Privacy Policy

Groot Games ("we", "us") makes online games and runs groot.games and Groot ID, the free account you use to sign in to them. We decide what Groot ID collects and why, so we are responsible for it.

To ask about your data or to use your rights, open a ticket from the support page while signed in. Parents and guardians can also use the Parents page, and anyone who cannot sign in can reach us on our Discord.

When you create a Groot ID:

• Your handle and display name. Other players can see them.
• Your email address. It becomes your Groot ID's address once you open the link we email to it; until then we keep it only with that link. For a player under 13 it is a parent's or guardian's address instead (see children).
• Your password, stored only as a one-way bcrypt hash: nobody can read it back, us included.
• Your month and year of birth. We only use it to know whether a parent has to approve. For players 13 and over we keep just that they are 13 or over, not the date. For a child we keep the month and year, to know when they turn 13.
• Which version of these terms you agreed to, and when. For a child, the parent agrees, and we record when they approved.

Until the parent's link is used, a child's sign-up also holds the address it came from (IP address). Groot IDs made before 8 October 2026, and those made by signing in with a Sky Fang account, are asked for the month and year of birth once, at their next sign-in, with the terms.

While you use Groot ID:

• Sign-in sessions: a random token we store only as a hash, the IP address and browser of each device, and when it was last used.
• A security log: sign-ins, failed attempts, changes to your account and anything our staff did to it, with the time, IP address and browser. You can see your own on the Security page.
• Abuse limits: attempts to sign in, sign up or send emails, with a keyed hash of what was typed and the IP address, so they can be counted.
• 2-step sign-in, if you turn it on: your authenticator secret, encrypted, and your recovery codes, hashed.
• Linked games: the id and name of each game account linked to your Groot ID, and the games you pre-registered for.
• A CELL wallet, if you link one in a game: its public address, and the balance we read for it.
• Support tickets: what you and our staff write in them.

If you trade on Groot Swap:

• Your trader record: when you accepted its rules and confirmed you are 18 or over, and any pause or restriction on your trading, with its reason.
• The payment methods you add: the name, number or email address of each account you want to be paid into, encrypted, and a short hint you recognise it by.
• Ads, orders and their chat: what you offer and at what price, each order's amounts, fees and steps, what you and the other trader write in it, and a dispute's reason and our decision. A cash order keeps its own copy of where the buyer pays, so the seller cannot change it during the order.
• Deposits and withdrawals: the game character a currency came from or went to, and for CELL the wallet addresses and transfer ids, which are public on the QSDM network anyway.

Each game keeps its own characters, progress and chat, and its own site explains what it stores (for example the Groveheart Online privacy page).

• To run your Groot ID and sign you in to our sites and games.
• To send the emails your account needs: the link that confirms your address, a parent's approval request, password resets, security alerts, receipts and Groot Swap order notices. We do not send marketing email.
• To keep accounts safe: limits on attempts, the security log, and checking new passwords against known leaks.
• To count, as daily totals, how many people sign up, confirm their address and go on to play each game, so we can see where sign-up is hard. The counts come from the security log and name nobody.
• To show your game characters and balances on your dashboard, and to answer support tickets.
• To run Groot Swap: to show your ads, hold each order in escrow, show the buyer of a cash order where to pay, settle disputes, keep our accounts and stop fraud. Our staff can read an order, its chat and its payment details to settle a dispute or look into fraud.

We do not sell or rent personal information, we do not share it for advertising, and groot.games has no advertising or analytics trackers.

Where the law asks for a reason (a "legal basis"): running your account, and Groot Swap once you trade, is our contract with you; the security log, abuse limits and fraud checks are our legitimate interest in keeping accounts and trades safe; a child's Groot ID rests on their parent's consent; and we keep what the law requires us to, such as records of trades.

Our games are made for players 13 and up, like most online role-playing games. A player under 13 can still have a Groot ID, but only with a parent's or guardian's approval, as the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and data protection laws such as the GDPR ask.

• Sign-up asks every player for their month and year of birth, without hinting at an age limit. A player under 13 gives a parent's or guardian's email address instead of their own.
• We email that address a request explaining what we collect. Nothing is created unless the parent approves. If they decline, or do not answer within 7 days, the request and their address are deleted.
• We collect from a child only what their Groot ID needs: a handle, a display name, a password (hashed), their month and year of birth, and the parent's address. Their Groot ID has no email address of its own: password resets and security alerts go to the parent.
• A child's Groot ID only signs in to games that protect children. Today that is Groveheart Online, which hides numbers, links and email addresses in what a child writes in chat, and does not post their bug reports to Discord. Other players can still see their character names and what they say.
• A child's Groot ID cannot be given an email address of its own, or connected to other games, before their 13th birthday.
• A Groot ID made before we asked for ages whose owner now tells us they are under 13 is paused, and we email the parent's or guardian's address they give. If the parent approves, it is used like any child's Groot ID and its own email address is removed. If they decline, or do not answer within 7 days, it is deleted.

A parent or guardian can at any time see what we hold about their child, have it deleted, and stop us collecting any more, by deleting the Groot ID: enter your address on the Parents page and we email you a link. If you think a child under 13 gave us information without a parent's approval, open a ticket from the support page while signed in and we will delete it.

• The games and sites you sign in to with Groot ID receive your Groot ID's public number, handle, display name, a picture made from your initials, your email address if you confirmed it, when your Groot ID was made, which of our other games you have linked, and whether it is a child's Groot ID. They never receive your password, birth date, IP address or wallet. When you move currency between a game and Groot Swap, that game is told which character and how much.
• Other players see your handle, display name and the picture made from your initials, and whatever the games show (see each game's privacy page).
• On Groot Swap, anyone can see your ads with your handle, display name and trading record (how many trades you completed, how many of your recent orders completed, and how quickly you release), and the most active traders of the last 30 days are listed by name. The other trader in an order sees its chat, and the buyer in a cash order sees the payment details the seller chose, while the order is open.
• Payment providers such as GCash, Maya, banks, PayPal and Wise carry the money in a cash trade, between the two traders' own accounts and under the providers' own privacy policies. It never passes through us.
• Resend (resend.com) delivers our emails, so it handles the address and the content of each one we send.
• Have I Been Pwned checks new passwords against leaked ones. Only the first 5 characters of a hash of the password leave our server, never the password.
• The QSDM network (qsdm.tech) is asked for the balance of a CELL wallet you linked, and carries the CELL you send to or receive from Groot Swap, publicly, like any transfer on it.
• Our hosting provider runs the servers the data is stored on.

We give information to the police or courts only when the law requires it. These services, and our servers, may be in another country than yours.

groot.games only uses cookies it needs to work. There are no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, so there is nothing to opt out of.

• Your sign-in: up to 14 days, and it ends after 7 days of not being used (staff: 3 days, and 12 hours unused).
• The second step of a sign-in: 5 minutes.
• A child's sign-up in progress: until the parent's link expires, so the browser that filled in the form is signed in once they approve.
• An under-13 answer at sign-up: 24 hours, so changing the year does not skip the parent.
• A game code typed on the link page: 10 minutes.

• Your account details: while your Groot ID exists.
• A child's sign-up a parent has not approved: until its link expires (7 days), then it is deleted with the parent's address. An approved one is deleted a day after its link would have expired.
• An email address you have not confirmed yet: only with the link we sent it, which works for 7 days; the link and the address are deleted 7 days after that.
• Sessions: until they end (at most 14 days).
• The security log: 12 months.
• The IP address of your last sign-in: 12 months after it.
• Abuse limit records: 1 day.
• Email links: deleted 7 days after they expire.
• Support tickets: while your Groot ID exists.
• Your trader record: while your Groot ID exists.
• Payment methods: until you remove them; removing one erases its details at once.
• An order's chat, a dispute's reason and the copy of where to pay: 180 days after the order ends, because a payment made outside our platform can be disputed for that long (PayPal allows 180 days).
• Groot Swap trades, deposits and withdrawals: for good, as part of our accounts. If you delete your Groot ID they stay under its empty record, without your name, payment details, chat or wallet.
• Backups of the Groot ID database are kept for up to 30 days, so something deleted is gone from them after that.
• Our web server's access logs (IP address, time, page and browser of each request) are kept for a short time to fix problems and stop abuse, then deleted as they rotate.

You can delete your Groot ID yourself at the bottom of the Security page. A parent can delete their child's from the Parents page.

• Straight away: it stops working everywhere, and its handle, display name, email address, password, birth date, wallet, sessions, game links, tickets and pre-registrations are erased.
• On Groot Swap, deleting waits until nothing is open there (a balance, an order, an ad or a transfer), so nothing is stranded. Then your trader record, payment methods, what you wrote in orders and ads, and the wallet addresses and character names of your transfers are erased. The trades themselves stay as financial records, under the empty record.
• Within 30 days: each game it was linked to deletes its game account and characters (Groveheart Online does it within minutes), and backups roll over.
• What is left: an empty record with only its public number, so it is never reused, and the security log's entries for it, without IP addresses or browsers, until they reach 12 months. A game's confirmation that it deleted its side is kept for 90 days.

We email a receipt to the account's confirmed address, or to the parent.

Depending on where you live, you can ask to see the information we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to have a copy, or to object to how we use it, and a parent can withdraw consent for their child. Much of it you can do yourself: the Security page shows your account and its activity, lets you change your email address and password, and delete your Groot ID. For anything else, open a ticket from the support page while signed in. We answer within a month.

If you are unhappy with our answer, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Every page is served over HTTPS. Passwords are hashed with bcrypt, and sessions, email links and recovery codes are stored only as hashes, so a copy of our database could not be used to sign in. 2-step secrets and Groot Swap payment details are encrypted. Our staff must use 2-step sign-in, and everything they do to an account is in its security log. No system is perfectly secure; if something goes wrong that puts your information at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

When we change this policy or the terms, we update this page and its date, and the next time you sign in we show you what changed and ask you to agree before you go on.