Privacy Policy

Steel Tide is made by one developer, Rene Wang ("we"). This policy covers the game wherever you play it (in a browser at play.steelti.de, through Steam, from the App Store or from Google Play), the dedicated server software that players run themselves, and this website. It is written to be read rather than scrolled past, and the whole of it fits on this page.

What stays on your device

Your settings (language, volume, interface options), saved games, last Conquest setup, custom map and remembered multiplayer commander name stay in the browser's or the app's local storage. They are not uploaded as part of analytics. The browser, iOS and Android versions also keep a random ID and its first day for usage counts when device linking is on, and a bounded queue of events waiting to be sent. Those events are sent when a connection is available and removed from the queue once accepted. There is no cloud save and no account to attach one to.

Deleting it is up to you: clear the site's data in your browser, or uninstall the app. The Steam version keeps the same data in the game's own user-data folder on your computer.

The store versions

The Steam, iOS and Android versions ship their game assets inside the app, and single player works offline. The iOS and Android apps also check for game updates and the minimum supported app version. They send usage counts to PostHog as described below. The Steam version sends no game analytics. All versions can connect to multiplayer servers you choose and open links in your browser.

The App Store privacy label and Google Play Data safety section declare the usage information and random device identifier collected for analytics, alongside the information received by our public multiplayer servers. We do not use game analytics for advertising or tracking across other companies' apps or websites.

Steam. When you play through Steam, the Steam client may provide the game with your Steam persona name, which the game offers as your default commander name in multiplayer, and achievements, once the game has them, are recorded by Steam on your account. What Steam itself collects is governed by Valve's privacy policy, not by this one.

Game analytics and this website

play.steelti.de and steelti.de are served by Vercel. Like every web server, theirs receives the technical information a request carries (your IP address, your browser type and the page requested) and may hold it briefly in logs to run and secure the service. We do not build profiles from it.

This website uses Vercel Web Analytics to count visits. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device and does not follow you across sites. It records the page viewed, the page that led to it, your country, and your browser, operating system and device type; one visitor is told apart from another by a hash of the request that is reset daily and is never linked to a name.

The browser, iOS and Android versions count a few things done in the game with PostHog (hosted in the European Union): the game being opened, a match started or decided (its mode, map, seat count and outcome), a mod installed (by its public id), a server joined or hosted (whether as host, and over TLS or not), a map exported from the editor, a replay exported, an achievement earned, a visit to the Store or the Arsenal and what was bought or worn there. Each count carries its time, the game's version, platform, screen size and browser or webview user agent; a launch also carries your language, and the phone apps include their app version. None carries a name, a chat line, a server address or anything else you typed. Events are sent through play.steelti.de, hosted by Vercel, which forwards them to PostHog. Requests carry an IP address; any country inferred from it may reflect the forwarding server.

So that we can tell whether players come back the next day or the next week, the game makes a random ID the first time it runs and keeps it in the browser's or app's storage with the date of that first day, and every count carries it. It is separate from your commander name and multiplayer handle. You can untie the counts from your device under Settings ▸ About ▸ Link statistics to this device: the ID, its first day and queued analytics events are deleted, and no further analytics data is stored on your device. The game still counts the same few things, but each launch uses a new random ID kept only while the game is open. These IDs do not link separate launches, and no analytics person profile is created for them. Clearing the site's or app's data deletes the stored ID too.

The counting starts only after the game has loaded and does not run in the Steam version. The game does not need it to run, and a blocker that stops it changes nothing.

Multiplayer

Steel Tide has no matchmaking, no lobby service and no accounts. The game never connects to a multiplayer server on its own: you pick one, by typing its address, opening an invitation link, or choosing one from the list on the Browse page, and most servers are run by players themselves, on their own machine or one they rent. Whoever runs a server is its operator, and this policy cannot speak for them. The servers on the Browse page named Official are ours; they are described under The public servers below. A friend of the game may run a public room and ask for it to be listed beside them, and it is listed under their own name: it is their server, and they are its operator, as with any other.

When you connect, the server receives what it needs to seat you in a match: the commander name you typed, your chat messages, your game commands, a saved game if you upload one as host, and, as with any connection over the internet, your IP address. The game also sends a random handle it made once on your device, so that a server which has removed somebody can keep them out for a while without mistaking a whole household or a mobile network for that person; it is not linked to you, and clearing the game's data replaces it. The server gives you a session id and a reconnect token so that a dropped connection can be resumed; both are meaningless anywhere but on that server. Your name and your messages are shown to the other people in the room. Chat is relayed with English, Chinese and Korean profanity masked in transit and is not kept beyond the room's own backlog; the most recent twenty lines travel with a report, below. A server may write a checkpoint of the running match to disk so that a restart does not lose it, and its logs may record connections, IP address included.

Any player may report another to the server's operator from the room's player list or from a chat line: what happened, in a word, and a note if they add one. The server writes the report down with the name, address and device handle of both players and the room's last twenty chat lines, for the operator to read. Nothing happens to the reported player automatically. Muting a player hides their chat on your device alone; nothing is sent.

If you run a server yourself, you are its operator: everything it receives is on your machine and in your hands.

#When a room has content filtering enabled, the game also sends the name you submit before joining and each chat message before sending to play.steelti.de for an automated content check. That service passes only the submitted text and whether it is a name or chat to the Jev model through Vercel AI Gateway; it does not include your chat history, game commands, server address or device handle. Vercel receives your IP address with the request. Vercel and the model provider process the text under their service policies and settings; our check handler does not log or store it. This applies to the browser and app clients, including Steam. A self-hosted server can disable content filtering, which also disables these AI requests. If the check is unavailable, the game falls back to the room’s existing filters.

The public servers

The servers listed on the game's Browse page as Official are run by us. On them we receive exactly what is described above, and this is what we do with it:

• The commander name, the chat, the game commands and the address are used to run the match and are gone when the room moves on; the server's log, which records connections with their address, is kept for no more than fourteen days.
• A player removed from a public room, whether by the room's own rules (repeated language the filter would mask, a vote of the seated players, a seat held in silence while the room waited) or by us, is kept out for a while by address and by device handle; that record lapses on its own, or within a year for one made by us, and holds nothing but the name used, the address, the handle and the reason.
• Reports are kept for up to ninety days so that a pattern can be seen, then deleted.
• Finished matches on these servers may be kept as a balance record (which units were built and lost, and when) under the commander names in the room, for the game's own tuning and nothing else.

None of it is shared with anyone, sold, or used for advertising.

Children

The game is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of digital consent where they live. Multiplayer chat is only as safe as the server you join: prefer servers run by people you know.

Your rights

Where data protection law gives you rights over personal data (to see it, correct it, have it deleted or object to its use), you can exercise them by writing to hi@steelti.de. Analytics counts in the browser, iOS and Android versions are associated with a random ID rather than your name. Switching off Link statistics to this device, or clearing the site's or app's data, stops future launches using that ID; it does not delete events already sent. Contact us about those events before deleting the ID if you want us to identify them. Data on your device you can delete yourself, as described above; for a multiplayer server, write to its operator.

Where it matters legally, the little processing we do, serving the sites and counting visits and play, rests on our legitimate interest in running and improving Steel Tide.

Changes

When this policy changes, the new text is published here with the date at the top updated. A change that matters, one that would have the game collect something it does not collect today, is also called out in the changelog.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or about anything on this page: hi@steelti.de.