Publisher: Sho run LLC. Applies to: The Frontier Trail for Windows and macOS, sold on Steam.
The Frontier Trail is a single-player game that works offline. This page says what the game stores on your computer, what Steam handles, what the game's crash reports contain, and what is sent anywhere if you choose the optional online features.
The short version
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Do I need an account or an email address? | No. |
| Analytics or ads? | None. |
| Crash reports? | Yes, on by default, and you can turn them off in Settings. When the game crashes or hits an error, it sends a technical report to us through Sentry (section 5). Reports are built to leave out your Steam ID, your name, and your save files. |
| Third-party SDKs? | Steamworks (Valve's Steam integration) and Sentry's crash reporter (section 5). The game also uses open-source libraries for rendering and interface; none of them collect data. |
| Where is my game data? | On your computer, in one folder you can delete. |
| Does anything leave my computer by default? | What Steam itself does, if Steam is running: Cloud sync, achievements, and a Rich Presence status line for your Steam friends. And crash reports (section 5), unless you turn them off. |
| Does Sho run LLC receive anything? | Crash reports (section 5), unless you turn them off, and what you submit through the optional online features in section 4. |
| Is it for children? | No. It is not directed at children under 13. |
1. What the game stores on your computer
| Operating system | Folder |
|---|---|
| Windows | %APPDATA%/The Frontier Trail |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/The Frontier Trail |
Your game documents are in the saves subfolder, as .json text files:
| Document | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Settings | Volumes and mute, text size, reduced motion, the CRT screen effect, captions and tutorial hints, whether to skip the boot sequence, whether to send crash reports, and your window size and position. |
| Progress | How many trips you started and finished, best scores, achievements you have earned (with the time you earned them), and which travelers, missions, and endings you have seen. |
| Journal | Your Travel Journal. For each trip: when it started and finished, play time, mode, traveler, mission, route, random seed, your decisions and the events that followed, expenses and receipt, score, ending, and a written recap. |
| Active run | The trip in progress, with the list of actions you have taken, so you can continue after quitting. |
| Achievement queue | Achievements earned while Steam could not be reached, waiting to be reported. |
| Daily challenge cache | Daily challenge files saved for offline replay, and a record of your daily attempts on this computer. |
The game also keeps a backup copy of each document so a damaged file can be recovered.
The game's runtime may also keep ordinary technical files in the same folder, such as caches and logs. They stay on your computer. The game never has your Steam password or email address, so they cannot be in these files.
When crash reporting is part of your copy of the game (section 5), the folder also holds a sentry subfolder (crash reports waiting to be sent, the current play session's status, and the technical context of the last run, used to describe a crash at the next start) and a Crashpad subfolder, where the game's crash handler writes a crash dump until the game starts again and deals with it.
To erase everything the game stores on a computer, delete the folder. Uninstalling the game through Steam does not delete it. If Steam Cloud is on, read section 2 first.
If you export a journal entry (a JSON file or a share image), it is saved where you choose. The game does not upload it. Sharing it is your decision.
2. Steam Cloud
If Steam Cloud is on for this game, Steam copies three of those documents (progress, journal, and active run) to your Steam account so they follow you between Windows and macOS computers. Your settings (including window size and position), the achievement queue, and the daily challenge cache stay on the computer where they were created. Steam controls this, not the game: in Steam, open the game's Properties and use the Steam Cloud toggle. Valve stores and processes those copies under the Steam Privacy Policy (https://store.steampowered.com/privacy_agreement/). Sho run LLC does not receive them.
If you delete the local folder while Steam Cloud is on, Steam may restore the files the next time you start the game. To remove everything, turn Steam Cloud off for the game, remove the cloud copies using Steam's tools or Steam Support, then delete the local folder.
3. Steam identity and Steam features
When Steam is running, the game reads your Steam ID (the number that identifies your Steam account) and your persona name (the display name on your Steam profile) from the Steam client. It uses them only for:
- achievements,
- leaderboards and ranked Daily Flight, if you choose to submit a score (section 4).
Steam records your achievements. What Steam does with that data is covered by Valve's Steam Privacy Policy. Steam does not host the game's leaderboards. They are run by our own ranked service, described in section 4.
Rich Presence. When the game runs under Steam, it sets a Steam Rich Presence status line (for example "In the terminal at DEN", "In flight to MCO", or "Main menu") that is visible to your Steam friends. It shows only your progress in the current trip (the stage plus airport or flight codes, never your journal text) and contains no other personal data. Steam's own friends and privacy settings control who can see it, not the game. It is cleared when you exit the game.
If Steam is not running, the game still plays. These features are off.
4. Optional online features (when enabled in a future update)
Offline play never needs these. They can be switched on in a future update. This section describes the intended design.
Daily challenge download. The game may download the day's challenge file from our server. The request does not include your Steam ID or any save data. Like any internet request, it shows our server host your IP address and the time.
Ranked Daily Flight. Nothing is sent unless you start a ranked Daily Flight attempt and finish it while online. Practice runs and offline runs are never sent. You get one ranked attempt per challenge, and the game tells you so before you start.
Mode leaderboards. The Quick Trip, Standard Trip, and Connecting Flight leaderboards are optional too. After a finished trip, nothing is sent unless you choose to submit that run to its leaderboard while online. You can submit more than one run; each leaderboard keeps your best verified score.
What is sent when you submit a run (a ranked Daily Flight attempt or a mode leaderboard score):
| Sent | Why |
|---|---|
| Daily Flight: the challenge ID and a hash (fingerprint) of the challenge | Says which challenge you played and that it was not altered. |
| Mode leaderboards: the run setup (mode, route, mission, and the random seed) | Lets our server start the same run to replay it. |
| The traveler you chose and the list of choices you made in the run | Lets our server replay the run and check the score. |
| Game, rules, and content versions | So the replay uses the right rules. |
| The score your game calculated | A cross-check only. Our server recomputes the score and does not trust this number. |
| A Steam authentication ticket | Lets our server confirm with Steam that the request comes from your Steam account. It does not contain your password. |
Our server replays the run with the game's own rules, works out the score itself, and keeps the verified result instead of your list of choices (the table below shows exactly what is kept).
Like any internet request, the submission also shows our server host your IP address and the time. Our database keeps only a salted hash of the address (see the submission log below), not the address itself.
Not sent: your journal text or recaps, your settings, your save files, other files or file paths, a hardware inventory, your friends list, your other games, your email address, or your real name.
Your Steam ID and persona name. The game does not send your persona name, and when you submit a run it does not send your Steam ID as separate data (viewing leaderboards is described below). Our server sends the ticket to Steam's Web API, which tells it your Steam ID, then asks the Steam Web API for the persona name that goes with that Steam ID. It does this the first time it sees you and refreshes the name at most once a day, so a new Steam name appears on a later submission. The leaderboard shows that name, or "Passenger" if Steam could not be asked or the name has been hidden. These requests go from our server to Valve, carry the ticket or your Steam ID, and are covered by Valve's Steam Privacy Policy.
What our server records for a submitted run: your Steam ID, your persona name (shown on the leaderboard), the challenge ID or leaderboard, your verified score and result, a fingerprint (hash) of the run, the submission time, and abuse-prevention records such as rejected or repeated submissions.
Submission log. For submissions, accepted or rejected, our server also writes a short log entry for abuse prevention: the time, which challenge or leaderboard, your Steam ID (when the ticket checked out), the outcome and the reason, the size of the request, the game version, the score your game claimed and the score our server calculated, and a salted hash of your IP address. The salted hash lets us spot repeated abuse from one address without storing the address. The log never holds your list of choices, your ticket, or your IP address itself. Entries are deleted after 30 days.
What we intend to keep:
| Data | Intent |
|---|---|
| Steam authentication ticket | Checked once with Steam, then discarded. Not stored. |
| Your list of choices (and, for a mode leaderboard, the run setup including the seed) | Used to replay and verify your run, then discarded. We keep a fingerprint (hash) of the run and the verified result. A ranked Daily Flight attempt also keeps the number of choices, the version numbers, and the reason if it was rejected. |
| Leaderboard entry (Steam ID, persona name, score, challenge or leaderboard, time) | Kept while that leaderboard stays published, so ranks stay meaningful. A mode leaderboard keeps your best verified score, a fingerprint of that run, and how many verified runs you have submitted to it. |
| Player record (Steam ID, persona name, when the name was last checked, and a note if we hid the name) | Kept until you ask us to delete your data (section 8). |
| Submission log (above) | Deleted after 30 days. |
| Rate-limit counters (per Steam ID or salted IP hash, including for challenge downloads and leaderboard views) | Deleted after about a day. |
Leaderboards are public. Anyone can read them. A leaderboard lists each player's persona name, rank, score, and the time the score was verified. It does not list Steam IDs. The leaderboard service can also look up the rank and score for a given Steam ID, so anyone who knows your Steam ID can see where you rank. We may hide or replace a name that breaks the rules; it then shows as "Passenger".
Viewing leaderboards. When you open the Leaderboards screen, the game sends your Steam ID to the leaderboard service, but only for leaderboards you have already submitted a score to, so your own rank can be shown. (A submission itself carries a ticket, not your Steam ID.) For leaderboards you have never submitted to, no identifier is sent. This is a read request: our database keeps no record of it beyond the short-lived rate-limit counter described above. Like any internet request, it also shows our server host your IP address and the time.
Our ranked service is hosted with a cloud database provider (Supabase) that processes this data on our behalf. We do not sell this data or use it for advertising. You can ask us to delete your leaderboard data (section 8).
5. Crash reports
When the game crashes or runs into an error it did not expect, it sends a technical report to us so we can find and fix the problem. This is on by default. To turn it off, open Settings (from the main menu or the pause menu) and set Send crash reports to OFF. That takes effect at once: from then on nothing is sent until you turn it back on. The first time the game starts, its boot screen says whether crash reports are on. "Reset to defaults" in Settings leaves this choice as it is.
The reports go to Sentry, a crash-reporting service (Functional Software, Inc., doing business as Sentry), which stores them in the United States and processes them on our behalf. We use them only to fix the game. They are not used for advertising, and we do not sell them.
When something is sent:
- When the game crashes, or hits an error it did not handle: one report for that error.
- For each play session, a short session status: when the session started, how long it lasted, how many errors it had, and whether it ended normally or crashed. It is sent when the session ends (when you close the game, or at the next start after a crash), and also when the session's first error or crash happens. It says nothing about what you did in the game.
Nothing else is sent: there is no record of your play.
What a report contains:
| Sent | Why |
|---|---|
| The error: its type and message, and the stack trace: the functions that were running, with the names of the game's files (or of its built-in runtime) and line numbers, and for an error in the game's main process a few lines of the game's own code around each (never lines of any other file) | To find the bug |
| When one of the game's processes crashes outright (a native crash), a minidump: a technical snapshot of the crashed process (its threads, processor registers, loaded program files, and parts of its memory, mainly the stacks) | Such crashes cannot be diagnosed otherwise. Like any memory snapshot, it can incidentally contain fragments of whatever the game was working on at that moment. |
| Up to 50 recent technical events from that session: the game's own log lines and app events such as a window gaining focus | Shows what led up to the error |
| The game's version and build (including its Electron, Chromium and Node.js versions), and the platform (for example macOS on Apple silicon, or Windows) | To match the report to the code |
| Your computer: operating system name, version and build; processor model, type, core count and speed; total and free memory; screen resolution and scaling; graphics card vendor, model and driver version, as the system reports them; language setting and time zone; how long the game had been running | To tell problems on some computers apart from problems on all of them |
| A random identifier for each report and for each play session, and the time | To count each problem once |
What is not sent: your Steam ID, your Steam persona name, your save files (settings, progress, Travel Journal, active run), the random seeds of your trips, your scores, Steam authentication tickets, your user or computer name, or cookies. The game never puts these in a report, and before a report leaves your computer it shortens file paths so that your user folder does not appear, and replaces anything shaped like a Steam ID and your persona name. The one exception is a minidump's memory snapshot (above), which is sent as captured. The game does not create an identifier that follows you from one play session to the next.
Your IP address. Like any internet request, sending a report shows Sentry your IP address. The game asks Sentry not to record it with the report, and our Sentry project is set not to store IP addresses.
Offline. A report that cannot be sent (for example while you are offline) waits in the sentry folder (section 1), at most 30 reports for up to 30 days, and is sent the next time the game runs with crash reports on. If the game next runs with crash reports off, nothing is sent, and a waiting report may be deleted instead of sent. A crash that happens while crash reports are off is deleted at the next start without being sent.
How long reports are kept. Sentry keeps each report for 30 days, the retention period of our Sentry plan, then deletes it.
6. What we do not do
- No analytics or usage tracking. The only automatic reports are the crash reports in section 5, which you can turn off.
- No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
- No selling or renting of data.
- No third-party SDKs in the game other than Steamworks and Sentry's crash reporter (section 5).
- No account system and no collection of email addresses.
- No uploads of user-generated content. Journal exports stay on your computer.
7. Children
The Frontier Trail is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. The game contains crude humor and is intended for teens and adults. If you believe a child's data reached us through ranked play, contact us and we will delete it.
8. Your choices
| You want to | Do this |
|---|---|
| Keep everything on your computer | Turn off Send crash reports in Settings, and skip the optional online features. Play offline, or put Steam in Offline Mode. |
| Stop crash reports | In Settings, set Send crash reports to OFF. It takes effect at once and stays off until you turn it back on. |
| Stop Steam Cloud copies | Turn off Steam Cloud for the game in Steam. See section 2. |
| Erase local data | Delete the folder in section 1. |
| Remove your leaderboard data | Contact us (below) with your Steam ID. We delete your player record, leaderboard entries and scores, ranked attempts, and submission-log entries. If you submit again later, a new record starts. |
| Change the name shown on leaderboards | Change your Steam persona name in Steam. It updates the next time you submit a score, unless our server already checked your name in the last day. |
9. Contact
Sho run LLC, privacy requests: info@sho.run
Change log
- 2026-10-12: Initial draft for counsel review.
- 2026-10-13: Section 4 revised to match the online backend: mode leaderboard submissions, server-side persona name lookup, public rank lookup by Steam ID, the 30-day submission log, and deletion requests. Leaderboards are no longer described as Steam leaderboards (short version, sections 3, 4, and 7).
- 2026-10-13: Added Steam Rich Presence (section 3) and the Steam ID sent when the Leaderboards screen is opened, only for leaderboards already submitted to (section 4). Section 4 draft note updated: the backend is now deployed.
- 2026-10-21: Added crash reports (new section 5, on by default, off switch in Settings, Sentry, US hosting) to the short version and sections 1, 6 and 8; "What we do not do" no longer says there are no automatic crash reports. Former sections 5 to 8 are now 6 to 9.
- 2026-10-22: Stated the Sentry retention period (30 days) in section 5 and the privacy contact address in section 9.