Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 July 2026

SecludedGems helps you find under-the-radar Steam games based on a public Steam profile you choose to submit. This page explains what we do with data. Plain version: we don't keep your library, only short-lived caches (minutes to a couple of hours) so the site stays fast, all spelled out below.

What we read

When you submit a Steam profile, we read public Steam data for that profile: owned games, playtime, recently played games, and your wishlist. We never ask for, see, or store your Steam password; we only use Steam's public APIs. Submitting a profile is optional: you can also search just by typing what you're craving, in which case we read no profile at all. If a profile's game details are private, we get nothing from it, and you can still search by craving instead.

What we do with it

We condense the library into a short taste summary (top genres, recent activity, and recently wishlisted titles), or for a craving-only search just the words you typed, and send that plus a list of candidate games to an AI model (Google Gemini, with OpenAI used as a fallback when Gemini is unavailable) to generate recommendations and short reasons. We send game, genre and taste data only, not your name or identity.

What we store

We do not permanently store your library. Two short-lived caches keep the site fast, and both delete themselves automatically:

• Your taste profile (~30 minutes): when you submit a profile we briefly hold what we work out from it: your top genres, the games and wishlist we read, and your region (so prices show in your local currency), keyed to your Steam ID, so that refining a search doesn't re-read your whole library every time.
• Your results (~2 hours): we cache the finished picks (keyed by your Steam ID, or by your craving for a no-profile search) so repeat views are instant and we don't pay to regenerate them.

To greet you on the results page, those caches also briefly hold your Steam display name and avatar; these are never sent to the AI and never stored permanently. Nothing here is kept long-term, there's no account, and we don't build lasting user profiles or sell data. Your region is read fresh from your connection each visit; we don't store your country.

Newsletter (optional)

If you enter your email in the signup box, we store just that email and the date you signed up, nothing else, so we can send you occasional updates (new features, new finds, the odd blog post). We don't sell or share it. We haven't sent any emails yet; once we do, every email will include an unsubscribe link, and in the meantime you can ask us to remove you at any time at the contact address below.

Third parties

• Steam (Valve): source of the public profile data.
• Google Gemini (paid API): processes the taste summary + candidate game list to generate recommendations. On the paid tier, Google does not use this data to train its models; it is retained only briefly for safety and abuse checks. We send game/genre/taste data only, never your name or identity.
• OpenAI (GPT-4o-mini, fallback): used only when Gemini is unavailable, to generate the same recommendations. With data sharing turned off, OpenAI does not use this data to train its models; it is retained only briefly for safety and abuse checks. We send game/genre/taste data only, never your name or identity.
• Cloudflare: hosts the site and processes requests, blocks bots on the recommendation button (Turnstile), and provides privacy-friendly, cookieless analytics (aggregate page views and page load speed). It sets no cookies, collects nothing personal, and runs on all visits, so it works without the cookie banner.
• Google Analytics 4 / Tag Manager: which pages you visit and which features you use (for example searching, expanding a pick, or clicking through to Steam), recorded against a random ID and never your name. No session recording. Sets a cookie and only runs after you accept via the cookie banner.

Cookies

The core tool works without tracking cookies. The one analytics cookie (Google Analytics, for the page and feature-usage stats above) is set only after you accept on the cookie banner; if you decline, none are set. Cloudflare's traffic and speed analytics are cookieless and set nothing either way. You can change your choice any time by clearing this site's data in your browser.

Your choices

Don't want your profile read? You don't have to submit it at all: you can search by craving alone, or set your Steam game details to private. There are no accounts and nothing to delete, since we don't retain libraries.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Contact me at adrian@secludedgems.com.