Tinselwood

The short version

Tinselwood is a Christmas town builder for Windows, sold on Steam and made by Clackety Rock. The game collects nothing. It has no accounts of its own, no analytics, no tracking, and no ads, and it never connects to the internet. Everything you build is saved on your own computer. The one place a copy goes is Steam Cloud, under your own Steam account, and you can turn that off.

What is stored, and where

Your towns, your settings (sound, graphics, lighting, snowfall, autosave interval) and the size and position of the game window are saved as files on your computer, under %APPDATA%\Tinselwood\:

• saves\ holds your towns, and the few settings that are about you rather than about this computer (the jukebox, the autosave interval, which tips you have seen). It is the one folder Steam Cloud backs up.
• device\ holds the settings that belong to this computer: the graphics options and the volume. They stay here.
• backups\ holds copies of your saves\ folder as it stood when you opened the game, for the last ten times it had changed, so that a town can be put back. They never leave this computer: Steam Cloud does not carry them.
• docs\ holds copies of this page, the terms and the open-source licences, put there when you open one from Settings so your browser can show them.
• window.json holds the size and position of the window, and whether it was maximised or full screen.
• tinselwood.log is a plain-text list of any errors the game ran into. Each time the game starts it also writes one line describing what it is running on: the game's version and build, the version of Electron (the browser engine the game runs in), your version of Windows, the processor, how much memory there is, the screen size, whether Steam is running and whether Steam Cloud is on, and then the graphics card. There is nothing about you in it: no name, and any folder path in an error has your own user folder written as %USERPROFILE%, so your Windows user name is not in it either. It is never sent anywhere; it is there so that you can attach it to a bug report if you choose to.

Postcards and wallpapers you save are written to Pictures\Tinselwood\, only when you choose Save. They are never uploaded anywhere, Steam Cloud included.

Uninstalling the game through Steam does not remove any of these folders: your towns are left where they are in case you come back.

On a computer with two graphics chips, the game also asks Windows, once, to run it on the faster one. That is a single entry for the game under Settings > Display > Graphics, and you can change or remove it there.

What Steam does

You bought Tinselwood from Valve and you start it from Steam, so some things about it are Steam's doing rather than the game's. Those are covered by Valve's privacy policy, not by this one.

• Steam Cloud keeps a copy of your saves\ folder under your Steam account, so that your towns follow you to another computer. It is on unless you turn it off.
• What the game says to Steam. Three things, all of them to the Steam app already running on your computer, never to the internet. When you earn an achievement, the game tells Steam which. It asks Steam whether Steam Cloud is switched on, for your account and for this game, so that Settings and the log can say whether your towns are being backed up. And if you start the game from its folder instead of from Steam, it asks Steam to start it properly and closes, so that the overlay, achievements and Cloud work. The game does not read your Steam name, your Steam ID, your friends list, or anything else about your account.
• The Steam overlay (Shift+Tab) works in the game. Its browser, chat and screenshots are Steam's own software, and what you do in them is between you and Steam.
• The purchase. Your payment details and your email address go to Valve and never reach us. Valve shows us totals (how many copies were sold, in which countries, how long people play on average), never who anyone is.
• The usual records. Steam keeps what it keeps about any game you own: that you own it, when you play it, and for how long.
• Reviews and discussions you post on the game's Steam pages are public, and are kept by Valve.

What is not collected

To be specific, Tinselwood contains no code that does any of the following:

• No accounts of its own, no sign-in, and no email addresses. Your Steam account is between you and Valve.
• No advertising of any kind.
• No analytics, telemetry, crash reports, or gameplay statistics.
• No third-party trackers, pixels, or social media SDKs.
• No connection to the internet, at launch or at any other time. The game, its fonts and its music all ship inside the download, and the game is built to refuse any web request outright.
• No location, contacts, camera, or microphone. The game is built to refuse those too.
• No cookies.

Nothing is sold, rented, or shared with anyone, because nothing is collected to begin with.

If you write to us

If you email us, we have your email address and whatever you chose to send, a log file included. It is used to answer you and for nothing else: it is never added to a mailing list and never shared. We keep it only for as long as it takes to sort out what you wrote about, and we will delete it sooner if you ask.

Your choices

• Delete a town. Use Load Town in the game. With Steam Cloud on, Steam removes its own copy the next time it syncs. Copies of the town stay in backups\ on this computer until ten newer snapshots have replaced them; delete that folder too if you want it gone at once.
• Delete everything. Delete each town from Load Town first, so that Steam Cloud lets go of its copies, then delete the folder %APPDATA%\Tinselwood\ (everything the game keeps: saves, backups, settings, the log) and, if you want your postcards gone too, Pictures\Tinselwood\. Deleting the save folder by hand while Steam Cloud is on does not work: Steam will put your towns back from its own copy the next time you play. A few small settings files (the jukebox order, which tips you have seen) may stay in Steam's copy; they hold nothing about you.
• Turn Steam Cloud off. In your Steam library, right-click Tinselwood, choose Properties, and switch off Steam Cloud under General. Your towns then stay on this computer only.
• Hide your achievements and play time. Who can see them is set under Game details in your Steam profile's privacy settings.
• Back up your towns. The save folder is plain files; copy it anywhere you like.

Children

Tinselwood is a gentle game and children may well enjoy it. Because it collects no information from anyone, it collects none from them. Steam accounts themselves are for people aged 13 and over, under Valve's own rules.

Changes

If this policy changes, the effective date at the top changes with it, and any change that affects what is collected will be described in the game's update notes on Steam before it takes effect.

Contact

Tinselwood is made by Clackety Rock. Questions about privacy: hello@clacketyrock.com