Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026

1. Controller

The controller responsible for processing data on tildown.com is the operator of Tildown; name and postal address are listed in the legal notice. For all privacy matters you can reach us at kontakt@tildown.com.

2. General Information

Tildown needs neither your email address nor your real name; an account is optional, and you can play entirely without one. We process personal data only to the extent necessary and in accordance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Austrian Data Protection Act (DSG). Below we inform you about the nature, scope, and purpose of the processing.

3. Hosting (Cloudflare)

The website and game server are operated via Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., San Francisco, USA). As with any website, technically necessary access data arise (including your IP address, the date and time, the requested resource, and your browser type), which Cloudflare processes in order to deliver and secure the site and for short-lived server logs used to troubleshoot errors; these logs are deleted automatically after 7 days at the latest. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in secure and stable operation (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Data may be transferred to the USA in the process; Cloudflare bases this on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

To protect against automated access (bots), Cloudflare uses a short script when a page is opened to check that a real browser is making the request, and may set the security cookie cf_clearance for this purpose (valid for up to one year). It serves solely to secure the site, not advertising or analytics. Legal basis: legitimate interest in secure operation (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) and Section 165(3) TKG 2021 (technically necessary storage).

4. Local Storage in Your Browser

What the game needs in order to run stays locally in your browser (including your save game, a random device-city code, the identifier of a signed-in account, and your sound and display settings). The random device-city code is additionally stored in technically necessary first-party cookies (one set by the game, one by our server) so that your save game is not lost if the browser clears local storage. This data is technically required, remains on your device, is not analyzed for advertising purposes, and is not shared with third parties. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR and Section 165(3) TKG 2021 (Austrian Telecommunications Act) (technically necessary storage); these functional cookies do not require consent.

5. User Account & Cloud Save Game

You can optionally create an account with a username and password. We store the username and a cryptographic hash (PBKDF2) of the password – the password itself is never stored in plain text. The same applies to the optional recovery code, which you can use to reset a forgotten password: it is shown to you once and stored by us only as a hash. Your save game is stored under a random code in the cloud (Cloudflare Workers KV and Durable Objects) so that you can load it across devices. An email address is not required for this. The account also records when it was created, when you last signed in and which display language you use; the display language is additionally noted with the save game – including without an account – so that we can see which languages are needed. Your account and save game are kept until you delete them; a login session expires 30 days after it was last used. Legal basis: performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Playing without an account is always possible.

So that nobody can guess their way into a password or swamp the game with requests, we briefly count failed attempts (for a maximum of 15 minutes). They do not contain your IP address but a check value derived from it and salted with a server-side secret, plus the affected username (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR – abuse prevention).

If saving your city to your account fails (for example because the server was briefly busy), we note this with your account name, the error code and the day – no time, no IP address, no city code – so we can find and fix such errors. The note disappears after 32 days or when you delete your account (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR – keeping the service working).

You can permanently delete your account at any time directly in the game (Menu → Account → “Delete account”). This irrevocably removes your account, cloud save game, all login sessions, and the activity notes from our servers.

Without an account there is no delete button in the game: your cloud save is deleted automatically 24 months after it was last saved – what counts is when it reached our server, not the clock on your device (for saves last stored before 1 November 2026, the period runs from that day). We delete it sooner as soon as you ask us to – just write to kontakt@tildown.com with your city code.

To improve the game, we evaluate stored saves statistically (e.g. population, number and type of buildings, progress, active playing time, language, time of the last save, the day the city was founded, on how many days it was played, how far the first steps got, and whether the game ran as a home-screen app or in another app’s built-in browser). For accounts we see the account name; for saves without an account only a non-reversible checksum (hash) of the city code, never the code itself. Legal basis: legitimate interest in improving the game (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

6. Error Reports

So that we can find and fix problems, your browser sends us a short report when something goes technically wrong in the game: the error message, an abbreviated technical location of the error (stack trace), the browser identifier (user agent), your language setting, and the game version. The reports contain neither names nor account or save-game data; the IP address is not stored along with them, and IP addresses that appear in an error message itself are blacked out before saving. They serve solely to detect and fix errors and are automatically deleted after 14 days at the latest. Legal basis: legitimate interest in stable, error-free operation (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

To see how many people play and whether they come back, we set a single tick per day: that an account or a city was active that day – for accounts under the account name, and when playing without an account under a non-reversible checksum (hash) of your city code. There is nothing more in it: no timestamps, no page views, no IP addresses. Because the tick carries the account name, we – and only we – can also see which days an account was active. After 32 days the ticks disappear by themselves. Legal basis: legitimate interest in a rough reach measurement for operating the service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

When the game is started for the first time on a device, it tells us once where the visit came from: only the name of the referring website (e.g. google.com – never the full address or search terms), a marker contained in the link (such as ?ref=reddit) or which of our own pages you came from. This is reduced to a rough source (such as “google”, “reddit” or “direct”). For each report we store one record containing only three things: the day, this rough source and a random value whose sole purpose is to stop two reports from overwriting each other. It carries no identifier, no IP address and no link to an account or city, and it is deleted automatically after 32 days. So that nobody can flood the counter with reports, we also keep a check value (hash) of your IP address, salted with a server-side secret, for 15 minutes (counted from the last report) – never the address itself, as with abuse prevention in Section 5. Legal basis: legitimate interest in knowing how people find the game and in preventing abuse (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

7. Audience Measurement (Cloudflare Web Analytics)

To understand how many people visit the website and the game and how fast the pages load, Cloudflare Web Analytics (Cloudflare, Inc., see Section 3) measures page views and loading times for us. For this, every page loads a small script from static.cloudflareinsights.com that sends the page address, the referring page, browser and device type and loading times to Cloudflare when the page is opened. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device and builds no user profiles; we only see aggregated figures. Data may be transferred to the USA; Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a fast, stable website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object by blocking the script with a content blocker.

8. Advertising (Google AdSense)

Tildown is free, and we intend to fund it through advertising from Google AdSense (Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland). At present, no advertising runs anywhere on Tildown: Google’s ad script is not loaded, neither in the game nor on the website, no ads are requested, and none of the processing described in this section takes place. The following describes how advertising will be set up once we switch it on.

Ads will then appear only in the guide, on the tips pages and in the game – and in the game only during natural breaks. The home page and all other pages stay ad-free. Google’s script, which also provides the consent dialog, is loaded only on pages where advertising is active.

We request ads exclusively on a non-personalized basis; no personalized advertising tracking takes place. In doing so, cookies or comparable technologies may be set and data (including your IP address, device and usage data) may be transferred to Google and its partners – including to third countries outside the EEA (in particular the USA) – in order to deliver, measure, and bill for ads. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to this website or other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet. On Tildown, however, we only ever request non-personalized ads: your previous visits do not determine which ad you see here, and cookies are then used only for frequency capping, measurement and fraud prevention. The consent dialog lists the ad partners that may be involved; how Google uses data from sites that use its services is explained at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. You can find further information in the Google Privacy Policy.

In the EEA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR); without it, no ad is requested and none is displayed (see Section 9). Outside these regions, ads are delivered without a prior dialog – likewise non-personalized – on the basis of our legitimate interest in funding the service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, where the GDPR applies at all). You can opt out of personalized advertising in Google’s Ads Settings or at aboutads.info, and in Europe also at youronlinechoices.eu.

9. Consent & Withdrawal

Before advertising is delivered in the EEA, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we obtain your consent via Google’s own consent management platform (based on the IAB TCF industry standard). The consent notice appears only where advertising is active – so at present nowhere. Advertising is voluntary: if you do not agree, no ad is requested and none is displayed – your access to the game and to all pages remains fully unrestricted.

Your decision is stored locally in your browser. You can withdraw a consent you have given at any time, right where the ads run: in the game via the game menu (☰ → “Ads” → “Withdraw ad consent”; the entry appears once you have given consent), and in the guide and on the tips pages via the link to the privacy settings that we provide there together with the ads. This reopens the consent notice. The withdrawal takes effect immediately going forward and is as easy as giving consent. Alternatively, you can delete your locally stored data for this site; we will then ask you again.

10. Contact & Feedback

If you contact us by email (at kontakt@tildown.com or via the feedback link in the game menu), we process your email address and the content you submit in order to handle your request (Art. 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR) and delete it as soon as it is no longer required for that purpose.

11. Your Rights

You have the right to access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, and objection. You can withdraw any consent you have given at any time. To do so, write to kontakt@tildown.com. You can also delete your account, including your cloud save game, yourself at any time in the game (see Section 5).

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority: Österreichische Datenschutzbehörde (Austrian Data Protection Authority), Barichgasse 40–42, 1030 Wien (dsb.gv.at).

12. Updates to This Policy

We will update this privacy policy as soon as the legal situation or the processing changes.