Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 21, 2026
1. Who we are and how to reach us
Genesis Remastered is operated by Zizuph in the United States. We decide what this service collects and why, which under European law makes us the data controller for it.
Use our contact form to reach us. You do not need a game character or a forum account, so it works whether or not you have ever played, and it keeps working if you delete your account. If you do play, you can also find the nearest post office in-game and mail aop.
We have not appointed a representative in the European Union.
This policy covers the game, this website and the forums, and the Steam release. Where Steam is involved we say so explicitly; section 3 is about Steam and nothing else.
2. What we collect, why, and for how long
Everything we hold is in this table. "Lawful basis" is the European legal term for what entitles us to hold it.
| What | Why | Lawful basis | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Character name, statistics, inventory and progress | Running the game | Contract | While the character exists |
| Your email address, if you give us one — it is optional | Account recovery, and contacting you | Consent | With your character. You can remove it in-game at any time |
| Aliases and triggers you write | Syncing your setup between devices | Contract | With your character |
| Client storage — space the client and you fill as you like | Whatever you use it for | Contract | With your character |
| That your adulthood was established — which check was passed, who recorded it, when, and a reference from the service that carried it out | Limiting adult content to adults | Legal obligation | While the character exists |
| A one-way hash of your Steam ID, if you link a Steam account | Recording that adulthood was established, without holding the account number itself | Legal obligation | While the character exists |
| Steam verification audit entries — time, character name, country, Steam ID and its hash | Proving to a regulator that age checks were carried out | Legal obligation | 12 months |
| The last IP address seen on your player record | Security, and preventing abuse | Legitimate interests | Until the player file is deleted |
| Website and game connection logs — IP address, client, times | Security, and preventing abuse | Legitimate interests | Up to 31 days |
| Your country, worked out from your IP address | Deciding which cookie and age rules apply to you | Legal obligation | Not stored, except in the Steam audit entry above |
| Forum account: username, email address, hashed password | Running the forums | Contract | While the account exists |
| Forum posts and private messages | Running the forums | Contract | Kept. If you delete your account we remove your name from them |
| IP addresses recorded against forum posts, messages and logs | Moderation, and preventing abuse | Legitimate interests | 90 days |
| The last IP address seen on your forum account | Security, and preventing abuse | Legitimate interests | While the account exists |
| Anything you send us through the contact form | Answering you | Contract, or legal obligation for data requests | 12 months; 24 months for data requests, as proof we handled them |
| gr_consent cookie | Remembering your cookie choices | Legal obligation | Six months |
| Google Analytics cookies | Understanding how the site is used | Consent | Up to 14 months |
| Crash reports from the game client | Fixing the client when it breaks | Consent | 90 days, set by Sentry |
Where the basis is legitimate interests, the interest is keeping the game and the forums working and free of abuse: investigating harassment and cheating, blocking attacks, and diagnosing faults. We keep those records no longer than that job needs. You can object to this processing — see section 7.
Your character keeps its history for as long as the character exists, because that is what the game is. Players return after years and expect to find their character where they left it. We do not delete characters for inactivity, and if you want yours gone you can ask us.
The client storage is free-form: it holds whatever the client or you put in it, so we cannot list its contents here. Please do not use it for sensitive personal information.
3. Steam
If you play through Steam, Valve Corporation runs the store, the client and your Steam account. Valve is a separate controller for everything it holds about you — your purchase, your playtime, your friends list, your library. What Valve does with that is governed by the Steam Privacy Policy, not by this one. We cannot see it, and we cannot delete it for you.
What passes between Steam and us is narrow, and only when you ask for it:
- Linking your account. The client hands us a short-lived Steam session ticket. We send it to Valve, which tells us your Steam ID and whether that account owns the game. Nothing else — no name, no email address, no friends list, no other titles.
- Age. Owning the game on Steam is what we treat as evidence of adulthood, because the store page carries mature content descriptors and Valve applies its own age assurance before an account can buy or install it. Whether that counts here depends on the country you connect from; where it does not, your character simply stays unverified and you can use another route.
- What we keep. Your character record stores a one-way hash of the Steam ID, never the number itself. The hash lets us recognise the same Steam account twice; it cannot be turned back into an account. A separate server-side audit log does keep the Steam ID for twelve months, because a regulator asking whether age checks actually happened needs a record that means something.
- Achievements and progress. When you unlock something, we send Valve the achievement and the figures behind it, read from the game's own record of your character. This is how Steam achievements work at all; it goes only to Valve, against your own account.
We do not receive payment details. Valve handles the transaction, and we never see a card number, a billing address, or your Steam login.
If you play through Steam and want your data gone, ask us and we will delete the character, the hash and the audit entry. Deleting your Steam account or your purchase history is something only Valve can do.
4. Cookies and tracking
We use essential cookies for game functionality. These are required for the site and the game client to work, and cannot be turned off.
Everything else is optional, and you can choose these separately:
- Analytics — Google Analytics, so we can see how players find and use the site.
- Error reporting — crash reports sent to Sentry when the game client breaks, so we can fix it.
The game client can also play music and ambience, which stream from YouTube and so contact Google's servers. That is switched off until you turn it on yourself in the client's Settings under Audio, where the same explanation sits beside the switch. Nothing is requested from YouTube before then.
Depending on where you are, these may be switched off until you allow them, or on until you turn them off. Either way you can change them at any time — on the web, through the Cookie settings link at the foot of any page of the main site; in the desktop client, in its own settings. We work out which rules apply from your IP address on our own server, using a local database; your address is not sent to anyone else, and we do not store it for this purpose.
The cookies involved are:
- gr_consent — records which of the two you allowed, so we do not ask you again for six months. It contains no identifier and cannot be used to track you. This one is set regardless of your choices, because it is what remembers them.
- _ga and _ga_* — set by Google Analytics, only if you allow analytics. These do identify your browser across visits.
- phpbb3_* (including _sid, _u and _k) — set by the forums to maintain your login session, user settings and auto-login preference. These are essential to the forums and do not track you across other websites.
The page you are reading sets no cookies and runs no analytics.
5. Who receives your data
We do not sell your personal information, and we never have. We share it only with the services we need to run this one:
- Valve Corporation — if you play through Steam. See section 3.
- Google — Google Analytics, only if you allow analytics. Also YouTube, only if you switch on music in the client, and Gmail, which receives messages sent through our contact form.
- Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry) — crash reports from the game client, only if you allow error reporting.
- Our hosting provider, which operates the servers the game and this site run on.
Beyond that we disclose data only where the law requires it, or to protect our rights, property or safety and that of our players.
6. Where your data is stored
Everything is stored in the United States. We are based there, our hosting is there, and Valve, Google and Sentry hold what they receive there too.
If you are in the European Economic Area or the UK, this means your data leaves your country when you use the service. European law applies to us anyway, because we offer this service to people in Europe, and we handle your data according to it wherever it sits. Google and Sentry are certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
7. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- Show you the personal data we hold about you — your right of access
- Correct anything that is wrong
- Delete your account and the data attached to it
- Restrict what we do with it while a dispute is resolved
- Send it to you, or to someone else, in a portable format
- Stop processing you object to, including anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests
Where we rely on your consent — analytics, error reporting, music, and your email address — you can withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything we did while it was in force.
We do not make automated decisions about you, and we do not profile you.
8. How to exercise your rights
Ask us through the contact form. You do not need an account to use it.
We reply within one month. If a request is complicated we may take up to two months longer, and we will tell you inside the first month if that happens. We may need to check who you are before acting on a request, so that nobody else can use these rights against you.
9. Complaints
If you think we have handled your data badly, please tell us first — we would rather fix it.
You can also complain to your data protection regulator. In the EEA and the UK that is the supervisory authority where you live, work, or where you think the problem happened. Swedish players can contact IMY, the Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten. Because we have no establishment in the EU, there is no single lead authority for us — your own national regulator is the right one to approach.
10. Children
Genesis Remastered is not directed at children. It is a text game written for adults, and nothing about it is aimed at a young audience.
We do not ask for your date of birth and we never see a document. Where content is limited to adults, your account can carry a record that adulthood was established — by your own word, by your ownership of the game on Steam, by a check carried out by a third-party verification service, or by a finding our administration team makes by hand. We keep which of those it was, who recorded it, when, and a reference from the service that carried it out. No date of birth, image or document ever reaches us. Which kinds of check count is decided by the rules of the region you connect from.
Two things still apply to us:
- In the United States, COPPA governs personal information collected from children under 13.
- In the EEA, a child below their country's age of digital consent cannot agree on their own to the optional things in section 4 — analytics, error reporting and music. That age is set nationally and falls between 13 and 16; in Sweden it is 13. Playing the game does not rely on your consent, so this affects those optional extras rather than your character.
If you tell us a player is below the relevant age — whether you are their parent or the player yourself — we will delete the account and the personal data attached to it, and confirm when it is done. Use the contact form; you do not need an account of your own to reach us.
11. California privacy rights (CCPA/CPRA)
California residents have these rights in addition:
- To know what personal information is collected, used, or shared
- To delete personal information
- To opt out of any "sale" of personal information. We do not sell data for money. Allowing analytics may count as "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising, and the cookie banner is how you control it
- To correct inaccurate personal information
- Not to be treated worse for exercising any of these
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. If we change something that matters, we will post the new version here and move the date at the top.