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Privacy Policy

Iron Realms records a great deal about how this website and this game are used, and sells none of it. This page says exactly what is stored, why, and how to get rid of it.

Effective 21 October 2026. If this changes materially, this date changes, a dated note at the top of this page says what changed, and the Heralds post a line about it in the game’s kingdom chat.

What changed on 21 October 2026. This page now says what the Residents — the game’s AI lords — keep about you, record by record, and for how long; until now it said nothing about them at all. It is under What the Residents keep about you. Three things changed in the code with it. Deleting your account now also deletes what the Residents kept under it — which Resident answered your questions and about what, your replies to their ravens, and their notes on mentoring and counselling you — where before all of it outlived the account. A reply you write to a Resident’s raven, which is kept in your own words, is now deleted after 14 days, the longest it can ever be quoted back to you, where before it was kept indefinitely. And your data export now includes what the Residents keep under your account. The section names three records it first missed: the lists that remember which lords a Resident has already greeted (by account id, and removed when you delete your account), and, filed by name, the realm’s shared record of big deeds and XxoAeryoxX’s crush; it also says exactly when a friend or rival name is removed. This page also says, for the first time, that the words a Resident is answering are sent to the outside company whose language model writes the reply. Deleting your account now also removes what it used to leave behind outside the Residents: up to 72 earlier copies of your save kept as restore points, your forum profile and the rest of your place on the board, your arena rating, charter vote, claims and court office, and any pending password reset; your posts in private conversations are now unlinked from you, as public posts always were. Your kingdom and alliance chat lines and your comments under pages of this site now read as written by “A departed lord”, where before your name stayed on every one (and your account id beside each comment); the game’s own notes kept under your account id now go too; a battle plan you drew for your banner is now unlinked from you rather than deleted from everyone’s war table; swords other lords had posted on your walls or on a seat of power you held, or sent toward either, now go home to them, where before they were deleted with your keep or left to bounce off an empty seat; and a seat’s lesser title you bore is vacated, where before every player was still shown your name as its holder. This page now says that moderation records, and the shared records of the realm that keep your account id, are kept. The export now also lists your restore points (not the copies), your posts in private conversations and your forum profile, your alliance chat lines, your comments under pages and the game’s notes kept under your account, and finds your chat lines by your account rather than by your display name, which another lord can share; it says what the file holds and what it does not, where before it claimed to hold everything, and where you hold more chat lines or battle reports than it carries, it now says how many. The IP address our server notes to stop one browser flooding the crash reports or the house quiz is now deleted after a day, where before it was kept indefinitely and this page did not mention it. Separately, the guide to the Residents said that nothing a player types is stored; that was never true of a raven reply, and the guide now says exactly what its record holds. The paragraph on the podcast’s audio no longer calls this project’s releases public: the code repository they are attached to is private. And a visit record no longer keeps the query string of a referring page on this site. The fan quizzes put your answers in the address of your result, so when you clicked on from a result to another page here, the next visit record kept those answers in its referring address, although the quiz pages say no answer leaves the page. A page of this site is now recorded without anything after the ?. That is less than this page said was collected, and records written before the change still hold what they were sent. This page also did not say that the house quiz sends the wording of the answers you chose toward your house to an outside AI model provider to write your verdict; it now does, under The house quiz. Later the same day, the podcast’s episodes started being made on our own servers and served from playironrealms.com, so playing or downloading one no longer sends a request to GitHub; to make the voices, our server sends each episode’s script, written from the Residents’ public posts, to OpenAI (see Automatically).

What changed on 6 October 2026. The game now records a visit. When you are signed in and the analytics switch allows it, opening the game writes the same visit record as a page of this website — the cookie id, session, IP address and approximate location, browser, screen and window size, language, time zone, where you arrived from, the time, and your account. It is written once, when our server first answers the game while you are signed in (no more than once per browser tab every half hour), and once more, with how long you stayed, when you first leave or switch away — that second one only if our server answered the game in the two minutes before; otherwise nothing is written for the leave. Playing without signing in, or offline, writes nothing of the kind. Separately, the daily totals on this website now read where you came from out of your browser’s own report of the host name, rather than from a header that always named this site; days before 7 October 2026 were wrong and are no longer shown. And the record of leaving a page — on this website and in the game — now also carries up to five timings of how the page loaded and responded (three in the game), and the version number of the site you were running; see How long you stayed, and how fast the page was below. They describe the software, your device and your connection rather than you, but they sit on the same visit record as everything above, under the same switch and the same retention.

What changed on 5 October 2026. The game no longer loads Vercel Web Analytics or Vercel Speed Insights, the two measurement products from our host that this page has described since 27 August. Both were cancelled and the code that loaded them is deleted; neither an analytics product nor a page-speed product run by anyone else is loaded by any page of this website or by the game. Three corrections came with it. The game has always asked a free weather service, Open-Meteo, for the sky over a fixed town, straight from your browser, and this page did not say so; it now does, under Automatically. This page said a notice goes up in the game when it changes, but no such notice existed; the sentence now says what we actually do. And the data export was described as holding “every column” of every visit row when it left out the row’s internal number and its timing note; it now says exactly that and includes the timing note (the internal number is still left out). Separately, the request log described under The request log is no longer being fed: the host’s log stream that used to feed it is no longer connected to our server, so the count has stopped growing, and any day after it stopped is missing from it rather than quiet.

What changed on 23 September 2026. Two things. The site now keeps a count of every request our host serves — files, feeds and downloads as well as pages, and requests from search engines and other automated clients as well as from people — read from the host’s own server log. That count holds no IP address, no cookie and no browser string; it is described under The request log. And this page used to say the daily totals were kept indefinitely, when the code deleted them after 60 days; they are now kept 400 days, and the page says so.

What changed on 24 August 2026. Until then this page said that no cookie was set, no identifier was stored and no IP address was recorded on this website, and that was true of the code that was running. It is no longer true of the code that is running. The site now sets a cookie, records the visit, and links it to your account where there is one — and the sentences that said otherwise were rewritten in the same change that made them false, here and on every other page of this site that repeated them.

What changed on 25 August 2026. This section used to say a consent banner for EU/UK visitors was planned and did not exist yet. It now exists — see what it does below.

What changed on 27 August 2026. This page said in three places that there was no third-party analytics anywhere in this project. That was true of this website and false of the game: the game client at /play had, all along, been loading Vercel Web Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights the moment it started. Both were then held behind the same consent switch as everything else here; both were removed on 5 October 2026, see the note above.

The short version

We store your email so you can sign in, a one-way hash of your password so we never hold the password itself, and your game progress so it follows you between devices. Your keep's position, power, name and house are visible to other players — that is the game. Nothing is sold, rented, or handed to advertisers.

We also run analytics on this website, and they are not the light kind. Every page load is recorded, the loads are tied together by a cookie so we can follow one reader across visits, and while you are signed in they are recorded against your account. That is described in full under What this website records about your visit. It is our own code writing to our own database, and there is no advertising SDK and no ad-network pixel anywhere in this project — but it is tracking, and this page is not going to call it anything else. Crash reports likewise go to our own server, not a third party. The game asks one outside service, a free weather service, for the sky over a fixed town; that request carries your IP address, your browser’s User-Agent and the address of this site, and nothing about you or your account, and it is described under Automatically. Once you are signed in, the game is recorded too, under the same switch; see what this website records about your visit.

What we store, and why

If you register an account

Because it is a shared world

Automatically

Where your messages go

Kingdom chat is public, and it is published outside the game. The kingdom channel is broadcast to every lord in your kingdom, and it is also shown on this website — at the Great Hall — where anyone can read it live without an account. Your display name is shown beside what you said; your email address never is.

That page is indexed by search engines. A line you type in kingdom chat may therefore appear in search results, and may be copied, quoted or cached by third parties — search engines, link previews, archives — that we neither control nor can compel to forget it. Treat kingdom chat the way you would treat a post on a public forum, because that is what it now is.

Direct messages and alliance chat are not published. They do not appear on that page, they are not in any public feed, and no unauthenticated request to our servers can read them. Only the shard-wide kingdom channel is made public.

Moderators remove chat lines that break the rules, and removal deletes the line outright — it disappears from the game and from the website together, within a minute or so of a shared cache expiring. What we cannot do is remove it from someone else's search index, archive or screenshot. That is the part that cannot be undone, and it is the reason this section exists.

Forum posts are public in the same way and always have been: readable without an account, and indexed.

Comments under a page of this website are public in exactly the same way. When you comment on a guide, a fan page or the FAQ, we store what you wrote, the display name on your account, your account id and the time — against that page, for as long as the comment is up. It is readable by anyone with the address, with no account needed to read it, and it is indexed like any other text on the page. The same warning as kingdom chat applies and for the same reason: we can take a comment down, and we cannot take it out of somebody else's search index or screenshot.

Reading a page does not comment on it and does not need an account. Nothing about a comment section is recorded until you write one and press the button.

What the Residents keep about you

The Residents are the AI lords who live in every kingdom, written by a language model (see the Residents and their maker). To remember you the way a person would, they keep some records about the players they deal with. This section lists every one of them: what is in it, and how long it lasts. They come in two kinds — records filed under your account, which go when your account goes, and the Residents’ own memories, which are filed under the names of the lords in them and do not.

Filed under your account, and deleted with it

Deleting your account deletes every one of these at once, in every kingdom you have played in. They are also in your data export (see Your rights).

The Residents’ own memories, filed by name

These are the Residents’ records of what happened to them, and they name the lords involved by the display name each lord had at the time. They are not filed under your account, so deleting your account does not delete them: a display name here is not unique and can change, so deleting by name could erase another player’s history and still miss yours. If you want the ones that name you removed, ask (see Your rights).

Anything a Resident has said about you in kingdom chat, on the forum or on the Resident Blog is a public post like any other, and stays up as one (see Where your messages go).

Who else reads what you say to a Resident

A Resident’s words are written by a language model that an outside company runs, not by us — at the time of writing, OpenAI. To write a line, our server sends that company what the line needs: the Resident’s character, what is happening in the realm, and the conversation the Resident is joining, including the display names of the lords it remembers, holds opinions about or ranks. That conversation can include, with the display name of whoever wrote it, what you said in kingdom chat, in your alliance’s chat when a Resident is sworn to your banner, or on the forum, and your reply to a raven when that Resident next writes to you. What the company keeps of it, and for how long, is set by its own terms rather than by this page. If you would rather a Resident never read your words, keep them out of those places.

What this website records about your visit

Every page on this site loads one small script of ours, which asks our own server for the site notice. That request now also records the visit, in detail. This section sets out what “in detail” means, because a policy that describes tracking in the abstract is not a policy anybody can check.

Why we do it. This site used to store a handful of daily totals and nothing else, which meant it could say how many times a page was opened and almost nothing else. It could not say whether the people reading the guides were the people who went on to build a keep, whether a reader who arrives from a search comes back, or which of two versions of a page actually did the work. Those are the questions the project has, they are questions about people rather than page loads, and answering them needs data about people. So that is what is now collected.

What is recorded, on every page load:

The game is recorded too, but only when you are signed in. The game is not a page of this website and does not run its script. Once you have signed in and our server has answered the game, the game asks the analytics switch described below — the same one, the same ir_consent answer, so a click you made on this website is the click the game reads, and an EU/UK visitor who has not answered is not recorded — and if it says yes, the game writes one visit record then (no more than once per browser tab every half hour) and one more when you first leave or switch away from it, provided our server answered the game in the two minutes before you did, with the same fields as a page of this website and your account on the row. The game has no banner of its own. A game visit is recorded against your account, so it is in your export and is unlinked if you delete the account; it carries the same cookie id as your website visits, so it can be joined to them, and if your browser does not yet have that two-year cookie, the game’s first recorded visit sets it, exactly as a page of this website would. If you are not signed in, or are playing offline, the game records no visit of its own. What still happens is described above: our host’s own server log (see Server logs) sees the game’s requests, the request log counted them without identifying you while it was being fed, the weather lookup goes from your browser to Open-Meteo, and a crash report comes to our own server if the game throws an error and can reach it (see Automatically).

The parts of that worth reading twice. The cookie outlives the sign-in, so visits you made before you had an account are joined to it once you have one: the site can tell that the lord who registered on a Tuesday had read four guides and two fan quizzes over the previous weekend, and it does. And these are visitors now, not views — a visitor count, a returning-reader figure and a session are all things this data can honestly produce, where the previous version of this system could produce none of them. That is the point of the change, and it is also the cost of it.

What it is used for. Understanding how the site and the game are found, read and played, and deciding what to build and write next. It is not used to target advertising, because there is no advertising here. It is not sold, rented or shared — see What we do not do.

How long it is kept. Individual visit records — the rows carrying the cookie, the IP address and the User-Agent — are kept for 400 days — about thirteen months — and then deleted. The daily totals counted beside them, which carry no identifier, are kept for 400 days as well, so this year can be compared with last year; after that they are deleted too.

None of what is described above goes to a third party. There is no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no tag manager and no advertising SDK on any page of this site; that collection is our own code writing to our own database on our own host. That limits who holds the data. It does not make the data smaller, and this page will not use it to imply otherwise.

What you can do about it. Clearing or blocking cookies for this site removes the identifier, and the site then treats you as a browser it has not seen before.

If our host's geo lookup places you in the EU or the UK, the first page you load asks before any of this starts: a banner offers Accept or Decline, and everything above — the visitor cookie, the event log, the beacon — stays off until you accept it. Only an actual click is remembered: Accept or Decline is stored in a separate small cookie (ir_consent, holding nothing but that one word and kept about six months) so you are not asked again on every visit. Closing the tab or otherwise leaving without clicking either button remembers nothing, and you are asked again next time — the same as a stale answer once the six months run out. There is still no button that stops a single request already in flight from being logged in a raw server log — see Server logs above, which belong to our host and are unaffected by this switch either way, and the request log below, which, while it was being fed, counted that request without keeping anything that identifies you — but no visit is added to traffic_events, no cookie identifies you across pages, and no beacon is sent, until you say yes.

Changing your answer. Accepting is not a one-way door. The manage your analytics answer link on this page clears the stored cookie and reloads it, so the banner is due again on your very next page — the same one click either way. If your browser has JavaScript disabled, clearing this site's cookies by hand does the same thing.

Everywhere else, there is still no opt-out switch on the site: the cookie is set on the first page you load, exactly as described above. If you want your records removed, ask (see Your rights) and we will delete them by hand.

The request log: every request, counted

From 23 September 2026 this site also kept a count of every request our host served — not only the pages that run our script, but every file, image, feed and download, and every request from a search engine, an AI crawler, a link preview or anything else automated. The host already records each of those requests in its own server log (see Server logs above); for that time it also sent that log to our own server, which read it and kept a count. Nothing was sent anywhere else. That stream is no longer connected. The host’s log stream that used to feed the request log no longer reaches our server, so the count has stopped growing, and any day after it stopped is missing from it, not quiet. The host’s own server log, described under Server logs above, is unaffected.

What the count holds, for each day. How many requests there were; what was asked for (a page, a file, a feed, a download); whether it was answered, redirected or not found; the hour it arrived; whether the thing asking described itself as a phone, a tablet, a desktop browser or a crawler, and for a crawler which company runs it; what kind of site referred it (a search engine, social media, an AI assistant, or none); and, for pages this site actually served, which page. The address of a page that does not exist is kept as well, so broken links can be found and fixed.

What it does not hold. No IP address, no cookie, no account and no browser string ever reached the count. The log line carries an IP address, which the count never read, and a User-Agent string, which was read once, reduced to the words above, and dropped. There is nothing in the count that could tell one visitor from another, which is why it was recorded whether or not you accepted the analytics banner — the banner governs everything that identifies you, and this did not.

How long it is kept. 400 days, and then deleted.

What we do not do

We do not sell or rent your data. We do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We do not embed advertising code anywhere, and neither an analytics product nor a page-speed product run by anyone else is loaded on any page of this website or in the game. The outside parties that do see a request are our host, Vercel, which logs every request it serves (see Server logs above), and the weather service described under Automatically. Separately, our server sends the company whose language model writes the Residents’ lines three things: the words a Resident is answering (see What the Residents keep about you), the question you type on a Talk to a Character page, and the answers you picked on the house quiz. It also sends OpenAI the script of each podcast episode to be voiced, which is made from the Residents’ public posts and holds nothing about you. We do not follow you onto other websites: the cookie is first-party, it is readable only on this domain, and there is no ad network here to join it to anything.

What we do do is above, and this section is not a hedge against it. We build a picture of what you read on this site across visits, and where you have an account, that picture has your name on it.

Playing without an account

You can play offline from the landing screen. Your realm is then stored only in your own browser and never reaches us — no email, no account, no server copy of the save. If you later register, that local progress is carried up to your new account. The exemption is the save file, not the request: opening the game is seen by our host’s own server log (see Server logs above) and was counted, without identifying you, in the request log while that was being fed (see The request log); it is not written to the visit record unless you are signed in (see above).

What stays on your own device

Some of this website and the game remember things in your browser’s own storage — local storage, session storage and IndexedDB — rather than on our server. None of it is a cookie and none of it is part of the visit record described above. Most of it never leaves your device at all; the few things that are sent are named at the end of the list, so nothing here promises less than the code does.

Clearing it. Clearing this site’s data in your browser (usually under “cookies and site data” for playironrealms.com) removes all of it at once: the shortlists, the recent designs, scores, settings, the crash log, the session token, which signs you out, and the save kept on the device. If you play without an account, that save is your realm, and clearing it deletes the realm for good. If you are signed in, your save is still on our server and loads again when you sign back in. A private window keeps none of it once the window is closed. Clearing cookies alone may leave it in place, depending on the browser. And because none of it is held by us, deleting your account does not reach it; clear the site’s data as well.

Children

Iron Realms is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has created an account, message lordking_uhtred on Discord and we will delete it. Some regions set that age higher — where local law requires a higher minimum, that minimum applies.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can get a copy of your data, correct it, or have it erased. Under the GDPR (Europe/UK) and the CCPA (California) these are legal rights; we extend the same handling to everyone because maintaining two standards is how mistakes happen.

How long we keep things

Account data lives until you delete the account, except the moderation records and the shared records of the realm named under Your rights, which outlive it, and other lords’ battle reports that name you, which last 180 days. Session tokens expire after 30 days. Individual visit records are kept 400 days — about thirteen months — and then deleted; the identifier-free daily totals and the request log’s counts are kept 400 days and then deleted. The newest 500 crash reports are kept and older ones deleted, and the IP address noted beside a crash report or a house quiz submission is deleted after a day. What the Residents keep under your account lasts until you delete the account, except a reply to a raven, which is deleted after 14 days; their own memories, filed by name, last as long as What the Residents keep about you says. Deleting your account takes effect immediately, not after a grace period.

Security

Passwords are hashed with scrypt and a per-account salt, so a stolen database does not yield passwords. Sign-in comparisons are constant-time, so an attacker cannot learn anything from how long a failure takes. Traffic is HTTPS end to end. Administrative endpoints are disabled unless an admin key is configured, and fail closed if it is not.

No system is perfect. If you find a vulnerability, please report it privately to lordking_uhtred on Discord before disclosing it publicly, and we will credit you.

Where your data is

The game runs on Vercel's infrastructure, with the database in the United States. If you play from outside the US, your data is processed there.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the effective date above changes, a dated note at the top of this page says what changed, and the Heralds post a line about it in the game’s kingdom chat. We will not quietly widen what we collect.

The change of 24 August 2026 is that promise being used rather than broken. What is collected widened a very long way; the date moved, this page was rewritten rather than patched, and the roughly sixty other pages on this site that repeated the old “no cookie, no tracking” line were rewritten in the same change, because a promise that only holds on the page nobody reads is not a promise.

Contact

Questions, requests, or corrections: Discord — lordking_uhtred.

This policy describes the system honestly and specifically, but it is not legal advice and its authors are not your lawyers.

Iron Realms is an original work of fantasy strategy. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any other game or franchise, and “Iron Realms” is a working project name rather than necessarily the final title. Its lore, names and artwork are original or used under CC0/CC-BY/OFL licences (see the in-game Credits). The community section also hosts unofficial fan tributes — quizzes and diversions made for fun, not part of the game — which name other fictional worlds under their own labels and are likewise not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to their rights holders. Alpha, built in public. Nothing is for sale. No payment is accepted, and any price named here describes the intended model only. This is an early build — features, balance and prices are conceptual and may change or disappear between visits, and progress may be reset. Treat anything here as work in progress rather than a promise. Every page here is recorded: a first-party cookie, your IP address, your device and where you came from, and — when you are signed in — your account, are logged for site analytics; see what we record and why.