1. Who we are
JALEX STUDIOS LTDA ("JALEX Studios", "we"), Minas Gerais, Brazil, CNPJ 40.723.169/0001-94, makes SUSPECIES and suspecies.com and is responsible for the personal data they use (the controller).
For anything about your data, write to support@jalexstudio.com, in English or Portuguese: it is our channel for data requests.
2. What the game uses, and why
Online play needs the data below: without it you can't play with others. Voice, chat and the webcam are up to you.
| Data | What for | Who gets it |
|---|---|---|
| Your Steam name and Steam ID, whether you own the game, and your Steam friends list | Start the game, check you own it, show your name, log you in to online play, find your friends' rooms, and let your Steam friends invite you and join you | Your name: the players in your room, and the name an Open room gets at first ("Name's lobby"). Your ID: Steam, and Photon to check your login; every PC in your room can read it from Photon, though the game doesn't show it. Your friends list is read on your PC only, to find your friends' rooms. |
| That you're in a room, and for a Friends or Open room its code, region, name and size | Let your Steam friends see where you play and join you; in a Private room they can only join with the code or an invite | Your Steam friends, through Steam |
| What you do in a room: your character, moves, actions, role and score, and the room's code and name | Play together: every PC in a room sees the same game | The players in your room, through Photon |
| An Open room's name, map, mode, number of players and whether a round is on | List the room so anyone can join it | Anyone playing SUSPECIES in that region, through Photon |
| Your sculptures: your aliens and disguises, and their names | Show what you made to the players you meet | The players in your room, whose PCs keep a copy (section 4) |
| What you publish to the Steam Workshop: theme packs (their name, words, cover and the pictures you pick, which the game crops to 512 px and saves again without their hidden photo data), backdrops you paint and maps, each with your Steam name as its author (you can change it on a theme pack) | Share what you made, and play it in rooms | Valve, which keeps it in the Workshop with the visibility you pick (Public, Friends, Unlisted or Private; a map you share with your room is published as Unlisted); the players who subscribe to it; and the players in the rooms that use it, whose PCs keep a copy |
| Your voice while you talk, your lobby chat messages, and the motion the webcam captures while it's on (your joints, fingers and face expression) | Voice and text chat; make your character move like you | The players in your room, live, through Photon |
| Your IP address, your login (your Steam ID) and connection details | Connect you, keep the service working and secure | Photon. Other players never get your IP address. |
| Messages and reports you send us, with your e-mail address and anything you attach | Answer you, fix bugs, handle reports | Our team and our e-mail provider |
We use this data to give you the game, which is our contract with you (LGPD art. 7, V; GDPR art. 6(1)(b)), and to keep it secure, fix problems and handle support and reports, which is our legitimate interest (LGPD art. 7, IX; GDPR art. 6(1)(f)): you can object to that use. Access records are kept because Brazilian law requires it (LGPD art. 7, II; for players in the EU, our legitimate interest).
We show no ads, don't sell or share data for advertising, don't profile you and make no automated decisions about you.
3. Webcam and voice
The webcam is only used to capture your movement, on your PC, and it is off until you choose Turn on in Pose mode. The game reads the camera picture on your PC and turns it into motion: your joints, fingers and face expression. Only that motion is sent to the players in your room. The picture itself is never sent, saved or recorded, and no other player sees it. In Pose mode your own screen shows the points the game tracks, and your actual video only if you turn on "Show my video" (off at first). If you choose Snap pose, that pose is saved on your PC, with a picture of your character (not of you). Your camera's name is kept in your settings and the log. The webcam isn't used to identify you. Turning it on is your consent to this (LGPD art. 11, I; GDPR art. 6(1)(a)); turn it off at any time.
Voice chat is live, through Photon, and push-to-talk by default. You can switch to an open mic, or turn your mic off, in Settings. We never record or store voice or chat. In HQ, a player can record a clip of up to 60 seconds with the crane or drone camera, on their own PC, with the room's voices; while they record, everyone sees a red light and hears a beep. As on any call, players can also record what they hear in other ways, for example while streaming.
4. What stays on your PC
Your aliens, the theme packs, backdrops and maps you make, the poses you save, your settings and a log file are saved on your PC, and we can't see them unless you send them to us. The log file contains your Steam name and ID, your camera's name and, on the host's PC, the names of the players in the room, so look at it before you send it to us. Sculptures and Workshop items of the players you meet are cached on your PC (up to 200 MB, the least used deleted first) so they don't download again; in the same way, copies of yours stay on other players' PCs, where we can't delete them. Clips you record with the crane or drone camera are saved in your Videos\Suspecies folder, and selfies (pictures of your character taken in the game) in Pictures\Suspecies; neither is sent. If Steam Cloud is on in your Steam settings, Valve keeps a copy of your saved aliens so they follow you to another PC. Uninstalling the game doesn't remove these files; you can delete them yourself.
5. Who else handles it
- Exit Games (Photon), Germany and the USA, runs the servers that carry online play and voice chat, as our processor. See Photon's privacy policy.
- Valve (Steam), USA, sells the game, runs your Steam account, your friends list, the Steam Workshop and Steam Cloud, and filters other players' text according to your Steam settings, under its own privacy policy.
- Unity Technologies, USA, makes the game's engine. We turned off its analytics and diagnostics in the game; see its privacy policy.
- Our e-mail and website hosts, only to deliver messages and pages.
- The players in your room, as in section 2.
We also disclose data when the law or a court requires it, or to protect players from fraud or abuse.
6. Data outside your country
We are in Brazil. Online play runs on Photon's servers in the region you pick, or the one Auto picks: São Paulo (Brazil), Washington (USA), Amsterdam (EU) or Singapore. Valve processes data in the United States. From Brazil, transfers to the EU rely on the ANPD's adequacy decision (LGPD art. 33, I; ANPD Resolution 32/2026), and others on being needed to perform our contract with you (LGPD art. 33, IX). Transfers from the European Economic Area to the United States or Asia rely on the safeguards in our providers' terms, such as the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses.
7. How long it is kept
- Game data exists only while the room is open; we don't keep it.
- Access records (IP address, date and time) are kept for 6 months, on our behalf by Photon and our web host, as Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet requires (art. 15).
- Your files stay on your PC until you delete them. What you publish to the Workshop, and the copy of your aliens in Steam Cloud, stay with Valve until you delete them there.
- Messages and reports are kept while we need them to help you and then deleted, unless the law requires us to keep them longer or you ask us to delete them sooner.
8. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us, free of charge, to confirm whether we hold data about you, see it, correct it, delete it, get it in a portable form, know who we shared it with, withdraw your consent, and object to or restrict a use based on our legitimate interest (LGPD art. 18; GDPR arts. 15–22). Write to support@jalexstudio.com from the address you want us to answer. If Valve holds the data instead, we'll tell you how to reach it.
You can also complain to Brazil's data protection authority, the ANPD, to a consumer protection body such as Procon, or to the data protection authority where you live.
9. Children and parents
To play SUSPECIES you need a Steam account, which Steam allows only from 13 years old. We don't knowingly collect data from children under 13; if you think a child has given us data, tell us and we'll delete it. Teenagers need their parents' permission to play, and we handle their data in their best interest (LGPD art. 14).
For parents
- Rooms are Private by default: players join with the room's code or a Steam invite. The host can make a room Friends (shown to the Steam friends of the players in it) or Open (listed for anyone in its region to join). Your Steam friends see that you're in a room; in a Private room they can only join with the code or an invite. Players in a room talk live by voice, and by text in the lobby. Text from other players is filtered by Steam, according to your Steam settings; pictures aren't filtered. We don't record or store voice or chat, but players can, for example with the in-game video camera or while streaming. There are no ads or in-game purchases.
- Any player can mute another player's voice, and the host can remove a player from the lobby between rounds. You can report a player to support@jalexstudio.com, and Workshop content through Steam (see the Terms of Use).
- Steam Families lets you choose which games your child plays, and when.
10. This website and security
suspecies.com uses no cookies, analytics, trackers or ads. Our web host receives your IP address and browser details to deliver pages and protect the site.
Game traffic goes through Photon's servers and is not end-to-end encrypted, so don't share passwords or private details in chat or voice. If a security incident puts your data at risk, we'll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
Neither the game nor this site tracks you across other sites, so they don't respond differently to "Do Not Track" signals.
11. Changes
When the game or the law changes, we update this policy and its dates. We tell players about important changes, for example in the game's Steam news.