Privacy policy

What stays on your device

The game saves each trip on your device: your progress, the words you have learned, the traveller story you give at the start, the name you go by in the game, your guide style and your 18+ answer, what your guide remembers about you, her sketchbook, and the photos in your album. Your settings are saved beside them. Places and outfits downloaded for your trips are kept on your device too. "Forget all this" in Settings clears what your guide remembers.

On PC and Steam Deck, the game hears you with a speech recognizer that ships with it and runs on your computer. No audio leaves your device. The game also writes a log file on your device, which can include what the recognizer heard. It is not sent to us.

On Steam, Steam Cloud keeps a synced copy of your saves, settings and album with Valve, so your trips follow you between computers. LineCrush Games does not receive those files.

Live conversation is optional

You can finish the game without it. With no connection, or when the server is off, every scene, every spoken check and the sketchbook still play, and your guide answers from her written answers where she has one. There is no switch for it in Settings: to keep the game offline, play without an internet connection.

What live conversation sends

When live conversation is on and you talk to your guide or a local, the game sends the LineCrush Games server:

• Your line. What you typed, or the words the recognizer heard you say, as text, never audio.
• The conversation so far. Up to its last 20 lines.
• Where you are. The city and place with its fact cards, the phrasebook, the time, weather and recent events of your trip, your plans and tickets, and how your character looks (presentation, hair length, hat).
• About you. Your traveller story in your own words (who you are on this trip, your budget, why you came and your goals), the things your guide remembers about you, your language level and the words you have met.
• Your guide. Your guide style, your 18+ answer, whether you have said you are under 18, and how close you and your guide have become.

It does not send the name you go by in the game or your saves.

How the server knows who you are

A Steam build asks Steam for a sign-in ticket made for this game and sends it with each request. The server checks the ticket with Steam, which returns your SteamID. The server uses your SteamID only for the records and limits described below. AI services never get it: they get a one-way code made from it (a SHA-256 hash), which lets them act on one abusive player rather than on the studio as a whole.

Services that receive data

• OpenAI. Your words and traveller story for a safety check, the request above for the model that writes the reply, and each sentence of the reply for a safety check. Requests to its models are sent with storage turned off, so they are not saved in our OpenAI account for later use, and carry the one-way code in place of your SteamID.
• Fish Audio. The text of each sentence your guide or a local says, to speak it in their voice. Nothing that identifies you.
• Valve (Steam). Your sign-in ticket, to confirm who you are.
• Vercel. Hosts the server, so your requests pass through it.
• Neon. Hosts the database that holds the cost records.

Each service handles the data under its own terms.

Places and outfits you ask for

The same server can also make new places and outfits for the game. When that is on and you name a real place to visit, the server checks your words with OpenAI's safety check and looks them up with Nominatim, OpenStreetMap's map search. It may then have OpenAI make pictures of it from the map's names, never from your words. If you ask your guide to wear something, your words go to OpenAI to match them to her wardrobe. Pictures are stored with Vercel at public addresses and shared with every player.

The browser version

A browser version of the game is in testing on LineCrush.com, open only to the studio team for now and behind a LineCrush sign-in. There, live conversation goes through LineCrush.com to the same server. When you hold Talk, your browser records a clip of up to 20 seconds and sends it to LineCrush.com, which sends it to OpenAI to turn into text. The text then goes on like a typed line. LineCrush.com logs only the clip's size and length, never the audio or the words.

What the server keeps

The server keeps no transcripts. It does not store what you typed or said, the requests it sends, or the replies. Its logs hold timings, counts and costs, never your SteamID or the text of the conversation. It keeps:

• A cost record for each service call. Your SteamID, a turn id, the time, which service and model it was, token and byte counts, the cost, and whether your line was declined. This is how the daily limit and the cap on voice per player work.
• A safety record for a flagged turn. The turn id, the categories and scores, and what the server did, for example that a line was declined or that an under-18 claim was heard. No text of the conversation.

Places and outfits are the exception. The place names players type are kept, lowercased and tidied, with the place they found or why it was refused, so the same request needs no second map search. The words of an outfit request her wardrobe cannot answer are kept for the studio (60 characters at most). Neither records who asked. When you ask for a new place or outfit to be made, the server keeps your SteamID with it, to apply the daily limit.

These records are not deleted automatically yet.

Age and the Flirty style

The Flirty guide style asks you to confirm that you are 18 or older first. Friendly asks nothing. If anything you say, or your traveller story, says you are under 18, the server runs the conversation as Friendly and tells the game, which keeps Flirty locked for that trip from then on. The server records only that an age claim was heard, never the words.

Platform services

If you obtain or launch the game through Steam, Valve may process account, purchase, device, or usage information under its own privacy terms. The game uses Steam Cloud as described above, records the stamps you earn as Steam achievements (the demo records none), and opens Steam's on-screen keyboard on a Steam Deck.

This website

The current LineCrush Games website does not set analytics or advertising cookies. Links to Steam and LineCrush.com take you to services with their own privacy practices.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to hello@linecrush.com. LineCrush Games is a studio of LineCrush Inc.