Holiday Empire — Privacy policy

Last updated: 5 October 2026 · applies to Holiday Empire for Android (Google Play) and for PC (Steam)

1. Who is responsible

Holiday Empire (“the game”) is published under the name auton by:

2. The short version

• The game sends no personal data such as your name, accounts or location.
• With your choice, it sends us anonymous usage data so we can find errors and improve the game (section 6). You can switch this off at any time.
• There are no ads, no third-party analytics or tracking, and no account or sign-in.
• Your islands, progress and settings stay on your device (and in Steam Cloud if you use it on PC).
• Purchases are handled entirely by Google Play or by Steam.

3. What the game stores on your device

To let you continue where you left off, the game saves in its private app storage on your phone, or on PC in the application data folder of your user account:

• your islands (save slots, a daily autosave and backup copies),
• your Career progress (completed levels, medals and best scores),
• your settings (language, volume, Reduced Motion, High Contrast and similar),
• which steps of the island guide you have completed.

We cannot see this information. If Android backup is switched on for your Google account, Android may include these files in your device backup, which Google stores for you; we have no access to it. You can delete the game's data at any time by uninstalling the game or by choosing “Clear storage” for Holiday Empire in your Android settings.

4. Purchases

The first chapter is free. The rest of the game can be unlocked with a one-time purchase through Google Play. Payment is handled by Google; we never see your payment details. The game only receives Google Play's confirmation that the purchase exists (a purchase token and its status), so it can unlock the game on this device and again after you reinstall it with the same Google account. Google's privacy policy applies to the payment: policies.google.com/privacy.

On Steam you buy the game from Valve; there is nothing to buy inside the game. The free demo only contains a link to the game's Steam store page. Valve's privacy policy applies to your Steam account and purchases: store.steampowered.com/privacy_agreement.

5. Steam on PC

When you play through Steam, the Steam client runs alongside the game. Valve may record, for example, your playtime and, if you switch on Steam Cloud, copies your save files to Valve's servers so you can continue on another computer. This happens between you and Valve under Valve's privacy policy; we receive no personal data from it.

6. Anonymous usage data

To find errors and improve the game, the game can send us anonymous usage data. You decide: in the EU, the EEA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland the game asks you once when you first start it, and nothing is sent unless you agree. Elsewhere it is on unless you switch it off. You can change your choice at any time in the game under Settings → About (the ⓘ tab) → “Share anonymous usage data”, right below the privacy policy.

What is sent:

• a random number the game creates for your installation; it is not linked to your name, your Google or Steam account, your device or your advertising ID,
• how you play: which screens and levels you open, whether a level is won or lost, the steps of the island guide, settings you change, whether the full-game offer was shown and whether the game was bought (not the price, not the order),
• technical data: errors and crashes with the place in the game where they happened, loading times, how smoothly the game runs, memory use, and coarse device facts (platform and operating-system version, phone, tablet or PC, a memory and processor range, the graphics chip family, a screen size class and the game's language).

Never sent: your name, e-mail address or accounts, your location, contacts or photos, anything you type, your saved islands, purchase tokens or payment details, your advertising ID or other device identifiers, or your exact device model.

Where it goes: encrypted (HTTPS) to our server at telemetry.auton.at, which runs on Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., our processor under its data processing agreement); the data is stored in the EU. Your device's IP address is necessarily visible when it connects; we do not store it, do not log it and do not use it to find out where you are. We only use it, scrambled and for about a minute, to limit how often a device can send.

Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR and § 165(3) of the Austrian Telecommunications Act 2021) where the game asks; elsewhere our legitimate interest in finding errors and improving the game (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can withdraw your consent or object at any time with the switch in Settings.

How long: individual records are deleted after 13 months; after that we keep only daily totals (counts without any installation number). When you switch usage data off, the game at once deletes its random number and anything not yet sent from your device; data already sent can then no longer be connected to your installation and is deleted after the 13 months.

7. What the game does not do

• Apart from the usage data in section 6, the game's own code makes no network connections. On Android, Google's Play Billing component inside the game talks to the Google Play app and sends Google technical logs about purchase requests (for example whether a request worked); Google's privacy policy applies.
• It uses no advertising software and no third-party analytics, crash-reporting or tracking software.
• It does not read your advertising ID or other device identifiers.
• It asks for no access to your location, camera, microphone, contacts or files.

Google Play itself may collect technical data about the app (for example crash reports), depending on your Android settings; this is covered by Google's privacy policy.

8. Children

Holiday Empire is meant for players aged 13 and over. It is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone.

9. Contacting us

If you email us, we use your message and email address only to answer you and delete them when the matter is closed, unless the law requires us to keep them (legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).

10. Your rights

The usage data in section 6 carries only a random installation number, so we cannot tell which data belongs to you (Art. 11 GDPR); switching usage data off in Settings stops it and deletes that number on your device. You still have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection under the GDPR; just email hello@auton.at. You can also complain to the Austrian Data Protection Authority (Datenschutzbehörde, Barichgasse 40–42, 1030 Vienna, www.dsb.gv.at).

11. Changes

If a future version of the game changes how it handles data, we will update this policy before that version is released and change the date above.