Privacy Policy

The VI is an independent, fan-created news and information site about Grand Theft Auto VI. This policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, who processes it on our behalf, and the choices you have. It describes the platform as it actually works today, and flags the systems we are preparing to launch.

You can read almost all of The VI without an account. Accounts, community participation, Ask Gat history, saved content and memberships are optional and only collect information when you choose to use them.

Paid VI Insider subscriptions and display advertising are not active yet. The sections below describing Stripe payments and advertising explain how those systems will work once we turn them on.

When you create an account or use interactive features, we store what you submit:

• Account details — email address and authentication identifiers. You can sign up with an email and password or with Google sign-in, in which case Google shares your basic profile details with us.
• Profile information — username, display name, bio, avatar image, cover/banner image, location text, preferred gaming platforms, gamer tags, favourite game/protagonist/vehicle, social links, and profile appearance choices such as theme, border and title. Everything except your username is optional.
• Community content — posts, comments, votes, poll responses, crew names and memberships, live chat messages, and reactions.
• Uploaded media — images and short videos you attach to your profile or to community content, stored in our managed media buckets.
• Reports and moderation submissions — the content you flag and any explanation you add.
• Ask Gat messages — the questions you send to our assistant, and, if you are signed in and save a conversation, the thread it belongs to.
• Contact and support messages — anything you send us through the contact form.
• Newsletter details — email address, optional display name, content preferences, the signup source, and consent proof (the exact wording you agreed to, the time, your IP address and browser user agent).

Newsletter signups are stored in our database and delivered with Resend, our email provider. Signup is double opt-in: nothing is sent until you click the confirmation link in the first email, and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe. If you are signed in when you subscribe, we link the subscription to your account. The contact form is still not connected to an email provider — it confirms your submission in the browser and nothing is transmitted or stored.

To make your account useful across devices, we store the state your activity produces:

• Bookmarks and saved content
• Recently viewed articles, guides and database entries
• XP, level, reputation, ranks, badges and daily activity streaks
• Follows and crew membership
• Notifications generated by activity involving you
• Personal markers you save on the Leonida map
• Saved Ask Gat conversations and their messages
• Membership and entitlement state, including VI Insider status once subscriptions launch
• Feature usage counters used to operate the service and support future usage limits

Cart contents for the merchandise shop are held in your browser and with Shopify, not in your The VI account.

Like any hosted website, our infrastructure and the services we use record technical information when you visit:

• Device and browser information, such as browser type, operating system and screen size
• IP address, processed by our hosting, database and security layers, including for rate limiting and abuse prevention
• Pages and features visited, and the approximate time of the request
• Referring page, where your browser sends one
• Session and activity signals, such as when you were last active
• Error and performance information when something breaks, which may include the page URL and a technical stack trace

An approximate region can sometimes be inferred from an IP address by our infrastructure providers. The VI does not request or collect precise GPS location, and does not ask for device location permissions.

We are beginning to measure how The VI is used so we can improve it. This covers overall site usage, feature engagement, map interaction, Ask Gat usage, tool usage, community engagement, repeat visits, and performance and reliability.

Some measurement is derived from data already stored in your account, such as activity records and usage counters, which are linked to your account identifier. Some interest signals for the membership page are currently buffered in your browser's session storage and are not tied to your identity.

We will not describe analytics as fully anonymous where account identifiers, cookies or device/session identifiers are involved. If we connect a third-party analytics provider, we will name it here before it goes live.

Ask Gat is our in-site assistant. When you send a message, it is transmitted to our server and forwarded to an AI model provider through the Lovable AI Gateway, which currently routes Ask Gat requests to a Google Gemini model. The provider processes your message to generate a response.

• If you are signed in, conversations may be saved to your account so you can return to them. You can delete saved threads.
• If you are not signed in, your conversation is not stored against an account, though the request is still processed to generate an answer.
• Ask Gat can search our own published content and knowledge base to answer questions; those lookups happen on our systems.
• Usage of Ask Gat is measured for service operation, abuse prevention, performance and future usage limits.

Please do not submit sensitive personal information — financial details, government identifiers, health information or anyone else's personal data — through Ask Gat. Gat is a fan-made assistant and its answers can be wrong.

The VI is a community site. Anything you intentionally publish is visible to other people, and may be visible to anyone on the internet and indexed by search engines.

• Your profile, including username, display name, avatar, banner, bio and profile details you fill in
• Posts, comments, poll responses and votes where the result is publicly displayed
• Crew names and membership
• Live chat messages and reactions during streams
• Community media you upload
• Badges, ranks, levels and leaderboard placement

Do not post information you would not want to be public, including your real address, contact details or anyone else's personal information. Moderators and staff can see reported content and the account that submitted it.

The VI intends to support the free tier with display advertising through Google AdSense. We are working through approval, and no advertising code is loaded on the site today.

Once advertising is active, advertising providers may use cookies or similar technologies to serve ads, measure ad performance, detect and prevent fraud or invalid traffic, limit how often you see the same ad, and personalise advertising where this is legally permitted and, where required, where appropriate consent has been given.

• Advertising will never be placed inside Ask Gat conversations, the Leonida map canvas, community composers, comment threads, live chat, verification labels and sources, navigation or checkout.
• Active VI Insider members receive an ad-free experience; advertising scripts are not loaded for accounts with the ad-free entitlement.
• Sharing information with advertising providers so they can serve and measure ads is not the same as selling personal information. The VI does not sell personal information for money.

Where consent is legally required for advertising or analytics cookies, we will present a consent control before those technologies load, and this section will be updated with the specific providers and choices available.

VI Insider is our planned paid membership. Nothing is charged today and no payment provider is connected yet. The membership pages describe target pricing only.

When subscriptions are activated, they will work as follows:

• Payments will be processed by Stripe using Stripe-hosted payment pages. Card details are entered with Stripe, not with us.
• The VI does not receive or store full payment-card numbers when Stripe-hosted payment processing is used.
• Stripe may collect payment, billing, transaction, device and fraud-prevention information under its own privacy practices, acting as an independent controller for those purposes.
• The VI will receive and store only what is needed to run your membership: subscription status, tier, billing interval, current billing period end, whether the membership is set to cancel at period end, a founding member number where applicable, and Stripe customer and subscription identifiers.

Our membership records are already structured for exactly those fields. We will update this policy with cancellation, renewal and refund specifics before checkout opens.

Physical and printed merchandise is sold through Shopify. Product listings and your cart are handled by Shopify's storefront service, and checkout takes place on Shopify's hosted checkout.

• Information you enter at checkout — name, shipping and billing address, contact details and payment information — is collected and processed by Shopify and its payment processors, under their own privacy practices.
• The VI does not receive or store full payment-card details for merchandise orders.
• Your cart is kept in your browser and with Shopify, and is linked to your The VI account only so it can follow you between your own devices.

To be clear: Shopify handles merchandise purchases. Stripe will handle VI Insider digital memberships once they are live. They are separate systems and do not share a customer record.

We use a small number of browser storage technologies:

• Essential — authentication and session tokens that keep you signed in, and security measures that protect accounts and prevent abuse. The site cannot work without these.
• Preferences — interface choices such as map layer settings, recently viewed items and dismissed prompts.
• Shopping — cart identifiers for the merchandise shop.
• Performance — error and performance signals used to detect and fix problems.
• Analytics and advertising — not active today. If and when analytics or AdSense technologies are enabled, they will be described here and, where legally required, gated behind a consent control.

Most of this is stored in your browser's local or session storage rather than in traditional cookies. You can clear browser storage or block cookies at any time, but signing in and some features will stop working.

• Operating and maintaining The VI
• Creating and securing accounts and sessions
• Saving your bookmarks, progress, preferences and personalisation
• Providing community features such as posts, comments, crews and live chat
• Providing Ask Gat and improving its answers
• Operating the Leonida map, trackers and other tools
• Processing merchandise purchases, and subscriptions once they launch
• Sending communications you asked for
• Measuring usage and reliability to improve the product
• Detecting, investigating and preventing fraud, spam, abuse and security incidents
• Moderating content and enforcing our Terms and community rules
• Meeting legal obligations and responding to lawful requests

We do not sell your personal information. We do rely on service providers to run the platform, and those providers necessarily process data on our behalf. The categories and the providers actually in use today are:

• Hosting, application delivery and error reporting — Lovable, which hosts and serves the site.
• Database, authentication, file storage and realtime features — Supabase, which stores accounts, profiles, community content and uploaded media.
• AI processing for Ask Gat — the Lovable AI Gateway, currently routing to a Google Gemini model.
• Merchandise commerce — Shopify.
• Live streaming and realtime media — LiveKit and Cloudflare Realtime, used when a live stream is running.
• Video embeds — YouTube, when you play an embedded official trailer or video.
• Payments for VI Insider — Stripe, once subscriptions are activated.
• Advertising — Google AdSense, once advertising is approved and activated.
• Resend — delivers newsletter confirmation and newsletter emails, and therefore processes your email address and display name. Contact-form email delivery is still not connected.

We may also disclose information where we believe in good faith that it is required by law or legal process, to protect the rights, safety or property of The VI, our users or the public, or in connection with a merger, acquisition or other business transfer, in which case this policy will continue to apply until it is replaced.

We keep information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described here, or as required for legal, security, dispute-resolution and operational reasons.

• Account, profile and saved data is kept while your account exists.
• Community posts, comments and uploads remain visible until you or a moderator remove them.
• Saved Ask Gat threads remain until you delete them or delete your account.
• Moderation reports and security records may be retained after related content is removed, so repeat abuse can be handled.
• Backups and logs are cycled on our providers' schedules, so deleted content can persist briefly in backups before it is overwritten.

We have not set fixed retention periods for every category yet. When we do, they will be stated here rather than described in vague terms.

• View and update most of your information directly in your profile and settings.
• Delete individual posts, comments, uploads, bookmarks, map markers and saved Ask Gat threads from within the site.
• Request a copy of your personal information, correction of inaccurate information, or deletion of your account and associated records by contacting us. These requests are currently handled manually — there is no one-click export or self-serve account deletion yet.
• Unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time — every email includes an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect immediately.
• Control cookies and browser storage through your browser settings, and use the consent control for advertising and analytics technologies once those are active.

Deleting your account removes your profile and account data. Content you posted publicly may be removed or, where it forms part of a conversation, anonymised; copies may persist briefly in backups and in moderation or security records where we are permitted or required to keep them.

The VI covers an adult-rated game. Accounts, community participation, media uploads and memberships are intended for people aged 16 and over. The site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete it. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will act on it.

We do not currently verify age at sign-up beyond this requirement. Personalised advertising will not be knowingly directed to users we know to be under the applicable age.

We use reasonable administrative, technical and organisational safeguards to protect information, including row-level database access rules that restrict records to their owner, private media storage, server-side checks for anything privileged, and hosted payment pages so card details never reach our systems.

No online service can guarantee absolute security. We make no security certification claims. Use a strong, unique password, and tell us if you believe your account has been compromised.

The VI is operated from and hosted on infrastructure that may process data in the United States and other countries. If you access the site from elsewhere, your information may be transferred to and processed in those countries.

• United States — depending on your state, you may have rights to know what personal information we hold, to request correction or deletion, and to appeal a refusal. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising unless and until personalised advertising is activated with the required disclosures and controls.
• California — residents may exercise the rights above and will not be discriminated against for doing so. An authorised agent may submit a request on your behalf.
• EEA and UK — where these laws apply, we process information to perform our agreement with you (accounts and memberships), for our legitimate interests (operating, securing and improving the site), with your consent (newsletters, and advertising or analytics cookies where consent is required), and to comply with legal obligations. You may request access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, or object to processing, and you may complain to your local supervisory authority.

Requests are handled manually and we will verify that a request comes from the right person before acting on it.

The VI links to and embeds third-party services, including official Rockstar Games sources, YouTube videos, social posts and our Shopify shop. Those services have their own privacy practices, and loading an embed lets that provider see that your browser requested it. We are not responsible for how third parties handle your information.

This policy is effective August 21, 2026 and was last updated August 21, 2026. We will update it as the platform changes, including before advertising or paid subscriptions go live.

When we make material changes, we will update the dates at the top of this page and, where appropriate, highlight the change on the site or notify account holders.

For privacy questions or to make a privacy request, use the contact form at /contact and mark your message "Privacy request". Include enough detail for us to find your account.

The VI is an independent fan publication and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.