Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what data the Azmar Quest skill for Amazon Alexa handles, why, where it goes and what you can do about it. "We", "us" and "our" mean Sevan Studio, the trade name of Sevan Soukiassian, who makes the skill. We wrote it in plain words on purpose: if something is not clear, write to us.

Do you just want to delete your data? Say "Alexa, ask Azmar Quest to delete my data" and confirm. The skill deletes your saved game at once. Section 10 explains what this does and what disabling the skill does instead.

In short

• The skill has no account and no sign-in. Alexa gives us a code that stands for your Amazon account in this skill. We cannot tell who you are from it. Amazon can.
• We store your saved game: the hero name you choose, the class, the hero's gender, the difficulty, your progress and choices, your settings, the count of packs you bought, and a few technical values listed in section 3.
• We never receive your voice recordings, your name, email address, home address, phone number, payment details or location.
• Purchases are sold by Amazon. We only learn whether a purchase succeeded and how many packs are active, so we can add the Gold to your game.
• Your save is stored in Ireland on Amazon's servers, encrypted. Technical logs stay in the Amazon region that served your request, which is in the United States for players on the American, Canadian and Australian Amazon stores.
• There are no ads, no tracking and no analytics inside the skill. We do not sell your data.
• Say "delete my data" to the skill at any time. Disabling the skill does not delete your save: it waits for you.
• Questions or requests: contact@sevanstudio.eu. We answer within one month.

Table of contents

1. Who is responsible

The data controller is Sevan Soukiassian, who publishes Azmar Quest as Sevan Studio, Viale Repubblica 160, 33077 Sacile (PN), Italy, VAT IT01975920933. Email: contact@sevanstudio.eu. Azmar Quest is made by one person, so this is also the person who reads your messages. We have no data protection officer and no representative in other countries: the law does not require them for a business of this size, and we are established in Italy.

2. What this policy covers

This policy covers the Azmar Quest skill for Amazon Alexa only: the voice game you open by saying "Alexa, open Azmar Quest" on an Echo device, in the Alexa app or on any other device with Alexa. The skill speaks English (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and India) and Italian. This policy is written in English, like all Azmar Quest legal pages. Voice commands are quoted in English; where it matters, the Italian command is given too. The rules for playing the skill are in the Terms of Use.

It does not cover the Azmar Quest game for Android, iOS and Steam, which has its own Privacy Policy. The skill and the game are separate: they share no account, no save and no data.

The skill sets no cookies and uses no tracker. Neither does this web page: like the rest of the Azmar Quest website, it sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device and loads nothing from other websites.

Amazon operates Alexa, your Amazon account and the purchase flow under its own rules. What Amazon does with your voice, your account and your payments is described in Amazon's privacy notice, not here (section 6).

3. What we receive from Alexa and what we store

What Alexa sends us

Alexa never sends us your voice. Amazon turns your speech into text and sends our code, which runs on Amazon's servers, a request with:

• a code for your Amazon account, limited to this skill. It is a long string that Amazon creates for you. It is pseudonymous: we cannot find out who you are from it, but Amazon can link it to your account. It is the key under which your saved game is stored, and it stays the same if you disable and enable the skill again (Amazon keeps it stable for skills that sell consumable packs). We treat it as personal data;
• the language of your device (for example English for the United Kingdom, or Italian), so the game answers in your language and shows the right products;
• technical details of the request: its type, a request number, the name of the command Alexa recognized, and the capabilities of your device (whether it has a screen, for example). We use the request number only to avoid applying the same request twice;
• the words Alexa understood, only for what the skill needs: your answers during hero creation (class, the hero's gender, the hero's name, difficulty), the choice you pick in the story, a fight command, a skill or item name, a setting, or the name of a pack you ask about. Those words are used to understand what you want and are then dropped. Only the hero name is kept.

The request from Alexa also carries a device identifier and, if Alexa recognized your voice, a voice profile identifier. Our code does not read, store or log them. The skill asks for no Alexa permissions: it never requests your name, email address, phone number, address, location, contacts, reminders or notifications, and it does not link to any account.

The hero's name

When you create a hero, the skill asks "What is your hero's name?" and suggests saying a first name. You can use any word you like, including an invented one. Some players use their own first name, and we cannot tell the difference, so we treat the hero name as personal data. We keep it, cut to 12 characters, in your saved game and we speak it back to you in the story. We do not use it to identify you, we do not match it with your Amazon account, and no other player hears it: it reaches Amazon only as part of your own Alexa conversation. If you prefer, give your hero an invented name.

What we store: your saved game

We keep one record per account code. It is saved after every turn, so you can continue where you left off. It contains:

• your hero: name, class, gender, difficulty, level, experience, Gold, honor, life, energy, arrows, skills, gear and items;
• your story: the chapter and scene you are in, the quest, and the choices you made (for example which path you took or who you spared);
• a fight in progress, if you stopped in the middle of one;
• your settings: how long the narration is, and whether sounds are on;
• dates and counts: when the save was created, when you last played, how many times you opened the skill, and the days on which daily gifts, bounties and pack offers were last given, so they are not repeated too soon;
• the last spoken reply and the number of the last request, so that "repeat" works and a request delivered twice is not applied twice. The reply can contain the hero name, because the story speaks it;
• purchase counts: how many Gold packs and treasure packs you bought and used, and the last number of active packs Amazon reported for each product (section 5). Counts only: no prices, no amounts paid, no order numbers;
• a random seed computed from your account code, so that the game's dice are stable.

The hero name and your answers are needed to play: without them the game cannot create a hero or continue the story. Nothing in the save is required by law.

What we do not receive or store

Voice recordings (Alexa never gives them to a skill). The other words you say, which are used to understand your answer and then dropped, never stored and never logged. Your real name, unless you chose it as the hero's name. Your email address, home address, phone number, contacts or location. Payment details, prices paid, receipts or order numbers. Device identifiers beyond what Alexa includes in every request, and even those we do not read. Your IP address: the request reaches us from Amazon's servers, not from your device.

Technical logs

Each time our code runs on Amazon's servers it writes one line to Amazon's logging service with: the type of request, the name of the command recognized, the reason a session ended, the language, how many milliseconds we took, whether the reply closed the session, the technical names of the instructions we sent back to Alexa, whether a yes-or-no confirmation or a pack offer was pending, and a short code computed from your account code. If something goes wrong, a second line records the error message and where in the code it happened.

The logs contain no spoken words, no hero name, no content of your save and no product you bought. The short code lets us group the lines of one player when we look for a bug. It cannot be turned back into your account code by itself, but it is not anonymous: anyone who already holds the account code could compute it. So we treat the logs as personal data too. We read them only through Amazon's developer console, and only to fix problems.

Data held for the session only

While a conversation with the skill is open, Alexa carries a few values for us from one turn to the next: whether we are waiting for a yes or no, whether a pack offer is open, and the list of our products with their current active count. Amazon holds these for the session only. We do not store them.

4. Why we use it and on what legal basis

• To run the game and save your progress, so that you can stop and continue later. Legal basis: providing the service you asked for when you enabled the skill and started playing (article 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• To give you what you bought: add the Gold or open the treasure chests of a pack, and record the new number of active packs if Amazon refunds one. Legal basis: performance of the purchase and of our terms (article 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• To keep the skill working and secure: measure how fast we answer, find the cause of an error, and notice misuse. This is what the technical logs are for. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a reliable and secure service (article 6(1)(f) GDPR). We chose the smallest log we could: no words, no save content, a short code instead of your account code. Players of an online game expect technical logs of this kind, and the risk to you is low. You can object to this processing (section 10).
• To answer your messages, when you write to us about the game, a purchase or your data. Legal basis: the service and your purchase (article 6(1)(b) GDPR) and, for requests about your rights, our legal obligation to answer them (article 6(1)(c) GDPR).

We process data to comply with a legal obligation only where a law really requires it, for example to answer a rights request or a lawful request from an authority. Nothing in the skill rests on your consent, so there is no consent to withdraw. We take no automated decisions about you: daily gifts, bounties and pack offers follow fixed game rules and have no legal or similar effect on you. We use your data for no other purpose.

5. In-skill purchases

The skill offers four optional packs: a Gold Pouch, a Gold Chest, a Gold Vault and a Treasure Cache. Everything they contain can also be earned by playing. They are sold by Amazon through Alexa's in-skill purchasing, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Canada. Elsewhere the skill says that purchases are not set up.

When you say "buy" and the name of a pack, the skill hands over to Alexa. Alexa speaks the price, asks you to confirm, charges the payment method of your Amazon account, sends you Amazon's order email, handles taxes and any parental approval, and decides refunds. All of this is Amazon's processing, under Amazon's privacy notice and the Alexa terms of use. The skill never speaks a price and never sees your payment method, the amount paid, your name, your address or a receipt.

From Amazon the skill receives only: the names and identifiers of our own products, whether each one can be bought in your country, the result of a purchase (accepted, declined, already purchased, pending or error), and the number of active packs for each product. We use these to credit the pack to your hero and to keep our count of your packs right. In your save we keep only the counts described in section 3.

To ask for a refund, say "refund" and the name of the pack: the skill hands you over to Alexa, and Amazon decides. You can also contact Amazon customer service. We cannot refund a purchase ourselves. If a refund is granted, Amazon no longer counts the pack as yours and we lower our count of your packs to match. Today the skill does not take back Gold or treasures that were already added to your game.

6. Who processes the data

• Amazon, on our behalf. The skill is an Alexa-hosted skill: Amazon provides and runs the servers where our code executes, the database that holds your saved game, and the service that stores our technical logs. For this, Amazon (Amazon EU Core Sarl) acts as our processor under the Alexa GDPR Data Processing Addendum, using the data centers of the Amazon Web Services companies as sub-processors: Amazon Data Services Ireland Limited in Ireland, and Amazon Web Services, Inc. in the United States (section 7). Amazon staff may access these resources to run the service, under the same contract.
• Amazon, as a separate controller. Amazon operates Alexa (including turning your voice into text and keeping your voice history), your Amazon account, the Alexa app, the skills store and the whole purchase flow: payments, receipts, taxes and refunds. For all of this Amazon decides by itself what it does with your data, under the Amazon Privacy Notice (also available, in your language, on the Amazon site where your account is registered).
• Aruba S.p.A. (Italy): our mailbox, where your emails to us arrive, on our behalf.

That is the whole list. The skill contacts no other company: it uses no analytics service, no crash reporter, no advertising network and no external server. Its sound effects come from Amazon's own Alexa sound library. We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with anyone else unless the law requires it.

7. Where data is stored and data outside the European Union

Your saved game is stored in Amazon's data center in Ireland (European Union), encrypted at rest with keys managed by Amazon. This is the only place where it is kept.

Our code runs in three Amazon regions: Ireland, the eastern United States and the western United States. Amazon normally sends each request to the region of the Amazon store your account belongs to: accounts on the European, British and Indian Amazon stores are served from Ireland; accounts on the American and Canadian stores from the eastern United States; accounts on the Australian store from the western United States. When you are served from the United States, the request (the words Alexa understood and your account code) is handled by our code there, and your saved game is read and written in Ireland from there. This happens even if you live in Europe but your Amazon account is registered on amazon.com.

Technical logs are written in the region that served the request. So the logs of players on the European, British and Indian stores stay in Ireland, and the logs of players on the American, Canadian and Australian stores are kept in the United States. Remember that these logs hold a short code, not your account code, and no words.

Amazon's own processing of your voice, your account and your purchases happens where Amazon decides, under Amazon's privacy notice. Amazon support staff in other countries listed in the Data Processing Addendum may also access the hosted servers to run the service.

Safeguards. For data that reaches the United States, we rely on two safeguards. First, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, an adequacy decision of the European Commission: Amazon states that Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services are certified under it, and under its extension for the United Kingdom. Second, the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, which are part of the Alexa GDPR Data Processing Addendum and apply to any transfer to a country without an adequacy decision. If the Framework ever stops applying, the clauses remain. You can read the clauses at that link, or ask us for a copy.

8. How long we keep data

• Your saved game: until you delete it by saying "delete my data" and confirming, or until Amazon tells us that your account code will change (section 10), in which case we delete it at that moment. There is no automatic expiry today, so a save that you stop playing stays until one of these happens or until we delete it by hand. Disabling the skill does not delete it.
• After "start over": the hero, the story, the items and the last spoken reply are erased at once and replaced by a fresh hero. The record itself stays, with your settings, the number of times you played and the counts of Gold and treasures you bought and used. The number of active packs Amazon last reported is read again from Amazon the next time you open the skill, so packs Amazon still counts as active are credited again to the new hero.
• Purchase counts: as part of your saved game, for as long as the save exists. Amazon keeps its own record of what you bought under its own rules.
• Technical logs: kept by Amazon's hosting service for Alexa skills. We cannot set their retention period ourselves. The default setting of Amazon's logging service keeps log data until it is deleted, unless a retention period is set; if Amazon's console shows us a fixed period, we will write it here. The "delete my data" command does not remove log lines, which hold only the short code described in section 3.
• Session data: held by Amazon for the conversation only.
• Your emails: as long as needed to help you or to answer your request.

9. Security

All data travels encrypted between Alexa and our code, and between our code and the database. The database is encrypted at rest by Amazon. On our side, only the developer can open the hosted resources, through Amazon's developer console. Amazon's own staff can reach them only to run the service, under the contract described in section 6. We collect as little as possible: there is no account, no password, no email and no payment data on our side to protect, one small record per player, and logs that carry a short code instead of your account code. The skill never asks you to say sensitive information, such as a password, a card number or an identity number, and you should never say them to it. If a breach ever affected your data, we would notify the authority and, where required, you.

10. Your rights and how to use them

Under the GDPR you can ask to see the data we have about you, to correct or delete it, to limit its use, to receive it in a portable format, and to object to its use, in particular to the technical logs. If you are in the United Kingdom, you have the same rights under the UK GDPR. The quickest way to use most of them is by voice, because the skill is the only place where your save can be found.

By voice

• Delete everything: say "Alexa, ask Azmar Quest to delete my data", or say "delete my data", "delete my save" or "forget me" while playing (in Italian: "cancella i miei dati" or "dimenticami"). The skill asks "This will delete all your Azmar Quest data. Are you sure?" If you say yes, it deletes your saved game at once and closes. The next time you open the skill, it starts from zero under the same account code (packs that Amazon still counts as active on your account are credited again at that launch). Say no, and nothing changes.
• See what is saved: say "status", "inventory" or "where am I" and the skill reads back your hero, your items and Gold, and where you are in the story.
• Start again: say "new game" or "start over" to replace your hero with a new one. This is also how you change the hero's name, which cannot be edited in place.

Disabling and enabling the skill again

If you disable the skill in the Alexa app, Alexa tells us whether your account code stays the same. For skills with purchases, like this one, it normally stays the same, so we keep your save: when you enable the skill again, your hero, your progress and your purchase counts are back where you left them. If Amazon instead tells us that the code will change, we delete your save at once, and a re-enabled skill starts from zero. Disabling is therefore not a way to delete your data: use the voice command above.

By email

You can also write to contact@sevanstudio.eu. We answer within one month and for free. One limit applies, and we want to be honest about it: your saved game is stored only under the code Amazon assigns to your account, which you cannot see and which we cannot work out from your name or email address. So we cannot find, send or delete your save from an email alone (article 11 GDPR). Tell us what you need: we will explain what we can do, and in most cases we will ask you to use the voice commands above, which work at once. If we can identify your record, we can send you its content as a file (portability) or delete it for you.

Objecting to the logs

You can object to the technical logs (article 21 GDPR). In practice, deleting your save by voice is the strongest step: new log lines can be grouped with the old ones only through the short code, which is tied to your Amazon account, and nothing else in the logs says who you are. Write to us if you want more than that, and we will look at your situation.

11. Children and teenagers

Azmar Quest is a fantasy adventure with combat, without gore. It is not made for children under 13 and it is not listed as a kids skill in the Alexa Skills Store. You need an Amazon account to use Alexa, and Amazon's conditions of use allow people under 18 to use Amazon services only with the involvement of a parent or guardian. If you are under 18, play with the permission of the adult who owns the Amazon account. That adult is responsible for purchases made on the account and can turn voice purchasing off, or protect it with a code, in the Alexa app. We do not knowingly keep data of a child under 13. If you are a parent and think we do, write to contact@sevanstudio.eu and we will delete it.

12. Complaints

If you think we handle your data unlawfully, or you are not satisfied with our answer, you have the right to complain to a data protection authority. In Italy it is the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, Piazza Venezia 11, 00187 Roma, Italy. The complaint is free. You can instead complain to the authority of the European country where you live or work, or, in the United Kingdom, to the Information Commissioner's Office. You also keep the right to go to court. We would prefer to hear from you first, so that we can fix the problem.

13. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top of this page. The skill cannot show you a notice, so please check this page from time to time: it is linked from the skill's page in the Alexa app and in the Alexa Skills Store. If a change matters for how your data is used, we will also say so in the skill's store description.

14. Contact

Questions, requests about your data, or help with the skill: email contact@sevanstudio.eu, or write to Sevan Studio (Sevan Soukiassian), Viale Repubblica 160, 33077 Sacile (PN), Italy. Other ways to reach us are on the contact page. Found a security problem in the skill? Please report it to us by email before telling anyone else, so that we can fix it first.

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