Privacy

Last updated 18 September 2026

Buried Worlds VR is published by MELVIA PTY. LTD. (ACN 159 295 824, ABN 41 159 295 824), trading as Bellare Studios, of 372/585 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia. This policy covers the game on Meta Quest and, from its release, on Steam for PC VR, and it covers this website. Privacy questions and requests go to [email protected].

The short version

The game does not have accounts, does not show ads, and contains no analytics or tracking software. It runs fully offline once installed, it does not know who you are, and it never asks for your name, email address or location. Your progress is a file on your own headset and never leaves it. The one thing the game ever sends us is feedback you choose to send, from a form you have to go and open yourself.

This website is separate. It has no mailing list and no accounts, and asks you for nothing anywhere you can reach from the front page — but it does use Google Analytics to count visits and the Meta pixel to measure advertising, both of which set cookies. That is the only tracking anywhere in Buried Worlds VR, and it is on the website only, never in the game.

There is one exception, and it is deliberate: if we are running a paid playtest, the application page for it asks for your email address and some details about your headset. That page is the only part of Buried Worlds VR that collects contact details, you only ever reach it by choosing to, and it is described in full below.

The VR game

Everything the game remembers about you is stored on your headset: your three save slots, the money and tools they hold, which finds you have recovered, quest progress, and your comfort and audio settings. None of it is transmitted anywhere. We cannot see it, and we have no server that receives it. Uninstalling the game removes it.

The game contains no advertising, no analytics, no crash-reporting service and no social features. It makes no network requests of its own except when you send us feedback, described next.

Feedback you send us

The settings menu has a "Send Feedback" panel: a short questionnaire about your experience, including whether you felt any motion sickness and whether you had difficulty with the controls. It is never sent for you: you open it, you answer, and nothing leaves the headset until you press Send. If you never open it, the game never contacts us at all.

When you do send it, this is everything that goes with your answers, which reach us as option identifiers — the choices you tapped, not words:

• a random install identifier, created on your headset
• the build version of the game
• your device model and operating system version
• the interface language you have selected
• how long the session had been running
• a small set of progress and frame-rate figures: which world you were in, your in-game money and lifetime finds, and how smoothly the game was running

That last group exists so that a report about a problem is actionable without you having to describe your setup.

The install identifier is a random number and nothing else: it is not your Meta account, your Steam ID, your name, your email, or your headset's serial number, and it lets us do one thing only — tell two reports from the same player apart, so a follow-up makes sense. Your IP address reaches our server, as it must for any connection, and we use it to stop flooding, but we do not store it with your feedback or write it to the feedback log.

What the game deliberately does not collect

• your name, email address or any other contact detail
• your Meta account identifier, Meta username or Steam ID
• your headset's serial number or device unique identifier
• your location, IP-derived or otherwise, beyond what is inherent in making any internet request at all
• any advertising or cross-app tracking identifier

None of these would tell us anything the random install identifier does not, and every one of them would be identity we would then have to justify holding. The paid playtest is the one place we ask for some of them, and there we ask you directly, on a page that explains why.

Where feedback is kept, and for how long

Feedback is sent to an endpoint we operate and stored on a private volume hosted in Australia, with access restricted to the developer. We use it solely to improve the game: we do not advertise to you, sell it, or share it with anyone outside the small team working on the game.

Submissions are kept for 24 months from the date you send them and then deleted. You can ask us to delete yours sooner — see below.

The licence check

When the game starts, it asks the Meta platform software on your headset a single question: whether the Meta account signed in there is entitled to run Buried Worlds VR — that is, whether it was bought or invited to a test release. Meta requires this check of apps on its store. It is answered on the device by Meta's own software, tells us nothing about who you are, and produces no record that we receive or keep.

The stores

Buying, downloading and running an app from the Meta Horizon Store is handled by Meta, not by us. Anything Meta collects in the process — your purchase, your account, playtime, crash information — is governed by Meta's privacy policy and their settings, not ours. Meta may give us aggregate figures such as install counts or anonymous crash reports. Where it does, we use them only to understand how the game is performing and to fix faults, and they do not identify individual players to us.

The same will be true of Steam when the PC VR version is released: Valve is the data controller for anything collected in buying, installing or running the game there, under Valve's privacy policy, and we receive only aggregate sales and store reporting that does not identify individual players.

No third-party analytics service and no third-party crash-reporting service receives anything from the game itself. If one is ever added, it will be named here, and the change published, before the build that uses it ships.

This website

Apart from the paid playtest application described in the next section, this site asks you for nothing: no sign-up, no mailing list and no account. Our web host may keep ordinary server logs, which can include IP addresses, for security and reliability.

We do use Google Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they read, so we know whether anyone is finding the game. It sets cookies in your browser and tells Google your IP address, the pages you view, roughly where in the world you are, and basic device and browser information. We see only aggregate figures — how many visits, from which countries, to which pages — never anything that identifies you personally, and we make no attempt to work out who individual visitors are. What Google itself does with that data is governed by Google's privacy policy, not ours.

Analytics also counts two things beyond page views: when somebody follows a link from here to the game's store page, and when somebody opens the trailer. We record that it happened and which button it came from, and nothing about who did it. It tells us whether this page is doing its job, which is the only thing we can measure — the store itself tells us nothing about individual visitors, and we would not want it to.

We also use the Meta pixel, so that when an advertisement on Facebook or Instagram brings someone here, Meta can be told whether they went on to apply for the playtest, and we can see what an application costs to advertise for. It sets a cookie and tells Meta that a browser visited a page and, on the playtest confirmation page, that an application was made. It is never given anything you type — not your email address, your username or your answers — and it does not run in the admin area. What Meta does with it is governed by Meta's privacy policy.

Some links we publish pass through a short address on this website before taking you to their destination. We record the time, which campaign link was used, the referring website if your browser supplies one, a broad device category, and whether the request appears to be an automated link preview or bot. We do not store your IP address, full browser identifier, a cookie, or a fingerprint with these clicks. The records let us compare promotions and are kept for 13 months; older click records may be retained only as totals that cannot describe an individual visit.

The trailer is served from this site rather than embedded from YouTube, so watching it sets no cookies from anyone else and tells no other company that you were here. It downloads only if you press play.

One destination page, Ballarat, offers a teaser that is hosted on YouTube. Opening the page loads nothing from YouTube — the picture you see is our own screenshot. Only if you press play is a player loaded, and it comes from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube's mode that does not store viewing history on your device. From that moment Google's privacy policy applies to the player.

If you would rather not be counted, any browser setting or extension that blocks analytics or third-party scripts will stop it, and we do not try to detect or defeat them. Google also publishes an official opt-out add-on that works across every site using Analytics. Nothing on this site depends on Analytics working — blocking it costs you nothing.

Our typefaces are served from this site — no font service sees you visit. Links to Discord and Reddit take you to those services, where their own privacy policies apply — including anything you post or share there. Our community is run on Discord, so if you join it, Discord holds your account and messages under its terms, not ours.

The paid playtest

From time to time we pay a small number of people to test the game and tell us what is wrong with it. Applying is entirely voluntary, you reach the page only through a recruitment post or a link we have given you, and nothing here applies to you unless you fill that form in.

When you apply, we store what you typed:

• your email address
• your Meta Horizon username
• which headset you would test on, and how often you play VR
• two VR games you have played recently
• which country you are in
• whether you have played Buried Worlds VR before
• whether you can record gameplay or would send screenshots
• whether you are 18 or over, or 13 to 17 with a parent or guardian's agreement — we store which, not the guardian's name or details
• anything you chose to add in the optional notes box

We also store the confirmations you tick, the version of the study terms that was on screen when you applied, and the dates your application moves through the study. Nothing is inferred, derived or bought in: every field is something you knowingly wrote.

Testers aged 13 to 17 take part with a parent or guardian's agreement, and the payment goes to that adult's PayPal account. We may email the guardian to confirm before a place is offered. Nobody under 13 can apply, and nothing is collected from anyone that age.

The application page itself carries no analytics and sets no cookies. Your IP address reaches the server as it must for any connection, and is used in memory to stop flooding, but it is never stored with your application.

Your country is used for one thing: to check a payment can reach you before a place is offered. Payment details are asked for once, from testers who were offered a place, when they submit their session on the questionnaire page: the PayPal account the payment goes to. It is stored with the application, shown only on the private dashboard, and deleted with the application.

When you submit your session we store your answers, which headset you played on, roughly how long, whether your progress came back, and a link you give us to a screenshot of the game's marketplace, plus an optional clip. The image or clip stays wherever you put it — we never copy it — and the link is deleted with your application.

The website emails you about your own application and nothing else: an invitation if you are offered a place, a confirmation when your submission arrives, a note if something is missing from it, and word when payment is sent. It is sent through Amazon Web Services from an address on bellare.com.au. There is no newsletter and no follow-up marketing, and nothing you do in the game is ever emailed.

Amazon tells us whether each of those emails was accepted by your mail server, bounced, or was reported as spam; whether it was opened, by way of a small image loaded when it is displayed; and whether the link to the brief in it was followed. That is so we know an invitation reached you rather than sat in a spam folder while your week ran down. The record is deleted with your application, and a mail client that blocks images or loads them automatically simply makes the "opened" part wrong, in one direction or the other — we do not rely on it for anything you are owed.

If you are selected, this site emails you a key for the game. We do not give your details to Meta: the pixel described above tells Meta that an application was made, not by whom, and Meta learns who you are only when you redeem the key on your own account, under Meta's privacy policy. No third party receives what you wrote.

Applications are stored in a private database we operate, with access restricted to the developer. They are never sold, never used to advertise to you and never added to a mailing list — being an applicant does not mean being contacted about anything else, ever.

Unsuccessful applications are deleted within 30 days of being declined. Answers, links, PayPal accounts and the contact details of people who took part are deleted 90 days after their final payment. What we keep after that is the findings themselves, with names, addresses and usernames removed, and the accounting records for the payments, which we are required to hold separately for longer.

You are shown a short reference when you apply. Send it to [email protected] and we will show you what we hold, correct it, or delete it — before, during or after the study, with no reason needed and no effect on any payment you have already earned.

Children

Buried Worlds VR is intended for teens and adults, in line with the age group declared on the Meta Horizon Store, and is not directed at children under 13; we do not knowingly collect anything from them, and Meta requires account holders to meet its own minimum age. The game collects nothing from anyone, whatever their age. This website counts visits through Google Analytics as described above, which it does without knowing anything about who is visiting or how old they are.

Your rights and how to reach us

You can ask us for a copy of anything we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. These rights belong to everyone who plays Buried Worlds VR, wherever in the world you live. We do not ask where you are before acting on a request, and we never will.

Unless you have sent us feedback or applied to a paid playtest, we hold nothing that identifies you — your saves are yours, on your own device, and the website analytics reach us only as aggregate counts. There is nothing for us to show you, correct or erase. You are welcome to ask us to confirm that, and we will.

If you applied to a paid playtest, quote the reference you were shown and we will act on your request within 30 days. If you have lost it, the email address you applied with is enough.

If you have sent feedback, the install identifier is the only way to find your submissions again, because we hold no identity to look you up by. It is shown on the feedback screen inside the game. Send it to us and the submissions attached to it will be deleted within 30 days, and we will confirm when it is done. You can also stop any further collection at any time simply by not sending feedback.

Send any privacy question, request or complaint to [email protected] and we will respond within 30 days; for anything else, the quickest way to reach us is to ask on Discord. If our response does not satisfy you, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live. We are based in Australia, so you may also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Changes

If we add something that changes any of this — an online feature, a leaderboard, analytics of our own — we will update this page and the date at the top before it ships, not after.