Privacy Policy

The short version

This site is run by Maple Avenue Labs LLC. If you give us your email, we use it to send one notification when Fable 5 is back. If you use live chat or the games, your nickname, messages, queued video links, and leaderboard scores may be public. We also use limited operational data for analytics, rate limits, ads, embedded video, and keeping the site running. We don't sell your personal information.

What we collect

For email notifications, we collect the email address you submit, along with basic signup metadata such as when it was captured and whether the address has unsubscribed.

For live chat, we store public chat messages, nicknames, queued YouTube video IDs, skip votes, room state, and moderation records such as temporary chat bans. The browser also keeps a random chat ID, nickname, and chat preferences in localStorage so the chat can work across reloads.

For games, we store public leaderboard nicknames and personal-best scores. Local game bests are also stored in localStorage on your device.

For the return-date prediction poll, we store the date you choose and an anonymous vote marker so the same network can update one vote instead of repeatedly adding votes. The marker uses a one-way hash of the request IP address; the poll does not store your raw IP address or email. Your browser also sends its existing random local ID for basic input validation, but that ID is not stored with the vote. Your selected guess is kept in localStorage so it can be shown after a reload.

For site operation, we process request data such as IP address and user agent through our host, logs, and short-lived rate limits. We also keep aggregate page-view and presence counters. The theme, notification hide state, and subscribed-in-this-browser flag are stored in localStorage on your device.

How we use it

We use your email for one purpose: to send you one notification when Fable 5 becomes available again. We do not add you to a newsletter or any other recurring list. That one email may invite you to opt in to separate updates from Maple Avenue Labs LLC, but that would be a separate choice.

We use chat data to display the public chat, synchronize the shared video queue, moderate abuse, and prevent spam. We use anonymous prediction data to calculate aggregate crowd guesses. We use counters, analytics, logs, and rate limits to operate the site, understand aggregate traffic, debug problems, and control costs.

The share controls use your browser's native share sheet or clipboard. The site does not send additional sharing data to us. The latest-news and waiting-room event cards do not collect user data unless you choose to follow a link or use an existing site feature. Event schedules and their automatic chat announcements are administrative site content, not visitor data.

Chat retention

Chat is public, so don't post anything private there. The chat panel displays only the latest 40 messages, but public chat messages and nicknames are retained as a historical archive unless a moderator or administrator deletes them.

Chat safety and anti-abuse

You can read the site and the public chat without choosing a nickname and without this section applying to you. If you choose a nickname or try to participate in chat — sending a message, queueing a video, reacting, voting to skip, voting in a poll, or posting a game score — we may process limited technical signals to keep the chat usable and safe.

These signals may include your chat nickname, a local chat identifier, timestamps, moderation actions, a one-way hashed version of your IP address, a one-way hash of an approximate network prefix, a one-way hash of a browser/user-agent signal, and short-lived reputation or rate-limit counters. We use them only to prevent spam, ban evasion, harassment, slurs, abuse, and manipulation of chat features such as reactions, skip votes, polls, games, and the shared video queue. We do not use these chat-safety signals for advertising, and we do not sell them. We do not store your raw IP address or your full user-agent string for this purpose, and these records carry an expiration (TTL) where practical. Visitors who only read the page or read the chat without choosing a nickname are not subject to this expanded chat anti-abuse tracking.

Moderation

Chat messages, reports, and moderation actions may be reviewed by site admins or moderators. Automated moderation tools may also review chat activity to detect spam, abusive language, ban evasion, or other misuse. This automated review runs through the operator's own local moderation tooling rather than a third-party content-moderation service, but we can't promise any particular privacy guarantee beyond what this policy describes. If a user is banned or moderated, their recent and/or previous chat messages may be hidden from public display.

Ads, analytics, and embedded video

The home page may load Google AdSense for account verification and advertising. Google and Google-certified ad partners may use cookies, device identifiers, web beacons, IP addresses, and similar technologies to serve, measure, and personalize ads. You can manage Google ad personalization at Google Ad Settings and opt out of some other advertising cookies at aboutads.info.

We use Vercel Web Analytics for aggregate traffic measurement. Vercel describes this product as cookieless and based on anonymized visitor data. If the shared video player is visible, YouTube/Google may receive information needed to load and play the embedded video under their own privacy terms.

Who processes it

We use service providers to run the site: Vercel for hosting and analytics, Amazon Web Services for DynamoDB-backed storage and rate limits, Google for AdSense and YouTube embeds, and an email delivery provider for the one notification email. They process data for those services. We do not sell, rent, or trade your email address.

Your choices

The notification email will include an unsubscribe link. You can also ask us to access or delete information associated with your email address by contacting us below. You can clear localStorage in your browser to remove this device's saved theme, notification, prediction, and chat preferences. Closing the chat stops that browser from polling the chat log until you open it again.

Contact

Maple Avenue Labs LLC
hello@mapleavenuelabs.com