Legal notice and privacy

Publisher

This site is published by Zapz, as an individual.

Hosting

Host: Cloudflare, Inc. (Cloudflare Pages), 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, United States. Phone: +1 (650) 319-8930.

Data and privacy

This site collects no personal data. No account, no form, no cookies, no analytics, no ads.

• Your browser keeps one thing only: whether you closed the bar that offers the site in your language (local storage, never sent). Each language is a separate page, not a setting.
• The AoE IV meta page loads statistics directly from AoE4 World (aoe4world.com) in your browser. That request goes to AoE4 World, under its own privacy policy.
• Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when the page loads.
• The host may keep technical access logs (IP address, date, page) for security, as with any website.

What the MetaAOE app does with data is described in the next section.

The MetaAOE app

The MetaAOE app runs inside Overwolf on your PC. There is no MetaAOE account and no MetaAOE server receives data about you. Here is exactly what the app does.

• Saved on your PC only. Your settings, pinned and imported builds, the linked player profile, your Premium status, the position of the game clock on screen and cached data are kept in the local storage of the app (keys starting with boc.). None of it is sent to us.
• Game state. Through Overwolf (GameInfo), the app knows whether Age of Empires IV or II is running and the size of its window, to open the overlay and keep it on screen. It reads no Overwolf game events and never reads the game memory.
• Game clock. To keep the build timer in step with the match clock, the app takes, once per second and through Overwolf, a capture of a small area at the top of the screen: first a band in the middle to find the clock, then the clock alone. The digits are recognised from this image, on your PC. The images are neither saved nor sent: the app only keeps the clock position and the shape of its digits. You can turn this off in the settings.
• Game log (AoE IV). To know right away which civ you play and against whom, even offline, the app reads the text file warnings.log that Age of Empires IV writes in Documents\My Games\Age of Empires IV. This file is read on your PC and sent nowhere.
• Your player profile. If you type your name, the app searches it on AoE4 World or AoE2 Companion. It can also find your account by itself: with the Overwolf file permission, it lists the account folders of the game on your PC and reads the Steam sign-in file (loginusers.vdf) to know which account is active, then asks AoE4 World or AoE2 Companion about those Steam IDs. Only these public IDs leave your PC. You can pick another profile by hand in the settings.

Services the app contacts

These requests go straight from your PC. Each service sees your IP address and the request, and handles them under its own privacy policy. The app sends neither your name, nor your e-mail, nor anything beyond what is listed here.

• AoE4 World (aoe4world.com): AoE IV stats, civs and maps, your profile and your games. Receives the name you search, your public Steam or profile ID, and those of your opponents.
• aoe4guides (aoe4guides.com and its API hosted on Google Cloud Run, address ending in a.run.app): AoE IV build orders. Only receives the civ and build requested.
• AoE2 Companion (data.aoe2companion.com): AoE II profile, ranking and games. Receives the name you search and your public Steam or profile ID.
• aoestats.io: AoE II civ win rates. No data about you, only the patch requested.
• GitHub Pages (craftysalamander.github.io, RTS Overlay project): unit and civ icons.
• Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com): interface fonts.
• This site (metaaoe.app, hosted by Cloudflare): a public data file for a faster start. Nothing is sent.
• Overwolf (content.overwolf.com): the ad module, see below.

Ads and Premium

• Ads. The desktop window and the end-of-game summary show ads served by Overwolf. There are never any in the in-game overlay, nor with Premium. Overwolf and its ad partners may use technical data (IP address, device ID, ads seen and clicked) under the Overwolf privacy policy. MetaAOE does not receive this data.
• Premium. The subscription goes through the Overwolf subscription window, and payment is handled by Overwolf and Tebex, never by the app. The app only asks Overwolf whether your subscription is active, to remove the ads.
• Erasing your data. Uninstalling the app from Overwolf removes everything it stored. MetaAOE keeps nothing anywhere else.

Contact

A question about your data or the app: write to us on the MetaAOE Discord.

Trademarks

MetaAOE is an unofficial, independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored or approved by Microsoft, Xbox Game Studios, World's Edge or Overwolf. Age of Empires is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Other names belong to their owners.

MetaAOE was created under Microsoft's “Game Content Usage Rules” using assets from Age of Empires IV and Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.

Data sources

Player and civ statistics: AoE4 World. AoE IV build orders: aoe4guides.com. AoE II players and games: AoE2 Companion. AoE II civ statistics: aoestats.io. Icons: RTS Overlay project.