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Last updated: 19 October 2026

Please read this End User License Agreement ("Agreement") carefully before you install or play Journey TD. It explains what you may do with the game, which rules apply when you play, how the online features work and which data the game sends over the internet.

By installing, starting or playing Journey TD you agree to this Agreement. If you do not agree, please do not play the game. Questions about refunds are handled by Steam (see Section 3). If you are under 18, please read this Agreement together with your parent or legal guardian.

1. Definitions

  • "Studio F", "we", "us" and "our" means Christian Forner, publishing as Studio F, Germany. You can reach us at dev@journeytd.de.
  • "Game" means Journey TD, including the game client, all updates and patches, all in-game content (such as towers, enemies, maps, music, sounds, artwork, characters and texts) and the accompanying documentation.
  • "Online Features" means the leaderboards, the score comparison with other players, the cloud profile, the player profiles, the run logs, the anonymous game statistics and the in-game bug report described in Section 7.
  • "Steam" means the platform operated by Valve Corporation through which the Game is sold, installed and updated. "Steam Account" means your account on that platform and "Steam ID" its unique number.
  • "Game Data" means your progress and everything you collect or unlock in the Game, for example builder and paragon levels, items, materials, power runes, collector cards, skins, titles, badges, achievements, statistics and scores.
  • "Run" means one game from the start of a map until you win, lose or end it.
  • "You" means the person who installs or plays the Game.

2. License and Rules of Use

a) Ownership. The Game is owned by Studio F and its licensors and is protected by copyright and other laws. You receive a license to use the Game; you do not acquire ownership of the Game or of any of its content. All rights that are not expressly granted to you in this Agreement remain with Studio F and its licensors.

b) License. As long as you comply with this Agreement and with the Steam Subscriber Agreement, Studio F grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable license to install the Game through Steam and to play it for your own private, non-commercial entertainment.

c) Videos and streams. You may record, stream and publish videos and screenshots of the Game, including in monetized videos and streams. Please do not present such content as official content of Studio F, and do not distribute the Game itself or its files.

d) Rules. You agree that you will not, and will not help anyone else to:

i) copy, sell, rent, lend, distribute or otherwise make the Game or any part of it available to others, except as allowed in Section 2(c);
ii) decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or modify the Game or its files, except to the extent that mandatory law expressly allows this;
iii) use cheats, trainers, memory editors, bots, macros or other unauthorized programs, or edit save files, in order to change the Game, its values or your Game Data;
iv) manipulate or try to manipulate leaderboards, scores, player profiles or other Online Features, including by deliberately exploiting bugs - please report bugs instead (see Section 6);
v) bypass or disable the technical protection of the Game, for example the protection of game values or the encryption of save files;
vi) attack, overload, scan or otherwise disrupt our servers or the Online Features, or access them in any way other than through the unmodified Game;
vii) send content through the bug report that is unlawful, insulting, threatening or harassing, that infringes the rights of others, or that contains personal data of other people;
viii) remove or change copyright notices, trademarks or other notices in the Game;
ix) use the Game in any way that violates applicable law.

e) Consequences. The Game detects certain kinds of manipulation. Runs in which manipulation is detected are marked as "not counted" and do not count towards leaderboards, records or progress. If you break the rules in Section 2(d), we may remove your leaderboard entries, your player profile or your cloud profile and exclude your Steam ID from the Online Features. Your right to keep playing the Game offline is not affected, unless your license ends under Section 9.

3. Purchase, Refunds and In-Game Content

a) The Game is sold exclusively through Steam. Payment, refunds and your Steam Account are governed by the Steam Subscriber Agreement and by Steam's refund policy; Studio F does not process any payments. Your statutory rights as a consumer remain unaffected.

b) The Game currently contains no in-game purchases. Everything you earn in the Game - for example gold, ore, materials, potions, items, power runes, collector cards, skins, titles and badges - is part of the Game and is licensed to you together with it. It has no monetary value and may not be sold, traded, transferred outside the Game or exchanged for money or anything else of value.

4. Steam Account and Game Data

a) The Game has no user accounts of its own. The Online Features use your Steam Account and your Steam ID. Please keep your Steam Account secure; Steam's rules apply to it.

b) Your Game Data is stored on your computer, in the Steam Cloud and - where the cloud profile is available - on our server (see Section 7(c)). Save files are encrypted and bound to your Steam Account. Save files that were modified, or that belong to a different Steam Account, cannot be used.

c) We take care to protect your Game Data, for example with nightly backups, but we cannot guarantee that Game Data will never be lost.

5. Updates, Balance Changes and Availability

a) We continue to develop the Game. Updates may add, change or remove content and may change the game balance, for example the values of towers, enemies, items, power runes and power-ups, drop chances, score formulas and difficulty levels. As a result, existing Game Data, records and scores may behave differently after an update.

b) Leaderboards may be reset, for example at the official release or at the start of a new season. Entries that resulted from bugs, cheats or manipulation may be removed at any time. A leaderboard position does not entitle you to any prize unless we expressly announce one.

c) The Online Features require an internet connection and Steam. They may be temporarily unavailable, and we may change or discontinue them. The single-player game remains playable without them.

d) Test and beta versions of the Game can contain errors. Content and Game Data from such versions may change.

6. Bug Reports and Feedback

a) The in-game bug report sends your subject and your text together with technical information about your game (see Section 7(f)). Attachments - a screenshot, your save file and an excerpt of the log file - are only sent if you select them.

b) Please do not include personal data of other people in a report. You grant Studio F a free, non-exclusive, worldwide and unlimited right to use your bug reports, suggestions and other feedback to improve the Game, without any obligation towards you. You are never obliged to send feedback.

7. Online Features and Your Data

Journey TD is a single-player game. To provide the Online Features, the Game sends certain data over the internet to Steam and to our server. Our server runs on Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc.). Everything else, for example your settings, stays on your computer and, if you use it, in your Steam Cloud.

a) Steam. Steam provides your Steam ID, your Steam name and avatar, the leaderboards, achievements and the Steam Cloud, and shows your current in-game activity to your Steam friends. Valve's privacy policy applies to Steam.

b) Leaderboards and score check. The leaderboards are Steam leaderboards that only our server can write to, so that scores cannot be faked. When a Run ends or you clear a mode, the Game sends to our server: your Steam ID (verified through a Steam authentication ticket), your score, details of the Run (for example mode, difficulty, map, wave reached, duration, score per wave, strongest towers, builder level and paragon level) and a short summary of your profile progress. The server checks the entry and writes it to the Steam leaderboard. For each Steam ID it keeps a summary of your progress for the current season (to detect manipulation) and the IDs of your Runs for 90 days (to prevent duplicate entries). Leaderboard entries and the score curves that are used for the score comparison with other players are kept as long as the respective leaderboard exists.

Colosseum. In the Colosseum, all players play the same round with the same map and seed. When a Colosseum Run ends, the Game sends to our server: your Steam ID (verified through a Steam authentication ticket), your Steam name, your score and details of the Run (round, seed, map, elements played, wave reached, duration, score per wave, strongest towers and builder level). The server keeps your best Run of each round together with your Steam name and shows it to all players in the Colosseum leaderboard; your strongest towers become visible there once the round has ended. The score per wave of your best Run is also used for the score comparison with other Colosseum players during their Runs. At the end of each round, the top 100 players receive a badge, which is stored with their Steam ID and shown on their player profile. Colosseum results and badges are kept as long as the Colosseum exists.

c) Cloud profile and player profile. Your profile - your save file, encrypted and bound to your Steam Account - is stored on our server so that it is available on your other computers and protected against loss. Together with it, the Game sends a profile card that other players can view in the leaderboard. It contains, for example, your builder skin, title, builder and paragon level, badges, lifetime statistics (such as wins, defeats, playtime, defeated enemies and bosses, achievements, collector cards found, heirlooms found and your arena damage record), statistics per difficulty and map, your favorite towers and elements, your last 10 Runs and your first clears. We keep your cloud profile until you ask us to delete it. Nightly backups are kept for 8 days, and the technical restore function of our database keeps data for up to 30 days.

d) Run logs. When a Run has reached wave 10, the Game sends a technical log of that Run - game events, warnings and error messages - together with your Steam ID when you leave the Run or when it ends. Logs that could not be sent are sent at the next start of the Game. We use run logs to find and fix bugs and to check unusual scores. Your Windows user name is removed from file paths before a log is sent. We keep the logs of your last 50 Runs; older logs are deleted automatically. Runs that end before wave 10 are not sent.

e) Anonymous game statistics (balancing). At the end of each Run, the Game sends anonymous gameplay data: which towers, elements and power-ups were played (with their damage, gold and rank), arena results, the wave reached, the duration, the mode, difficulty and map, and the game version. These statistics contain no Steam ID and no name, only a random ID of the Run, so we cannot link them to you. We use them to improve the game balance and keep them without a time limit.

f) Bug reports. If you send a bug report, your subject and text, the game version, operating system, language and details of your game state (for example wave, mode, difficulty and score), the ID of your current or most recent Run (so that we can find its run log, see Section 7(d)), plus the attachments you selected, are forwarded through our server to a channel on our Discord server (Discord Inc.). Your Windows user name is removed from file paths in the log excerpt before it is sent. Reports stay there until we delete them. As spam protection, our server remembers your IP address for at most 10 minutes.

g) News and live streams in the main menu. When you open the main menu, the Game asks our server for current news (for example how long the beta lasts) and for the list of public Journey TD live streams on Twitch. These requests contain no Steam ID and no other data about you. Our server gets the list of live streams from Twitch (Twitch Interactive, Inc.) and keeps it for about a minute and a half. If you open the live window, the preview images of the streams are loaded directly from Twitch's servers, so Twitch receives your IP address and the usual technical connection data. If you click a stream, it opens in your web browser on Twitch, where Twitch's terms and privacy policy apply.

h) Connection data. Whenever the Game connects to our server, Cloudflare processes your IP address for technical reasons and to limit the number of requests. We do not store your IP address in our databases, except for the bug report spam protection described in Section 7(f).

i) Purposes and legal bases. We process this data to provide the Online Features you use (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) and on the basis of our legitimate interests in fair leaderboards, the detection of manipulation, fixing bugs, a balanced game and keeping players informed about the game and its live streams (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

j) Service providers. The following providers are involved: Cloudflare, Inc. (servers, databases and file storage; our databases and file storage are located in Western Europe), Valve Corporation (Steam), Discord Inc. (bug reports) and Twitch Interactive, Inc. (list of live streams and their preview images, see Section 7(g)). These providers are based in the USA; transfers rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework or on the providers' standard contractual clauses.

k) Your rights. You have the right to access, rectification, erasure and restriction of processing of your data, the right to data portability and the right to object to processing that is based on legitimate interests. To exercise these rights, or to have your cloud profile, player profile, leaderboard entries, Colosseum results or run logs deleted, write to dev@journeytd.de and include your Steam ID. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority.

8. Intellectual Property and Third-Party Software

a) Journey TD, its name, logo, artwork, music, sounds and texts are protected by copyright and other rights of Studio F or its licensors.

b) The Game contains third-party software and fonts, in particular the Godot Engine (MIT License), GodotSteam (MIT License), the Steamworks SDK (Valve Corporation) and the fonts Pixeloid and Jersey 10 (SIL Open Font License 1.1) and PixelOperator (CC0 1.0). Their own licenses apply to these components; the license texts are included in the file Documents\ThirdPartyNotices.txt in the installation folder of the Game. Nothing in this Agreement restricts your rights under those licenses.

9. Term and Termination

a) This Agreement applies for as long as you use the Game. You can end it at any time by uninstalling the Game. Your license ends automatically if you seriously or repeatedly violate this Agreement.

b) When your license ends, you must stop using the Game. Sections 3(b), 6(b), 8, 10 and 11 continue to apply.

10. Warranty and Liability

a) If you are a consumer, your statutory warranty rights for digital products apply, including the right to the updates that are necessary to keep the Game in conformity. Nothing in this Agreement limits these rights.

b) We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz) and where we have given a guarantee.

c) In cases of slight negligence, we are only liable for the breach of an obligation whose fulfilment is essential for the proper performance of this Agreement and on whose fulfilment you may regularly rely (cardinal obligation), and only for the damage that is typical and foreseeable for this kind of agreement. Otherwise, our liability for slight negligence is excluded.

d) The Online Features are provided free of charge and without guaranteed availability (see Section 5(c)).

e) The limitations in this Section also apply in favour of our representatives and agents.

11. Miscellaneous

a) Changes. We may change this Agreement for future versions of the Game, for example when we add new features or new kinds of data processing. We will inform you about material changes in the Game or in the patch notes. Changes do not affect a purchase of the Game you have already made.

b) Governing law. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). If you are a consumer, the mandatory consumer protection laws of the country in which you have your habitual residence remain applicable.

c) Severability. If any provision of this Agreement is or becomes invalid, the remaining provisions remain in effect. The statutory provisions apply in place of the invalid provision.

d) Contact. Studio F - Christian Forner - dev@journeytd.de