Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how AnnoMotion (“we”, “us”, “our”) — an independent software studio operating from the United Kingdom — collects, uses, stores and protects personal data when you visit annomotion.studio, install the ArcadeOn Engine desktop app, or use any of our AI creator tools (together, the “Services”).

1. Who we are

AnnoMotion is a product of ArcadeOn Studios, the trading name of Ash Lyndhurst, a sole trader based in the United Kingdom. Ash Lyndhurst trading as ArcadeOn Studios is the data controller for the personal data processed through our Services unless we state otherwise. You can reach us at hello@arcadeonstudios.co.uk.

2. Data we collect

We only collect data that we actually need to run the Services. Depending on how you use us, this may include:

Account data (private): name, email address, password (stored hashed), profile photo if you upload one, and your in-app preferences. None of these is published — see the separate entry below for the one field that is;
Your public handle (published): if you claim one, the handle you choose is public and permanent. It is the byline on everything you publish through the community features, and it is visible to anyone on the internet. See § 6;
Community content (published): generations you choose to share or publish, any caption you give them, the comments you post, and the likes you give. See § 6;
Reports you file: the item you reported, the reason you selected, any detail you typed, and your identity as the reporter, which is recorded and visible to our staff (never to the person you reported). See § 6;
Google Sign-In data: if you choose “Sign in with Google”, we receive your name, email address and Google account identifier from Google to create or match your account (in place of a password);
API tokens: opaque tokens issued so the ArcadeOn Engine app can authenticate on your behalf; tokens are stored hashed and can be revoked at any time from your account;
Device & usage data: browser type, operating system, device identifiers, pages viewed, features used, timestamps;
Network data: IP address (used for security, rate-limiting and abuse prevention; anonymised before it reaches our analytics provider);
AI inputs and outputs: the prompts you write, the reference files you upload (images, audio, video or 3D models, depending on the tool), and everything generated for you — images and sprite sheets, vector art, 3D models, audio, music, voice, sound effects, video, animation and text — plus job metadata (which tool, timestamps, credit cost, status, error messages if any);
Billing data: payment is handled by Stripe. We receive a limited transaction record (Stripe session ID, amount, status, currency, last 4 digits of the card). We do not store full card details on our servers;
Engine licence state: if you have purchased the ArcadeOn Engine 2.0 Lifetime Licence, we store the activation date and the originating Stripe session ID against your account so the desktop app can verify entitlement;
Support correspondence: ticket subject, body and replies you send through the support form or by email.

3. Why we collect it

To provide, maintain and improve the Services;
To authenticate you and the ArcadeOn Engine app, and to secure your account against unauthorised access;
To operate billing (credit packs and the engine lifetime licence) and to validate entitlements;
To run the AI tools you submit jobs to;
To publish the content you have chosen to publish, and to run the community features (public profiles, comments and likes);
To keep those features safe — reviewing reports, removing content that breaches our Terms, and acting against abuse;
To respond to support enquiries;
To measure how features are used in aggregate so we can prioritise improvements;
To comply with legal and regulatory obligations (including consumer law and tax law).

4. Lawful bases for processing (UK GDPR)

Contract: to deliver the Service you have asked for — for example, to run an AI tool you submitted, to fulfil a credit-pack purchase, to validate your engine lifetime licence, or to publish and keep serving something you asked us to publish;
Legitimate interests: to keep the Services secure, prevent abuse and fraud, moderate published content, review reports, protect other users, and improve our products (balanced against your rights);
Consent: for optional cookies, marketing emails (where applicable), and other optional features. You can withdraw consent at any time;
Legal obligation: where we are required to process data to comply with UK law (e.g. accounting records).

5. AI tools & generations

When you use one of our AI creator tools (for example the image, sprite sheet, vector art, 3D model, sound effect, music, voice, video, animation, writing, image-restyle and stem-separation tools), the following happens:

Your prompt and any reference file you upload are sent to a third-party AI provider (based in the USA), which runs the model and returns the result. Which provider depends on the tool — the image, audio, video, 3D and animation tools use our inference provider; the writing, localization, game-design, HTML5-game and SVG tools use a text-generation provider. Both are named in § 8;
The result is downloaded back to our servers and stored on your account so it appears in your Gallery and tool history pages;
We store the prompt and a record of the job (status, credits charged, completion time) so we can show you your usage and so support can debug issues;
We do not use your prompts or generations to train AI models. We do not pass them to any other third party except as needed to run the job (i.e. our AI inference provider itself).

Two different providers sit behind that first bullet, and it is worth stating plainly which is which. Anything that produces text or code — the writing, localization and game-design tools, the HTML5 game and SVG generators, the “Enhance my prompt” helper, the Forge “AI Build” assistant and the Studio prompt bar — sends the text you submit to a text-generation provider (OpenAI, in the USA). Everything that produces images, audio, video or 3D goes to our media inference provider instead. Both are named in § 8, and the same rule applies to both: your text is used to answer your request and not to train models.

Our AI inference provider's processing is governed by their own privacy notice. At time of writing, they do not retain inputs or outputs beyond what is necessary to fulfil the request, but the authoritative position is set out in their own notice.

You can delete individual generations from your dashboard at any time. Deleting the underlying account removes all generations and their associated metadata within a short retention window.

6. Public handles, the community gallery & reports

Everything described above is private to your account. This section is about the parts of the Services that are not — where information about you is published rather than merely processed. Publishing is always something you do deliberately; nothing here happens to an account that never uses these features.

Your handle is public and permanent. To publish to the community gallery, comment or like, you must first claim a handle. Once claimed:

It is public — visible to anyone on the internet, signed in or not;
It appears on every item you publish and every comment you post, and it forms the web address of your public profile page;
It is permanent for as long as you hold it. There is no rename, and you cannot give a handle up while keeping your account, because a freed handle could be claimed by someone else and inherit links pointing at you. Deleting your account is the one thing that does release it — see the account-deletion note below. If yours is genuinely wrong, email us and we will look at it by hand;
It is the only thing about your account that is published. Your name, email address and profile photo are not shown on any public page, and the community pages are deliberately built so that they cannot be.

Because the handle is public, please do not choose one that reveals something about you that you would rather keep private, and bear in mind that reusing a handle you already use on another platform links the two together.

Search engines. Being honest about this matters, because the answer is not the same for every page:

The community gallery itself is open to search engines. Your handle appears there on any item you publish, so your handle can be indexed and can appear in search results;
Individual share links (/s/…) are open to search engines. That is the point of them — they are meant to be findable and shareable;
Your public profile page currently asks search engines not to index it, so that everything you have ever published is less easily collected onto one searchable page under your handle. This is a request, not a wall: major search engines normally honour it, but we cannot guarantee that every crawler will, and the page itself remains publicly readable by anyone who visits it. Treat it as public.

What appears on a published item. When you publish a generation, the following becomes visible to anyone: the file itself (and a thumbnail we derive from it), the tool that made it, any caption you gave it, the prompt you typed where the tool records one, the date you published it, its comment and like counts, and your handle. We deliberately do not publish the filenames of files you uploaded — those routinely contain real names, client names and project names — nor any prompt text the system generated or rewrote on your behalf, nor your account name, email address or profile photo. Generations you have not published stay private.

Comments and likes are public. A comment is published with your handle and the time you posted it, and stays visible until you delete it or we remove it. You can edit a comment for a short window after posting; an edited comment is marked as edited. Likes are public as a count; who liked what is not shown to other users.

Reports are not public, but they are not anonymous either. When you report something, we record what you reported, the reason you chose, anything you typed, and who you are. That record is visible to our staff so we can review the report, de-duplicate it and act on it. It is never shown to the person you reported, or to any other user. We keep the report even after the reported item is removed, because it is the record of a moderation decision. If you would rather not file a report while signed in, you can email support@annomotion.studio instead.

Taking things back down. You control your published content, and you can withdraw it at any time from your account:

Remove an item from the gallery, or revoke its share link — it stops being served immediately, on the page, on the file itself and on its thumbnail;
Delete a comment — it disappears from public view immediately. We keep the underlying record for a period so that any open report about it can still be reviewed, and it is destroyed outright if the generation it was posted on is deleted;
Withdraw a like — the row is deleted;
Delete the generation — this also kills its public page, its share link and every comment and like attached to it.

What we cannot do is recall copies that have already left our systems. Search-engine caches, other people's browser caches, screenshots, reposts and downloads made while the content was public are not ours to delete. We will help where we reasonably can — for example by asking a search engine to refresh a cached page — but we cannot promise a result. This is a limit of the internet, not a limit on your rights: see § 12 for how to exercise those, including erasure.

Deleting your account. Deleting your account removes your account record and your generations, and the public pages that depended on them stop resolving. Reports you filed are retained as moderation records with the link to you removed. Be aware that deleting the account also releases the handle: once your account record is gone, the handle is no longer held by anyone and could in principle be claimed by another user in future. If that matters to you, tell us before you delete and we can reserve it.

7. ArcadeOn Engine app

The ArcadeOn Engine desktop application authenticates against this site using an API token issued to your account. When you launch the app, it makes a small number of HTTPS calls to annomotion.studio to:

Verify the token is still valid (so we can revoke compromised tokens);
Check whether you hold the lifetime licence (so the app can unlock Pro features);
Tell you about a new engine download when one is available.

Each call sends the token plus standard request metadata (IP, user-agent, timestamp). It does not send your project files, assets, or anything you create inside the app. Your projects live on your own machine unless you separately export or share them.

We never sell your personal data. We share data only with carefully selected processors who help us run the Services:

Stripe — payment processing. Stripe sees your name, email, billing address and card details; we only receive a transaction summary.
AI inference provider (fal.ai, USA) — for our AI creator tools. The provider receives the prompt and any reference image or audio associated with a single job (see § 5).
Text-generation provider (OpenAI, USA) — powers every tool that produces text or code, listed in § 5. It receives the text you submit to those tools; we do not use it to train models.
Google (Sign-In / OAuth) — when you choose “Sign in with Google”, Google confirms your identity and provides your name, email and Google account identifier so we can create or access your account.
Cloud hosting and infrastructure providers used to run the website, store generations and deliver emails.
Google Analytics 4 (Google Ireland Ltd.) — website analytics. Loaded in Google Consent Mode v2 with analytics denied by default, so no analytics cookies are set on your device until you accept analytics cookies via the cookie banner. IP addresses are anonymised.
Professional advisers (legal, accounting) under confidentiality, where strictly necessary.

We may also disclose data where required by law, court order, or to protect the rights, property or safety of users or the public.

9. International transfers

Some of our processors are located outside the United Kingdom — most notably Stripe and our AI inference and text-generation providers, which are based in the United States. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (with UK Addendum), or an adequacy decision by the UK Government, depending on the destination country.

10. How long we keep data

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected:

Account data — for the life of your account, plus up to 90 days after deletion to handle refunds, security incidents and legal claims;
AI generations and prompts — for the life of your account, or until you delete them in-app, whichever is sooner;
Stripe transaction records — retained for at least 7 years to satisfy UK tax and accounting requirements;
Purchase-consent records — when you buy credits or a subscription, we record that you ticked the checkout box asking us to start straight away and acknowledging the loss of your 14-day cancellation right, with the time, your IP address and your browser. We keep these as evidence of the contract for up to 6 years after the purchase, even if you delete your account;
Server logs and access records — typically 30 days, longer for security incidents under investigation;
Support correspondence — up to 24 months after the last reply, then archived or deleted.

11. Cookies and similar technologies

We use strictly necessary cookies to keep the site working — for example, your login session and CSRF protection. Optional cookies (preferences and analytics) are only set after you accept them via our cookie banner. You can change your choices at any time using the “Cookie settings” link in our footer.

The site uses Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-82GT4QBP6V) to help us understand how pages are used. Google Analytics loads in Consent Mode v2 with all storage categories denied by default — no analytics cookies are set on your device until you accept the relevant categories in the cookie banner. IP addresses are anonymised. You can opt out at any time by re-opening the cookie banner or installing Google's browser opt-out add-on.

12. Your rights

Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the right to:

Access the personal data we hold about you;
Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data (most of this is editable from your profile page);
Ask us to erase your data (the “right to be forgotten”);
Object to or restrict certain kinds of processing;
Withdraw consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of earlier processing;
Request a portable copy of data you have provided to us;
Complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) if you believe we have mishandled your data.

You can delete individual AI generations and revoke API tokens directly from your dashboard. For everything else, email hello@arcadeonstudios.co.uk and we will respond within one month.

13. Children

Our Services are not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. In the UK, the age at which a child can consent to online services under data-protection law is 13; in the EEA this can be higher (up to 16) depending on the country, and consent below the applicable age may require parental approval. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will remove it.

14. Security

We use industry-standard technical and organisational measures to protect personal data — including TLS in transit, password and token hashing, access controls, audit logging, and signed time-limited URLs for accessing generated files. No internet service can be guaranteed 100% secure, but we commit to notifying affected users and the ICO where required in the event of a material personal-data breach.

15. Contact & changes

Questions, requests, or concerns? Email hello@arcadeonstudios.co.uk. Your use of the Services is also governed by our Terms of Service.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent version. Material changes will be signposted on the website or by email where appropriate.