Safety centre

Adults and teens are separate spaces

This is the most important thing on this page. PlayersPuff has two spaces that do not touch:

• 13–17 (Teen): Friends mode only. Dating is not available, is not shown, and is refused by the server if requested directly. Teens are matched only with other 13–17s.
• 18+ (Adult): Date mode, Friends mode or both. Adults are matched only with other adults.

An adult and a teen can never be put in a queue together, matched, shown in each other’s discovery, sent a message, or shown each other’s profile. We treat that as a property of the system rather than a rule people follow, and we enforce it in five independent places:

1. The matchmaking queues are partitioned by age bracket, so a teen ticket and an adult ticket are never even held in the same place to be compared.
2. Every database query that returns people is scoped to your own bracket. There is no code path that fetches a person without that filter.
3. The realtime layer checks the bracket again when a game or chat connection opens, and refuses a mismatch.
4. Every API route re-derives your bracket from your session rather than trusting anything the app sends.
5. The database itself refuses to store a cross-bracket match, chat message, block, game or decision. If every layer above failed, the write would still be rejected.

We also run automated tests whose only purpose is to try to create a cross-bracket interaction and assert that it fails. Those tests run on every change, and a change that breaks the separation cannot be merged.

How we verify age

Everyone confirms their age twice: a date of birth, and a facial age estimate from a short selfie handled by a specialist verification provider.

• If the two agree, your account is verified and you can play.
• If they disagree, or the check is inconclusive, your account is held and a person reviews it. While it is held we apply whichever of the two answers is more protective. If you declared 25 and the estimate says 15, you wait in the teen space, because treating a possible minor as a minor is the safer mistake.
• Under 13s cannot sign up. We refuse the account and do not keep the date of birth, the selfie or anything else.
• Changing bracket later — including turning 18 — requires re-verification and a human review. It never happens silently.

The selfie is sent to the verification provider and is not retained by us as a profile photo or used for anything else. Photo verification badges, which are separate and optional, work from a photo you choose to submit for that purpose.

What chat blocks

Messages are checked on our servers before they are delivered. A blocked message is never shown to the other person and is never stored as a message.

Filters are not perfect, in either direction. They occasionally stop something harmless, and a determined person will sometimes get something past them. That is exactly why reporting matters, and why repeated filter hits are recorded and surfaced to moderators even when no one reports them — a pattern of attempts is itself a signal.

Reporting and blocking

You can act on any player, from the game screen, the chat or their profile.

• Block — they disappear from your experience and you from theirs. Blocks work both ways: neither of you can see, match with, message or search the other, and any existing match closes.
• Report — choose a category, add detail if you want, and we capture the surrounding conversation as evidence so a moderator can see the context rather than one line out of nowhere. Reporting offers to block at the same time.
• Unmatch — end a match quietly, with no reason given and no notification sent.

Every report filed from the teen space, and anything in any space categorised as minor safety, grooming or an underage account, is marked critical and goes to the top of the moderation queue. Evidence is frozen at the moment of reporting, so someone deleting their messages afterwards does not erase what the moderator sees.

If a child is in immediate danger, please contact your local emergency services or your national child protection hotline directly — do not wait for us.

For parents and guardians

If your child is using the teen space, here is what that actually means in practice:

• There is no dating. It cannot be enabled, by them or by us.
• They are only ever matched with other 13–17 year olds. Adults cannot see them, message them or appear in their matching at all.
• We do not know or store where they are beyond country and region. No distance, no coordinates, no city.
• Chat is text and stickers. They cannot send or receive photos, and contact details and links are blocked.
• They cannot spend money. There is no premium tier shown to them.

In countries where the law requires it, we ask for your consent by email before the account becomes active, and we explain the above in that email. You can withdraw consent at any time, which deletes the account and its data.

If you have a concern about a specific account or conversation, email safety@playerspuff.com and say it concerns a minor — those go to the priority queue.

Your data and your control

From Settings you can, at any time:

• Hide your profile — stay signed in but stop appearing in matching.
• Download your data — a JSON export of your profile, matches, messages, games and account history.
• Delete your account — removes your profile, photos, matches, messages and games. We retain moderation records of reports you were involved in only where we are legally required to, and nothing else.

We never store your exact coordinates. Adult distance matching is computed from a coarse location grid, and we strip location metadata from every photo on upload.

Reaching our safety team

Email safety@playerspuff.com. We aim to respond to all reports within 24 hours, and to anything involving a minor within 2 hours. If you are reporting something urgent, please put “urgent” in the subject line.