Privacy Policy

This policy covers the Castle Arena game and this website. It says exactly what happens with your data today, based on how the game is built.

In short

• We don't collect your data. Neither the game nor this site sends anything about you to us, and we don't run servers of our own.
• No analytics, advertising or tracking, in the game or on this site. No cookies.
• No account with us. You play through Steam, and Steam is the only online service the game uses.
• What the game saves stays on your computer, and part of it is copied to your Steam Cloud if you have it turned on.
• Online play goes through Valve's network. Other players in your room see your Steam name and what you do in the match.

What stays on your computer

The game keeps these in its folder (%APPDATA%\Castle Arena on Windows, ~/.config/Castle Arena on Linux):

• Settings: options, key bindings, display, sound and accessibility choices.
• Progress: Training lessons completed, best times and hints seen, and how many matches you have played.
• Match history for your Profile: for each of your last 1,000 matches, the date, mode, arena, factions, result and length, plus a few numbers such as troops trained and damage to the castle. For online matches it also keeps who sat in each seat (Steam name and Steam ID), so your Profile can show your record with and against each person; 1v1 matches against the AI keep no seat list.
• Your coat of arms and your saved game modes.
• Blocked and recent players: the players you block (Steam ID, name and date) and the last 50 people who shared a room or a match with you (Steam name, Steam ID, when, and whether they were an ally, an opponent or a spectator).
• Replays of your last 30 matches, plus up to 15 you protect and the ones you import. A replay holds the match settings, every order given, the names shown in the match (online, the other players' Steam names) and the coats of arms on display. Export writes the same data to a file you choose: if you share that file, the names go with it.
• A Training log: the last 400 Training events, such as "lesson started" or "hint shown". It helps us tune the Training while we test the game, and it is never sent anywhere.
• Rejoin details while an online match is running: the room, your seat and the other player's Steam ID, so you can get back in if the game closes. They are cleared when the match ends.
• A technical log and crash reports, to understand a problem after it happens. The log (logs\main.log, up to about 1 MB, plus the previous copy) records the game and system versions, your graphics card model and driver, and the game's warnings and errors. If the game crashes, a crash report goes to the Crashpad folder: it is a copy of part of the game's memory at that moment and may contain what was on screen, such as the names of players in the match. The game never sends either of them anywhere.

Videos are saved only when you choose Save video on a Highlights reel or Record clip in a replay, in your Videos folder (Videos\Castle Arena), as MP4, WebM or GIF. The game never uploads them.

You can remove all of this by deleting those folders. Uninstalling the game through Steam may leave them in place.

What goes to Steam Cloud

If Steam Cloud is on for your account and for Castle Arena, the game keeps a copy of these in your Steam Cloud storage, so they follow you from one computer to another: your settings (except the video and display ones, which belong to each machine), progress, match history, result-chart preferences, coat of arms and saved game modes. Your saved replays can be copied too.

These copies are kept by Valve in your Steam account, and only the game reads them. You can turn Steam Cloud off for Castle Arena in Steam, under the game's Properties → General.

What Steam receives

Castle Arena runs on Steam, so Steam (run by Valve) takes part in these features:

• Your Steam name and Steam ID. The game reads them from Steam to show your name and to tell players apart in online rooms.
• Achievements and stats. When you unlock an achievement, the game tells Steam, which shows it on your profile according to your Steam privacy settings. A few counts from your match history (matches, wins, online wins, best streak, and how many factions and arenas you have won with) are stored as Steam stats, so Steam can show achievement progress such as "9/14".
• What you're doing (Rich Presence): your friends list can show whether you're in the menu, in the Training, against the AI, online, watching a match or a replay, along with the arena, your faction and the match clock. Steam lets you appear offline or invisible.
• Online rooms. Rooms are created through Steam and can be private, friends only or public. A room carries its name (which includes the host's Steam name), the host's Steam ID (so players who blocked the host don't see the room), the game version, the format and the free seats. Public rooms are listed for anyone looking for a match in the game.
• The match connection. Online matches exchange only what the game needs: each player's orders, a fingerprint of the battle to check that everyone sees the same thing, room details, emotes and coats of arms. It all travels through Steam's networking, which by default relays it through Valve's network so other players don't see your IP address. Steam has its own setting for direct connections with friends, which share IP addresses; Castle Arena doesn't change it.
• Players you met. When an online match starts, the game tells Steam who you played with, so they show up in Steam's own "Recent players" list.
• Steam Workshop, only if you publish something: when you choose Publish to Workshop, the item (a replay, your coat of arms or a game mode), its title, description and preview image go to the Workshop under your Steam account, visible according to the visibility you pick. A replay of an online match is published with the players' names hidden by default; if you untick that, the other players' Steam names go with it. Items you subscribe to are downloaded by Steam and checked by the game before use.
• Steam Timeline, only if you use Steam's game recording: the game marks the timeline with what you're doing (menus, playing, watching), a short description such as "Against the AI · Crown · Frozen Lake" and moments of your own match (a big Rescue, a legendary raised, castle damage, the result). They stay with your Steam recordings.
• Steam Cloud, as described above, and the Steam overlay for invites and for opening a player's Steam profile.

How Valve handles this data is covered by the Steam Privacy Policy.

What other players see

In an online room, the other players and the spectators see your Steam name, your coat of arms, your faction, your emotes and everything you do in the match. Their replays of that match, saved on their computers, keep your Steam name and your orders. If you publish a replay with the names shown, anyone who can see the item sees them. The game has no text chat: the only messages are the preset emotes.

What we receive

Nothing directly: the game doesn't send us any data, and we have no servers. As the game's developer, we may get aggregate reports from Valve, such as sales, the number of players or the share of players who unlocked each achievement. They don't identify you.

If you write to us, we receive what you send, such as your email address and your message, and use it only to answer you.

This website

This site is a set of static pages:

• No cookies, analytics, advertising or tracking.
• No accounts, logins or forms.
• Everything, fonts included, comes from the site itself: it loads nothing from other companies' servers.
• The RSS feed is a plain file, with no tracking.

Like any website, it is served by a hosting company that may keep standard access logs (such as IP address, browser and the page requested) to deliver and protect the site. We don't use them to follow anyone. Links to Steam and other sites lead to pages with their own privacy policies.

Children

Castle Arena doesn't ask anyone for personal information, and it has no text chat. Steam's own age rules apply to Steam accounts.

Changes

Whenever a change affects what data goes where, we will update this page and its date before the change reaches the game.