Privacy policy

Who is responsible

StudioScore is an independent project made by Yevhenii Shyshkin. If you have a question about your data, or want it removed, write to [email protected].

Using the site without an account

You do not have to sign in. Everything the site measures is public, and no account is created unless you make one.

If you add games to a list without signing in, that list is a few game ids kept in your own browser, in local storage. It never leaves your device except for one thing: when the list page draws, those ids are sent to this site’s server so each game can be looked up and measured. Nothing about you travels with them, nothing is stored when the request ends, and the answer is the same for anybody holding the same ids. Clearing your browser’s site data clears the list.

Cookies

Three, and none of them for tracking:

A session cookie

Set only when you sign in with Steam. It holds the session token and expires after 30 days. It cannot be read by scripts on the page.

Two sign-in cookies

Written the moment you press “Sign in” and deleted the moment you come back. They hold a one-use value that proves the trip to Steam started in your browser, and the page you were on so you can be returned to it. They last ten minutes.

There are no advertising cookies and no analytics library of any kind. Nothing here asks you to consent to tracking, because there is none to consent to.

What is loaded from somewhere else

Two things on these pages are not served by this site. One is pictures. The other is a video player, and it is the only piece of anybody else’s code that ever runs here.

Steam’s own image servers. Cover art, poster images and the pictures inside an announcement are fetched by your browser straight from Steam, on more or less every page here. They are not copied through this server first — doing that made every picture wait in one queue and cost about a second each. Those servers set no cookie, and nothing is passed to them about you; what they see is what any website you open sees, which is your IP address and which browser you are using.

A trailer in a post. Where a studio put a video in an announcement, that announcement page shows it, and the player comes from YouTube. It is the no-cookie player, which sets no cookie unless you press play, and it is not fetched at all unless you scroll down far enough to reach it. A page with no video loads nothing from YouTube.

That is the whole list. No advertising network, no analytics, no fonts, maps or widgets from anybody else — the measurement itself, the catalogue, the feed and every game’s own page are drawn from this site and Steam’s pictures, and nothing more.

What is stored when you sign in

Signing in is what creates an account, and it is the only thing that causes anything to be stored on the server. Here is the whole of it:

• Your SteamID — to know whose saved games are whose.
• Your Steam nickname and avatar image URL — shown to you in the header and on your account page.
• A session token — so you stay signed in. It expires after 30 days. A copy is kept in your own browser, as the cookie described above, so you are not asked to sign in every time.
• The list of games you saved — the whole point: it is what gets watched for updates.
• An email address, only if you give one — see below. Not asked for at sign-in and not required for anything.

The email address, if you leave one

At the top of your list there is a box for an address. It is optional, it is the only place on this site that asks for one, and nothing about the site changes if you never fill it in.

Leave one and a single letter goes to it, asking whether it is yours. Until you press the link in that letter, nothing is ever sent to that address again — not a reminder, not a second attempt. That is not politeness: a box on a web page can be filled in with a stranger’s address, and the stranger’s silence has to be the end of it.

Once confirmed, what is stored is the address, the date you confirmed it, and a token that identifies the link out. One address per account. It is used for one thing: a letter when a game on your list is updated, carrying the game, the post and a link to it. Never a digest, never a newsletter, never anything about another product, and it is never given or sold to anybody.

Every letter carries a link that removes it, in one press and without signing in, and the mail apps that show an unsubscribe button beside the sender’s name are told the same address. Removing it deletes the row rather than marking it — the token in the link is the last thing tying that address to anything here, and it goes too. You can also clear it from your account, and deleting your account takes it with everything else.

What is never collected

• Real name, phone number, address — never collected.
• Location — never collected.
• Payment or card details — never collected. Nothing is sold here.
• Your Steam password — never seen. You type it on Valve’s site.
• What you click, read or search for — never recorded.
• Contacts, photos, camera, microphone — never requested.
• Analytics SDKs, advertising, trackers — none, of any kind.

Nothing is sold, rented or shared with advertisers or data brokers. There is no advertising on this site and no third-party analytics in it.

The analysis is about games, not about you

StudioScore works out how often a game gets updated, whether a studio has gone quiet, and what becomes of unfinished games. All of that runs on public Steam data about games and studios: update posts, review counts, prices, release dates. It is never built from your behaviour. The figures on your list are counted from the games you chose to save, and from nothing else.

Signing in with Steam

Sign-in uses Steam’s own OpenID service. You type your Steam credentials on Valve’s website, not here: this site never sees your Steam password. Valve tells us your SteamID, and nothing else — no library, no friends, no purchases. Valve’s own handling of that sign-in is covered by the Steam Privacy Policy.

Where your data is stored

On servers operated by Railway in the European Union (the Netherlands). Game data shown here — titles, prices, review counts, update posts — comes from Steam’s public interfaces and is stored in the same place.

How long it is kept

• Session token: 30 days, then it expires on its own. Signing out ends it immediately.
• Everything else: until you delete your account.

Deleting everything

Open your account and choose Delete account. That removes your SteamID, nickname, avatar URL, saved games, email address and session in one step. It is immediate and it cannot be undone.

If you would rather someone did it for you, write to [email protected] from any address and say which Steam account it is.

Your rights

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the right to see what is held about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, and to receive a copy. The legal basis for storing the items listed above is performance of a contract: without them the site cannot keep your list or keep you signed in.

To exercise any of these, write to [email protected]. Deletion is also one page away, as described above.

Children

StudioScore is not directed at children, and signing in requires a Steam account. No accounts are knowingly created for children under 13.

Changes to this policy

If what is stored ever changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top is updated. Material changes will be announced before they take effect.

Contact

[email protected]