Privacy Policy for King's Descent

Applies to King's Descent on iPad, on Steam for Windows and Mac, and in the browser at kingsdescent.com. Effective 8 September 2026.

King's Descent has no accounts, no advertising, and no analytics from anyone else. It never asks for your name, your email address, your contacts, your location or your photos, and it never reads a device or advertising identifier.

The one thing the game may collect is anonymous gameplay data. On an iPad and on Steam the game asks you once, in plain words, and sends nothing unless you agree. In the browser it does not ask: the demonstration at kingsdescent.com sends anonymous gameplay data unless you turn it off, and it stores nothing on your computer. Either way you can change your answer at any time. We use that data for one purpose: to understand how players experience the game, so that we can balance the gameplay, fix bugs, and consider new features.

What stays on your device

The game saves your progress, your settings and its own log of each game on your own device. On an iPad they live in the storage iOS gives the app, and deleting the app deletes them. On a Mac they live in the game's own folder under Application Support in your home folder, and on Windows in the game's folder under AppData in your user profile; uninstalling the game through Steam leaves that folder where it is, so removing it is up to you. Nothing in that folder leaves the device except a backup you make yourself, through iCloud, Time Machine or a computer, under Apple's or Microsoft's terms rather than ours, and the gameplay data described next, only if you have said yes.

In the browser, nothing stays. The demonstration at kingsdescent.com stores nothing on your computer: no cookie, no saved game, no setting. Closing the tab ends the game and forgets everything, including whether you turned gameplay data off.

Anonymous gameplay data

On an iPad and on Steam, the game may ask, the first time you start or continue a game, whether it may send us anonymous gameplay data. It asks once, and you can opt in or opt out. If it has never asked you, it is not sending anything. Once you have answered, a checkbox at the foot of the main menu, Send anonymous gameplay data, shows your answer and lets you change it at any time. Turning it off stops the next upload.

In the browser, the game does not ask. The demonstration at kingsdescent.com sends anonymous gameplay data from the moment it opens: opening the game reports that it was opened, and playing reports the game as described below. The same checkbox at the foot of the main menu turns it off for the rest of your visit. Because the browser edition stores nothing on your computer, it cannot remember that choice, and your next visit starts sending again until you turn it off again.

Gameplay data is the game's own log of a game, in the game's terms: the dungeon it dug, the moves and key presses you made, what happened as a result, and the game's notes about itself. It is not a picture of your screen and not a sound recording.

Before anything leaves your device, the game swaps the names you typed for your party for invented ones and removes any folder path that would carry your account name. We do this on a best-effort basis, and the swap is not perfect: a party name that is also an ordinary word, or a very short one, may slip through.

Gameplay data carries no email address, no real name, no contacts, no location, no photos, and no device or advertising identifier. Sending it involves your device's internet address, as visiting any website does. We do not write that address into the data, we do not keep it with the data, and we make a best effort not to retain it at all.

We use gameplay data only to understand how players experience the game, so that we can balance the gameplay, fix bugs, and consider new features. It is not used for marketing or advertising, it is not linked to you, and it is not shared with or sold to anyone.

We keep gameplay data for as long as it is useful to the game's development. It carries nothing that names you.

What Apple sees, which is not ours

Downloading and running an app on an Apple device involves Apple, and Apple collects its own information under its own policy. If you are testing the game through TestFlight and joined by invitation, Apple gives us the email address you were invited at, along with counts of installs and sessions, and any crash report or feedback you choose to send. If you joined by public link, Apple shows us only an anonymous tester, and your email address only if you add it to a piece of feedback. We use what we receive only to fix the game and to reach testers about the test.

We do not receive your name, your contacts, your location, your photos, your device identifiers, or anything you have not deliberately sent us.

What Steam sees, which is not ours

Downloading and running the game through Steam involves Valve, and Valve collects its own information under its own privacy policy. The game itself contains no Steam code and does not talk to Steam: it is Steam's own client that downloads it and launches it, and the Steam overlay is Valve's rather than ours. What Valve shows us is counts and aggregates: how many people own or play the game, for how long, and from which countries. That is true of the playtest as well; Valve chooses who joins it from the accounts that asked. Anything you post on the game's community hub is public under your Steam name, and anything you send to the address below arrives with whatever you put in it. The game does not use Steam Cloud, so your saves stay on your own machine and never reach Valve's servers through us. We use what we receive only to fix the game and to reach testers about the test.

Children

The game is not directed at children under 13. It collects no personal information from anyone, of any age. On an iPad and on Steam the anonymous gameplay data described above is sent only after the person at the device has said yes; in the browser it is sent unless the person at the keyboard turns it off, and it carries nothing personal either way.

If this changes

This page says what the game may do. If a version ever collects anything this page does not describe, this page will change before that version is released, and the App Store listing's privacy details and the Steam store page will be updated to match. No released version starts collecting anything it did not disclose.

Contact

Write to joel@stoneshift.games with any question about this policy, or to ask what we hold about you, which is at most the anonymous gameplay data described above.