Store pages, ratings, privacy, licences and credits: sources

The research behind the store-page, legal, asset-pipeline (credits) and release-readiness skills, the credits command, doctor's Steam store art, trailer, tag and privacy checks and plan's release timeline, gathered on 2026-10-21. Pages were fetched as served that day; store rules change, so check the source before relying on a number. General information for developers, not legal advice.

Marks: tested means run here (Godot 4.7.2 mono on Linux); unconfirmed means only a secondary source was found, or sources disagree. Everything else was read in the source named.

Sources

Kit checks

Each uses only the rules above; where the sources give no number, the check reports the value and does not judge it.

• Release timeline (plan and status, from plan.json's optional release block; plan.md): warnings when the app fee is paid fewer than 21 days before release, the Coming Soon page is up fewer than 14 days, the store page or build goes to review fewer than 7 business days ahead (or the build before the page), the Next Fest demo misses its 3-week (5 with the press preview) deadline, or Next Fest falls on or after release; a note once the date is locked. Warnings only: a plan is advice.
• Trailers (doctor, store/steam/trailer* with a video extension, read with ffprobe; without it, one warning says they were not checked): warns on audio at a rate other than 44.1 or 48 kHz, a frame rate other than 30 or 60 (29.97 and 59.94 count) and a size over 1920x1080, which the trailer page names as the commonest failures. Another video codec than H.264 or audio codec than AAC, a bitrate under 5,000 Kbps and an aspect ratio other than 16:9 or 4:3 are INFO, and so are the container and length. The trailer page does name containers (.mov, .wmv, .mp4), a high bitrate (5,000+ Kbps), 16:9 preferred with 4:3 accepted, and H.264 video with AAC audio as preferred because Steam "can transcode from many formats"; it gives no length.
• Tags (doctor, store/steam/tags.txt, one tag per line): warns on fewer than 5 (before launch), more than 20 (Steam shows and counts only the first 20), a tag listed twice (any case) and a line that looks like several tags (a comma, semicolon, bar or tab); "Indie" in the first five is INFO (Zukowski).
• Privacy policy (doctor): the policy is store/privacy-policy.md (or .txt, .html) or PRIVACY.md in the project. It warns when the game collects player data with none (Sentry's addon, [sentry] settings or SentrySdk, the kit's TelemetryClient or PlaytestTracker, GameAnalytics or Firebase Analytics in the code, or a policyVersion set to a number), when an Android or iOS preset exists with none (both stores require one), and when the code asks consent for a policyVersion the policy does not state as "Version N". Warnings, not failures: the policy may be published elsewhere, and whether a game needs one outside the phone stores is a legal question.

Tested here

• Engine.get_license_text(), get_copyright_info() (102 components) and get_license_info() (19 licence texts, keyed by Debian-style names such as Expat) in Godot 4.7.2. The Godot logo is CC-BY-4.0; FreeType's licence asks binary releases to say they are based in part on the FreeType Team's work. The list covers every platform's components, not only what one export compiles in. ci/godot/tools/notices.gd dumps it for credits.
• A Godot 4.7.2 C# Linux export (the C# example, 189 files in its data folder) contains no .NET licence or notices file. The runtime pack in the NuGet cache has THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.TXT; credits appends it for C# games.
• MPL-2.0, read in SPDX's 3.29.0 text (ci/godot/templates/licences/MPL-2.0.txt): shipping MPL files in executable form means making their source available and telling recipients how to get it (3.2(a)); the source's notices stay (3.4); the rest of the game keeps its own licence (3.3), and changes to the MPL files themselves are MPL-2.0. So credits writes the licence text and the source URL into the notices, and fails (source-offer-missing) when source is not a URL.
• doctor's store art and press kit checks on generated PNG and JPEG files of right and wrong sizes, the trailer check on videos ffmpeg makes during the test (H.264 and AAC at 1920x1080 and 30 fps pass; MPEG-4 and MP2 at 2560x1440, 25 fps and 22.05 kHz are named on each count), the tag and privacy checks (tests/Test-Store.ps1), the release timeline on fixed days (tests/Test-Plan.ps1), and the credits generator on a sample manifest (tests/Test-Credits.ps1).

Mistakes an agent is likely to make

1. The old capsule sizes (460x215, 231x87, 616x353, 374x448), refused since August 2024.
2. "You need 7,000 wishlists" as a rule; its author archived it in June 2026.
3. A 30-day wait after the Steam Direct fee (now 21), and forgetting the 2-week Coming Soon minimum, the 7-business-day review lead, the date freeze and the manual release button.
4. Treating Steam as an IARC store, or entering an IARC-generated USK rating on Steam.
5. Missing PEGI's June 2026 change for paid random items.
6. Saying Steam needs no rating: Germany and Indonesia need one, which the Content Survey gives.
7. Crediting Godot with only its MIT text, or only FreeType, ENet and mbedTLS (an older version of Godot's page); and shipping a C# game without the .NET notices.
8. An MIT credit on screen without the licence text shipped; or a CC BY credit only in a file nobody sees.
9. First-week conversion figures attributed to Zukowski (they are Carless's, from 2020).
10. Calling OGA-BY an SPDX id (it is not one), or treating bought asset packs as free of obligations.
11. "We collect nothing, so no privacy policy": Google Play and the App Store require one anyway.

Unconfirmed or not reached

• The short description's exact limit (300 characters is from third parties) and the capsules' file formats and size caps.
• Whether Zukowski's March 2025 statement that Valve removed the trailer requirement holds: the trailer page ("you will be required to upload a trailer") and the quickstart table ("Trailers are required to release on Steam") both say it is required, and the Coming Soon page only says "ideally". Treat a trailer as required until a Valve page says otherwise.
• How a custom EULA is configured on Steam, and whether Steam requires a game's own privacy policy (not in public pages).
• Whether Steam's DRM wrapper counts as an "effective technological measure" under CC BY 3.0 and 4.0 (OGA-BY exists because artists objected to that clause): a legal question, flagged rather than answered.
• IARC's exact questions (only inside store portals).
• The COPPA amendment dates (effective June 2025, compliance April 2026) and the Belgian loot box report: secondary sources only.
• GodotSteam's licence page, the Steamworks SDK redistribution terms, FMOD's credit terms and GOG's asset specs: not reachable from the session or not public.
• Whether an export template's get_copyright_info() lists only the components it compiles in.