Privacy Policy

Effective Date: May 27, 2025

This policy covers https://www.gamestegy.com (“Gamestegy”)

What information Gamestegy collects and Why

In order to give you the best possible experience using Gamestegy, we collect information from your interactions with our network. We use common internet technologies, such as cookies and web server logs. We collect this basic information from everybody, whether they have an account or not.

The information we collect about all visitors to our website includes:

• The visitor’s browser type
• Referring site
• The date and time of each visitor request
• We also collect potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

We use this information to:

• Provide, test, improve, promote and personalize Gamestegy Services
• Fight spam and other forms of abuse
• Generate aggregate, non-identifying information about how people use Gamestegy Services

We partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioral metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve and market our products/services. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products/services and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimization, fraud/security purposes, and advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

In order for you to create an account on Gamestegy and use our Services, we need to collect and process certain information. Depending on your use of the Services, that may include:

• Communications you send to us (for example, when you ask for support, send us questions or comments, or report a problem);
• Information that you submit on or to Gamestegy in the form of reactions, comments, or messages to other users;
• The email address associated with your Gmail account, if you choose to sign up using your Gmail credentials. Gamestegy will also request permission to access additional information (these permissions are governed by Gmail’s privacy policies and can be managed through your Gmail privacy settings). We never post anything to your Gmail without your permission.
• You also have the option to give us more information if you want to, and this may include “User Personal Information.”

Information Disclosure

We do not sell User Personal Information in the traditional sense of exchanging it for monetary payment from third parties for their own commercial use. However, like many websites that offer free content and services, we partner with third parties for advertising and analytics purposes. These partnerships may involve the collection of information from your browser or device and the sharing of certain identifiers or internet activity data that could be considered a "sale" under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Please see our "For California Residents: CCPA Information" section for more details on these practices and your rights.

We do share certain aggregated, non-personally identifying information with others about how our users, collectively, use Gamestegy. For example, we may share information pertaining to the popularity of different games for advertising partners.

We do host first-party advertising on Gamestegy. We do not run any code from advertisers and all ad images are hosted on managed Gamestegy servers. For more details, see our section on Advertising Details.

We may use User Personal Information with your permission, so we can perform services you have authorized. For example, if you indicate you are looking for work, we may contact you with opportunities.

We may share User Personal Information with a limited number of third party vendors who process it on our behalf to provide or improve our service, and who have agreed to privacy restrictions similar to our own Privacy Statement. Our third party vendors are listed below.

Advertising Details

We target advertisements based solely upon:

• Details of the page where the advertisement is shown, including:
• The name and keywords associated with the page or article being viewed
• We allow advertisers to target ads to a list of keywords advertising.

We may place ads in:

• Sidebars
• Below articles
• On search result pages
• On tag pages
• Our dedicated Sponsors page

Third Party Vendors

We may share your account information with third parties in some circumstances, including: (1) with your consent; (2) to a service provider or partner who meets our data protection standards; (3) for survey or research purposes, after aggregation, anonymization, or pseudonomization; (4) when we have a good faith belief it is required by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena or other legal process; (5) when we have a good faith belief that doing so will help prevent imminent harm to someone.

Data Storage

Gamestegy uses third-party vendors and hosting partners for hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology we need to run Gamestegy. By using Gamestegy Services, you authorize Gamestegy to transfer, store, and use your information in Lithuania and any other country where we operate. All service providers and third-party vendors are required to meet our data protection standards.

Site monitoring

Gamestegy uses a variety of third-party services to diagnose errors and improve the performance of our site. We aim to minimize the amount of personal information shared, but the information may include your IP address or other identifying information. All service providers and third-party vendors are required to meet our data protection standards.

Third-Party Embeds

Some of the content that you see displayed on Gamestegy is not hosted by Gamestegy. These “embeds” are hosted by a third-party and embedded in Gamestegy. For example: YouTube videos, Codepens, Twitter tweets, or other embeds that appear within a DEV post. These files send data to the hosted site just as if you were visiting that site directly (for example, when you load a Gamestegy post page with a YouTube video embedded in it, YouTube receives data about your activity). Gamestegy does not control what data third parties collect in cases like this, or what they will do with it. Third-party embeds on Gamestegy are not covered by this privacy policy; they are covered by the privacy policy of the third-party service. Be mindful when interacting with these services.

Tracking & Cookies

We use browser cookies and similar technologies to recognize you when you return to our Services. Third-party vendors may also use cookies for various reasons.

Gamestegy uses a specific cookie in order to facilitate the use of Google Universal Analytics for users logged-in to the Applications or the Platforms (“Logged-In User). If you are a Logged-In User, Gamestegy may use your Gamestegy user ID in combination with Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics to track and analyze the pages of the Services you visit. We do this only to better understand how you use the Website and the other Services, with a view to offering improvements for all Gamestegy users; and to tailor our business and marketing activities accordingly, both generally and specifically to you. Google Analytics cookies do not provide Gamestegy with any Personal Information.You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to this site by disabling cookies on your browser.

You may opt-out of this feature by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, by setting your web browser to refuse cookies, or by setting your browser to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you do so, note that some parts of the Site may not function properly.

Data Security

We use encryption (HTTPS/TLS) to protect data transmitted to and from our site. However, no data transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, so we can’t guarantee security. You use the Service at your own risk, and you’re responsible for taking reasonable measures to secure your account.

Administrative Emails from Gamestegy

Sometimes we’ll send you emails about your account, service changes or new policies. You can’t opt out of this type of “transactional” email (unless you delete your account).

When you interact with a transactional email sent from DEV (such as opening an email or clicking on a particular link in an email), we may receive information about that interaction.

Non-administrative Emails from Gamestegy

Upon creating a Gamestegy account, you will be opted into the Gamestegy Newsletter and other non-administrative email. Your email address and user profile information may be stored by a third-party email provider such as Sendgrid or Mailjet. You can opt out of non-administrative emails such as digests, newsletters, and activity notifications through your account’s “Settings” page and at the link of the footer in any non-administrative email you receive from us.

When you interact with a non-administrative email sent from Gamestegy (such as opening an email or clicking on a particular link in an email), we may receive information about that interaction.

Deleting Your Personal Information

You may request deletion of your personal information and account by emailing zanuffas@gamestegy.com.

To protect information from accidental or malicious destruction, we may maintain residual copies for a brief time period. But, if you delete your account, your information and content will be unrecoverable after that time.

Data Portability

If you would like to request a copy of your user data, please email zanuffas@gamestegy.com.

Business Transfers

If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, reorganization or sale of assets such that your information would be transferred or become subject to a different privacy policy, we’ll notify you in advance of any such change.

For California Residents: CCPA Information

This Privacy Notice for California Residents supplements the information contained elsewhere in this Privacy Notice and applies solely to all visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California (“consumers” or “you”). We adopt this notice to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) and any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this notice.

Rights and Choices

The CCPA provides consumers located in the state of California with certain rights regarding their personal information and data. The following section describes those rights and explains how to exercise them:

Right to Opt-Out of Sale of Personal Information

California consumers have the right to opt out of the "sale" of their personal information. As described above and in our "Sales of Personal Information" section below, we may engage in activities with advertising partners that could be considered a "sale" under CCPA.

To exercise your right to opt out of the sale of your personal information, please visit our page.

Alternatively, you can submit an opt-out request by emailing us at zanuffas@gamestegy.com with the subject line "CCPA Opt-Out of Sale".

We also honor opt-out preference signals, such as the Global Privacy Control (GPC), if your browser or browser extension supports them. If we detect such a signal from your browser, we will automatically treat it as a request to opt out of the sale of personal information for that browser.

Access to Specific Information and Data Portability Rights

You have the right to request that the company disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (as described in the section “Exercising Access, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights”), we will disclose to you:

• The categories of personal information we collected about you.
• The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
• Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
• The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
• The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called data portability request)
• If we sold or disclose your personal information for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing:
  • Sales, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient purchased, and
  • Disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained

Non-Discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or imposing penalties.
• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level of quality of goods or services.

Any CCPA-permitted financial incentive we offer will reasonably relate to your value and contain written terms that describe the program’s material aspects.

Exercising Access, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights

To exercise the access, data portability, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by emailing us at zanuffas@gamestegy.com

Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child.

You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access of data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

• Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative.
• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you.

Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Information We Collect

Our websites, emails (with your consent, where required by law), and other products, services and platforms collect information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or device (“personal information”). In particular, our websites, apps, emails, and other products, services and platforms may have collected the following categories of personal information from its consumers within the last twelve (12) months:

Personal information does not include:

• Publicly available information from government records.
• Deidentified or aggregated consumer information.
• Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope, like:
  • health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or clinical trial data;
  • personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FRCA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), and the Driver’s Privacy.

Use of Personal Information

We may use or disclose the personal information we collect for one or more of the following business purposes:

• To fulfill or meet the reason you provided the information. For example, if you share your name and contact information to request a newsletter or ask a question about our products or services, we will use that personal information to respond to your inquiry. If you provide your personal information to purchase a product or service, we or our third-party service providers will use that information to process your payment and facilitate delivery. We may also save your information to facilitate new product or service orders and requests.
• To provide, support, personalize, and develop our websites, emails, and other products, services and platforms.
• To create, maintain, customize, and secure your account with us.
• To process your requests, purchases, transactions, and payments and prevent transactional fraud.
• To provide you with support and to respond to your inquiries, including investigating and addressing your concerns and monitoring and improving our responses.
• To personalize your website, apps, emails, or other product, service or platform experience and to deliver content and product and service offerings relevant to your interests, including targeted offers and ads through our websites, apps, emails, and other products, services and platforms.
• To help maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our websites, apps, emails, and other products, services and platforms, databases and other technology assets, and business.
• For testing, research, analysis, and product development, including to develop and improve our websites, apps, emails, and other products, services and platforms.
• To respond to law enforcement requests and as required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations.
• As described to you when collecting your personal information or as otherwise set forth in the CCPA.
• To evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of the Company’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by the Company about our Website users is among the assets transferred.

Sharing Personal Information

The Company may disclose your personal information to a third-party for a business purpose or sell your personal information, subject to your right to opt-out of those sales (see ‘Sales of Personal Information’ below). When we disclose personal information for a business purpose, we enter a contract that describes the purpose and requires the recipient to both keep that personal information confidential and not use it for any purpose except performing the contract. The CCPA prohibits third parties who purchase the personal information we hold from reselling it unless you have received explicit notice and an opportunity to opt-out of further sales (see ‘Sales of Personal Information’ below).

We may share your personal information with the following categories of third parties:

• Subsidiaries and affiliates.
• Contractors and service providers.
• Data aggregators.
• Third parties with whom we partner to offer products and services to you.

Disclosures of Personal Information for a Business Purpose

In the preceding twelve (12) months, Gamestegy has disclosed the following categories of personal information for a business purpose to the categories of third parties listed in the "Sharing Personal Information" section (such as our service providers for website analytics, data storage, and site monitoring):

• Category A: Identifiers. Examples: IP address, cookie identifiers (disclosed to analytics providers, site monitoring services, advertising partners acting as service providers for specific functions).
• Category B: California Customer Records personal information categories. Examples: Email address (if you contact us for support, disclosed to our communication platforms).
• Category F: Internet or other similar network activity. Examples: Browser type, referring site, pages visited, interaction with our services (disclosed to analytics providers, site monitoring services, advertising partners acting as service providers).
• Category G: Geolocation Data. Examples: General location derived from IP address (disclosed to analytics providers).
• Category J: Inferences drawn from other personal information. Examples: Inferences about user preferences based on Browse activity (disclosed to analytics providers to improve our service, or to advertising partners if they are acting as service providers to help us understand ad effectiveness).

Sales of Personal Information

Under the CCPA, "sale" is broadly defined and can include the sharing of personal information for monetary or other valuable consideration. This may cover activities such as allowing third-party advertising networks (like Nitropay and Microsoft Advertising) to collect information from our website visitors (e.g., via cookies or similar technologies) to provide personalized advertising.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, Gamestegy may have "sold" (as defined by CCPA) the following categories of personal information to advertising partners and data aggregators for the purposes of targeted advertising, analytics, and ad campaign measurement:

• Category A: Identifiers. Examples: Cookie IDs, mobile ad identifiers, IP addresses.
• Category F: Internet or other similar network activity. Examples: Browse history on our site, ad views, clicks on ads, interaction with our site features used to tailor advertising.
• Category G: Geolocation Data. Examples: General geolocation data derived from IP address, used for targeting ads based on general location.
• Category J: Inferences drawn from other personal information. Examples: Inferences about interests based on Browse activity and ad interactions, used to create profiles for targeted advertising.

As stated above, you have the right to opt out of these sales. Please visit our page to exercise this right.

We do not knowingly sell the personal information of minors under 16 years of age without affirmative authorization as required by the CCPA.

How Our Advertising Partners Collect Information

The company and our advertising partners collect the personal information identified above (such as the cookies stored on your browser, the advertising identifier on your mobile device, or the IP address of your device) when you visit our websites, apps, and other products, services and platforms, or open our emails. We, and our partners, use this information to tailor and deliver ads to you on our websites, apps, emails, and other products, services and platforms, or to help tailor ads to you when you visit others’ sites (or use others’ apps). To tailor ads that may be more relevant to you, we and/or our partners may share the information we collect with third parties.

Changes to this Policy

This policy was last updated on May 27, 2025.

We reserve the right to revise this Privacy Policy at any time. If we change this Privacy Policy in the future, we will post the revised Privacy Policy and update the “Effective Date,” above, to reflect the date of the changes.

For Users in the European Economic Area (EEA), UK, and Switzerland: GDPR Information

This section supplements the information contained elsewhere in this Privacy Policy and applies solely to visitors, users, and others ("you") who reside in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom (UK), and Switzerland. We adopt this notice to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and relevant local data protection laws.

Data Controller

Gamestegy (“Gamestegy,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), reachable at zanuffas@gamestegy.com, is the data controller responsible for the processing of your personal data collected through https://www.gamestegy.com.

Lawful Bases for Processing Your Personal Data

We process your personal data based on the following lawful bases under GDPR:

• Consent: For certain activities, we rely on your consent. This includes the use of non-essential cookies and similar tracking technologies for personalized advertising, analytics, and delivering tailored content. We also rely on your consent for sending you direct marketing communications (e.g., newsletters) if you have subscribed. You provide this consent via our Consent Management Platform (CMP) when you first visit our website or by opting into specific services. You can withdraw your consent at any time, as described below and via our consent management tool.
• Contractual Necessity: If you create an account on Gamestegy or otherwise enter into an agreement with us for our Services, we process your personal data (such as your email address and user-submitted content) as necessary to provide and manage these Services, fulfill our contractual obligations to you, and manage your account.
• Legitimate Interests: We process certain personal data for our legitimate interests, provided these interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. Our legitimate interests include:
  • Operating and maintaining our website, including ensuring its security and integrity (e.g., processing IP addresses for security logs, fighting spam).
  • Analyzing website traffic and user interaction (often using aggregated or pseudonymized data) to improve our website design, user experience, and services.
  • Responding to your communications and providing customer support.
  You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests, as described in your rights below.
• Legal Obligation: We may process your personal data where necessary to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject (e.g., responding to lawful requests from authorities).

Your Data Protection Rights Under GDPR

If you are located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you have the following data protection rights regarding your personal data:

• The right to access: You have the right to request copies of your personal data that we hold.
• The right to rectification: You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate or complete information you believe is incomplete.
• The right to erasure (right to be forgotten): You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions (e.g., if the data is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, or if you withdraw consent and there is no other legal ground for processing).
• The right to restrict processing: You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions (e.g., if you contest the accuracy of the data, or if the processing is unlawful).
• The right to object to processing: You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data when it is based on our legitimate interests, under certain conditions. You also have an unconditional right to object if we process your data for direct marketing purposes.
• The right to data portability: You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected and that you provided to us to another organization, or directly to you, in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format, under certain conditions (primarily where processing is based on consent or contract and is carried out by automated means).
• The right to withdraw consent: If we are processing your personal data based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal data conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent. You can withdraw your consent for cookies and similar technologies as described in the "Cookies, Similar Technologies, and Consent Management" section below.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at zanuffas@gamestegy.com. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable data protection laws, typically within one month. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights).

Data Transfers Outside the EEA, UK, and Switzerland

Your personal data may be transferred to, stored, and processed in countries other than the country in which you are resident. Our primary data storage is in Lithuania (which is within the EEA). However, we use third-party service providers (such as hosting providers, analytics providers like Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, advertising partners like Nitropay and Microsoft Advertising, and email service providers like SendGrid or Mailjet) that may operate in other countries.

If we transfer personal data of users from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland to a third country that the European Commission or UK Information Commissioner's Office has not deemed to provide an adequate level of data protection, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data. These safeguards typically include implementing Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission (or the UK equivalent) with the third party, or relying on other valid transfer mechanisms. For example. You can request more information about the safeguards we have in place by contacting us.

Data Retention

We will retain your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, or as needed to provide you with our Services. The criteria used to determine our retention periods include:

• The length of time you have an active account with us.
• Our legal obligations (e.g., we may be required to keep certain information for tax and accounting purposes for a specific period).
• Whether retention is advisable in light of our legal position (such as in regard to applicable statutes of limitations, litigation or regulatory investigations).

When we no longer need to process your personal data for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, we will either delete or anonymize it, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal data has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal data and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

Cookies, Similar Technologies, and Consent Management

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies (like web server logs and pixels) to collect information about your Browse activities over time and across different websites following your use of our Services. This helps us operate our website, understand how visitors use our services, provide personalized content, and, with your consent, deliver targeted advertising.

For users in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland, we use a Consent Management Platform (CMP) to obtain and manage your consent for the use of non-essential cookies and similar technologies that process personal data. When you first visit our website from such a region, you will be presented with a banner allowing you to provide or withhold consent for different categories of data processing.

You can review and change your consent preferences at any time by clicking on the link, which is located in the footer of our website. Clicking this link will bring up the consent management interface again.

For more detailed information about the specific cookies we use, their purposes, and duration, please refer to our [Consider adding a "Cookie Policy" link here if you create a separate, more detailed one. Otherwise, ensure your CMP provides this detailed information, and you can state: "Detailed information on the cookies we use can be found within our consent management tool."].

Right to Lodge a Complaint

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal data, we encourage you to contact us first at zanuffas@gamestegy.com so we can try to resolve your concerns. However, you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority in the EEA member state of your habitual residence, place of work, or place of the alleged infringement, or with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you are in the UK. Contact details for data protection authorities in the EEA are available here. For the UK ICO, please visit ico.org.uk.

Questions

We welcome feedback about this policy at zanuffas@gamestegy.com.