Privacy

The short version

Tessellate has no account, no telemetry and no ads. Nothing about you is sold or shared for marketing. Your games, profiles, play history and settings stay on your PC. The app talks to the internet only to fetch things it needs (updates, game setups, cover art, downloads you ask for), to send a crash report if you turned those on, or a problem report when you press Send, and only to the places listed below.

What stays on your PC

Everything Tessellate keeps is in your Windows user's data folder, %APPDATA%\Tessellate, except one key:

• Your library and settings: the games you added, profiles (names, colours, pictures, characters), controller and window settings, per-game options.
• Play history and stats: when you played, which game, who played, how it ended. Achievements, quests and Wrapped are worked out from this on your PC.
• Logs (only if you allow them): the first time Tessellate starts it asks whether it may keep logs. If you say yes, it writes down errors and crashes, updates, controllers connecting, the names (never the values) of settings you change, and what each game session did. They can contain folder names on your PC. They stay on your PC; you can turn them off in Settings, and turning the app log off deletes it.
• Per-player game folders and saves: mirrors of game folders, each player's saves, save backups, and backups of game and Windows settings Tessellate changes while a game runs (restored afterwards).
• Caches: cover art, the list of game setups (patterns), which of your Steam games are co-op.
• Downloads you asked for: the Goldberg Steam emulator and emulators.
• Your Steam Web API key (only if you add one) is kept in Windows Credential Manager, not in the data folder. Your SteamGridDB key (only if you add one) is in the settings file. Neither is ever included in an export or a report.

Tessellate also reads some files it doesn't keep: Steam's own files (which account signed in last, your installed games, Steam's cached art) and your screenshot folders, to show a session's screenshots on its recap. It doesn't copy or upload them.

Exports and Save a problem report make files you save wherever you choose (a problem report is one zip on your Desktop, and you can read every file in it first). Tessellate doesn't send them anywhere.

What leaves your PC, and to whom

Every request below is an ordinary web request from your PC, so the server that answers sees your IP address and the app's name and version, as for any visit.

• Update check, and the update itself: to tessellate.games (Cloudflare), with the app's version. Shortly after start, then now and then; off with Settings › Updates & about › Check for updates.
• Game setups (patterns) and the pattern library: to tessellate.games (Cloudflare), nothing beyond the request. When you browse or update patterns.
• Cover art: to Steam's image servers, IGDB's image server (covers in the pattern library) and libretro's thumbnail server (box art for ROMs), with which picture: a Steam app id, a cover id or a game's name. When a cover is shown for the first time.
• Co-op details: to the Steam store, with a Steam app id, to check whether one of your Steam games has local co-op.
• Your owned games (only with your Steam Web API key): to the Steam Web API, with your key and the Steam account id of the account that signed in to Steam on this PC last. At most every 6 hours.
• Art search (only with your SteamGridDB key): to SteamGridDB, with your key and a Steam app id or a game's name. When you look for art.
• Tools you ask for: to GitHub (the Goldberg Steam emulator, melonDS, mGBA), dolphin-emu.org and libretro's buildbot (RetroArch and its cores), with which release. When you download or update one.
• Crash reports (off unless you turn them on) and problem reports (only when you press Send): to Tessellate's own crash server, crash.tessellate.games, run by the owner behind Cloudflare. What they contain is below.
• Discord status (off unless you turn it on): to the Discord app on your PC, which shows it to the people who can see your Discord profile: the game's name, "Split-screen" or "Solo", how many players (for example "2 of 4"), when the session started, and the game's Steam cover address. While a session runs.

Tessellate doesn't decide what those services do with a request; their own privacy policies apply (Valve, Discord, SteamGridDB, GitHub, Cloudflare, IGDB/Twitch, libretro, Dolphin).

Crash and problem reports

Crash reports are off unless you turn on Send crash reports in Settings › Updates & about. When they're on and Tessellate crashes or hits an error it didn't expect, it sends one short report: the start of the error message (any detail after it, such as a file or game it was handling, is cut off), where in Tessellate's code it happened, Tessellate's version and your Windows version. A crash that closes the app is kept on your PC and sent the next time Tessellate starts. Turning the setting off deletes any report that hasn't been sent yet.

Problem reports (Report a problem, or Report this on an error) show you everything that would be sent, and nothing goes until you press Send: what you typed, Tessellate's and Windows' versions and the graphics card, the last game played and its pattern, the end of the app log and of the latest session log, and the controller report. They never include your settings.

Before either kind leaves your PC, keys, tokens, links, your Windows user name, profile names and folder paths are taken out, and neither includes your games list, profiles or settings. Both go to Tessellate's own server (GlitchTip, run by the owner), which also records the IP address the report came from. Reports and that address are deleted after 90 days; the server's backups can keep a copy for up to about three months more. They're read only to fix Tessellate.

This website

tessellate.games is hosted by Cloudflare and sets no cookies. Cloudflare, like any host, keeps standard server logs. The in-browser demo uses sample data and stores nothing about you. The site doesn't count visits today. If that changes, it will use Umami, a self-hosted, cookie-free tool run by the owner that sees only which page was opened, roughly where from (country) and what kind of browser, and this page will say so first.

Deleting everything

• Uninstall Tessellate (Windows Settings › Apps), then delete the folder %APPDATA%\Tessellate.
• If you saved a Steam Web API key: remove it in Settings › Games › Steam first, or delete Tessellate/steam-web-api-key in Windows Credential Manager (Windows Credentials).
• To revoke the keys themselves: steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey, and SteamGridDB's preferences page.
• Crash and problem reports you sent are deleted after 90 days on their own. To have them deleted sooner, write to the address below and say roughly when you sent them.

Children

Tessellate has no accounts and doesn't knowingly collect anything from children. Discord's status feature needs a Discord account, and Discord is for people aged 13 and over.

Who is responsible, and contact

Tessellate (ms1748), a hobby project based in North Carolina, United States, makes Tessellate and runs tessellate.games. Questions or requests: legal@tessellate.games. If this page changes, the date above changes with it; a change to what the app sends is listed in the patch notes of the version that makes it.