Help & support

01How to reach us

There is one support address: support@skatelabs.app. It is read by a human, in English, Spanish or Portuguese — write in whichever you are comfortable with. The alpha is small on purpose, so the person answering can open your match and see what happened rather than guess.

To get a real answer on the first reply instead of three rounds of questions, tell us:

• Your handle: the name you play under in the app.
• Your phone: iPhone or Android.
• What happened: what you tapped, what you expected, and what you saw instead.
• When: roughly the day and time, so we can find it in the match history.
• The match: if it is about a game, paste the link you or your opponent shared.

Anything about safety — someone being abused, threatened, or a clip that should not exist — goes to the same address and jumps the queue. If a person is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first; we are a small team and cannot act in real time.

02The alpha, and who can play

Global SKATE is an early test build. You install it from TestFlight on iPhone or from Google Play on Android — the links on this site go straight there.

The alpha is 18+. You confirm you are 18 or over before you can play, and accounts that misrepresent age are removed. Because this is a test build, it can change, break, or be withdrawn — that is what you are signing up to help with.

If the app will not let you in at all — the install link expired, sign-in fails, or you are told your account is restricted — email support@skatelabs.app from the address you asked for access with.

03A game looks stuck

Every match room carries one line at the top saying whose turn it is and what happens next. Start there. These are the four things that usually explain a game that looks frozen:

• Nobody accepted the challenge: a challenge link is single-use and dies 7 days after it was sent. Once it expires it cannot be revived — start a fresh challenge and send the new link.
• The turn window ran out: you pick 24 hours, 72 hours or a week when you challenge. If the setter runs out of time the round simply closes and nobody takes a letter; if the responder runs out, it counts as a miss and the next letter of S-K-A-T-E is applied. Only the server closes a deadline, so the clock is the same for both of you.
• Your opponent has not made the call yet: the alpha never quietly accepts a clip for someone. A game can sit waiting on a human decision for as long as they take, which is deliberate, and the fix is usually a message rather than an email.
• The round is frozen for review: when either player disputes a call, the game and the turn stop until a reviewer resolves it. A person does that, never an algorithm, so it takes as long as a person takes.

If none of that fits — the room contradicts itself, a letter looks wrong, or the match will not open — send us the match link and what you expected to see. Nothing about a game is decided on your phone, so we can check the real record.

04A clip will not send

Attempts are filmed in the app and then sent from a queue, so a dead connection in a car park does not cost you the attempt. The recording stays on your phone until it lands.

• Get back on a connection you trust and reopen the match. The upload resumes the same clip and shows you where it is: filmed, getting ready, sending, checking it arrived whole, sent.
• Did not send: that status means it needs another go, not that the attempt is lost. Try again from the same screen.
• Do not refilm to "fix" it: one attempt counts, and the queue will never swap in a different clip than the one you filmed.
• There is no gallery upload, by design: official attempts come from the app camera only. If you are hunting for a way to send a video you already had, there is not one — that is the whole point of the game being trustworthy.

If the same clip fails repeatedly and a deadline is closing, email support@skatelabs.app with your handle and the match link and say it is an upload failure. We can see the attempt was filmed even when it has not finished arriving.

05Reporting a player, a clip or a spot

Reporting lives beside whatever you are reporting, so the report arrives attached to the exact match, clip or place you mean:

• A player: open the match and use Report opponent. Block user sits next to it — blocking cuts contact between you immediately and cancels any active game you have together, without changing anyone’s letters or win-loss record.
• A clip or a message: open the official clip, or the message in the match chat, and use the report action there.
• A spot: open the spot and use its report action — a wrong location, private property, or a place that should not be published at all.

Depending on what we find we warn, restrict or remove accounts. Content attached to a report that is still open is held, not deleted, even if the account it belongs to is deleted in the meantime — that is what stops a report being erased by the person it is about.

If you cannot reach the in-app tools — you are locked out, or the account is already gone — email support@skatelabs.app and describe what you can. The community rules set out what we act on.

06Deleting your account

You delete your own account from inside the app — Settings → Account → Delete account, also reachable under Settings → Your data. You retype your handle to confirm. Nobody has to approve it and there is nothing to email us for.

The moment you confirm, in one step:

• The account stops working: every device is signed out immediately, including the phone in your hand.
• Everything that names you is destroyed: handle, display name, bio, city, country, profile picture, stance and age band, along with your email address, phone number, password and every sign-in method linked to the account, including Sign in with Apple.
• Your own data goes with it: saved spots, app settings, notification registrations for your devices, and the blocks you made.
• Your clips stop playing: for everyone, at that moment.
• Unfinished games are cancelled: any challenge still open closes as no contest. No letters move, nobody is handed a win, and leaving is never a forfeit.

Some things survive, and we would rather tell you here than surprise you later:

• Finished games: a completed match is a record of two people. It stays exactly as it was played — same winner, same letters, your opponent’s clips — so nobody can erase a loss by deleting themselves. Your name is not on it: what is left is a random identifier that no longer points at anyone.
• Safety records: reports filed by you or about you, disputes you opened, and the moderation trail stay, so abuse can still be investigated after an account is gone.
• Your consent record: the versioned note that you accepted the terms, the privacy policy and the community rules on a given date. That record is exactly what a regulator asks for after the fact.
• Spots you added: a skate spot is a place in the world, not a personal detail — other people have saved it and filmed there.
• Chat messages: the messages stay in the match but their contents are redacted — except where a report that is still open points at a message, because destroying reported content on the reporter’s behalf is the exact thing moderation exists to prevent.

Two honest caveats about the files themselves. Your clips, profile picture and spot photos stop playing for everyone the instant you confirm, but the stored files are erased afterwards by a background sweep rather than in the same second. And any file attached to a report that is still open or under review is deliberately held back from that sweep until the report is closed.

Data export is not automated yet. Email support@skatelabs.app to ask for a copy of your data — during the alpha those requests are handled by hand and confirmed to you when they are done. Ask before you delete: once the account is gone, the identifying data is gone with it.

07The rules in full

The three documents you accepted when you created your account, and the way in if you do not have an account yet.

• Terms
• Privacy
• Community rules