Your privacy is important
We run a trusted community site, so we hold ourselves to the highest privacy standards. Simply put — We would never sell your email address, nor share it with with anyone, or ever spam you — ever, end of story. We also have everything in place to keep the bad guys out. We would also never ask you for your passwords, credit card, phone, etc.
In fact, don’t use your real name on our site, so you don’t have to worry too much about your privacy. You can edit your customer info and profile at any time.
By becoming a member of our web site community, you are only agreeing to become a virtual person in our world . Seriously, that’s all there is to it. Easy, eh? Yes, as it should be. (ahem!) We allow the use of burner email addresses too, but note that you won’t be able to recover your password if you forget it.
GDPR Compliance
Our site uses a basic PHP login script that stores your customer number and username and login state … that’s it. We make no attempt to figure out who you are in real life nor do we care. Even our login page asks you to create a fake persona here because sometimes people say dumb things when gaming on the internet. Setup a fake avatar on our site and forget about it, done, easy. Furthemore, you can block/delete all cookies from our site that you won’t find anything different about our site, as we don’t have creepy feeds or target you in any way.
We do serve ads using Google Ad server, which issues its own cookies. For these ad-related cookies, you’ll be able to use Google’s own tools to access the data of that cookies. These tools are to be released after May 15, 2018. For more info, check this resource.
Financial Information:
We don’t host any financial information on our servers, period. We use third-party commerce partners for memberships and merchandise sales. If you need a refund or have privacy concerns about something you bought in conjunction with us, please contact them directly or ask our moderators to help point you in that direction.
The Long Version:
Our site is part of the Enthusiast Gaming network, and we’re very committed to protecting the privacy of Internet users. The following statement details our ongoing support for the responsible collection and management of Internet user information. We also follow all rules set forth by the Online Privacy Alliance.
Internet User Information
When we display an advertisement on your computer, we do not collect any personal identifiable information about you, such as your name, address, telephone number or email address. Destructoid.com does, like other Internet advertisers, collect certain information which can not personally identify you. (Specifically: Cookies!)
This category of information is generally referred to as non-personally-identifiable information includes information like the server or internet service provider you use, type of browser used. There are some cases where you, the Internet user, may voluntarily provide personal information in response to a particular ad (a survey or purchase order form). In such cases the third party advertising with our site may collect this information on behalf of an advertiser. The advertiser in turn uses this information to reply to your request.
Furthermore, Enthusiast Gaming does not divulge any information regarding the users who use email for correspondence with the webmaster or any representative of our company.
Online Advertising
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads and collect information when you visit our Web site. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements on our Web Site, other web sites and other forms of media about goods and services of interest to you.
If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, check out:
https://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
In layman’s terms: many advertisers use cookies for stuff like “hey you saw this ad already” or “ok, he clicked on a banner ad for leather pants, lets show this guy more of those as they travel around the web.” That’s all coming through Google’s Ad software – Destructoid doesn’t pass any behavioral data directly, period. We don’t share any information from your personal account with advertisers.
HEY YOU – USE COMMON SENSE IN ALL YOUR ONLINE ACTIVITIES
Even the best policy can’t protect your online privacy and security in all circumstances. Unscrupulous advertisers, hackers, and scam artists are constantly searching the Internet looking for new targets. Your best protection is to understand the limits to privacy on the Internet and use common sense in all of your on-line activities.
Be aware that e-mail is an inherently insecure form of communication. Remember that third parties are sometimes able to illegally intercept your unencrypted messages, including online greetings. Anytime you visit a chat room or post a message to an on-line bulletin board, your e-mail address can be accessed by advertisers looking to compile lists for unsolicited commercial e-mail (also known as spam).
Be sure that you only disclose your e-mail address in circumstances in which it is safe to do so. Beware of scams in which persons unknown to you request your screen name, password, or credit card information. Make sure you verify the identity of anyone asking for personal information. Always monitor your children’s on-line activities and educate them as to the rules for safe Internet use. For more information, click here for the Internet Education Foundation’s Online Safety Guide for Kids.
A WORD ON ETHICS
Work by our publishing group have been name as one of OpenCritics’s most trusted sites, and we hope to continue earning such accolades by being one of the most open and transparent gaming sites on the web.
GENERAL GUIDELINES
As outlined by the Federal Trade Commission, we make every effort to follow the guidelines set by the FTC, as recommended in 2013. Generally speaking, we make repeated clear and conspicuous disclosures and disclaimers in every author’s biography, and under every editorial where our readers may have any such concern. We view ourselves as a consumer-first publication and do everything in our power to live up to this standard.
EX-STAFF AND ASSOCIATES
The video games industry is very small, and our job involves getting to know the individuals behind the games we play. Many prominent figures in the business have worked at our network of sites in the past. Those relationships don’t simply vanish when they move onto other things. They are, however, set aside and never taken into consideration when we evaluate games.
We also ask for disclosures upfront as part of our employment paperwork, which are updated on a regular basis. When a person leaves our website network, their new work history is noted on their bio whenever possible.
You will find disclosures on every employee bio, and a snippet of that appears on every article. When developers, marketers, or sponsors blog here it is clearly labeled as such.
REVIEW SCORES AND FREE PRODUCTS
In every case, we disclose if the product was provided by the manufacturer or if it was purchased on our own. We’ve also made an effort to retroactively pursue disclosures where former staff had any involvement, direct or indirect. We are a part of a website network, and try to account for movements of all staff across our sites as well. Such is the case with this Destructoid review of Oddworld after learning that a staff member, who was hired after we reviewed the game, was involved with the production as a voice. It seems unnecessary, but when possible, we prefer to be as transparent as possible. We wouldn’t be here without our readers, so we owe it to you. If mistakes are made, we’ll do our best to make it right.
CROWDFUNDING / INVESTING
As a whole we take disclosures very seriously, and we have continued to make an effort to disclose relationships in all of our reviews. That includes private investments, Kickstarters, Patreons, IndieGoGo, Fig campaigns, and any such other financial contribution that individual staff members are directly involved in or through their family members. These disclosures will also show up in the review itself. If a writer invests in a game, they are barred from writing about it. Similar to disclaimers for ex-staffers, we’ll also provide a note in pertinent news stories that we have an individual who is investing in the game.
As always, no relationships will be factored into coverage, and writers are required by Escapist Magazine to disclose this before they invest. To go a step further, all shift leads (EICs) are forbidden from investing outright, and reviews for these games will be non-scored.
TRAVEL AND GIFTS
Any travel, gift, or product provided by an advertiser is clearly marked as such.
ADVERTISING
Ads on Escapist Magazine are sold by the Enthusiast Gaming Network (Toronto)
Enthusiast works with multiple third-party ad networks to display advertisements on our site. These external teams do not have access or control of the editorial content in any way, shape, or form.
Likewise, the editorial team has no knowledge ahead of time what advertisements may appear on our site, and 100% of ads are hidden when an editor is going about their work on our site.
AUTOMATED SOFTWARE DISCLOSURES
Our web software will automatically insert disclosures for stories that match a certain pattern. For example, if a story is tagged ‘deals’ our software will insert a disclosure stating that we as a company may earn an Amazon.com commission for the sale. This isn’t always the case, as we frequently report deals that have nothing to do with affiliate relationships, but we prefer to err on the safe side. In broad terms, most deals on our site are blogged from vendors such as a “Dealzon” author account, which also carries a similar disclosure in their bio. This is also the case involving Twitter – we use third-party software to push social media updates automatically. We make every effort for any social media update containing a deal or offer to automatically have clear disclosures when shopping links are concerned, regardless if they financially benefit our parent company or not.
Thanks for reading!