Privacy

Responsible

Julian Ott, c/o Alpinity GmbH, Hauptstrasse 19, 9030 Abtwil SG, Switzerland, hello@gcity.ch. Send any question or request about your data to this email address.

Visiting the site

The site runs on Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA). When you open it, Cloudflare processes the technical data this needs: IP address, date and time, the address requested, browser and operating system. This delivers the page and protects it from attacks. We keep no access logs ourselves.

We count, per day and as plain numbers, how many people open the home page, tap “Request an invite”, start the form, sign up and confirm their address; for a page view we also count the platform of the post whose link brought you. For this the page sends our server a short signal, without a cookie and without an identifier. We store neither your IP address nor your browser, only the number. So that nobody can inflate the numbers, the server takes the signals only from our own pages and limits them per connection and minute; as for the waiting list, the key is a hash, not the IP address itself.

Waiting list

When you join the waiting list we store: your email address, when you last signed up (your consent), when you confirmed, whether you’d like to test now, and the language of the page. Plus two technical details: a random id for the links in our emails (the links never contain your address) and when the last confirmation email went out. If you come through the link in one of our posts (such as gcity.ch/?von=tiktok), we also store the link’s platform with your sign-up (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X or LinkedIn), only to count how many sign-ups come from where. Nothing else: no name, no IP address.

Purpose: we get in touch as soon as G-CITY is open to everyone or when we’re looking for testers, and now and then with short news about the project. If you’d like to test now, we unlock you by hand. The legal basis is your consent; you can withdraw it at any time, with the unsubscribe link in every email.

After signing up you get an email with a confirmation link (double opt-in); once you confirm, we send you one short welcome email. Without a confirmation we delete the address from the waiting list 7 days after your last sign-up; the daily clean-up does so within a day after that. We keep confirmed entries until you unsubscribe or G-CITY no longer needs the waiting list; then we delete them. Every email from us contains an unsubscribe link; unsubscribing deletes your entry at once. Cloudflare backs up the database automatically and keeps the backups for 30 days: a deleted entry disappears from them within 30 days.

The data lives in a Cloudflare database (D1) that runs and stores its data in the EU. The emails are sent by Cloudflare Email Service; Cloudflare keeps a log of the emails sent (time, delivery status, the receiving mail server’s answer) that can be viewed for up to 30 days. We do not keep the emails’ content there.

To keep bots out, Cloudflare Turnstile checks technical features of your browser when you send the form; for this check we also pass your IP address to Cloudflare. We only receive the result. To slow down abuse we count sign-ups per connection and minute. The key for this is not your IP address itself but a hash of it made with a secret key. We do not store this value in the waiting list; Cloudflare keeps the counter in the data centre that handles your request and uses it only for this limit.

If we unlock you as a tester, we note it with your entry: in which round, when we unlocked you and sent you the invitation and notices, and whether the unlock still holds. When you sign in to the game (play.gcity.ch), the game asks gcity.ch whether your unlock still holds: at sign-in, when it loads the bought cars, when it sends performance data if you allowed it, when you enter a room and once a day; an answer is reused for at most five minutes. gcity.ch stores nothing about these requests. When you request a sign-in code, gcity.ch keeps a check value of the code, never the code itself; it expires after ten minutes, and we delete it by the next day at the latest. So that nobody can flood an address with codes, gcity.ch counts per day how often a code was requested for an address and sends five codes at most; the key is a hash made with a secret key, not the address itself, and we delete the count the next day. If you unsubscribe from the waiting list, we delete the unlock as well; seven minutes later at the latest the game no longer lets you into a room.

If we unlock you as a tester and you sign in to the game with the email code or a passkey (play.gcity.ch), we create a game account. It holds no email address, only a random identifier, the link to your entry on the waiting list and, if you set one up, your passkey (only its public part; the secret part stays on your device). gcity.ch sends the sign-in code by email to the address on the waiting list. The game (play.gcity.ch) only passes the address you type on to gcity.ch and never stores or logs it. If you unsubscribe from the waiting list, we lock the game account and delete it after 90 days; a game account you have not signed in to for 210 days is deleted too.

You stay signed in through a cookie that serves only the sign-in; we store only a hash of it. A sign-in lasts up to 30 days after its last use, 180 days at most. The data is kept in a Cloudflare database (D1) that runs and stores in the EU; Cloudflare runs the sign-in on our behalf, backs the database up automatically and keeps the backups for 30 days. You can have your game account deleted at any time with an email to the address above.

So that nobody floods the sign-in, Cloudflare Turnstile checks a request for a code as it does for the form, and we count requests per connection; the key is a hash made with a secret key, not the IP address itself, and the count expires after an hour. We note the same hash with each sign-in. Anyone who deliberately disrupts others can be excluded from the game; we keep that exclusion until 14 days after it ends. The game server logs who entered which room and when (with the random identifier, without the IP address) and deletes the log after 14 days.

To keep to the licence terms of the bought 3D models, we note per game account when the game fetched the key for these models, and delete these notes after 90 days.

Leaderboards. If you drive a race, a time trial or a started drift zone online with your game account, we store your best result per track and season (points or time, the car, the day) with your account’s random identifier. All players see your rank, your result and the name you chose, otherwise “Ohne Namen” (no name); we never show your identifier. Under “Konto” (account) you choose “Nicht auf Ranglisten erscheinen” (don’t appear on leaderboards): then we delete your entries, store no new ones, and your name also disappears from the leaderboard of the room you play in as soon as you enter it; in a room you left before, when that room restarts. Your entries go with your account in any case; we delete a finished season after 30 days. As a guest and in single player we store nothing.

Car classes. If you drive a race or a time trial in a room with a tuning garage, we also store your best result on the leaderboard of your car’s class; on the open leaderboard it stands as before. Everything under “Leaderboards” applies to these entries.

Tuning garage. If you tune a car in the garage online with your game account, we store the stage and the look (paint, tyre smoke, underglow) per car model with your account’s random identifier, for eight cars at most. When you enter a room, the game server gets these details with your sign-in, and everyone in the room sees your car as you tuned it. If you set a car back to stock in the garage, we delete its entry; all of them go with your account. As a guest your tuning lasts only until you leave the room; in single player it stays in your browser.

In the game

How many play sessions take place per day, how many minutes are played in total and from which class of device (computer, tablet or phone) we count as plain daily numbers. The numbers do not say who played; they are produced on the game server and are not linked to your entry.

Emailing us

If you write to hello@gcity.ch, we use your message and address only to reply. These emails are received and stored by our mail provider Proton AG, Route de la Galaise 32, 1228 Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva, Switzerland.

Processor and transfers abroad

On our behalf, Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA) runs the site, the waiting list’s database and the sending of the waiting list’s emails, under Cloudflare’s data processing agreement. For transfers from Switzerland to the United States, Cloudflare relies on its certification under the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and on standard contractual clauses for transfers to other countries. Technical data of a page visit may also be processed in other countries where Cloudflare runs data centres.

Server infrastructure: Alpinity GmbH, Switzerland (provides the game server).

Your rights

You can ask at any time what data we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, and withdraw your consent: with the unsubscribe link in every email or by writing to hello@gcity.ch.

You can lodge a complaint with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC): www.edoeb.admin.ch.