Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 2026. Working draft — pending review by qualified counsel.

This policy describes, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the French Data Protection Act, how Murder Maker processes your personal data when you use the application (Android, web) and this site.

1. Data controller

The data controller is the operator of Murder Maker, Sviatoslav BESNARD, a natural person acting in a personal capacity, 78300, France. No separate Data Protection Officer (DPO) is appointed: the operator is himself your point of contact for any question about your data, at contact [at] murder-maker.com.

2. Data collected

We apply the principle of minimisation: we collect only the data necessary for the service.

• Account data: your name (display name) and your email address, which you provide when creating the account.
• Authentication data: a password, which we never store in clear text — only an argon2id hash is kept. The session relies on tokens (a short-lived access token and a refresh token renewed by rotation), stored securely on your device.
• Content you create: your scenarios and everything they contain (characters, plots, relationships, clues, groups, locations, timelines, solutions, secrets and objectives).
• Uploaded images: character images, scenario cover images and your profile portrait. On upload, each image is fully decoded and re-encoded to the WebP format: the EXIF and GPS metadata are stripped and are never kept. Storage is subject to a quota.
• Workshop data: when you publish a scenario, it becomes visible in the community Workshop; if another user clones it, an independent copy is created for them and a non-personal lineage reference (clonedFrom) and a clone counter are recorded (see §9 and the Terms of Service).
• Members and participants: the membership edges on a scenario (owner / contributor, access to the solution, date added). The participants of a Murder Party join the session via a code or a link, without an account: their identity is limited to the session and is not linked to a user account.
• Verification codes: a temporary code is sent to your email to verify your address or reset your password.
• Export archives: when you request the export of your data (see §8), an archive is generated (at most one per 24 hours) and then automatically deleted after 24 hours.
• Minimal technical data: the technical logs necessary for operation and security (for example to limit abuse). We do not build any advertising profile.
• Activity and security logs: to secure your account and run the service, we record certain security events (successful or failed sign-in, sign-out, account creation, email verification, password request and change, token-reuse detection) and certain activity events (creation, modification, deletion, publication or duplication of your scenarios and their content, management of members and participants). These logs contain technical identifiers, your IP address and the user-agent (device / application type). They never contain your passwords, your tokens or the sensitive content of your scenarios (solutions, character secrets).

No third-party advertising SDK or marketing tracker is integrated into the application or this site. We do not sell your data.

3. Purposes & lawful basis

• Create and secure your account, authenticate you and verify your email address — performance of the contract (the terms of use that you accept) and compliance with our security obligations.
• Let you design, find, share and run your scenarios — performance of the contract.
• Operate the community Workshop (publishing and cloning of scenarios) — performance of the contract (for you) and legitimate interest (running a community catalogue).
• Provide support and improve the service, prevent fraud and abuse — legitimate interest.
• Keep security and activity logs (see §2) and allow the service administrator to access account and activity data to operate, secure, troubleshoot and moderate the service — legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR: security, fraud prevention and sound operation of the service). This interest is balanced against your rights: logging is limited to what is strictly necessary, kept for a short retention period, and the administrator's access to personal data is itself logged.
• Inform you about the service (for example the launch of Premium) when you request it — consent.

4. Sharing and recipients

Your data is neither sold, rented nor exchanged. It may be processed by technical providers strictly necessary to the service, acting as processors within the meaning of the GDPR (Art. 28) and bound by confidentiality commitments:

• Hosting / infrastructure: OVH (European Union — France), on a dedicated server managed by the operator.
• Transactional email: OVH (Zimbra), for sending address-verification and password-reset codes.
• Display fonts: the « Playfair Display » font used by this marketing site is now self-hosted on our own server. No request is made to Google Fonts and no visitor IP address is transmitted to Google.

No paid plan or payment provider is active to date; this policy will be updated before any launch of the Premium plan. The scenarios you choose to publish or share are distributed only according to the visibility settings you define yourself: a scenario published in the Workshop may be viewed and cloned by other users (see §9).

The service administrator (the operator) may access your account data (name, email, status, plan) and your activity and security logs, where necessary to operate, secure, troubleshoot or moderate the service, and to respond to your requests to exercise your rights. Such access is restricted to authorised persons and is itself logged. The administrator does not access the content of your scenarios for commercial purposes and does not disclose it to third parties.

5. Retention

Your data is kept for as long as your account is active. If your account is deleted, your personal data and your scenarios are erased within a reasonable time, except where a legal retention obligation applies.

The logs (see §2) are kept for limited periods:

• Security logs (authentication, administration actions, security events): 365 days.
• Activity logs (changes to your scenarios and their content): 90 days.
• IP address: it is erased from the logs after 30 days, even when the associated security event is kept longer (data minimisation).
• Export archives: generated on request (at most one per 24 hours), automatically deleted after 24 hours.
• Verification and reset codes: short lifetime, expiring quickly after issue.

If your account is deleted, your activity logs are erased; the strictly necessary security logs (security, fraud prevention) may be kept until the end of their period but are then pseudonymised (removal of your identifier and your IP).

6. Security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures: encryption of communications in transit (HTTPS/TLS), passwords protected by argon2id hashing, short-lived session tokens with rotation-based refresh, and restricted access to the database (never publicly exposed). As no system is infallible, we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we strive to protect your data against any unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure. The administrator's access to personal data is restricted and logged, to ensure the traceability and accountability required by the GDPR.

Data breach. In the event of a personal-data breach, we assess it and, where required, notify the CNIL within 72 hours as well as the affected users where the risk is high (Articles 33 and 34 of the GDPR).

7. Hosting & transfers

The data is hosted by OVH, in the European Union (France). The service is designed to keep data within the EU/EEA and all the processors named in §4 are hosted in the European Union: no transfer outside the European Union takes place. If such a transfer were to become necessary, it would be governed by the safeguards provided for by the GDPR (Standard Contractual Clauses or an adequacy decision).

8. Your rights

In accordance with the GDPR, you have the following rights at any time:

• right of access to your data;
• right of rectification;
• right to erasure (« right to be forgotten »);
• right to portability of your data;
• right to object and to restrict processing.

Under the right of access and portability, the export of your data includes, where applicable, your own activity logs (the events you generated). It does not include logs mentioning other users.

You also have a right to object to processing based on legitimate interest (including the logging described in §2), on grounds relating to your particular situation; we act on it unless there are compelling legitimate grounds (for example a security necessity).

You can exercise these rights directly in the application (the export of your data and the deletion of your account are offered on a self-service basis) or by contacting us at contact [at] murder-maker.com. We may ask you to confirm your identity before responding.

9. Deleting your account and your data

You can delete your account at any time, directly in the application or by writing to contact [at] murder-maker.com from the email address associated with your account. To avoid any surprise, deletion has the following effects:

• Your private or unpublished scenarios are deleted in full, including their uploaded images.
• Your published scenarios in the Workshop are anonymised, not deleted: their ownership is transferred to a technical platform account and your personal link to them is erased, so that the community catalogue and the clones already made by other users survive without any personal data concerning you. Deleting your account therefore does not remove a published scenario that others may have cloned. To remove a published scenario, unpublish or delete it before deleting your account. Murder Maker may take over stewardship of published content left by a deleted account (see the Terms of Service).
• Your profile portrait, your remaining memberships, your invitations and your export archives are deleted; all your sessions are revoked and your user record is erased.
• Your activity logs are erased and your security logs are pseudonymised (see §5).

All of the above is subject to any legal retention obligations.

10. Minors

Murder Maker is a game-creation tool that may involve crime or violence themes. Creating an account is reserved for people at least 16 years old (where the law of your country sets a higher age of digital consent, that higher age applies). The participants who join a Murder Party as guests, without an account, may be younger, under the responsibility of the event host and of their parents or guardians, and subject to the scenario's recommended minimum age. If you are a minor, use the service with the consent of a parent or legal guardian. We do not knowingly process the data of children below the required minimum age.

11. Cookies

This marketing site uses no non-essential cookie and no advertising tracker, and does not set any audience-measurement cookie. No consent is therefore required to browse it. The application uses only technical local storage necessary for your session (authentication tokens).

12. Changes

This policy may be updated. The date of the last update appears at the top of the page; for material changes, we will inform you by an appropriate means.

13. Contact & complaints

For any question or to exercise your rights, contact the data controller at contact [at] murder-maker.com. If you believe that your rights are not respected, you may lodge a complaint with the CNIL (the French data protection authority), www.cnil.fr.