Cookies
TheGameCurator sets no tracking cookies of its own. What it uses for itself is listed below, and none of it follows you anywhere.
Advertising is the exception, and it is not ours: this site is paid for by Google AdSense, and Google asks for your permission itself, through its own consent message. That message — not this page, and not a banner of ours — is what decides whether any advertising cookie is ever set. It is described in full further down.
Strictly necessary
- tgc:consent — localStorage. Records an optional choice you make on this page. Written only if you make one; cleared only by you.
- tgc:curation — sessionStorage. Holds the answers to the questionnaire so a refresh or a step back does not lose them. Removed automatically when the tab closes.
- tgc_steam_state and tgc_steam_return — real cookies, set only at the moment you press Connect with Steam. They protect the sign-in against request forgery and remember which page to return you to. Both expire after ten minutes and are deleted as soon as you come back.
- sb-…-auth-token — a real cookie, set only if you sign in. It keeps you signed in between visits so your Play Later list is there when you return. Signing out removes it.
None of these can be switched off, and none of them needs to be: the last three exist only if you choose to connect a Steam account, and every one of them is strictly necessary for something you asked for by name. That is why they are not behind a consent prompt.
Optional: anonymous analytics
Off by default, and — being straight about it — currently unused: no analytics script exists on this site today. The switch at the bottom of this page is kept so that if aggregate usage measurement is ever added, it starts off and stays off until you say otherwise.
Advertising: Google's consent message
Ads pay for this site. Serving them in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland legally requires a consent platform certified by Google, so that is what asks you — Google's own message, shown the first time you visit from one of those regions. Answer it however you like; it is remembered, and it can be reopened at the bottom of this page at any time.
One thing worth being straight about. The AdSense library loads on every page, before you have answered, because Google's consent message is delivered by that library — gate it, and the thing that asks for permission could never appear. Loading it means your browser contacts Google. What it does not do is set advertising cookies or serve an ad until you have answered: that part waits for your decision, and refusing means it never happens.
Once loaded, your browser contacts these Google domains:
- pagead2.googlesyndication.com — the AdSense library, the consent message, and the ads themselves.
- fundingchoicesmessages.google.com — Google's consent platform, where your answer is recorded.
- ep1.adtrafficquality.google and ep2.adtrafficquality.google — Google's invalid-traffic and ad-fraud checks, loaded automatically by the library. They inspect the browser environment.
Google is the controller for everything it collects there, under its own policies. We never see it, and we cannot read the cookies it sets.
Third-party requests
Loading the page also fetches fonts from Google Fonts and Fontshare, and store artwork from Steam's CDN. These are asset requests, not cookies, but they do reveal your IP address to those hosts in the ordinary way any embedded asset does.
Change your choice
Both decisions live here. Analytics is ours to change; advertising is not, so the button below reopens Google's own message rather than pretending to overrule it — an answer stored in two places is an answer nobody can honour.