Terrafactor privacy
Last updated: pending randy's okay: publishing date
Terrafactor is made by randy, a one-person studio in Australia. This page says what the game sends off your computer, why, and how to turn it off. Questions or requests go to contact@randy.gg.
The short version
- Gameplay stats and crash reports are on by default. One switch turns both off: on the GAMEPLAY DATA screen the first time you launch, or any time in Options > General > Share Gameplay Data.
- They're tied to a random ID made on your computer, never your name or Steam ID.
- F9 feedback only goes when you write a note and press Enter. It carries your name and Steam ID so we can thank you in patch notes.
- Playing online means the server you join sees your IP address, your in-game name and your Steam ID, like any online game.
What the game sends, and why
1. Gameplay stats
What gets sent:
- A random install ID, made on your computer the first time the game runs, plus a random ID for each play session.
- A scrambled (hashed) form of the game's multiplayer login token, so one player's events line up across sessions and servers. It can't be turned back into the token.
- Game version and build, your OS, and your Steam beta branch if you're on one.
- Once per launch: your CPU model and core count, RAM, graphics card and driver, screen resolution and refresh rate, and your fullscreen, vsync and frame cap settings.
- What happens in play: starting and quitting the game, entering and leaving worlds (with load time and how long you played, idled or sat in menus), a check-in every 5 minutes, quests completed, first-time moments (first move, first time opening your inventory, crafting menu or tech tree), and every 10 minutes a tally of what you crafted, harvested, placed, fed to the Hole and researched.
- Multiplayer connection quality: ping, packet loss, stutters and netcode error counts.
- Short error codes when a world fails to load or a connection fails.
- That you sent F9 feedback, never what it said.
Worlds are identified by a scrambled ID made from the world's seed and creation time, not by their names. These stats don't include your name, your Steam ID, your chat or your save files.
When the stats arrive, the receiving servers see your IP address the way any website does. We don't store IP addresses; PostHog stores a rough location worked out from the IP when the event arrives (country, and usually city, region, postal code and map coordinates). pending randy's okay: GeoIP wording
Why: to see where players get stuck, how long things take, what to balance, and what's slow or broken.
2. Crash reports
If the game crashes, it sends a crash report: the kind of error, where in the game's code it happened (the call stack), which program files (DLLs) were loaded, the last error messages the game printed, your game version, and how long you'd been playing. Folder paths that contain your user name are swapped for placeholders first.
On Windows, while the crash window shows its progress bar, the game also uploads the crash dump file and the crash summary. A crash dump is a snapshot of the game at the moment it crashed, mostly the call stacks. It can contain small pieces of whatever the game had in memory at that moment. We only use it to find and fix the crash.
If a crash report can't be sent, for example when you're offline, it waits on your computer and is sent the next time you start the game. After 30 days it's deleted unsent.
Why: so we can fix crashes, including ones nobody reports.
3. F9 feedback
Nothing is sent until you press F9, write a note and press Enter. Esc keeps your note as a draft, or throws it away if it's empty.
A note carries:
- Your text and any images you paste in.
- A screenshot of the moment you pressed F9.
- Short performance records (frame times and stutters).
- The last part of the game's log file (up to 512 KB).
- Where you were: which screen, the world's name, singleplayer or multiplayer, your position, what you were holding, and the in-game day.
- Your game version, OS and window size.
- Who you are: your Steam ID and Steam name (when Steam is running), your in-game name and the random install ID. We use these to thank you by name in patch notes and to stop spam.
Before the log leaves your computer, other players' names, Steam IDs, all chat messages, your login token, your user folder and your computer user name are replaced with placeholders. The log can still contain your world names and the addresses (including IP addresses) of servers you connected to.
Notes are stored with Cloudflare, at feedback.terrafactor.io. Cloudflare tells us which country a note came from. Your IP address is used to limit spam and is only ever stored scrambled (hashed). Your computer's name is never stored.
The Share Gameplay Data switch doesn't affect F9: a note only goes when you send it yourself.
4. Multiplayer
- Playing with Steam friends: hosting and joining go through Steam's own relay network, run by Valve. Your friends see your Steam name, and while your world is open to them, Steam shows them its name.
- Joining a server by its address: that server sees your IP address, your in-game name, your Steam ID and Steam name, and a Steam ticket that proves who you are. Our servers check that ticket with Steam.
- Chat and voice pass through the server to the other players. Voice is passed along live and is never recorded.
- Servers we run keep logs of who joins and leaves: IP address, in-game name, Steam ID and Steam name, connection quality, and chat messages. We use them to keep the servers running, track down problems and deal with cheating or abuse. They also send join and leave stats tied to your scrambled player ID (never your name or Steam ID) with your ping, packet loss and how long you stayed. These come from the server, so the Share Gameplay Data switch on your computer doesn't stop them. pending randy's okay: keep this, or make our servers respect the player's switch
- Servers run by other players are their own. We don't control what they log.
5. The ending
At the very end of Terrafactor you fall into Goop Runners, our next game, which ships inside Terrafactor. It joins a Goop Runners room server (run on Cloudflare) with your world's room code and your in-game name, so you land with your friends. If Goop Runners can't start, your browser opens the Goop Runners web page with the same room code.
pending randy's okay: what Goop Runners' own F9 box sends when it runs inside Terrafactor, and whether this section should cover it
6. Steam
Terrafactor uses Steam (Valve) for your Steam ID and name, your friends list (for the Friends tab), rich presence (what your friends see you doing), Steam Input for controllers, the relay network and sign-in tickets. Valve's own privacy policy covers what Steam itself collects.
What you can turn off
| What | How to turn it off |
|---|---|
| Gameplay stats | Share Gameplay Data, on the first-launch screen or in Options > General |
| Crash reports and crash dumps | The same switch |
| F9 feedback | Don't send a note: nothing goes until you press Enter |
| What servers see | Play singleplayer, or only with friends you trust |
Turning the switch off stops sending straight away. Turning it back on starts again straight away.
Who handles the data
- PostHog (USA): gameplay stats and crash reports. They pass through Amazon CloudFront on the way, using a proxy we run ourselves. pending randy's okay: confirm the proxy is yours and which AWS account owns it
- Backblaze B2 (USA): Windows crash dumps.
- Cloudflare: F9 feedback, and the Goop Runners room server.
- Hetzner (Germany): the multiplayer servers we run.
- Valve (Steam): as above.
We don't sell your data, and the game has no advertising or marketing trackers. pending randy's okay: "we don't sell your data" is his promise to make
Why we're allowed to collect it
For gameplay stats and crash reports we rely on our legitimate interest in finding bugs and fixing and balancing the game. You can switch them off at any time. pending randy's okay: legal basis line
How long we keep it
- Gameplay stats and crash reports in PostHog: 1 year. pending randy's okay
- Windows crash dumps: 90 days. pending randy's okay
- F9 notes: 2 years. pending randy's okay (nothing deletes them automatically today)
- Our servers' logs: 30 days. pending randy's okay
- Data collected before 1.0, from earlier playtests, will be deleted before 1.0. pending randy's okay: deleting pre-1.0 data
On your own computer the game keeps its last 30 log files, its last 5 crash dumps, sent F9 notes for 30 days and unsent crash reports for 30 days. They live in the Terrafactor folder: %APPDATA%\Terrafactor on Windows, ~/.config/Terrafactor on Linux, and ~/Library/Application Support/Terrafactor on Mac.
Your rights
You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it or delete it, or ask any other question: email contact@randy.gg. To help us find your data, include your Steam ID, the ID of any F9 note you sent (the game shows it when the note goes), or your install ID (the line starting posthog distinct_id= in a log file in the Terrafactor folder's logs folder).
Changes
If what the game collects changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top, and mention it in the patch notes.