Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy explains what information Vortex ("we", "us", or "our") collects when you use the Vortex website, launcher, client software and plugins (together, the "Service"), why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It should be read alongside our Terms of Service.
The short version. We collect what we need to run your free or paid plan, enforce its limits and stop accounts being shared: your Discord identity, your purchase details, your licence and device activity, and how the software is used. We do not sell your information. We cannot read the game account logins you store in the launcher — they are encrypted on your own computer with a password only you know. Card numbers are handled by Stripe and never reach us.
1. Information we collect
Your account (from Discord)
You sign in with Discord. With your permission, Discord shares your Discord user ID, username, display name, avatar and email address. We store these to identify your account, attach your key, subscriptions and purchases to it, and contact you about your account.
Subscriptions and purchases (through Stripe)
Payments are processed by Stripe. We never receive or store your card number. Stripe shares your subscriptions and payments with us, and we keep: the plan, amount, currency and payment status; each subscription's status, billing period dates, and whether it is set to cancel; Stripe's customer, subscription, invoice and payment references; the processing fee Stripe charged; and the billing name, email, country, city and postal code you gave at checkout. We use these to give you the access you paid for and end it when a subscription ends, send your invoice, handle refunds and chargebacks, pay developers their share of plugin sales, and meet tax and accounting obligations.
Your account page can open Stripe's billing portal, where Stripe shows you your subscriptions, payment methods and receipts directly.
When you accept the Terms at checkout we record which version you accepted, when, your IP address and your browser's user agent, as evidence of that agreement.
Your plan, key and devices
We record which plan your account has and where each part of it came from (a subscription, a purchase, your previous licence, a promotion, or a grant by our team), with its start and end dates. To enforce plan limits and to prevent an account being shared, we also record:
- A hardware identifier, stored only as a one-way hash. It lets us bind a licence to your machines without storing the underlying hardware details.
- Sign-in attempts and running sessions: time, client version, the result, and the IP address they came from. We count the clients your account is running at once, and the premium plugin sessions running in them, to apply your plan's limits.
- An approximate location (country and city) derived from that IP address. This lookup is done on our own server using an offline database — your IP address is not sent to a third party to do it. We use it to detect fraud and licence sharing.
- Your key, which we store encrypted so your account page can show it to you again.
How the software is used
The client reports usage so we can fix bugs and understand which features matter: session start and end, periodic heartbeats, the client version, which plugins are used and for how long, and error codes when something fails. This is tied to your licence and a random install identifier. It does not include your game account password.
Cloud sync (optional)
If you use cloud sync, the launcher uploads your saved game accounts, profiles and launch settings so they follow you between computers. Your saved game accounts are encrypted on your own computer before upload, using a key derived from the master password you choose in the launcher. We store only the encrypted data and cannot read it. If you forget your master password, we cannot recover it.
Referrals
Our referral programme has ended. If you took part in it, we keep the record of who referred whom and any reward that was granted.
Developer programme
If you hold a developer key, we additionally record developer sessions and fingerprints of the plugin files you run (file names and code hashes, not source code), to detect a developer key being shared.
If you are a plugin developer who earns a share of sales, we record your developer profile, the plugins assigned to you, your revenue share and each change to it, and a ledger of the sales, refunds and disputes of your plugins so we can calculate what you are owed. Developers see only daily totals of their own earnings — never who bought a plugin or what any individual buyer paid.
Actions our team takes on your account
When our team changes an account — for example granting or removing access, disabling an account or ending a running session — we record who did it, when, what changed and the reason they gave. We keep this to support you and to prevent misuse of staff access.
Our website
- Essential cookies. A session cookie keeps you signed in, and a security cookie protects forms against cross-site request forgery. The site does not work without them.
- Analytics on our home page. Our landing page uses Contentsquare (Hotjar) to understand how visitors use it, which may record clicks, scrolling and page interactions. It is deliberately not loaded on your account page or the purchase confirmation page, which show licence keys.
- Google. Our home and plugins pages load Google's "preferred sources" button, and our home page includes a Google Ads measurement tag. These may set cookies or collect data under Google's own privacy policy.
Messages we send
We use a Discord bot to grant customer roles and to send you account messages, and email to send purchase invoices.
2. How we use information
- To provide the Service: sign-in, keys, your plan and its limits, cloud sync and support.
- To process subscriptions and payments, send invoices, and handle refunds and chargebacks.
- To calculate and pay developers their share of plugin sales.
- To prevent fraud, abuse and account or developer-key sharing.
- To fix bugs, measure reliability, and decide what to build next.
- To contact you about your account, your subscriptions and changes to our terms.
- To comply with legal, tax and accounting obligations.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it to show you advertising on other websites.
3. Who we share it with
We share information only with the service providers we rely on to run Vortex, each for the purpose listed:
| Provider | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Discord | Sign-in, customer roles and account messages |
| Stripe | Subscriptions, payment processing, billing portal, billing details, fraud screening |
| Hetzner | Hosting the servers that store our data |
| Our email provider | Sending invoices |
| Contentsquare (Hotjar) | Home page analytics |
| Home and plugins page features and ad measurement |
We may also disclose information where required by law, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights and safety of Vortex, our users or others — for example in responding to a chargeback or to a valid legal request.
We publish videos to our own TikTok, Instagram and YouTube accounts. Doing so shares our marketing content with those platforms; it does not share customer information.
4. How long we keep it
- Detailed usage events: about 90 days.
- Aggregated usage statistics: about 13 months.
- Account, plan, key, subscription, purchase and Terms-acceptance records: for as long as your account exists, and afterwards for as long as we need them for tax, accounting, chargeback and legal purposes.
- Developer revenue records and the record of staff actions on accounts: kept permanently and never edited, because they are financial and security records.
- Cloud sync data: until you delete it or ask us to.
5. How we protect it
All connections to our website and servers use HTTPS. Keys are stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM), hardware identifiers are stored only as one-way hashes, synced game accounts are encrypted on your own device before they reach us, and access to our systems is restricted. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will act promptly if we become aware of a breach.
6. Your choices and rights
You can ask us to access, correct or delete the personal information we hold about you, or to stop using it for a particular purpose. Some information we must keep — for example purchase records we are required to retain for tax and accounting — and deleting your account ends your access to the Service.
We are based in Canada and handle personal information in line with Canadian privacy law. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or another region with its own privacy rights, you may have additional rights under local law, including to complain to your data protection authority.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Blocking the essential cookies will prevent you from signing in.
7. International transfers
Our service providers may process information in countries other than your own, including Canada, the United States and the European Union. By using the Service you understand that your information may be transferred to and processed in those countries.
8. Children
The Service is not directed at children under 13, and signing in requires a Discord account, which itself requires users to be at least 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.
9. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the version and effective date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will make reasonable efforts to tell you, for example on Discord.
10. Contact
For privacy questions or requests, contact us on our Discord or email vsupport@vortexosrs.com.