Privacy

What We Collect

Version 0cec5f10.

The Short Version

If you ask for playtest access we keep your email address, what you wrote in the form, and — only if you ask us to — a name to print in the game’s credits and a name to give one of the in-game opponents.

You can also ask us, separately, to send you news about the studio and the games we are making. Playtesters receive it as part of the playtest.

We use two companies to run the site and send the email, and nobody else sees any of it.

Who We Are

Trailing Comma Studios Ltd, company number 17381201, registered at 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. We are the data controller. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under reference ZC245390. For anything on this page, write to hello@trailingcommastudios.com.

You Must Be 18 or Over

Playtesting is for adults only. As we are a small studio, we are not set up to handle children’s data properly, so rather than do it badly we do not do it at all.

If you believe someone under 18 has signed up, tell us at hello@trailingcommastudios.com and we will delete their details.

What We Collect, and Why

Your email address, so we can send you playtest builds, tell you when a new one is ready, and send you our news. What you wrote in the “why” box, because a person reads it. We ask for both only when you request access, and we rely on your consent.

If you choose to give them, a name for the game’s credits and a name for one of the in-game opponents. They are two separate choices, both optional, and saying no to either has no bearing on whether you are given access.

We do not log your IP address. Everything reaches our servers through Cloudflare, so what our own logs record is Cloudflare, not you. Cloudflare holds an address at its edge briefly, for security, to stop abuse, and to work out which country a visit came from for the visit counts.

Our download server records which download code fetched a file. Your code is yours alone, so we can tell that it was you who collected a build — we are not going to pretend otherwise. What that log does not contain is your name, your email address or where you were. We use it to know a build was picked up, and it is deleted along with everything else when you ask us to remove you.

News About the Studio and Our Games

Playtesters receive it as part of the playtest, and anyone can sign up for it on its own through the mailing list. It is the only thing we would ever use your address for beyond the playtest itself.

It means occasional messages about Trailing Comma Studios and the games we are making — a new title, release dates, when something goes on Steam. Never anybody else’s products, never your details passed to anyone, and never sold.

Every email carries a one-click line that deletes everything and stops our communication. Simple and easy – how it should be.

Who Else Sees It

Two companies, and they act on our instructions only. Neither may use your details for their own purposes.

Cloudflare carries the website and receives the form when you submit it. Google carries our email, so a message we send you passes through Google Workspace.

Nothing is hosted with anyone else; the site and the builds run on our own machines.

Where Your Data Goes

Cloudflare and Google are both United States companies, so your details may be transferred outside the UK. Both are covered by the UK Addendum to the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses in their data processing terms, which is the safeguard we rely on. You can ask us for a copy of those terms.

How Long We Keep It

We keep your details until you ask us to remove them — but we will not hold them indefinitely without asking. Every twelve months we will email you to check whether you still want us to keep your email address and the names you provided.

Unsuccessful playtest applicants will have their data removed after ninety days.

Credited names only appear in the finished game.

A bot name can appear in playtest builds that other testers download. If you withdraw it, we take it out of the next build, but we cannot change copies people already have.

Removing Yourself

Every message we send carries a removal link. One click deletes your address and ends your access. You can also email hello@trailingcommastudios.com.

Your Rights

You can ask us to give you a copy of what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. You can ask us to restrict what we do with it while a question is being sorted out. And because we hold it with your consent and handle it by computer, you can ask for it in a portable form, or ask us to send it straight to somebody else.

We hold everything here because you agreed to it, so the way to stop us is to withdraw that agreement — one click, either from the link at the bottom of any message we have sent you, or on this page if you no longer have one. Withdrawing does not make anything we did beforehand unlawful; it stops us going further.

Ask us for any of this at hello@trailingcommastudios.com and we will respond within a month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Cookies, and Why There Is No Banner

No cookies, and one item of local storage — which the rules treat the same way as a cookie. There is no tracking pixel, no advertising tag, no fingerprinting, and nothing that follows you to anybody else’s website.

We do count visits, and this is exactly what that means. Cloudflare Web Analytics runs a small script on each page. We checked what it actually sends rather than taking anyone’s word for it: the address of the page, a random number that exists only for that one page view, your browser engine and its version, and some timings for how quickly the page loaded. It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device, which is why there is still no banner.

One thing is stored in your browser, and only if you ask for it. If you turn the background music on or off, we remember which you chose, so the site does not start playing at you again on the next page. It is a single entry called tcs-audio holding the word “on” or “off”.

You can clear this setting by clearing site data in your browser.

Keeping It Safe

The tester list lives encrypted on a machine of ours that is not on the public internet and is reachable only from one other machine on our own private network. Access to it is limited to Rob. The site is served over HTTPS throughout, and the build download links are signed and expire.

Our backups stay on hardware we own. Nothing about you is copied to a cloud backup service.

If We Change This Notice

We will update the date and version at the top. If a change affects what we do with details you have already given us, we will email you about it before it takes effect rather than expecting you to check this page.