Cookie policy

1What it is

A cookie is a short record the site asks the browser to store and send back on the next request. Without it the site cannot tell your second request from the first: the protocol is designed so that every request arrives on its own.

A cookie is not a program by itself and does nothing on your device. What matters is not that it exists, but what is written in it and who reads it later.

2Necessary — there are seven

bm_s — your sign-in session. Inside are 32 random bytes we use to find the session in the database; it contains neither an email nor a name. It is marked HttpOnly (scripts cannot read it) and Secure (it is never sent over an unencrypted channel). It lives 30 days from your last visit and ends when you sign out or press the button in the settings.

bm_theme — the dark or light theme. It lets the page arrive in your theme right away instead of flashing another one. It lives for a year.

bm_oa — a temporary record for the duration of signing in via Yandex ID, VK ID or Steam: we use it to check that the reply coming back to us belongs to the same sign-in you started. It lives 10 minutes and deletes itself.

bm_cc — a mark that you have closed the cookie notice, and the edition number of this document. Without it the notice would appear on every page. Lives for a year.

bm_lang — the site language, if you chose English with the switch at the bottom of the page or in settings. It is needed so that pages open in the chosen language right away. Lives for a year.

bm_dl — a pass for downloading mods: the issue time and a signature, nothing else. It is set when you open any page of the site and is sent only to the file download address — so files are not mass-downloaded by bots that never opened the site. It lives for two days.

bm_h — a mark that your browser has passed the check: the issue time and a signature, nothing else. It is not set for everyone, only when a request looks like a program pretending to be a browser: then instead of the page you briefly see “Checking your browser…”, and the site's script sets this mark. It lives for 30 days.

None of the seven goes to another domain or takes part in tracking. You cannot switch them off one by one: without bm_s you cannot sign in, without bm_cc the cookie notice will not remember that you have seen it, without bm_dl mods will not download, without bm_h the browser check will repeat.

The site team has two more in the admin panel: bm_adside — whether the menu column is collapsed, and bm_adcols — which columns are shown in the servers table. They live for a year and do not go anywhere either.

3Visit statistics: the LiveInternet counter

The site footer contains the LiveInternet counter — a small image the browser requests from counter.yadro.ru. The request for this image is itself the data transfer: together with it, the address of the open page, its title, the address of the page you came from and the screen size and color depth are sent to a third party. LiveInternet also sets its own cookie on its own domain — we cannot influence it.

The counter was carried over from the old site so as not to break a many-year series of traffic data: had we set up a new one, there would be nothing to compare “before” and “after” the move with.

We do not load LiveInternet's code on the page: of its whole script we only need the image address, and we build it ourselves.

The counter runs for all visitors — like Metrica in section 4 and for the same reason; the admin and moderation sections have none. You can turn it off in your browser: block images or cookies from counter.yadro.ru or block that address with an extension.

4Visit statistics: Yandex Metrica

Yandex Metrica (Yandex LLC) always runs on the site — the same counter that was on the old battlemetrics.ru. Without it we cannot see which sections people need, where they come from and where the site is inconvenient, so it runs for all visitors; the legal basis is described in the privacy policy. Unlike LiveInternet, it is a program: the browser loads it from mc.yandex.ru.

Metrica learns the address of the open page and of the page you came from, information about the browser, device and screen, the approximate location by connection address and how you use the page: navigation, clicks, scrolling. Webvisor is enabled — a recording of actions on the page that shows where the site is inconvenient. Webvisor does not record passwords, nor the contents of your account pages and sign-in forms: they hold your email, payments and keys. In the admin panel and moderation, where pages show other people's data, and on the new password page, whose address carries the secret from the email, there is no counter at all.

Metrica sets its own cookies on our domain — their names start with _ym (for example, _ym_uid and _ym_d) and live up to a year — and may read Yandex cookies on its domains. How Yandex handles this data is described in its Metrica terms of use.

You can turn Metrica off in your own browser: block cookies for battlemetrics.ru or block the address mc.yandex.ru with an extension — the site keeps working as usual.

5How many people are on the site — counted without cookies

The “On the site now” banner on the home page shows how many tabs are open right now. No fifth cookie was added for it: while a tab is visible, once a minute it tells our own server that it is open, and the server keeps the mark in memory for three minutes and forgets it. Nothing is written in the browser.

Nothing goes to third parties here either: the request goes to our domain, and its body carries no data at all — no page address, no title, no screen size. That is the only difference from the counters in sections 3 and 4, but it is a fundamental one.

We recognize a signed-in user by the same bm_s as everywhere. A guest is counted by an irreversible hash of the connection address with a random salt that lives only in the site's memory; more in the privacy policy. Several people behind one address count as one, and this undercount is deliberate: telling them apart would require browser fingerprinting, and we do not take fingerprints.

An avatar and nickname appear in this banner only if the person enabled it in the settings. It is off by default, and the number does not change because of it: those who do not show themselves are still counted.

6What we do not have

Advertising cookies. Social network pixels. Google Analytics. Data exchange with ad networks and brokers. Targeting profiles.

This is not a promise for the future but a description of the current state: look at the list of requests on any page of the site — apart from our domain, fonts from our own domain, the counters from sections 3 and 4 and the captcha on forms from section 9, there is nothing there.

7How to turn the counters off

There is no choice on the site anymore: both counters run for everyone, and the notice at the bottom of the page only informs you about it. You can turn them off in your own browser — block cookies and images from mc.yandex.ru and counter.yadro.ru or block these addresses with an extension. The site keeps working as usual.

Answers to the former consent banner (before 29.09.2026) remain in accounts as history: they show what was chosen and when.

You can also delete our cookies in the browser, in the “Privacy” section. After that you will have to sign in again, the theme will return to the system one, and the cookie notice will appear again.

If the text of this document changes substantially, the edition number inside bm_cc will no longer match, and the notice will appear again.

8What happens if you block cookies entirely

Server lists, server pages, charts, wipes, player search and server check work without a single cookie — you can check.

Signing in to an account and everything behind it will not work: favorites, settings, notifications. The theme will be taken from the system every time.

9Captcha on forms

Registration, password recovery, reviews of a server or hosting and votes for a server have a captcha — Yandex SmartCaptcha (Yandex.Cloud LLC). It tells a person from a program that creates hundreds of accounts or inflates votes and reviews.

The browser loads the captcha widget from smartcaptcha.yandexcloud.net: it looks at the browser and at how you interact with the page, and may set cookies on Yandex's domain. When you submit the form, we pass Yandex the one-time captcha answer and your connection address — only to get a “human or not” answer. How Yandex handles this data is described in its SmartCaptcha terms of use.

There is no captcha on other pages. If you block its address, these forms will not be sent: there is no other way to check that a person sent the form.

10Browser records that are not cookies

The site keeps a few small things in browser storage (localStorage and sessionStorage). Unlike cookies, it is not sent to us by itself: only a page of our site in your browser can read it.

bm:search:recent — your recent searches, to suggest them again; bm:games:fav — the games you marked in the catalog. They stay until you clear them.

bm_cur and bm_prev — the path of the current and previous page of our site, without parameters; bm_ad — a mark that the server page was opened from an ad spot; bm_news_seen — which server news posts have already been shown in this tab. With them we count where server pages are opened from — the list, search, home page, an ad or a widget — and how many times a post was shown; only the kind of source reaches us, not the addresses. They live while the tab is open.

The site team has two more records in the admin panel: what has been read in the alerts center and what has been muted for an hour.

11Relation to other documents

What we do with data after receiving it is described in the privacy policy; the rules for using the site are in the terms of use. This document is only about what is written in the browser and what is sent to third parties.

Questions about this document — to privacy@battlemetrics.ru.

12Company details

Individual Entrepreneur Maxim Sergeevich Suvorov

INN 543317138517 · OGRNIP 323547600120282

Website: battlemetrics.ru · Contact email: info@battlemetrics.ru · Personal data inquiries: privacy@battlemetrics.ru