characters have no real-world monetary value and are licensed, not owned. Buying or selling them for real money outside the Game breaks the Game Rules and can cost your child the Account.

10. What we do not offer

We would rather you know the shape of the gaps than assume protections that are not there.

1. No parental spending controls. There is no spending limit, no approval step, and no age check on the purchase path. If your child can reach a saved payment method, nothing in our system stops a purchase. Control this where the card lives — your bank's or card issuer's controls, your device's app-store or payment approval settings, and by not saving a card in the browser your child uses.
2. No parental consent mechanism. See clause 3.4.
3. No parent dashboard. There is no way for you to view your child's Account, their playtime, their spending or their moderation record from an account of your own. Requests under clause 11 go through support.
4. No playtime limits or scheduling built into the Game.
5. No offence history visible to your child, and no structured appeals process. See clause 5.6.

11. Your child's rights, and how to use them

1. Get a copy of the data (access and portability). Signed in, your child can download a JSON file of their Account from their account page. It contains the Account record, Characters, skills, sign-in history, sessions and any sanctions.
2. Correct it (rectification). The email address, phone number and password can be changed from the account page. The Account display name cannot be changed as a preference — there is no self-serve route; the normal mechanism is the moderator takedown described in clause 4.2.2, which is an enforcement action and is not available on request. If the display name is itself inaccurate personal data about your child, write to support@islesofcalamity.com and we will consider it by hand.
3. Delete it (erasure). See clause 12.
4. Object, or ask us to restrict processing. There is no button for this. Email support@islesofcalamity.com and we will deal with it by hand.
5. Withdraw consent. Where we rely on consent — analytics, the newsletter, optional Account features — it can be withdrawn at any time, without affecting anything done before. Analytics: Cookie preferences in the footer. Newsletter: the unsubscribe link in any message.
6. As a parent exercising these rights for your child, email support@islesofcalamity.com. We have no automated route for this and no built process for verifying that you are the parent, so expect us to ask questions before we act on an Account we cannot confirm is your child's. That caution protects your child from someone else making the same claim.
7. Complain. If you are in the EU, the EEA or the UK, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office. You can do this without contacting us first, though we would like the chance to fix it.
8. Depending on where you live, other rights may apply — including under the California Consumer Privacy Act, if and to the extent it applies to us. Ask support and we will tell you honestly whether a given right is one we are able to give effect to.

11.9 Our representatives in the EU and UK

1. If Article 27 requires an EU appointment, the representative will be We have not yet appointed an EU representative under Article 27 GDPR; until we do, players in the EU should contact us directly at support@islesofcalamity.com.
2. If Article 27 requires a UK appointment, the representative will be We have not yet appointed a UK representative under Article 27 UK GDPR; until we do, players in the UK should contact us directly at support@islesofcalamity.com.

12. Deleting the Account

1. Your child can request deletion from their account page. You can ask us to do it under clause 11.6.
2. There is a 30-day grace period. During it, the request can be cancelled by signing in. After it, deletion runs automatically.
3. Deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed. The email address, display name and password are destroyed, credentials and contact details are deleted, and the Characters are retired. The Account cannot be recovered and its progress is gone.
4. Three things survive deletion, and you should know this before you ask for it:
   1. Bans. If the Account is banned, the ban survives. Otherwise deleting an Account would be a way to escape enforcement.
   2. Financial records, which tax law requires us to keep — see clause 8.3.
   3. Audit and moderation records, kept for security and to enforce the Game Rules.
5. A single Character can be deleted without touching the Account. A Character that has never been played goes immediately. One that has been played has a 90-day grace period, and can be restored within it.

13. Keeping the Account safe

1. Turn on two-factor authentication. It is in the account settings, it uses a standard authenticator app, and it is the single most effective protection available. Recovery codes are issued when it is enabled — save them somewhere outside the device, or a lost phone becomes a lost Account.
2. Use a password that is not used anywhere else. We check every new password against known breaches and refuse ones that appear in them, but that only catches passwords already known to be leaked.
3. Do not share the Account. Account sharing breaks the Game Rules even with friends and family, and your child remains responsible for everything the Account does.
4. Your child can review their sign-in history and their active sessions, and sign out any of them, from the account page. An unrecognised sign-in is worth acting on: change the password and revoke the sessions.
5. Security questions and a verified phone number can be added as recovery routes. Both are optional.
6. We will never ask for the password — not by email, not in the Game, not on support. Anyone who does is not us. Our email only ever comes from an islesofcalamity.com address.
7. Teach your child the ordinary rules: real names, addresses, schools and phone numbers are not things to give to people met in a game, however friendly.

14. Changes to this guide

1. We will update this guide when the Game changes. Where a feature described here does not yet exist, we will update this guide when that feature ships, not before.
2. The date at the top tells you when it last changed. Significant changes will be announced on the Site.

15. Law

1. The Terms of Service are governed by the laws of the State of California and applicable United States federal law.
2. If you are a consumer in the European Union, the EEA or the United Kingdom, that choice does not take away the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country you live in. Your statutory rights — including your rights to a refund, to cancellation, and under data protection law — apply in full regardless of anything in the Terms of Service, this guide, or any limitation of liability, and regardless of which law is chosen. Nothing we write can sign those rights away.
3. Nothing in this guide limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

16. Contact

1. Report a player: islesofcalamity.com/report.
2. Everything else — support, account help, billing, appeals, privacy requests, or a concern about your child: support@islesofcalamity.com, or the form at islesofcalamity.com/support. A reply goes to the address you write from.
3. By post: Pixel Glitch Studios.
4. If your child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first. Then tell us, so we can act on the Account.