Privacy Policy

Operator of the private, non-commercial community “PLAYCS.DE”.
Contact: peter@playcs.de

When you play on our Counter-Strike 1.6 server, our statistics software (HLstatsX) automatically records game-related data: your in-game name (including names used before), your SteamID, kills/deaths/headshots and other performance values, connection and play times, in-game chat messages, the connecting IP address and — if enabled — a rough location (country/city, see section 14). Name, statistics and profile are shown publicly on this website (leaderboards, player profiles); IP addresses are not published. The game server also writes log files (name, SteamID, IP address, game events). The legal basis is our legitimate interest in functioning community statistics and safe gameplay (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
Retention: Individual game events (including connections with IP address) are deleted automatically after 180 days. Your player profile (name, SteamID, aggregated statistics) remains until you request deletion (sections 5, 20). Game server log files are deleted automatically after 30 days.

If you violate our server rules (e.g. cheating), we ban you on the game server and add the ban to the public ban list, showing your in-game name, the reason, time and duration. Internally we also store your SteamID and the name of the team member who issued the ban. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in fair, traceable gameplay (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Retention: Temporary bans are marked as expired in the list after they end or are lifted; we remove entries upon a valid deletion request. Banned players cannot have their account deleted while the ban is in force (section 5).

This website offers a login via Steam (OpenID), provided by Valve Corporation, 10900 NE 4th St, Bellevue, WA 98004, USA. During login you are redirected to steamcommunity.com; we then receive your public SteamID64, which we use to link you to your player profile and to provide your personal Login Center (overview, profile, friends, demos, tickets, privacy). Our server also fetches your public profile picture via the Steam Web API and caches the image URL for at most 24 hours. When displayed, your browser loads the image directly from Steam (avatars.steamstatic.com), which transmits your IP address to Valve. We neither process nor store Steam credentials. The legal basis is your consent through active use of the login button (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) and providing the features you chose (lit. b). As Valve is a US company, a transfer to a third country may occur. Retention: The session ends when you close the browser or sign out.

In the Login Center you can optionally store a real name, an email address and a homepage, as well as your setup (hardware, resolution, mouse DPI, sensitivity, launch options, preferred servers) and a small config file (.cfg/.zip/.rar, max. 10 KB). Everything is voluntary and only stored if you enter it; the config can only be downloaded by signed-in members via your profile. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time by deleting the details.
Access/export: Under Privacy & account you can download everything stored about your account yourself as a JSON file.
Deletion: You can also request deletion there. After review by the team we delete your website account including profile and setup, your chat messages, tickets, friendships and reputation, your identity in the leaderboard (name, SteamID, IP addresses, connection, chat and name history), your entries on the game server (name lock, welcome/rules confirmation) and your lines in the server logs; your statistics are anonymised. Excluded are banned players (to enforce the ban, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) and team members (only after their rights are removed). Recorded demos and backups still contain data for a limited time (sections 9 and 16).

Signed-in users can send and accept friend requests and give other players a reputation point (+1). For this we store the SteamID64 of the users involved, the status and timestamps. Your friend list is visible to signed-in users only; reputation is shown as a counter on the player profile. The legal basis is your consent through active use (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). Retention: until you end the friendship or delete your account; you can withdraw pending requests at any time.

Signed-in users can rate news posts on the homepage with a thumbs up/down. We store your SteamID64 together with the rating to prevent multiple votes and to show you your rating. Legal basis: consent through active use (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). Casting the same rating again removes your vote. Retention: until you withdraw it or delete your account.

After signing in with Steam you can use the community chat; it is visible to signed-in users only. We store your SteamID64, the displayed name (player name from the statistics or Steam profile name), the message text, time, replies and reactions, and a timestamp of your last activity for the online indicator. Your profile picture is loaded from Steam (section 4). The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (using the chosen service) and lit. f (operating and protecting the community, e.g. moderation). Retention: messages are deleted automatically after 30 days; you can delete your own messages at any time. Moderators can delete messages and temporarily mute users.

The forum is only accessible to members who are signed in with Steam (reading and posting). We store your SteamID64, the displayed name (player name from the statistics or Steam profile name), your threads and posts with timestamps and edit notes, your likes and the posts you reported. Posts are publicly visible, including to search engines, and show your displayed name. Please do not publish sensitive personal data. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (using the chosen service) and lit. f (operation, moderation, protecting the community). The team can edit or delete posts and move threads; mutes apply to chat and forum together. The “Who is online?” display shows signed-in users by name while they were active in the forum during the last 5 minutes; guests are only counted (anonymous, non-reversible session value). This presence data is deleted after 15 minutes at the latest. Retention: posts stay until you or the team delete them, or until your account is deleted (section 5). Then your posts are deleted; a thread that others replied to remains with an anonymised opening post. Cheating reports: The "Cheating reports" area is only visible to signed-in members. A report contains the name or SteamID of the reported player, map, time, optionally a reference to a demo and your description; it is only handled by the team (legal basis: legitimate interest in fair play, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Notifications: When someone replies in a thread you posted in, we store for up to 90 days the type, thread, time and displayed name of the replying person so the bell can notify you. You can mute it per thread. Your forum profile only shows public data (name, avatar, role, number and titles of your posts).

The game server records rounds as demo files. They contain player names, SteamIDs and the gameplay of the participants and are available for download to signed-in users. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in transparency and fair-play control (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Retention: demos are deleted automatically after 14 days.

The result of the map vote at the end of a map is logged as a plain count (map, number of votes, total) and shown on the server page as “most popular maps”. Neither a SteamID nor a name is stored; there is no personal reference.

If you use our contact form, a support ticket is created with your details (name, email address, category, message) so we can answer and you can follow its status. If you are signed in with Steam, the ticket is linked to your SteamID and appears in your Login Center — this is optional. We are also notified by email about new tickets. To protect against abuse (spam), a hashed value of your IP address (SHA-256, not reversible) is stored for at most 2 days. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, or lit. b for pre-contractual requests. Retention: tickets are deleted once the request is fully handled and no retention duties apply; earlier on request.

This website uses exclusively one technically necessary session cookie (PHPSESSID) to keep your login status during a visit. It is deleted when you close the browser or when the session expires. As it is strictly necessary, no consent is required under § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG. No analytics, marketing or tracking cookies are used. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. The cookie notice serves transparency; as there is only this one necessary kind, we deliberately do not offer a selection banner. Your confirmation of the notice and your language choice are stored locally in your browser (localStorage / cookie “playcs_lang”), not in a user profile.

Fonts (Inter, Chakra Petch) are served from our own server — no connection to Google or other third parties.
Only on the server statistics page (location map) the following providers are additionally embedded, each receiving your IP address: unpkg.com (“Leaflet” map library) and the OpenStreetMap Foundation (map tiles). Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. For Steam/Valve see section 4.
For editorial news, administrators use a translation service (MyMemory, Translated S.r.l., Italy). Only the news text written by the team is transmitted; no data of visitors or players.

To show roughly from which country/city players connect, the IP address is matched against a geolocation database stored locally on our server (DB-IP City Lite, db-ip.com, CC BY 4.0). The IP address is not transmitted to third parties. Only country, city and approximate coordinates are stored. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.

Whenever you access this website, the web server automatically records access data (IP address, date/time, page, browser type). This serves system security and error analysis only (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); it is not combined with other data. Retention: web server logs 14 days; game server logs 30 days (section 2); system logs (e.g. failed login attempts on the server) at most about 2 months.

We back up the website, database and game server weekly to an external backup server (encrypted FTPS transfer) and keep the last two backups. These backups may contain personal data. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in recovering from failures (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Retention: deleted data also disappears from the backups after about two weeks at the latest.

The team manages the community through a protected administration area (kick/ban players, maps, news, tickets). Actions are logged with the SteamID/name of the acting team member, time and the affected object; the log is visible to the team only. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (traceability, protection against misuse).

Website, database and game server run on a rented server of 1blu AG (Berlin); backups are also stored with this provider. The provider processes data solely to operate this infrastructure.

The website is transmitted exclusively via an encrypted connection (HTTPS). Access to the underlying systems is restricted to the operators and protected by keys/passwords; systems are updated regularly.