Privacy Policy

Ascend (also referred to as Ascend Hub or Play Ascend) is operated by Play Ascend, Inc., a Delaware corporation located at 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, Delaware 19713, USA. Our website is play-ascend.com.

For the purposes of data-protection law, Play Ascend is the controller (or, under U.S. state laws, the business) for personal data about our users (account details, tracker queries, shop orders, matchmaking profiles, rewards activity). Play Ascend acts as a processor (or service provider) when a community admin uses Ascend AI and uploads markdown knowledge-base content to a server they manage — in that case, the community admin is the controller and Ascend processes that content on their behalf.

We only collect data that's necessary to operate the products you use. The full list, broken down by surface:

Account and identity

When you sign in with Discord:

• Your Discord user ID, username, display name, avatar URL, and email (provided by Discord with your consent).
• Optionally, your linked Riot account, if you choose to link one through Riot Sign On. What we receive, what it makes visible, and how to unlink are all set out under Riot Games data and Riot Sign On below.

VALORANT tracker

When you look up an account:

• The Riot ID and region you query, and the timestamp of the query.
• The VALORANT profile, rank, and match data returned for that account, plus the statistics we derive from it.

Where that data comes from, what linking an account makes visible, and how to unlink or have it deleted are covered in full under Riot Games data and Riot Sign On below.

Shop

When you place an order:

• The game, denomination, and region of the item purchased.
• Order metadata (order ID, timestamps, delivery method).
• The delivery email or Discord identity we use to send the code.
• Payment data is handled by Stripe, our payment processor. We do not see or store your card details — Stripe sends us only the order/subscription confirmation and a customer reference.
• Gift-card codes are deleted from our systems within 24 hours of successful delivery.
• Tournament entry fees: the entry amount, the timestamp, the team and tournament, and your registration and refund status. Payment is handled by Stripe. We store the payment status and Stripe identifiers, not your card.
• Community support (contributions): the contribution amount, timestamp, and status, and (for recurring support) your subscription status and period. Payment is handled by Stripe; we store the status and Stripe identifiers, not your card. If you contribute, your display name, rank, and total contribution amount may appear on the public supporter leaderboard unless you choose to contribute anonymously (which hides both your name and your amount), and your linked Discord account may receive a supporter role.
• Ascend Rewards Pro: your membership status, billing period, billing country and currency, and the Stripe customer and subscription references. Payment is handled by Stripe; we store the status and Stripe identifiers, not your card. We also derive the age of your linked Discord account from its Discord ID, to apply the 30-day minimum. That check is anti-throwaway friction, not age verification.
• Gifted Rewards Pro: who bought the gift, who received it, the amount, and the record of months credited and used. If you send a gift that is not anonymous, your display name, avatar, months given, and number of gifts sent appear on the public gifters leaderboard, visible to every signed-in member; what you paid is never shown. If a gift is sent anonymously we never show the buyer to the recipient anywhere in the product and the gift is not listed on that board, but we do keep the link between buyer and recipient, because we need it for refunds, chargebacks, tax records, and abuse reports, and we may disclose it where the law requires or to investigate abuse. Gifts carry no message or free text from the buyer.

Ascend AI (Discord support bot)

When you install Ascend AI on a Discord server you manage:

• Your Discord server (guild) ID, server name, and member count.
• Your configured settings: allowed channels, bot personality, support-channel routing, daily question limits.
• The markdown knowledge-base documents you upload — you are the controller of this content; Ascend processes it on your behalf.
• Question / answer logs for the admin-dashboard analytics, retained for 30 days then aggregated.

Other surfaces

Matchmaking, marketplace, rewards, crosshairs, recruit, and esports collect only what's necessary to operate the feature: queue entries, listing content you write, ledger entries, crosshair codes you submit, queries you make.

Desktop app

If you use our downloadable desktop application, it works against the same account and Services as our website and collects the same categories of data described above for the surfaces you use — no new categories of personal data. In addition:

• Update checks. The app periodically contacts our update server to check whether a newer version is available. That request includes the app version and your operating system and processor architecture. It is not used to identify you.
• Diagnostics. The app may send limited technical and crash diagnostics so we can fix problems. These are the operational signals described under Security and fraud-prevention signals and Analytics, not new categories of data.
• Your rank rating history. If the setting is on, the app reads your own competitive rank rating changes from your Riot Client while VALORANT runs and saves them to your Ascend account, so your tracker can show them later. Only you can see them. You can turn this off in Settings, and the data is deleted with your Riot link or your account.

The app does not read data from your device beyond what is needed to run these features and the Services you use.

Analytics

We use Amplitude for product analytics with autocapture (page views, events, sessions). Amplitude processes this data in the European Union. Session replay is sampled at 10%, and replays are recorded with all text and all form fields masked, so the content of what is on screen is not captured. Pages that display redemption codes or invite links are excluded from replay entirely. Analytics are recorded only in production, never on local development, and known web crawlers are excluded.

You can opt out in three ways, any of which is enough on its own:

• Your browser's Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal. We check this before analytics loads, so nothing is collected at all.
• The Share product analytics toggle in your account preferences on the website, or in Settings in the Ascend Companion. Turning this off stops collection on that device and, once you are signed in, also stops the events our servers record about your account.
• Emailing info@play-ascend.com.

Security and fraud-prevention signals

To keep the platform fair and to prevent fraud, ban evasion, and multi-account abuse (for example, one person entering a tournament on several accounts), we record technical signals when you use the website or the Ascend Companion desktop app: your IP address, an approximate country derived from it, your browser and operating system (from the user-agent), the network operator (ASN) of your connection, and a random device identifier. On the website that identifier is stored in the ascend_did cookie. In the Companion there are two: the app's own installation identifier, a random value created when the app is installed, and a computer identifier. The computer identifier is derived from the identity your operating system already assigns to the machine. It is converted on your own device into an irreversible code before anything is sent, so the original value never leaves your computer and we never hold it. We use both to recognise that two accounts have been used on the same computer. We do not use either to identify your hardware to anyone else, and neither is combined with data from other companies. We use these only for security, fraud prevention, and eligibility checks. We never use them for advertising.

Your full IP address is kept for 90 days and then deleted; only a salted, one-way hash and a coarse network prefix are retained afterward, so we can still detect shared-account patterns without storing the address itself. The installation identifier is kept while the app remains installed and is deleted, along with the events it appears in, when you delete your Ascend account.

Because these signals can overlap for people who share a home, a campus, a VPN, or a computer, they are used as a review aid and never as the sole basis for an automated penalty. A shared computer is treated as a reason to look, not as a finding: where a single installation carries more accounts than a household plausibly would, we treat it as shared equipment and do not link those accounts at all.

Cookies and storage

We use a small set of cookies and local-storage keys, all strictly necessary or analytics:

Cookie / key	Purpose	Lifetime
sb-* (Supabase Auth)	Authentication session	Until logout
auth-redirect-to	Remembers where to send you after OAuth	10 minutes
ascend_did	Random device id for security and fraud prevention (not advertising)	~13 months
Companion installation id (desktop app, not a cookie)	Recognises that two accounts used the same installation of the app, for security and fraud prevention	While the app is installed; deleted with your account
Companion computer id (desktop app, not a cookie)	An irreversible code derived on your device from your operating system's machine identity, so two accounts used on one computer can be recognised. The original value never leaves your device	While the app is installed; deleted with your account
ascend-ai:discord-guilds:v1	Caches your Discord server list for the picker	7 days
amp_* (Amplitude)	Product analytics	1 year

We do not use third-party advertising cookies or cross-site tracking pixels.

How we get it

Linking a Riot account is optional and runs through Riot Sign On (RSO), Riot's own OAuth login. You are sent to Riot to sign in, Riot shows you exactly what Ascend is asking for, and you approve or decline it there. We never see or receive your Riot password. Riot returns a token that lets us request the data below on your behalf. We store that token encrypted and use it for nothing else.

If you never link a Riot account, we never ask Riot for anything about you.

What we receive

From Riot	What it is
PUUID	Riot's stable, per-account identifier for you.
Riot ID	Your game name and tagline, and your platform region.
Match history and match detail	Your matches: queue, map, agent, result, scoreboard, and round data.
Competitive rank	Your current rank, rank rating, and act history.

From that we derive statistics (per-agent and per-map performance, trends, session summaries, teammate and head-to-head splits) and store them so your profile loads without re-querying Riot every time.

Riot Games is an independent controller of the data it holds about your Riot account. Riot's own handling of it is described in the Riot Games Privacy Notice. Linking does not give Ascend any control over your Riot account.

Linking makes your VALORANT data public on Ascend

Once you link, the data above and the statistics we derive from it can be shown to other people on Ascend: on your public profile, on leaderboards, in team and organisation rosters, on match pages, and through our Discord bot in servers you are in. That visibility is the point of linking. If you don't want your VALORANT data visible to others, don't link your account.

On play-ascend.com, we do not display a player's VALORANT data unless that player has linked their own Riot account. Two things sit outside that rule, and neither identifies an unlinked player: statistics aggregated across the player base, and Riot's own published competitive leaderboard.

The Ascend Companion desktop app is the exception, and we would rather say so than imply a protection we have not finished building: it still looks up any Riot ID entered into it, including accounts nobody has linked, using the same publicly available match data described above. That is how it has always worked and we are changing it as Riot Sign On rolls out. If you would rather your VALORANT data was not reachable that way in the meantime, email info@play-ascend.com and we will exclude your account.

We respect Riot's incognito and streamer modes. A player Riot marks as hidden is masked everywhere on Ascend.

What we never do with Riot data

• We never sell it.
• We never use it for advertising, or share it for targeted advertising.
• We never use it to train AI models. Ascend AI reads your matches only to answer a question you asked about your own play.
• We never show it to another player except through the surfaces described above, and never for a player who hasn't linked.
• We never write anything to your Riot account, and we never use Riot data to contact you in game.
• We never use it to work out something Riot deliberately hides, including the identity or rank of a player in incognito or streamer mode, or an opponent's data before or during a match.

Unlinking, revoking, and deletion

You can unlink at any time from your account settings on the website or in the Ascend Companion, and you can revoke Ascend's access from your Riot account settings. Either one takes effect on our side immediately:

• We stop requesting anything about you from Riot.
• Your Riot ID, rank, and match data come off Ascend's public surfaces straight away.
• The stored RSO token is deleted straight away.
• The Riot data and derived statistics we hold are deleted within 30 days, with backups completing the purge within a further 30 days.

Deleting your Ascend account does all of the above as well, on the timeline described under Your rights.

Deletion requests routed through Riot. Riot passes on requests from players who ask Riot to have their data deleted. When Riot sends us such a request, we stop using that player's Riot data and delete it from our systems, whether or not that player ever contacted us directly.

Data we source from outside the Riot API

Two VALORANT-related surfaces don't come from Riot's API, and RSO doesn't govern them:

• Professional esports data (VCT, Game Changers, and Challengers rosters, results, and scoreboard statistics) is compiled from public esports coverage and concerns public figures acting in a professional capacity.
• Third-party VALORANT data provider. Some tracker lookups are served by a third-party VALORANT data provider rather than by Riot's API. It is listed as a processor in Who we share data with, and the deletion and opt-out routes in this policy apply to it in the same way.

We use the data above to:

• Operate the products you actively use — sign you in, return tracker results, fulfil shop orders, run Ascend AI replies, run matchmaking lobbies.
• Verify your account and the Discord/Riot identities you link.
• Send transactional emails and Discord DMs — shop delivery confirmations, promo codes, account notices.
• Improve the product through aggregated analytics, debugging, and usage measurement.
• Detect abuse and protect the platform — rate limits, fraud signals, anti-spam in Ascend AI.
• Comply with applicable law, including tax-record retention and lawful requests from law enforcement.

We do not:

• Sell your personal data.
• Share your personal data for cross-context behavioral advertising ("targeted advertising").
• Use your data to train third-party AI models for our own benefit (community-admin-uploaded Ascend AI KB content is sent to model providers only to generate the reply that admin's server requested).
• Share your data with anyone other than the service providers listed in the next section.

We use a small set of third-party processors / service providers, each bound by contract to use the data only to provide their service to us. Each has its own privacy policy:

Processor	What we share	Where
Supabase	Database + auth records	AWS (ap-south-1, Mumbai)
Stripe	Payment + subscription billing	United States
Riot Games	Your RSO authorisation, and the requests we make for your own game data	United States
Third-party VALORANT data provider	Riot ID + region for tracker queries	Outside the United States
Discord	OAuth identity + Ascend AI runtime	United States
Resend	Transactional email delivery	United States
Amplitude	Product analytics + 10%-sampled, fully-masked session replay	European Union
OpenAI / Anthropic	Ascend AI prompts (KB + the user's question)	United States
AWS Amplify	Web hosting	AWS (ap-south-1, Mumbai)

Riot Games is the exception in that table: it is an independent controller rather than our processor, and it is listed so you can see every party involved in a linked account. We share data with the processors only as needed to operate the relevant feature. We do not sell data to data brokers or advertisers, and we may disclose data when required by law or to protect our rights, users, or the public.

If we ever need to add or change a processor, we'll update the table above. Material changes will be announced on our Discord and via an in-app banner before they take effect.

We keep data only for as long as we need it:

• Account data — until you ask us to delete it.
• Tracker queries — cached briefly to speed up repeat lookups, then discarded.
• Riot account data (PUUID, Riot ID, rank, match history, and derived statistics) — kept while your account is linked, then deleted within 30 days of unlinking, of you revoking access at Riot, of an Ascend account deletion, or of a deletion request Riot passes to us. Backups complete the purge within a further 30 days.
• RSO tokens — deleted immediately on unlink, revocation, or account deletion.
• Shop order records — retained for as long as required by applicable U.S. tax and accounting law (typically up to 7 years). Gift-card codes are deleted within 24 hours of delivery.
• Tournament entry-fee records: retained for as long as required by applicable U.S. tax and anti-fraud law (typically up to 7 years). When you delete your account we anonymize these records and keep the de-identified payment and refund history for that period, after which it is purged.
• Ascend Credits ledger & reward redemptions — the record of credits earned/spent and rewards redeemed is a financial and fraud-prevention record. When you delete your account we anonymize these records (we remove your account link and any shipping address) and keep the de-identified transaction history for up to 7 years to satisfy U.S. tax, accounting, and anti-fraud obligations, after which it is purged. Ascend Credits have no cash value and unredeemed credits are forfeited on account deletion.
• Ascend AI knowledge-base documents — until the community admin deletes them or uninstalls the bot.
• Ascend AI question/answer logs — 30 days for admin-dashboard analytics, then aggregated.
• Security signals (IP address) — your full IP address is deleted 90 days after it was last seen. A salted, irreversible hash and a coarse network prefix are retained after that for ongoing fraud and ban-evasion detection.
• Companion installation and computer identifiers: kept while the app remains installed, and deleted together with the app's event records when you delete your Ascend account. The computer identifier is stored only as the irreversible code described above; the underlying machine identity is never sent to us.
• Analytics events — per Amplitude's default retention.
• Account-deletion backups — 30 days after a deletion request, all backups complete the purge.

We apply the following baseline rights to all users worldwide, regardless of jurisdiction. U.S. state residents (see the next section) and users in the EEA/UK have additional rights described below.

Right	What you can do
Access	Request a copy of your personal data in a readable format.
Deletion	Request deletion of your account and personal data. Completed within 14 days of verification, with a 30-day backup-purge window.
Portability	Request an export of your data in a machine-readable format.
Correction	Ask us to correct inaccurate information.
Objection	Opt out of analytics, session replay, or any non-essential processing.
Withdrawal of consent	Disable specific data uses or revoke prior permissions.
Complaint	Lodge a complaint with your local data-protection regulator.

For a linked Riot account you don't need to write to us at all: unlinking in your account settings, or revoking Ascend's access from your Riot account settings, triggers the removal and deletion described under Riot Games data and Riot Sign On.

To exercise any of these rights, email info@play-ascend.com from the email address linked to your Ascend account, or use the contact page. We'll respond within 14 days where we can, and in all cases within the timeframe the applicable law requires.

Legal bases (EEA / UK users)

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we process your personal data on the basis of: contract (to provide the Services you request), legitimate interests (to secure, debug, and improve the platform), consent (for analytics and optional features, which you can withdraw at any time), and legal obligation (e.g., tax records).

Regulators

If you're not satisfied with how we've handled your request, you can complain to your local regulator:

• California, US — California Privacy Protection Agency, cppa.ca.gov; or the California Attorney General.
• Other US states — your state Attorney General.
• European Union — your country's Data Protection Authority.
• United Kingdom — Information Commissioner's Office, ico.org.uk.

This section describes rights available to residents of U.S. states with comprehensive privacy laws, including California (CCPA/CPRA), Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, and others. The categories below describe our practices over the preceding 12 months.

Categories of personal information we collect

Category (CCPA)	Examples we collect
Identifiers	Discord user ID, username, display name, email, avatar URL, linked Riot ID and Riot PUUID, IP address.
Customer records	Name/handle and email associated with your account and orders.
Commercial information	Shop orders, items purchased, subscription and rewards activity.
Internet / network activity	Page views, events, sessions, and 10%-sampled session replay via Amplitude (replays are text-masked).
Geolocation	Coarse region only (e.g., your game region or country) — never precise location.
User content	Profile, marketplace listings, crosshair codes, scrim posts, Ascend AI KB documents.

We collect this information from you directly, from Discord (via OAuth when you sign in), from Riot Games (via Riot Sign On, if you link a Riot account), from a third-party VALORANT data provider, and automatically through analytics. We use it for the purposes described in How we use your data above, and we disclose it for business purposes only to the service providers listed in Who we share data with.

No sale, no sharing, no targeted advertising

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising ("targeted advertising") — as those terms are defined under the CCPA and other state laws. We have not done so in the preceding 12 months, including for the personal information of any consumer we know to be under 16. We also do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes that would give rise to the right to limit its use.

Your rights

• Know / Access — request the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you.
• Delete — request deletion of personal information we collected from you.
• Correct — request correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Portability — request a copy of your data in a portable, machine-readable format.
• Opt out — opt out of any sale, sharing, or targeted advertising, and of certain profiling. (We don't do these, but you may still exercise the right, and we honor opt-out preference signals such as Global Privacy Control.)
• Limit sensitive information — direct us to limit the use of sensitive personal information.
• Non-discrimination — we will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.
• Appeal — if we decline your request, residents of states that provide an appeal right may appeal by replying to our decision; if your appeal is denied, you may contact your state Attorney General.

How to exercise these rights

Email info@play-ascend.com or use the contact page and select a privacy request. We will verify your request using the email address and account identifiers associated with your account before acting on it. You may use an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf with proof of authorization. We respond to verifiable requests within the time required by law (generally 45 days, extendable once where permitted).

California "Shine the Light": California residents may request information about disclosures of personal information to third parties for their direct-marketing purposes. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing.

Play Ascend, Inc. is based in the United States, and we serve users worldwide. Our primary database and web hosting run on AWS in the ap-south-1 (Mumbai) region, and several of the processors listed above are located in the United States. This means your data may be processed in countries other than the one you live in, whose data laws may differ from yours. When we transfer your data internationally:

• We rely on appropriate safeguards (such as standard contractual clauses and transfer impact assessments) where required by the GDPR or UK GDPR for transfers out of the EEA / UK.
• Our processors are contractually bound to apply protections at least equivalent to those described in this policy.

We use industry-standard technical and organisational controls:

• TLS in transit, AES-256 at rest (provided by AWS / Supabase).
• Row-level security on the database, with explicit access policies on every table.
• Minimum-permission OAuth scopes everywhere — Ascend AI's Discord install requests only Embed Links + Stream, no moderation permissions.
• Service-role credentials rotated periodically; user-facing tokens scoped per session.
• Analytics are labelled by environment so production reporting excludes our own development traffic, and local development sends nothing at all.

No system is 100% secure. If we discover a personal-data breach, we'll notify affected users and regulators as required by law, aiming to notify affected users within 72 hours of confirming it.

Ascend is not directed at children under 13 years of age, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13, consistent with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If you become aware that a child under 13 has provided us personal data without parental consent, email info@play-ascend.com and we'll delete it promptly. Riot Games sets its own minimum age for a Riot account, and you must meet it to link one to Ascend. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16.

We may update this policy from time to time. The "Updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the current version. Material changes — anything affecting your rights or expanding what we collect — will be announced at least 30 days in advance via:

• A banner on play-ascend.com
• An announcement in our Discord server
• An email to your account address, if we have one

By continuing to use Ascend after the effective date of a change, you accept the updated policy.

For privacy questions, data-subject or consumer requests, or anything else covered by this policy, email info@play-ascend.com or write to Play Ascend, Inc., 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, Delaware 19713, USA. You can also reach us through the contact page — pick "privacy request" and your email opens with the right intake template.

We aim to respond within 14 days, and in all cases within the time the law requires.