PRIVACY POLICY

1. Who We Are

Mad Octopus Games is an indie game publishing and marketing agency based in Poland. We help independent game developers get their games noticed and sold through marketing, PR, influencer outreach, and Steam optimization.

Contact: info@madoctopus.fun

2. What Data We Collect

We collect and process the following personal data:

• Email address - when you subscribe to our newsletter or submit a contact form
• Name - if provided through our contact form or sign-up
• Usage data - analytics about how you interact with our website (via Google Analytics)
• Dev Hub account data - if you use the Dev Hub, the data described in Section 6 below

3. How We Collect Your Data

We collect data from the following sources:

• madoctopus.fun - newsletter sign-up with double opt-in confirmation
• Steam (store.steampowered.com) - wishlister and game community contacts who opted in to communications
• Cloutboost (cloutboost.com) - gaming influencer/creator outreach platform for professional contacts

4. How We Use Your Data

We use your personal data to:

• Send newsletter campaigns about indie game releases on Steam
• Share game announcements, Steam key giveaways, and developer news
• Respond to your inquiries submitted through our contact form
• Improve our website and services through anonymized analytics

We send approximately 2–3 email campaigns per month. We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for their marketing purposes.

5. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

We process your data based on:

• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) - you explicitly opted in to receive our newsletter
• Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) - to provide the Dev Hub (accounts, matchmaking, chat, bundle kits, service requests) under our Terms of Service
• Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) - for website analytics, abuse prevention (rate limiting), security and backups

You can withdraw your consent at any time (see Section 9 below).

6. Dev Hub (Developer Accounts)

If you create an account in our Dev Hub (bundle matchmaking and developer services at madoctopus.fun/bundles), we additionally process:

• Account data - your email address (used for one-time sign-in links) and optional studio profile (studio name, bio, website, social handle)
• Game data - the Steam games you submit and their publicly available store information (artwork, genres, price, reviews), refreshed periodically from Steam
• Activity data - your swipe decisions, matches, shared launch-checklist state and in-hub notifications
• Chat messages - the content of conversations with your matched partners
• Service requests - the details you submit when requesting audits, key campaigns or playtests, and our replies
• Technical data - IP address and timestamps kept briefly for rate limiting and abuse prevention

What other developers see: your submitted games are visible to other approved developers in the swipe deck. After a mutual match, your matched partner also sees your contact email and studio profile - this disclosure is the core purpose of the matchmaking service. Chat messages are visible to your match partner and may be accessed by us for moderation and abuse prevention.

Retention & deletion: Dev Hub data is kept for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account at any time in the Profile tab - this removes your games, swipes, matches, chat threads, notifications and service requests. Encrypted database backups (stored on our private infrastructure) are retained for up to 90 days before rotation. Swipe decisions of games you interacted with may persist in your former partners' match records where required for the integrity of their data.

7. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate:

• Mailgun - email delivery service (processes your email address to deliver our newsletters and Dev Hub messages)
• Google Analytics - website usage analytics (Google Ireland Ltd.)
• Stripe - payment processing for paid Dev Hub access (Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd.). When you choose the paid plan, Stripe processes your email and payment details to take the one-time payment; we never see or store full card data.
• UseBouncer - email validation to maintain list hygiene

These services process data on our behalf and are bound by their own privacy policies and data processing agreements.

8. Data Retention

We retain your email address for as long as you remain subscribed to our newsletter. If you unsubscribe, we remove your data from our active mailing list promptly. We may retain a hashed record of your email for suppression purposes (to ensure we don't re-add you) for up to 12 months after unsubscription.

9. Your Rights

Under the GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access - request a copy of your personal data
• Rectification - correct inaccurate data
• Erasure - request deletion of your data
• Restriction - restrict how we process your data
• Portability - receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Objection - object to processing based on legitimate interest
• Withdraw consent - at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@madoctopus.fun.

10. Unsubscribing

Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link. We also support RFC 8058 List-Unsubscribe headers, enabling one-click unsubscribe directly from your email client. All unsubscribe requests are honored immediately.

11. Bounce & Complaint Handling

We automatically process bounces and spam complaints via Mailgun webhooks. Hard bounces and complaint addresses are immediately removed from our mailing list. Our bounce rate is maintained under 2% through regular list cleaning and email validation.

12. Cookies

Our website uses cookies necessary for basic functionality - including a session cookie for the Dev Hub (sign-in) and the admin area - and Google Analytics cookies for usage statistics. We do not use advertising cookies. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; the Dev Hub sign-in will not work without its session cookie.

13. Children's Privacy

Our services are not directed at individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe we have collected data from a child, please contact us and we will promptly delete it.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated “Last updated” date. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

15. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your data rights, contact us at:

Mad Octopus Games
Email: info@madoctopus.fun
Website: madoctopus.fun

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In Poland, this is the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO).