Privacy Policy

This policy explains what recap.games collects, why it is needed, which services process it, and the controls available to you.

Supporter release planner

The supporter planner uses your existing game follows and subscription status to display your release plan. It does not store a separate plan or send it to another service. CSV exports are generated on your device and contain the displayed game titles, release labels, date certainty and public game page paths. You control any exported copies; deleting your account does not delete files you have downloaded.

Partner enquiries

When you use the Work with us form, we collect your name, email address, enquiry type, message and any organisation or links you provide. We send these details through Resend to our team's email inbox to review the enquiry and follow up. We do not publish them or add you to a mailing list. Enquiries remain in our inbox while we handle them and keep any related correspondence. You can ask us to delete that correspondence at [email protected]. Account deletion and account exports do not include these emails because the form does not require or link to an account.

We store keyed hashes of your IP address and email address with short-lived counters to limit spam. We also store a keyed hash of the enquiry to prevent repeat sends for 24 hours. Expired counters are removed when the limiters next run. We do not store the message body in our application database or include form contents in analytics.

Showcase search

Search words are sent to our website to filter a showcase’s titles and summaries. They appear in the page URL, so your browser history and anyone you share that link with can include them. Clear search removes them from the current URL. We do not save these searches to your account or include the search words in product analytics.

Account information

When you register or authenticate, we collect:

• Email address
• Securely hashed password (when using email/password sign-up). If you sign in with an emailed link instead, your account is created from your email address alone and has no password
• Display name and username
• User role for access control

If you choose Google, Twitch, or Discord sign-in, that provider processes your login and shares your account identifier, email address and its verification status, display name, and profile picture when available. We use these to create or sign you into your recap.games account. We store the linked account identifier and authentication tokens; access and refresh tokens are encrypted in our database. These records are deleted when you delete your recap.games account. You can also revoke recap.games access in your provider's account settings, or use an emailed sign-in link instead. We request only the profile and email permissions needed for sign-in.

Authorized administrators can see account activity counts for follows, saves, games seen, blog views, comments, votes, and suggestions, along with supporter status, follow-digest preferences, and the latest recorded activity time. They can also inspect the games and showcases you follow, games you save or mark seen, blog posts you view, comments you submit, poll choices, and content suggestions. We use these existing account records to manage accounts and understand product usage; this view does not collect additional activity or send these summaries to another service.

Support and billing information

If you choose to support recap.games, Stripe collects and processes your payment details. recap.games stores the Stripe customer and subscription references needed to manage billing, along with your plan, billing interval, subscription status, renewal dates, and cancellation status. We do not receive or store your full card number.

Poll participation data

When you vote in a poll, we store a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address alongside your vote. This hash cannot be reversed to recover your actual IP address and is used solely to prevent duplicate voting. We do not store your raw IP address for poll votes.

Content suggestions

When you submit a content suggestion while signed out, we store a one-way hash of your IP address with the suggestion to limit abuse. Signed-in suggestions are linked to your account instead.

Session and device information

When you sign in, we store your session's IP address and browser user-agent string alongside the session so you can review active sessions and we can detect abuse. These are included in your data export and deleted with your sessions.

Emails we send you

Account emails are delivered through Resend. These are password resets, sign-in links you ask for, and, when you create an account with a password, a message asking you to confirm your email address. A sign-in link works once and expires after 15 minutes. We log only a pseudonymous correlation identifier for delivery, never the email body, and sign-in links are kept out of our server logs.

The weekly email (the follow digest) is optional and off unless you turn it on in your settings, sign up for it with the email field at the bottom of every page, or ask for it by following a game or showcase with your email while signed out. Signing up that way creates an account for your address and signs you in: the email we send says so, and clicking its link is what turns the digest on. We only send it to a confirmed address, and only in a week when there is something new about the games or showcases you follow, or a showcase or a game with a confirmed release day coming up that week. It contains your display name, those games and showcases, that week's showcases and releases, and links back to recap.games tagged so we can count how many visits the email produced - the links carry no identifier for you.

To send it we store, against your account, whether the digest is switched on and the time the last one was sent, so that the next one does not repeat what you already received. Both are included in your data export and deleted with your account. Every digest carries an unsubscribe link that works without signing in, and you can switch it off at any time in your settings.

Show reminders are also optional and off unless you turn them on. An hour before a showcase you follow starts, we send one email with the show and a link to watch it. Only shows with a confirmed start time are reminded - we never guess one. So the same person is not emailed twice, we store which show start times you were reminded about. The preference and those delivery records are included in your data export and deleted with your account. Every reminder carries an unsubscribe link that turns off reminders only; the weekly digest is unaffected.

Show recaps are optional and off unless you turn them on in your settings, or ask for them from a showcase page - signed out, that is by email, and the email we send says so before you click it. After a showcase you follow ends and its announcements are in, we send one email listing them with links back to recap.games, tagged the same way as the digest. So the same person is not emailed twice, we store which shows you were sent a recap of. The preference and those delivery records are included in your data export and deleted with your account. Every recap carries an unsubscribe link that turns off recaps only.

Discord webhooks

If you connect a Discord webhook in your settings, we post new announcements, showcase reminders, and (if you switch them on) after-show recaps to that channel. When you connect it we ask Discord to confirm the webhook exists and post one test message. We store the webhook URL encrypted, the name Discord reports for the webhook, which posts you switched on, whether it is working, when we last posted, and which shows we have already sent it a recap of. We never show the URL again, including in your data export, because it lets anyone who holds it post in your channel. The posts contain only public recap.games content, never your account details. Disconnecting a webhook or deleting your account removes it from recap.games; the webhook itself stays in Discord until you delete it there.

The recap.games Discord bot

When you use one of the bot's commands, Discord sends us the command, what you typed into it, and the IDs of you and your server, as it does for every Discord bot. We use that only to answer you: the bot does not store or log what you type, and answers come from public recap.games content. We count how many times each command is used per day and how many servers the bot is in, including each server's public name, icon, member count, and the date the bot joined, without recording who ran a command or where. This list is replaced each time the bot reports, so a server that removes the bot disappears from it within minutes. If a server admin runs /setup, the bot creates a webhook in the channel they choose, and we store the server's ID, that webhook's URL (encrypted), which posts are switched on, whether it is working, when we last posted, and which shows we have sent it a recap of. This belongs to the server, not to a recap.games account, so it is not part of anyone's data export. Running /setup off or removing the bot from the server deletes it from recap.games, and the bot deletes the webhook from Discord when it still can.

When optional Bot Premium is enabled, Discord handles its purchases and subscription management. The bot checks the entitlement information Discord includes with a command to see whether you or your server can use the paid options. We do not store that entitlement information, your platform filter, or payment details in recap.games. Manage or cancel a bot subscription in Discord's Subscription settings. Website supporter subscriptions are separate and are managed in Stripe.

Platform preferences and your calendar link

The platforms you choose in setup or settings are stored with your account so recap.games can point you at games on them. They are included in your data export and deleted with your account.

Settings can also give you a personal calendar link that subscribes your calendar app to the shows and release dates you follow. The link carries a signed identifier for your account and is the only thing that authorises the feed — anyone who has it can read those dates, so treat it like a password. We store only a version number, never the link itself, which is how "Reset link" revokes the old one. The feed returns only public show and release dates for what you follow; it is marked noindex and never stored by a shared cache. The version is deleted with your account and is not included in your data export.

Donation records

Historical Ko-fi donations shown on the public supporter wall list only the donor name, amount, currency, message, and date. We strip verification tokens, email addresses, and shipping details before storage. New supporter subscriptions are private and never appear on that wall.

Affiliate links

Some store links on game pages, such as Green Man Gaming and GOG, are affiliate links: recap.games may earn a commission if you buy after following one, and these links are marked as ads. The links are tracked by our affiliate network, impact.com, and the store, which set their own cookies and receive your IP address and browser details when you follow a link, under their own privacy policies. We add only non-personal labels to the link (the site name, the game's page name and where on the page you clicked) so we can see which pages lead to sales, and we do not use affiliate reports to identify individual visitors. Prices shown next to these links come from impact.com's product catalogue, which our server reads on a schedule; your visit does not trigger it and no personal data is sent.

Advertising (Google AdSense)

We fund recap.games with ads served through Google AdSense. When you visit a page, your browser loads Google's ad script directly from Google, and Google receives your IP address and browser details. Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads based on your visits to this and other websites. We do not send Google your email address, name, username, or account details. Google processes this data under its own privacy policy; see how Google uses information from sites that use its services. If you visit from the UK, the EEA, or Switzerland, Google's consent message asks whether Google may use cookies and your data to personalize ads; if you decline, the ads you see are not personalized. You can also opt out of personalized ads in Google Ad Settings.

Cookies and session data

We use cookies and similar technologies to:

• Maintain your authentication session
• Remember your preferences and user settings
• Remember a Follow click in this browser tab while you sign in. We clear it when you return signed in to that page and ignore it after 15 minutes.
• Keep anonymous saved and viewed game history on your device; saved games are merged into your account when you sign in, and games you follow are stored with your account so we can show you their updates and remember when you last viewed Following so we can identify newer updates
• Remember on your device when you last visited, so we can mark games added since then. To show how many there are, your browser sends that time to us with the request, and we use it only to count them. When product analytics is enabled, the first page of each visit also reports roughly how long it has been since your last one (for example "2 to 7 days"), never the time itself
• Remember on your device that we have already offered to follow a game after you saved one, so we only ask once
• Remember your last five searches on your device so the search box can offer them again. They stay in your browser, are never sent to us or to analytics, and you can remove them from the search box. What you type is sent to us only to return results
• Store the conferences you follow with your account so we can show them on your Following page. You can unfollow at any time, and follows are included in your data export and deleted with your account

Product analytics

When product analytics is enabled, we collect a limited set of usage events such as account creation, saving, following, or marking a game seen, following or unfollowing a conference, trailer playback, playing or opening a conference's stream, Catch Up progress, and submitted suggestions. Clicking a store link on a game page records the game, which store it goes to, and whether it is an affiliate link. Support analytics record when a support prompt is clicked, the selected billing interval, and whether Stripe returned the browser to a success or cancelled page. These events may include a short-lived pseudonymous session identifier, the internal account ID for signed-in users, the route where the action occurred, campaign labels, and a timestamp. Starting a Catch Up session also records which general part of the site it started from, using a small fixed set of labels (for example the homepage or the site header) rather than a full page address. The first page of each visit records how long it has been since this browser last visited, as a broad range such as the same day, 2 to 7 days, or no earlier visit. This tells us whether people come back without using cookies or a persistent identifier.

Analytics events do not include your email address, name, username, suggestion text, search text, or media titles. Product analytics is disabled when your browser sends a Do Not Track request.

Authorized administrators can view aggregate usage reports from PostHog in our admin dashboard to understand site activity. Our server holds these summaries in memory and reuses them for up to one minute before requesting an updated report. The reports do not contain individual visitor or account IDs.

We process your data to:

• Authenticate and authorize your access
• Limit comment submissions using your account and recent comment timestamps
• Provide site functionality including game browsing, conference tracking, content suggestions, and polls
• Create and manage optional supporter subscriptions and provide billing self-service
• Prevent abuse such as duplicate poll votes using hashed IP addresses and rate limiting
• Improve the platform based on usage patterns

Under GDPR and other applicable laws, we rely on:

• Performance of a contract for account management services
• Legitimate interests for platform security and improvement

We retain personal data only as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this policy or as required by law.

recap.games uses the following measures to protect your data:

• Encrypted connections over HTTPS/TLS
• Secure password hashing algorithms
• Access controls based on user roles

recap.games uses the following services and software:

• Better Auth software for authentication
• SQLite software to store application data on recap.games infrastructure
• PostHog EU for limited product analytics when analytics is enabled
• Stripe for supporter payments, receipts, subscription management, and fraud prevention
• Resend to deliver account emails such as password resets, sign-in links, email confirmation, and the optional weekly follow digest
• Discord to deliver posts to channels whose webhooks you connect or a server admin set up with our bot, and to run the bot's commands. Discord receives the public content we post, from our servers, not your browser
• Ko-fi for historical donations shown on the public supporter wall (name, amount, and message only)
• Google AdSense to serve ads. When a page loads, your browser fetches Google's ad script, and Google receives your IP address and browser details and may set its own cookies to serve and personalize ads
• YouTube and Twitch players for trailers and showcase streams. On showcase pages the player only loads when you press play. Once it loads, YouTube or Twitch receives your IP address and browser details and may set their own cookies, including the sign-in that lets age-restricted videos play

PostHog, Stripe, Resend, Discord, Ko-fi, Google, YouTube, and Twitch have their own privacy policies governing how they handle data.

Game artwork and blog images come from services including IGDB, Steam, YouTube, PlayStation, Deep Silver, Xbox Wire, and Jagex’s Framer-hosted website. Images may be delivered through our image optimizer or loaded directly from those providers. When an image loads directly, its provider receives your IP address and browser details. Loading an image does not send your recap.games account information to that provider.

Our servers also keep standard web-server access logs (IP address and user agent) for operation and abuse prevention. Password-reset and sign-in link URLs are excluded from those logs so their tokens are never written to disk.

You have the right to:

• Access and request a copy of your data
• Rectify or update inaccurate data
• Request deletion of your account and personal data
• Withdraw consent for non-essential processing

You can export your data anytime from Settings. Each download is requested afresh for your signed-in account, and account data cached in the browser is cleared when the signed-in account changes. Keep downloaded files private; signing out does not delete files you have already saved. There is no self-service deletion yet - email [email protected] to request deletion. If you have an active supporter subscription, cancel it first: deletion is blocked while a subscription is still open so billing records stay consistent.

For privacy inquiries or to exercise your rights, email us at [email protected].

We may update this policy periodically. We'll post any changes here and update the "Last updated" date above.