Last updated 11 October 2026
This policy explains what personal data Solar Rust collects, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and what your rights are. It covers the Servers, the Website, our Discord server and the Store. Words such as Servers, Store and Paid Content have the meanings given in our Terms of Service.
1. Who we are
Solar Rust is run from the United Kingdom by its owner, trading as Solar Rust, who is the controller of your personal data. That means we decide how and why it is used. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean Solar Rust. You can reach us about your data through the routes below.
- Email: support@solarrust.net
- Discord: open a ticket in our Discord server and mark it as a Privacy Request
We handle personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Members of our staff team can see the data they need for their role, such as chat logs and moderation records, and must follow our instructions when they use it.
2. What we collect
- Steam: your Steam ID, public display name and avatar, which Steam gives us when you sign in. We also check whether you are in our Steam group and, if your Steam game details are public, read your total Rust hours.
- Discord: your Discord user ID, username and avatar when you connect Discord. In our Discord server we also see whether you are a member, your roles, whether you boost the server, whether you display our server tag, and which invite link you joined with.
- Account links: which Steam and Discord accounts are linked and when, and when, why and by whom a link was removed. Each link and unlink is posted to a staff-only Discord channel.
- Gameplay: your in-game name and statistics, recorded against your Steam ID for each Server and Wipe. These include kills, deaths, headshots, shots fired and hit, longest kill, best kill streak, kills by weapon, animal and NPC kills, structures destroyed, rockets fired, C4 thrown, playtime and event results.
- In-game chat: messages you send in game chat, with your Steam ID, the Server and the time.
- Signs: images and text you put on signs with /sil and /silt, with your Steam ID, the Server and the time.
- Moderation records: reports made by or about you, warnings, mutes (including automatic ones), kicks, bans, appeals and the reasons for them, and a log of the actions staff take in our moderation tools.
- Discord activity: messages you send in our Discord server, copies of edited and deleted messages kept in staff-only logs, and automatic moderation actions.
- Connection data: IP addresses and related technical data seen by the Servers, the Website and our security tools.
- Purchases: what you bought, when, the price, the Server you chose, your order reference and, for a gift, the recipient's Steam ID. For Subscriptions, we read the status and next renewal date from PayNow so you can see and cancel them on your profile. If PayNow passes us the email address you used at checkout, we use it only to deal with your order. PayNow handles your card details. We never see or store them.
- Support: messages and attachments you send in tickets or by email, and records of privacy requests and complaints.
Most of this comes from you or from your use of the Services. Some comes from Steam, Discord and PayNow as described above, and some from other players, for example when they report you.
You need a Steam account to play and to buy Paid Content. Linking Discord is optional, but some features, such as tickets and linked-only kits, need it.
3. Why we use it, and our lawful basis
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Signing you in, linking your Steam and Discord accounts, and giving you linked perks and Discord roles | Contract |
| Delivering Paid Content to the right Steam ID and Server, managing Subscriptions and sorting out problems with orders | Contract |
| Delivering a gift to the recipient's Steam ID | Legitimate interests: carrying out the buyer's order |
| Running the Servers, the Website and our Discord server and keeping them secure, including blocking spam and attacks | Legitimate interests: providing a working, secure service |
| Recording gameplay statistics and showing public leaderboards and player profiles | Legitimate interests: letting players see how they compare. You can object at any time (section 10). |
| Moderating chat, signs and our Discord server, handling reports, sanctions and appeals | Legitimate interests: keeping the community safe and enforcing our rules |
| Detecting cheating and ban evasion, and voiding the stats of players banned for cheating | Legitimate interests: keeping the game fair |
| Keeping link history and a log of staff actions | Legitimate interests: preventing fraud and ban evasion, and holding staff to account |
| Answering support tickets and emails | Contract where it concerns your account or a purchase, otherwise legitimate interests: helping you |
| Keeping purchase records for tax and accounting | Legal obligation |
| Handling privacy requests and complaints | Legal obligation |
| Dealing with chargebacks and legal claims | Legitimate interests: protecting our legal rights |
| Responding to requests from the police, courts or regulators | Legal obligation, or legitimate interests in helping to prevent crime |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interests against your rights, and you can object (section 10). We do not rely on your consent for any of the uses in this policy. We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising or marketing.
4. What is public
Our leaderboards and player profiles are public. They show your Steam name, avatar and Steam ID, your in-game statistics including event wins, and your Rust hours if your Steam game details are public. Players banned for cheating are removed from the leaderboard and their stats are voided for that Wipe.
Event results, including the names of winning players and teams, are posted in game chat and in our Discord server. Anything you say in game chat or put on a sign can be seen by other players. Staff names, roles and avatars appear on the Website.
5. Moderation and automatic actions
Staff can see in-game chat from the last 14 days, sign uploads, reports and moderation records in our moderation tools. Every action staff take in those tools is recorded in an audit log.
Some moderation is automatic. Our chat filters mute players who use banned words, in game and in Discord, and our Discord moderation mutes accounts that spam the same message or mass-ping. Automatic mutes get longer for repeat offences. If you think an automatic action was wrong, open a ticket and a member of staff will review it.
If you report another player, we do not tell them who made the report.
6. Account linking
You sign in on Steam's and Discord's own pages, using Steam OpenID and Discord OAuth2, so we never see your passwords. From Discord we only ask for your basic profile. You can unlink either account at any time on the Link page. When neither account is linked any more, your profile is deleted. Link history and moderation records are kept for the periods in section 9.
7. Who we share data with
We use the providers below to run the Services. Processors only use your data on our instructions. Independent controllers decide how they use the data themselves, under their own privacy policies.
- PayNow (PayNow Services, Inc., United States): runs the Store checkout as our merchant of record. We send PayNow your Steam ID, the items in your order, the Server you chose, and your IP address and country so local prices and tax can be worked out. We also use your Steam ID to look up and cancel your Subscriptions when you ask on your profile. PayNow is an independent controller for the payment and its own records, under its privacy policy.
- Valve (Steam): sign-in, and lookups of your profile, Steam group membership and Rust hours. Steam avatars on the Website load from Steam's image servers. Independent controller.
- Discord: sign-in, our Discord server, roles, our bot and tickets. Independent controller.
- Discord bot providers: some of the bots in our Discord server, used for tickets, message logs and moderation, are run by other providers. They process your Discord ID, messages and ticket contents for us. Processors.
- Cloudflare: hosts and protects the Website and handles traffic to it. Processor.
- Hetzner and our game server hosting provider: host the Servers, our API, our database and our bots. Processors.
- Anti-cheat and ban management services: process Steam IDs, gameplay data and connection data for us to detect cheating and enforce bans. Processors.
- BattleMetrics: lists our Servers and supplies the player counts on the Website. Your browser loads those counts directly from BattleMetrics, which sees your IP address. BattleMetrics also collects player names and play sessions from the servers it lists, under its own privacy policy. Independent controller.
- Google Fonts: the Website's fonts load from Google, which sees your IP address. Independent controller.
- RustLabs: the item pictures in the Store's kit contents load from rustlabs.com, which sees your IP address. Independent controller.
- Police, courts and regulators: only where the law requires it, or where it is needed to prevent crime or protect someone from harm.
- A new operator: if someone else takes over running Solar Rust, your data would pass to them so the Services can continue. We would tell you before this happens.
8. Transfers outside the UK
Some of these providers are based outside the UK, mostly in the United States, and Cloudflare handles traffic through data centres around the world. When we send personal data outside the UK, it is protected in one of these ways:
- the country is covered by UK adequacy regulations, as the EEA is;
- the US provider is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, also called the UK-US data bridge; or
- the transfer is made under contract terms approved under UK law: the International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.
Steam, Discord, PayNow, BattleMetrics, Google and RustLabs receive some data directly from your browser and are responsible for their own transfers. You can ask us which safeguard applies to a particular provider.
9. How long we keep data
| Data | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| In-game chat | 14 days, then deleted automatically |
| Sign uploads made with /sil and /silt | 30 days |
| Sign-in session | 30 days from when you sign in, or until you sign out |
| Linked profile (your Steam and Discord details) | Until you unlink both accounts |
| Link history, including the staff link log | 2 years after the link ends, or longer while either account is banned |
| Gameplay statistics | For as long as the Services run, so lifetime stats can be shown, unless you ask us to remove them |
| Website and API logs, including IP addresses | 30 days |
| Server connection records, including IP addresses | 90 days |
| Reports, warnings, mutes and kicks | 12 months after the report is closed or the sanction ends |
| Bans, with the connection data linked to them | For as long as the ban lasts, then 12 months |
| Staff action log | 12 months |
| Staff-only logs of edited and deleted Discord messages | 90 days |
| Messages in our Discord server | Until you or we delete them |
| Purchase records | 6 years from the end of the tax year of the purchase, for tax, accounting and legal claims |
| Support tickets and emails | 12 months after the ticket is closed, or as long as the purchase record if it is about a purchase |
| Privacy requests and complaints | 2 years after we close them |
10. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- access your personal data and get a copy of it;
- have inaccurate data corrected;
- have your data erased;
- restrict how we use your data, for example while we check whether it is accurate;
- object to us using your data on the basis of legitimate interests. For example, you can ask to be taken off the public leaderboards and player profiles, and we will do it;
- receive the data you gave us in a portable, machine-readable format, and have it sent to someone else, where this right applies (portability); and
- ask for a person to review an automatic moderation action.
To use any of these rights, open a ticket in our Discord server and mark it as a Privacy Request, or email support@solarrust.net. It is free. We may ask you to prove that you own the Steam or Discord account first, and the time limit starts once you have. We reply within one month. If a request is complex, or you send several, we can extend this by up to two more months, and we will tell you within the first month if we need to. If a request is clearly unfounded or excessive, we can refuse it or charge a reasonable fee, and we will explain why.
Sometimes we cannot delete or stop using data, for example where we need it to enforce a ban, prevent fraud or meet a legal obligation. If so, we will tell you why. When we answer a request for your data, we do not reveal other people's personal data, including who reported you.
11. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have used your data, please tell us first, using any of the contact routes in section 1. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, keep you updated and tell you the outcome.
You also have the right to complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commission, which replaced the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in 2026.
- Website: ico.org.uk
- Helpline: 0303 123 1113
If you live in the EU or EEA, you can also complain to the data protection authority in your country.
12. Children
The Services are for people aged 16 and over, in line with Rust's PEGI 16 rating. We do not check ages, but we act when we find out that someone is too young. If we find out that a user is under 16, we remove their access.
We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. Under UK data protection law, an online service that relies on consent needs a parent's consent for a child under 13, and we do not offer the Services on that basis. If we find out that a user is under 13, we unlink their accounts, remove them from the leaderboards and delete their personal data. We keep only their Steam ID and Discord ID on a block list, and anything the law requires us to keep. A parent or guardian can ask us to do this using the contact routes in section 1.
13. Cookies and browser storage
The Website only uses cookies and browser storage that it needs to work, plus a few items that remember choices you make. We do not use analytics, tracking or advertising cookies. Our Cookie Notice lists each item, what it does and how long it lasts.
14. Security
We protect your data with encrypted connections, signed sign-in cookies, staff access limited to what each role needs, and automatic deletion of chat logs after 14 days. No system is completely secure. If a data breach is likely to put you at high risk, we will tell you without undue delay.
15. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. The date at the top of this page shows when it last changed, and we announce significant changes in our Discord server.