GameStart
Privacy Policy
Effective date: 12 October 2026
GameStart (gamestart.com) is operated by HGC Ventures, Inc, a California corporation, 21781 Ventura Blvd #122, Los Angeles, CA 91364 (“GameStart”, “we”, “us”). We are the controller of the personal information described here. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have wherever you live.
The short version
- We collect what you type into our forms, plus basic technical data every website receives.
- We use it to review applications, reply to you and send the emails you asked for.
- We do not sell your information, share it for advertising, or track you across other websites.
- You can see, correct or delete your information at any time by emailing privacy@gamestart.com.
- If you are a creator, we publish a listing about your game only after you approve it, and you can have it changed or removed at any time.
1. What we collect
Creator applications: your name, email address and role; the project and studio name; links you give us; project type and status; the payment channels you would list; your answers to our questions (for example, whether a press kit page would be useful, and the date of your next launch, demo or campaign); anything you write in free-text fields; how you heard about us; and the date and time.
Notification sign-ups: your email address, the interests you tick, and when you signed up and confirmed.
Weekly email sign-ups: if you sign up for the weekly email of newly verified listings, your email address, the version of the consent wording you agreed to, which link or campaign brought you to the form, and when you signed up, confirmed and unsubscribed. This is a separate sign-up: signing up for the notification email does not add you to it.
Listings and the checks behind them: if your application goes ahead, we draft a listing from your application and your public pages (for example your Steam store page and website), and keep the material you send us for it. Before and after publishing we run checks and record their results and dates: for example that the game’s store page exists, that a code we gave you appeared on your page, and that your name and studio name are not on US sanctions lists. To run those checks we may note your country and region. If you approve or ask for changes on your private preview page, we record the name you type, your request, which listing terms you agreed to and when (not the preview link itself).
Emails you send us: your address and the contents of your message.
Studios we contact: when we write to a game studio about GameStart, we keep the business email address the studio publishes (for example on its website, press kit or Steam store page), where and when we found it, the studio and game names, the studio’s country and, for UK companies, the company number, and what happened next (for example a reply, a bounce or a request not to be contacted).
Reports about listings: when you use “Report this listing”, we collect the listing you report, the reason you choose, your explanation and any links you include, and the date and time. Your name and email address are optional, except that copyright and trademark claims need your email, and copyright claims need your name. For a copyright claim the law (the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act) also requires your postal address, phone number, a description of the work and your typed signature.
Technical data: our hosting provider receives your IP address, browser and device type, the page requested, the referring page and the time. We also record which link or campaign brought you to a form (for example, a link from HappyGamer). When you send a form or use the press kit tool, we store a salted hash of your IP address (a one-way code made from the address and a secret value) for 24 hours, so we can limit how many forms one connection can send. We do not store the IP address itself. To keep the forms working, we also record form events without identifying you: that a form was started or sent, which field failed a check (not what you typed), and any errors, with the page they happened on. When you use the free press kit tool, we read your game’s public Steam page and record the Steam app number and whether it worked. These records hold no names, email addresses, IP addresses or form contents. If an email to you fails to send, we record a one-way code made from your address (not the address itself) so we can send it again. We count visits with Vercel Web Analytics, which sets no cookies and counts visitors with a temporary identifier discarded within 24 hours. We also measure how fast pages load with Vercel Speed Insights, which sets no cookies either.
We do not collect payment details, government ID or passwords at this stage, and we do not ask for sensitive information (such as health, religion, biometrics or precise location). Please don’t include it in free-text fields.
2. Why we use it, and our legal bases
| Purpose | Information | Legal basis where one is required (EEA, UK, Switzerland, Brazil and similar) |
|---|---|---|
| Reviewing your application and replying | Application details, email | Steps you asked us to take before a possible agreement; our legitimate interest in running GameStart |
| Publishing the listing you approved, and keeping it up to date | The listing details you approved, including the press contact you chose | Our agreement with you (the listing terms, section 14 of our Terms of Use) |
| Running and recording the checks shown on listings, including sanctions screening | Names, studio, country and region, the pages we check | Legal obligation for sanctions screening; our legitimate interest in showing accurate, dated checks to readers |
| Sending the notification email you asked for | Email, interests | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Sending the weekly email of newly verified listings, only in weeks with something new | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email | |
| Understanding demand and setting prices, using combined totals | Application answers | Our legitimate interest in deciding what to build |
| Handling reports about listings, including fraud, impersonation, sanctions and intellectual property claims | Report details, and your name and contact details if you give them | Our legitimate interest in keeping listings accurate and safe; legal obligation for copyright notices and for notices about unlawful content |
| Writing to game studios about GameStart | The studio’s published business email and the details listed above | Our legitimate interest in telling studios about a free service relevant to their work. Reply “no thanks” (or write to us) and we will not contact you again |
| Keeping the site secure and preventing spam and abuse | Technical data | Our legitimate interest in security |
| Complying with law, including sanctions law, and defending legal claims | As needed | Legal obligation; legitimate interest |
We do not make decisions about you by purely automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not use your information to train AI models.
3. Who we share it with
Only with service providers that run parts of the site for us, under contracts that limit their use of your information to that service:
| Provider | What it does | Where the data is |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel, Inc. | Website hosting and cookieless analytics | United States and global edge network |
| Supabase, Inc. | Database for form submissions and the hashed IP addresses used to limit spam | United States (us-east-1, Virginia) |
| Resend | Confirmation and reply emails | United States |
| Zoho Mail (Zoho Corporation) | Our email inbox | United States |
Published listings are public. Anyone, including search engines, can see what you approved for publication, such as your name or studio name, the press contact you chose, your links, the art and text you supplied, and the checks we completed with their dates. Search engines and others may keep copies after a listing is removed; we cannot control those copies.
HappyGamer is run by the same company. Your form details are not passed to HappyGamer’s editorial work, and applying does not lead to news coverage.
Reports about listings are read only by the people who run GameStart. So that the creator can respond, we may send them a copy of a report. For reports other than copyright or trademark claims, we remove your name and contact details from that copy first. For copyright and trademark claims the creator needs to know who is making the claim in order to answer it, so the copy includes your name and contact details, and the creator may use them to send a counter-notice. We may also share a report with the authorities where the law requires it.
We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to prevent fraud or harm, or as part of a merger, sale or reorganisation of the business. In that case this policy continues to protect your information, and we will tell you if a new controller takes over.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising or targeted advertising.
4. Cookies and tracking
gamestart.com uses no advertising or third-party tracking cookies.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control: we do not track visitors across other sites or let third parties do so on ours, so these signals change nothing here. If that ever changes, we will treat Global Privacy Control as a valid opt-out and update this policy first.
5. How long we keep it
| Information | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Creator applications | While we consider or run your listing, then up to 24 months after our last contact. If GameStart does not go ahead, we will tell applicants and delete applications within 90 days, keeping only anonymous totals. |
| Notification sign-ups | Until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. Unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted after 30 days. |
| Weekly email sign-ups | Until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them; deleted 30 days after you unsubscribe. Unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted after 30 days. |
| Approvals and change requests from the preview page | While the listing is published, then up to 24 months after it is removed (as proof of your approval). |
| Published listings | Until you or we remove the listing. A removed listing shows only a short removal notice for 90 days. The material behind it is deleted within 90 days of removal, except the record of the checks we ran, which we keep up to 24 months after removal to handle complaints and repeat applications. |
| Email conversations | Up to 24 months after they end. |
| Studios we contact | Up to 24 months after our last contact. If you ask us not to contact you again, we keep your address on a do-not-contact list for as long as we need to honour that. |
| Record of emails we sent you (a one-way hash of your address, the subject and the date, so nobody gets the same email twice) | Up to 24 months after the email. |
| Reports about listings | Up to 24 months after we close the report. Copyright and trademark claims: up to 3 years after we close them, so we can apply our rule on repeat infringers. |
| Hashed IP addresses (spam limits) | 24 hours. |
| Form events and error records (no personal details) | 90 days. |
| Hosting logs | Under our hosting provider’s schedule, generally days to weeks. |
We may keep information longer only where the law requires it or to defend a legal claim.
6. Your rights
Everyone, wherever you live, can ask us to:
- confirm whether we hold information about you and give you a copy, in a portable format if you want one;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- stop using it for a purpose based on our legitimate interests;
- stop sending you emails (every email has an unsubscribe link).
You can also withdraw any consent at any time. Withdrawal does not affect what we did before.
How to ask: email privacy@gamestart.com from the address you used with us. We may ask you to confirm the request from that address. We answer within 30 days, or sooner where your local law requires (we will tell you if we need an extension the law allows). Requests are free. We will not treat you differently for using your rights. You may use an authorised agent; we may ask for proof of their authority.
If you disagree with our answer, reply and we will review it again. You can also complain to your data protection authority (see section 9).
7. International transfers
GameStart is run from the United States and our providers store data there. If you are outside the United States, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy law may give less protection than your own. We rely on our providers’ data protection terms, including the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK and Swiss equivalents, or on certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework where a provider is certified. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.
8. Security
Access to form submissions is limited to the people who run GameStart. Our providers encrypt data in transit and at rest, and we keep only what we need. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
9. Region-specific information
European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland. You have the rights in section 6, plus the right to restrict processing, and you may complain to your local supervisory authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office; in Switzerland, the FDPIC). We have not appointed a representative in the EU or the UK. Please write to us directly at privacy@gamestart.com: we handle requests from the EU, the UK and Switzerland in the same way and within the same time limits.
California and other US states. We do not sell or share personal information, or use it for targeted advertising or profiling, so there is nothing to opt out of. You still have the rights in section 6, and the right to appeal a refusal by replying to our answer. If we refuse your appeal, you may contact your state Attorney General. Under California’s “Shine the Light” law, you may ask whether we disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing; we do not. Categories of personal information we collect, in California’s terms: identifiers (name, email, IP address), professional information (role, studio), internet activity on our site, and inferences we draw about demand from your answers. Sources: you, and your browser. We disclose these only to the service providers in section 3, for the purposes in section 2.
Canada, including Quebec. Our person in charge of the protection of personal information is our Privacy Officer, reachable at privacy@gamestart.com. You may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or, in Quebec, the Commission d’accès à l’information.
Brazil. Our data protection officer (encarregado) is our Privacy Officer, at privacy@gamestart.com. You have the rights in LGPD Article 18, including information about who we share data with and about the consequences of refusing consent, and may petition the ANPD.
India. You may contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@gamestart.com for grievances, to withdraw consent or to exercise your rights, and you may nominate another person to exercise your rights if you die or become incapable. If your grievance is not resolved, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
Australia and New Zealand. We disclose personal information to service providers in the United States as described in section 3. You may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner or New Zealand’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner if we do not resolve your concern.
Japan, South Korea, Singapore, South Africa and elsewhere. The rights in section 6 apply to you. You may contact our Privacy Officer for any request and complain to your local authority, for example Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission, Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission, Singapore’s PDPC or South Africa’s Information Regulator.
China. By submitting a form you understand that your information is sent to and stored in the United States by the providers in section 3, for the purposes in section 2. You may exercise your rights through our Privacy Officer.
10. Children
GameStart is not directed at children. Our forms are for people aged 16 or older (or older where local law sets a higher age for consenting to data processing), and creator applications must come from adults or from someone authorised to act for a studio. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (under 14 in South Korea; under 16 in the EEA). If you think a child has sent us information, email us and we will delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we update the effective date. If a change materially affects information you have already given us, we will email you before it takes effect and, where the law requires, ask for your consent again.
12. Contact
Privacy Officer, GameStart
HGC Ventures, Inc
21781 Ventura Blvd #122, Los Angeles, CA 91364
privacy@gamestart.com