Privacy Policy
This policy explains what the LOBBY Android app and this website process, why, who else is involved, and how you can have your data removed. It describes what the current app actually does.
1. Who is responsible
LOBBY is run by a private individual, not a company, under the public name USBee Studios. USBee Studios is a name, not a separate legal entity. The controller is that individual, the operator of LOBBY. For anything in this policy, write to [email protected].
2. Signing in with Google
You sign in with your Google account directly on your phone. We never see your Google password. Google passes us an account identifier, your email address and the basic profile details your Google account provides. We use them only to create your LOBBY account and to recognise you when you sign in again, on this phone or another one.
3. Your LOBBY profile
When you set up LOBBY you choose what goes on your profile. Other signed-in LOBBY users can see it.
- Nickname (3–20 characters) and an optional profile picture.
- The languages you play in, your platforms, your favourite games, and whether you use a microphone.
- Your time zone, so session times appear in your local time.
4. Sessions, participation and attendance
A session you post holds the game, start time, duration, number of spots, language, platform, microphone requirement and an optional note of up to 140 characters. Signed-in users can see open sessions and who has joined them. After a session, participants can mark who turned up. Individual marks are never shown to anyone. Only the resulting percentage appears on each profile.
5. Session chat
Each session has a small chat. Messages are limited to 300 characters and only the people in that session can read them. You cannot edit or delete a message from inside the app.
6. Your device
To deliver notifications (for example that someone joined your session, or that a session is about to start), your phone gets a Firebase Cloud Messaging token, which we store with your account. The token is removed when you sign out. LOBBY is active on one device at a time. To do that, the app stores a random identifier for the phone currently using your account and a timestamp that expires after a few minutes. Session reminders you set are scheduled locally on your phone.
7. Advertising
During the public alpha, LOBBY does not request or display live advertisements. The app may show static ad placeholders. The Google Mobile Ads SDK is included in the app for future advertising support, but LOBBY’s AdMob and consent flow is disabled in the alpha build and no ad requests are made by the app in placeholder mode. We plan to enable Google AdMob in a later version. This privacy policy will be updated before live advertising is enabled.
8. Game cover images
Game names and cover images come from the RAWG game database. Your phone loads cover images directly from RAWG’s image servers, which therefore see your IP address, like any website you visit.
9. This website and the download
joinlobbyapp.com and the APK download are hosted on Cloudflare. As part of delivering the site, Cloudflare processes your IP address and standard request data. Fonts, icons and images are served from joinlobbyapp.com itself. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which does not use cookies, to see aggregated page views and site performance. The site sets no cookies and shows no advertising. It remembers your chosen language in your browser’s local storage, and that choice never leaves your device.
10. Feedback and email
If you send a report with the feedback form, we receive what you typed: the description and, if you filled them in, your device model, Android version and steps to reproduce. We use it only to investigate and fix the problem, and delete it once it is no longer needed for that. If you email us, we use your message and address only to reply. Our addresses are [email protected] for help, [email protected] for data protection and [email protected] for account deletion.
11. Service providers
These providers process data on our behalf, or receive it as part of running LOBBY:
- Supabase: account, profile, session, chat and device data used to operate the LOBBY backend.
- Google: Sign-In and Firebase Cloud Messaging. The Google Mobile Ads SDK is included in the app for future advertising support; live AdMob advertising is disabled during the public alpha, and the app makes no ad requests in placeholder mode (see section 7).
- Cloudflare: website and APK hosting, cookie-free website analytics (Cloudflare Web Analytics), and receiving the reports you send with the feedback form.
- Spaceship (Spacemail): our mailbox. It receives email sent to our @joinlobbyapp.com addresses and delivers feedback-form reports to us.
- RAWG: game cover images, loaded directly by your phone.
12. How long we keep data
We keep your data while your account exists. When your account is deleted, your profile, the sessions you hosted, your participation, the attendance marks you gave and received, your chat messages and your device records are all deleted with it. Copies can remain in our hosting provider’s routine backups until those backups are rotated out. Nothing is kept for any other purpose. Android may include LOBBY’s local app data in your phone’s own Google backup. That backup is controlled by your Google account settings, not by us.
13. Security
All traffic between the app, the website and our backend is encrypted. Access rules on the backend limit each user to the data they are allowed to see. For example, chat messages are readable only by that session’s participants, and individual attendance marks are not readable by anyone.
14. Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your data and have it corrected or deleted. Where applicable, you can also restrict or object to its processing, or receive it in a portable format. Write to [email protected]. You can also lodge a complaint with a data protection authority, in particular the one in the EU or EEA country where you live. To delete your account, see the Delete account page.
15. Age
LOBBY is for adults only. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use the app. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has an account, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.
16. Changes
If this policy changes, the new version appears here with a new date. Significant changes will also be announced in the app.