What Kifu collects, and what happens to it

Kifu records gameplay and licenses it to AI companies as training data. That sentence is the whole reason this policy exists, so it goes first rather than last. Everything below describes what actually leaves your machine today.

Who this covers

Kifu Labs builds datasets for AI research from real gameplay. This policy explains what we collect from contributors who run the Kifu recorder, what we do with it, and the control you have over it. It sits alongside the Contributor Terms, which are what you actually accept before your first recording is sent.

This is a draft policy for an alpha with a small, hand-picked group of contributors. It will be revised before Kifu is opened more widely.

What the recorder captures

A recording starts only when you press your record hotkey, and ends when you press it again or the game closes. While a session is running, we capture:

• Video of the selected game window, that window only, even if other windows overlap it. Not your desktop, not your other monitors, not your other apps.
• Your keyboard and mouse input, but only while the game window is focused. This includes text you type inside the game: multiplayer chat, character or save names, anything typed into an in-game text box.
• The game’s window title and the path its executable runs from. Window titles sometimes contain save or character names. Executable paths on Windows usually contain your Windows account name, so your Windows username is part of a session’s metadata.
• The names (not the contents) of applications you switch to during a session. If you alt-tab away, we record that a foreground change happened and the executable name of what you switched to, for roughly the first 64 switches, so we can diagnose why input capture stopped. We do not capture anything inside those applications.
• System information about the machine: OS build, CPU, GPU vendor and device IDs, RAM, monitor layout, keyboard layout, and locale. Taken together this is a reasonably stable fingerprint of your computer.
• For a small number of specifically configured games, named metadata files such as mod lists or keybinding configs. Named files only, never a scan of your disk.

What the recorder never captures

These are hard boundaries in the software, not policy promises:

• No audio: not your microphone, not system sound.
• No webcam.
• No clipboard contents.
• No pixels from any window other than the game being recorded.
• No keyboard or mouse input once the game loses focus. Input capture closes the moment you tab away and reopens only when the game is focused again, so what you type in your browser, your password manager, or a chat app is never recorded.
• No background or scheduled recording, and no way for us to start a recording on your machine remotely.

Other information we collect

Outside of recordings:

• Application details. If you apply to contribute, we store the email address and the answers you submit.
• A contributor identifier. Your kit carries a token that identifies your uploads as yours, so sessions can be attributed to your account.
• App health telemetry. The recorder reports diagnostics: app version, OS and GPU, encoder chosen, timings, warnings, update outcomes, upload sizes, and which game process was recorded. Telemetry never contains video, input events, or session contents. A local copy of everything sent is kept on your machine so you can read it yourself.
• Consent records. When you accept the Contributor Terms we store a record of which version you accepted and when.

Why we collect it, and who gets it

The purpose is not incidental to the product; it is the product. Gameplay recordings and the annotations made from them are processed into datasets that we license to AI companies as training data, under the perpetual, sublicensable license granted in the Contributor Terms. If you are not comfortable with that, do not contribute; nothing else we do with the data matters more than this.

We also use recordings and telemetry to operate the service: reviewing quality, administering rewards, and diagnosing problems on machines we have never seen.

We share data with the infrastructure providers that run Kifu (cloud storage and hosting), and with dataset buyers as described above. We do not sell your email address or use your data for advertising.

How long we keep it

Honestly: at present there is no automatic expiry. Recordings you upload are kept until you delete them or we delete them. We have not yet set a retention schedule, and we would rather say so than imply one that does not exist.

Recordings also remain on your own computer after upload; the recorder does not currently remove local copies, so you can delete them yourself at any time from your sessions folder.

Setting and publishing a real retention schedule is a prerequisite for opening Kifu beyond the alpha.

Your control

Practically, in the software:

• Choose when uploads happen. The recorder’s Upload menu lets you upload as you play, only when your machine is idle, ask each time, or never automatically.
• Decline any single recording. When the recorder asks, choosing not to send it keeps that session on your machine and out of every upload path.
• Delete uploaded sessions. During this alpha, ask us and we will delete them — the self-serve contributor portal is still being built. Deletion removes the files from our servers. One limit, stated plainly: if a session was already exported into a dataset delivered to a buyer, deletion stops all future use but cannot recall the copy that buyer holds.
• Stop at any time. You can quit or uninstall the recorder whenever you like; nothing further is collected.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or erase your personal data, to object to or restrict processing, and to complain to a data-protection authority. Write to us and we will act on those requests.

Two limits worth stating up front rather than in a footnote: copies of a recording already delivered to a buyer cannot be recalled, and we may keep a minimal record of a deletion request so we can prove we honored it.

Age

Kifu is for adults. You must be 18 or older to contribute, and you confirm that when you accept the Contributor Terms. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18; if you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

Uploads travel over encrypted connections to private storage that is not publicly listable, and the recorder is code-signed so you can verify what you installed came from us. No system is perfect, and we do not claim otherwise.

Where data is processed

Kifu operates from the United States and stores data with cloud providers that may process it in other countries. If you contribute from outside the US, your data will be transferred there.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes we update the version and effective date on this page. If a change materially affects what we do with recordings, we will also bump the Contributor Terms, which means you are asked to accept them again in the recorder before further sessions upload.

Contact

For privacy questions, deletion requests, or anything else in this policy, write to privacy@kifulabs.com.

See also the Contributor terms, what you accept before your first recording is sent, and Recording and privacy for a plain-language walkthrough of the capture boundaries.