PRIVACY POLICY
Introduction – What is this notice for?
This privacy notice (this “notice”) is about how we use personal information about you called “personal data” when you’re playing Still Wakes the Deep (the “game” or the “service”).
Who are we?
We are Secret Mode Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 12912552. Our registered office is at 32 Jessops Riverside, Brightside Lane, Sheffield, United Kingdom, S9 2RX. We are referred to as “we” or “us” in the rest of this notice.
We make decisions about how and why we collect and use your personal data when you use the game. This means we are a “data controller” of this personal data.
What is personal data and why is it important?
Personal data is any information which identifies you (like your name, username, and email address). It is also information which can be pieced together with other information to identify you, like your title, location, age, gender, or the technical IDs given to your phone/laptop (these IDs are sometimes known as “online identifiers”).
It is important to know what we do with your personal data, because you should be able to control what happens to it. By reading and understanding this notice, you will know how we collect, use, share, and protect your personal data, and how you can ask us to use it differently.
How do we collect your personal data?
Sometimes you will give us your personal data directly. For example, you will likely give us personal data directly when you are contacting our customer support teams with queries about the game, or where you engage with us on game forums or in other online communities (such as when you leave a review about the game on Steam, or where you discuss or give us feedback about the game publicly online). If we require you to provide us with personal data, the information that you are asked to provide, and the reasons why you are being asked to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we request it. Providing us with information that we request from you directly is voluntary, but if you choose not to provide it, we may not be able to assist you or answer your queries.
Sometimes we also use certain technologies, such as game analytics and crash handling tools, to collect information about you automatically when you play our games. Where information that is collected automatically can be linked back to you or pieced together with other information to identify you, it will be classified as personal data. In Still Wakes the Deep, we don’t automatically collect any information about you when you use the game.
We may collect (or be provided with) your personal data from third parties when you access and play our games via third-party publishing and distribution platforms, such as Steam, Xbox or PlayStation. These third-party publishing and distribution platforms are operated and managed by third parties, and your use of them is subject to the relevant third-party’s terms and conditions. When you access and play our games through a third-party platform, details of what information we may receive from them can be found in the privacy documents of the relevant third-party platform.
When are we allowed to use your personal data?
We are only legally allowed to use your personal data where a “legal basis” allows us to do so. These are the legal bases which could apply:
| Legal Basis | When does this Legal Basis apply? |
| “Contract” We need to carry out or sign up to a contract | When it’s necessary to use your personal data to perform a contract with you, or because you have asked us to do something before signing a contract with you that requires the processing of your personal data. This includes the End User License Agreement (EULA) for the game, which is a contract between us and you that allows you to access and play the game. In these cases, if you don’t provide your personal data, then we won’t be able to perform the contract or do what you have asked us to do before signing or agreeing to the contract. |
| “Legitimate Interest” It’s in our or someone else’s “legitimate interests” | “Legitimate interests” is a legal phrase. It usually means a commercial or business interest that is important to us or another company, and which we’ve balanced against your right to privacy. We will always let you know what the interest is, and you can object to us using your personal data for these reasons via email at info@secretmode.games. |
| “Consent” You have given us your consent | Sometimes we will ask for your consent to use your personal data. This consent will always be clear and separated out from other information. You can always withdraw your consent by contacting us at info@secretmode.games. |
| “Legal obligation” We need to do something a legal obligation tells us to | When it’s necessary to use your personal data so that we can perform our legal and regulatory obligations – so that we don’t break the law. |
What personal data about you do we use, and why?
This table lists the types of personal data we use about you, and our reason for this:
Information you provide to us, or which is collected from a third-party:
| The types of your personal data we collect and use | Why we use this personal data | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party account login and profile information: third party identifiers such as the username that you use on third-party platforms, and other information shared with us via those third-party platforms. | We use this information to allow you to access the game from a third-party platform. | Contract Legitimate interest – our interest in allowing our games to be published and distributed on third-party platforms, so that you may access and play them. |
| Customer support: any information voluntarily provided by you to our customer support team, including your name, email, other contact information, username and details related to gameplay data. | We use this information to help provide support to you in relation to the issue you’ve contact us about. | Legitimate interest – our interest in answering your questions about our service in order to improve your experience and improve our relationship with you. |
| Data subject request information: name, username, email address, transaction history and proof of purchase, login history, proof of your identity. | If a data subject access request is submitted by you, we use this information to confirm your identity, your rights and to process the request. | Legal obligation - our obligations under data protection laws |
| Sending legal reports/responding to court orders - purchase and activity data, online identifiers (if collected) and other information that may requested by law enforcement | We may be required by law to disclose this information to law enforcement bodies. | Legal obligation – our obligations under intelligence and security laws |
| The types of your personal data we collect and use | Why we use this personal data | Legal Basis |
|---|---|---|
| None | N/A | N/A |
Who do we share your personal data with?
Sometimes we share your personal data with other companies and organisations.
The types of companies and organisations we share your personal data with are as follows:
· Companies in our “group” of companies – Secret Mode is part of the Sumo Group, and we have lots of different companies in our “group”, all of whom are linked to us. Some of them provide us with services to help us to develop and manage our games. We share your personal data with these other companies so they can provide us with these services, and to fulfil some of our legal obligations. For the avoidance of doubt, we will not share your personal data with our ultimate parent, Tencent Holdings Ltd., a public company listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK: 0700) and headquartered in China or with any of Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s affiliates outside of the Sumo Group.
· Other companies who provide us with services – We need separate companies to provide us with services to support our business activities and the game (for example, data storage and hosting providers, companies which may process support tickets and support us in communications with our players, and various other software and service providers who may assist us in publishing and operating the game). We share your personal data with those companies so they can provide us with those services, which allows us to develop and publish the game.
· Regulators, official authorities, and other third parties in relation to legal compliance – For example, the police or the government might legally require use to give them personal data to help them with an investigation, or we might be required to give these companies personal data to enforce our terms, address security and fraud, and to protect you.
· A third party that acquires all or part of our business – we might disclose your personal data to another company which buys or undertakes another type of corporate transaction in respect of our shares or buys all or part of our assets.
Does your personal data ever go to other countries?
Yes, sometimes your personal data goes to other countries as part of using your personal data in the ways we listed above.
If you are in the UK, the EU, or Switzerland and your personal data goes outside of the UK, the EEA or Switzerland, the law requires us to take extra steps to make sure your personal data is protected in the place it is going to.
We do the following things to make sure we are not breaking these laws:
· If an adequacy decision/regulation from the European Commission or UK government is in place, we will rely on that adequacy decision to share personal data.
· If we send your personal data to a company (either in our “group” of companies or a separate company) which is in a jurisdiction not subject to an adequacy decision so they can provide us with services, we will have a contract with that company called the “standard contractual clauses and the UK addendum” which requires that company to protect your personal data to the standard required under the laws of the UK, the EU and Switzerland.
· Sometimes the companies who provide us with services have special documents in place called “binding corporate rules”. If a company has one of these documents in place, this will be enough to make sure the personal data is protected.
We might take similar steps where you are in another country with similar legal requirements, as well.
If you want more information about any of these things, you can contact us here info@secretmode.games.
How long do we keep your personal data for?
We only keep your personal data for as long as is necessary, and we give due consideration to the purpose for which that data was collected when determining how long to keep it. When determining the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and other applicable legal requirements.
What control do you have over your personal data, and how can you make us change what we do with it?
Because your personal data is about you, you should be able to control what happens to it.
We provide different ways you can do this. The easiest way is to write us an email at info@secretmode.games requesting one or more of the following:
· “Stop using my data” - you can object to how we are using your personal data if we are using it based on legitimate interests (see above) in certain situations;
· “Download my data” - you can request a downloadable copy of your personal data and for us to transfer it to another party. If you wish for us to transfer such personal information to a third party, please ensure you detail that party in your request. Note that we can only do so where it is technically feasible;
· “Access my data” - you can request to access to the personal data we use about you, and information about how we use it and who we share it with;
· “Delete my data” - you can request that specific personal data we store about you is deleted;
· “Correct my data” - you can request that information about you that is wrong or outdated is corrected;
· “Restrict the use of my data” - you can request to restrict the use your personal data, for example to storage purposes only;
· “I don’t consent any more” - you can withdraw your consent if our reason for using your personal data is consent (see above). We will then stop using your personal data in this way (though this doesn’t affect the lawfulness of the processing until you withdraw).
Unfortunately, we’re sometimes not able to do the things you tell us to, for example because of the particular legal basis we have been relying on to process your personal data, or because it would interfere with another person’s own privacy rights. If this happens, we’ll explain to you why we aren’t able to do what you tell us to with that piece of personal data.
We may also be required to keep certain personal data to satisfy legal requirements or for security purposes, or if there are valid grounds under data protection laws for us to do so (for example, for the defence of legal claims or freedom of expression) but we will let you know if that is the case.
Children
Still Wakes the Deep is rated PEGI 18 (and has similar ratings from other age rating bodies across the world). The game is therefore not designed or intended for use by children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 18 for any purpose. If you believe that we have personal information of a child under these ages without parental/guardian consent, or if you are the parent or guardian of the user and wish to withdraw consent, please contact us at info@secretmode.games.
The game is in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and will never be directed at children under 16 years of age. If you are below the age under which personal data is not permitted to be processed without parental/guardian consent in your jurisdiction, you are not permitted to access the services until such parental/guardian consent has been obtained.
Security
We have implemented technical and organisational measures to safeguard the personal data that we collect and prevent it being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they will be subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
Updates to this policy
We may make updates to this policy from time to time (for example because our services have changed or because of changes in laws). We will appropriately notify you of this. The date this notice was last updated can be found at the top.
How can you ask questions or make a complaint about your privacy?
If you have any questions about what we have said in this notice or how your personal data is used, you can contact us about it.
Our contact details are: info@secretmode.games.
You can also contact the official organisation which regulates personal data in your country (the “regulator”) to lodge a complaint, if you think we are not using your personal data correctly. If you are in the UK or the EEA:
· You can find a list of EEA data protection regulators here.
· In the UK, the regulator is the Information Commissioner’s Office which you can contact here.
We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the relevant regulator, so please contact us in the first instance.
Thank you!
We hope you have a great time playing Still Wakes the Deep.
If you are in California:
California Privacy Rights. This section contains disclosures required by the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) and applies only to “personal information” that is subject to the CCPA.
Personal Information we Collect. In the preceding 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information about California consumers. We do not sell personal information.
| Categories of Personal Information | Disclosed for business purposes to the following categories of third parties: | Sold to following categories of third parties: |
| Personal data shared with us via third-party publishing and distribution platforms such as Steam, Xbox and PlayStation (such as names, email address and usernames). | All categories listed below. | All categories listed below. |
| Other information about Californian consumers which has been provided to us voluntarily by California consumers themselves. | All categories listed below. | All categories listed below. |
Categories of Sources. We collect personal information from the following categories of sources:
· Directly from consumers who are based in California; and
· Third-party publishing and distribution platforms.
Why We Collect, Use, and Share California Information. We use and disclose the personal information we collect for our commercial and business purposes, as further described in this notice.
These commercial and business purposes include, without limitation:
· Our commercial purposes, including assisting with consumer’s queries about our game.
· Our business purposes as identified in the CCPA, which include:
o Auditing related to our interactions with you;
o Legal compliance;
o Detecting and protecting against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity;
o Debugging;
o Performing services (for us or our service provider);
o Internal research for technological improvement;
o Internal operations;
o Activities to maintain and improve our services; and
o Other one-time uses.
Recipients of California Personal Information. We disclose the categories of personal information designated above to the categories of third parties listed below for business purposes:
· Service providers (for example, data storage and hosting providers, companies which may process support tickets and support us in communications with our players, and various other software and service providers who may assist us in publishing and operating the game).
Your Rights Regarding Personal Information. California residents have certain rights with respect to the personal information collected by businesses. If you are a California resident, you may exercise the following rights regarding your personal information, subject to certain exceptions and limitations:
· The right to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information we collect, use, disclose, and sell about you; the categories of sources from which we collected personal information about you; our purposes for collecting or selling personal information about you; the categories of personal information about you that we have either sold or disclosed for a business purpose; and the categories of third parties with which we have shared personal information.
· The right to request that we delete the personal information we have collected from you.
· The right to opt out of our sale(s) of your personal information. Please note that we do not sell any personal data that we receive about you from the game.
· The right not to receive discriminatory treatment for the exercise of the privacy rights conferred by the CCPA.
To exercise any of the above rights, please contact us and submit the required verifying information, by emailing us at info@secretmode.games.
Verification Process and Required Information. Note that we may need to request additional information from you to verify your identity or understand the scope of your request, although you will not be required to create an account with us to submit a request or have it fulfilled. We will require you to provide, at a minimum your name, email address.
Minors’ Right to Opt In. We do not have actual knowledge that we sell the personal information of minors under 16 years of age. We do not sell the personal information of any consumer based in California.