Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-09-20

Altros Studios, LLC ("we", "us", "our") makes Game Demon, an AI coaching desktop app for competitive games. This page describes what data we collect when you use our products, where it goes, and the choices you have. Plain English, no dark patterns.

What we collect

License key (direct distribution)

Game Demon is distributed directly from Altros Studios via altrosstudios.games. When you purchase, you receive a license key tied to your email. We store only a SHA-256 hash of the key, never the raw key itself. The key is bound to one machine via a hashed hardware fingerprint at first activation; you can revoke that binding any time from your account dashboard.

Customer email (direct distribution)

If you bought Game Demon directly, we hold your email (lowercased) and a Stripe customer ID. Used for: license delivery, sign-in magic links, refund confirmations, and subscription state changes. No marketing email without opt-in.

Steam ID (SteamID64) — legacy

If you originally signed in via Steam (pre-2026-05-15 Steam retirement), we read your SteamID64 and use it to look up your entitlements (free vs Pro tier, token balance) on our backend. We don't sell or share Steam IDs. New customers do not provide a Steam ID; license-key entitlement is the path forward.

In-game state from Counter-Strike 2 (GSI)

CS2's Game State Integration sends Game Demon your match data in real time — round outcomes, your money, weapons, score, position. The desktop client writes the raw stream to a local session log on your computer and uses it to build a post-match summary. The raw GSI feed is not transmitted to our servers. When a coach call fires, the client constructs a coaching prompt from the relevant slice of game state and sends that prompt to a cloud LLM for inference — see "Coaching prompts and outputs" below.

Demo files (.dem)

Demo files are parsed locally on your machine. The match metadata we extract (round timeline, kills, money state, weapon usage) is saved to a local SQLite database in your Game Demon data directory. The demo files themselves are never uploaded to our servers.

Dota 2 match data

Dota 2's Game State Integration supplies the match clock and available hero, item, ability and player state to the desktop client. The coach uses relevant observed facts in cloud prompts, for example your hero, gold and resources. Dota replay files are processed locally; the raw replay file is not uploaded for coaching. Questions about a match or review send the relevant extracted facts with your question.

Local recordings and coach-call markers

If you enable gameplay recording, the video and its synchronization information stay on your machine. Coach-call markers can include the call text, the observed game clock and its position in the recording so you can revisit it in Film Room. Local recording has a separate setting from coaching-data sharing. Turning sharing off does not stop a recording you enabled. Raw gameplay recordings are not automatically uploaded to us.

Community features (website)

The Game Demon community page on this website (feature requests and trailer voting) lets you take part without an account. To keep out spam and vote manipulation without forcing you to log in, we compute a short-lived, one-way hash of your IP address combined with a secret that rotates daily. We never store your raw IP address, the hash cannot be reversed back to it, and it auto-deletes within about a day, so it cannot be tied to you or correlated from one day to the next. No other personal data is collected for these features. If you submit a feature request while signed in to your account, it is tagged as coming from a verified owner; otherwise it is fully anonymous. Every submission is held and reviewed by us before it can appear publicly.

Coaching prompts and outputs

The prompts we send to language models include relevant in-game state and recent coach output. Questions can also include recent conversation so follow-up answers make sense. Dota live questions use up to four recent question-and-answer pairs held in memory, expiring after ten minutes without a request and cleared when the match or hero changes. Coaching inference continues when data sharing is off. Local review and recording features may retain their own history; when coaching-data collection is on (see below), coach and Ruby interactions are additionally captured and uploaded to our backend to improve the coach and train future models.

Visual coaching (screen frames)

While you play, the visual coach periodically captures a single frame of your Counter-Strike 2 window and sends it to a cloud vision model (Groq) so the model can produce a structured reading of what is on screen: a small set of labels and counts such as the UI state (gameplay, scoreboard, buy menu), where your crosshair sits, how many players are visible, and your cover state. The model is instructed never to output player names, and the reading carries no coordinates or identities. The frame is used for that inference only; we do not store the screenshot image on our servers.

When coaching-data collection is on (see below), that derived structured reading — the labels and counts, never the image — is uploaded to our backend alongside the rest of your coaching content so we can improve the visual coach and train future models. It is anonymized and auto-deletes on the same schedule as the rest of your coaching records (up to 12 months — see "How long we keep it").

Coaching feedback (v1.0 through v1.6)

When you rate a coach call thumbs-up or thumbs-down, or submit feedback through the in-app form, that gets stored in our database (DynamoDB, AWS region us-east-1) keyed by your player identifier. The associated coach output is included so we can review what you reacted to. This data is retained for up to 12 months, then auto-deletes (a DynamoDB time-to-live).

Coaching content and your interactions (v1.7+)

To improve the coach, Game Demon records and uploads your coaching sessions. This collection is on by default and is governed by a single setting (see "Coaching data collection" under Your choices). When it is on, we collect:

• What the coach and Ruby say: every live coaching call, the post-match analysis, and the chat and voice answers they generate.
• What you say to them: the messages you send to Coach Chat and to the Ruby assistant, and the voice commands you speak, which are transcribed to text and stored as text.
• Relevant game state at the moment a call fired, such as round number, score, money, armor, weapons, side, map and the observed game clock when available. We do not collect your raw position coordinates or your teammates' identifiers in these feedback records.
• The visual coach's structured reading of your screen: the labels and counts described under "Visual coaching" above (UI state, crosshair position, visible-player counts, cover state). This is the model's interpretation of the frame, never the screenshot image itself.
• Your chosen coaching style (for example a veteran-pro register, a beginner-friendly one, or a direction you wrote yourself), the tone, and any rating or written note you choose to give. From v1.7 the binary thumbs are joined by a six-signal chip selector (Good call, Wrong call, Wrong timing, Wrong tone, Too generic, Not right now); a rating is optional and captured content is uploaded whether or not you rate it.
• A rotating hash in place of your Steam ID (see below).

Records do not include: your email, your IP address, your real name, raw microphone audio, screenshot images of your screen (we store only the structured reading described above, not the picture), your in-game team voice chat, or your replay files.

Anonymization and hash rotation

Your Steam ID is never stored in plaintext alongside coaching data. On our backend, before anything is written, we replace it with a keyed hash (HMAC-SHA256) computed from a server-held secret combined with the current 90-day period. The same player therefore hashes to a different value each period, which means records from one quarter cannot be linked to records from another quarter using only the stored data. Collected records auto-delete up to 12 months after creation (a DynamoDB time-to-live). Because the identifier key rotates faster than records expire, a record older than its 90-day period is no longer linkable to you — by us or by anyone with the stored data — for the remainder of its retention.

Token usage and entitlements

When you spend tokens on cloud LLM calls, we record the spend in our backend tied to your Steam ID. Pro subscriptions are billed via Stripe; payment card data is held by Stripe under their terms — we never see it.

Crash diagnostics

Local session logs (%APPDATA%\game-demon\logs\ on Windows) include event breadcrumbs and stack traces. We don't auto-upload these. You may share one with us when reporting a bug, in which case it becomes part of that bug report.

What we do NOT collect

• Raw voice or microphone audio (your spoken voice commands are uploaded to our speech-to-text provider, transcribed to text, and the audio is then discarded; we collect the transcript as described above, but never store the audio itself)
• Webcam
• Unrelated personal files: replay and recording features use the supported game folders, your selected files or folders, Downloads, and Game Demon's own data directory
• Real names, addresses, or payment card numbers (Stripe handles those)
• Browser history or system info beyond what Electron auto-reports for crash diagnostics
• Chat messages from CS2, Discord, or other external apps (your messages to Game Demon's own Coach Chat and Ruby assistant are collected, as described above)

Where data goes

Stays on your machine

• Raw GSI event feed
• Session logs (the rolling local record of GSI + coach output)
• Demo files
• Parsed match metadata (local SQLite)
• Coach output history (saved alongside the session log)
• Gameplay recordings and their local timing and coach-call markers

Note: coaching prompts (built from a slice of game state) are sent to the cloud LLM for inference. See "Third parties" below.

Our backend (AWS, us-east-1)

• Steam ID (for token balance and entitlement state)
• Token balance and entitlement state
• Coaching content and your interactions, with any ratings — keyed by the rotating hash, not your Steam ID (retained up to 12 months)
• If you answer the optional one-tap survey at purchase ("How did you hear about Game Demon?"), your answer — one of a handful of generic categories — is stored on your license record. It is optional, skippable, and never affects your purchase or features.

Third parties

• Where coaching prompts go, in general — every coach call routes through our backend proxy to a cloud model; Game Demon does not run a local LLM. Prompts include the slice of in-game state relevant to the call (money, weapons, score, recent rounds, map) but never your Steam ID, email, or IP address. The proxy picks the provider below based on the type of call and your tier, and falls back automatically if one is unavailable.
• Amazon Bedrock (Anthropic models): the primary route for live coaching, post-match Reckoning and Coach Chat across Trial, Base, Pro Monthly and Pro Annual. Requests run through our AWS account.
• Cerebras and Groq: fallback and other configured inference routes. The streaming service retains a Cerebras fallback configuration; Bedrock is tried first for the coaching classes and tiers listed above. Groq also processes screen frames for visual coaching, transcribes spoken voice commands, and runs the automated content check on Social posts. Screen frames and voice audio are used for processing, not retained by us as coaching records.
• Leetify (public API) — we may fetch public CS profile data (rank summary, recent matches). Public information only; no auth required.
• Steam Web API (Valve) — we verify your Steam authentication ticket. Valve handles per their privacy policy.
• Stripe — Pro subscription billing.
• Amplitude (website analytics) — the Game Demon landing page can send anonymous page views and campaign tags to Amplitude's US cloud. It uses a random browser identifier in localStorage, not your email, license or account. This integration does not record sessions, capture form contents, or send desktop coaching conversations. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control disable it. The website works without it.
• First-party site analytics — altrosstudios.games (the website, not the app) records aggregate page visits to our own AWS infrastructure. No cookies; the only identifier is a random anonymous ID stored in your browser's localStorage, never linked to your account, email, or IP. Since 2026-08-13 this also records the referring page URL and any campaign tags on the link you arrived through, so we can tell which post or site sent you.
• PostHog (website analytics) — as of 2026-08-13, altrosstudios.games also sends page views to PostHog (US cloud) so we can see traffic sources and how people move through the site. This applies to the website only — never to the Game Demon desktop app, which sends nothing to PostHog. We configure it to use browser localStorage rather than cookies, so it sets no analytics cookies, and we keep its session-replay feature switched off, so your screen is never recorded. On signed-in account pages we also disable its automatic click tracking, so nothing on a page showing your email or license key is read. We deliberately never send it your identity: even on signed-in account pages we do not link your PostHog activity to your email, license, or account, so it sees anonymous traffic. You can opt out at any time with your browser's Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control setting, an ad/tracker blocker, or by declining cookies in your browser settings; the site works fully either way.

How long we keep it

• Local data — until you uninstall Game Demon or delete it manually
• Backend entitlements (and the optional purchase-survey answer, if you gave one) — for the lifetime of your license
• Coaching records, thumbs ratings, and feedback — up to 12 months, then auto-deleted
• De-identified training archive — periodically, records that inform coach training are copied into a separate archive (S3) after the identifier de-linking described above; the archive is retained for up to 24 months, then auto-deleted
• Stripe records — per Stripe's retention

Your choices

Coaching data collection (v1.7+)

Coaching data collection is on by default. You can turn it off anytime in Settings → Coach Feedback → Share My Coaching Data. When the toggle is off:

• No new coaching records are captured for feedback or training, even locally; this stops that capture at the source, not just its upload.
• Your personal coach profile (preferences, ratings, tone bias) continues to adapt to you locally — that profile is stored on your machine in the Game Demon data directory and is read by the client to condition each coach call.
• No new feedback or training records are uploaded. Cloud coaching still sends prompts, questions and relevant context for inference. License and usage requests also continue.
• Your local match history and any gameplay recording you enabled are separate from this setting. Use the recording controls to stop recording.
• Records collected before you opted out remain until their scheduled auto-delete (up to 12 months), or until you request deletion sooner (see Data requests below).

There is no penalty for opting out. Game Demon's coaching quality is the same whether you're contributing to the training set or not.

Data requests

You can request a copy of your training data or ask us to delete it at any time, regardless of where you live. Submit either request at altrosstudios.games/privacy/data-request. We confirm the request via the email on file for your license, then either:

• Export request: we package the records tied to your current identifier hash into a downloadable ZIP and email you a 7-day link. Records from earlier 90-day periods cannot be included: the key rotation that protects you also means we can no longer tell which older records are yours.
• Deletion request: we remove all records tied to your current identifier hash — everything from the current 90-day period, which is everything that can be linked to you. Records from earlier periods are already de-linked by the key rotation (no one, including us, can connect them to you using the stored data); they remain in de-identified form until their scheduled auto-delete — up to 12 months for coaching records, up to 24 months for the training archive.

We aim to fulfill both within 7 days. EU and UK customers are entitled to a 30-day fulfillment window under GDPR / UK-GDPR; we hold ourselves to the 7-day standard regardless of where you're based.

Other choices

• Email support@altrosstudios.games for any other privacy question. We respond within 30 days.
• Uninstall to remove all local data
• Cancel Pro at any time via the Stripe customer portal

Children

Game Demon is not directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we'll delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Continued use after changes means you accept them.

Contact

Questions? Email support@altrosstudios.games.