Privacy
The short version: your scores are saved in your own browser. You can also make a profile (still only on your device), or sign up so that your progress follows you to another browser — and if you do, the only thing we hold is your email address and that saved progress. No tracking, no analytics, no selling anything to anybody.
What is stored, and where
Every game keeps its leaderboard and your three-letter name in your browser's own local storage. That is a per-site scratchpad on your computer. It is not sent anywhere, we cannot read it, and clearing your browsing data deletes it. It is why your scores do not follow you to another browser or another device.
Playing as a guest, that is the whole story: nothing you do leaves your machine.
Profiles, save codes and accounts
The Sign in button at the top of the page offers up to three things, depending on what the site has switched on:
A profile lets several people share one browser. Each profile keeps its own copy of those same local-storage keys. It never leaves the device and needs no email address.
A save code is your progress written out as a long line of text you can copy. Paste it into the panel on another device and it loads there. We never see it — copying and pasting it is entirely between you and your own clipboard.
An account, where the site offers one, is an email address and a password, and it exists so your progress can follow you between devices. The email address, a player name if you set one, and the saved progress itself are stored for you by Google Firebase (Authentication and Firestore), because PLAYPILE is a static site with no server of its own. We can see your email address and your saved game progress; we cannot see your password, which Google holds and we never receive. Nothing is shared with anyone else and none of it is used for advertising.
The saved progress is exactly what the games already keep on your device: high scores, the three letters you type in beside them, coins, unlocked clothes and settings. No location, no contacts, no device fingerprinting, nothing about what else you do online.
Levels, badges, the daily challenge and leaderboards
The site itself also keeps a few things in that same local storage, under keys beginning
pd.site.: how many minutes you have spent in each game and on which days
(used for your XP, level and play streak), which badges you have earned, your daily
challenge streak, the games you mark as favourites, the picture you choose, and the list of
games you played recently. It is counted in your browser while a game page is open in
front of you, it is not sent anywhere, and it is shown back to you on your profile page.
If you sign in to an account, those keys are saved with the rest of your progress
as described above. Signed-in players also appear on public leaderboards: for each
game that keeps a best score, we store your player name, your chosen picture and your best
score (in Google Firestore, under leaderboards), and anyone visiting that
game's page can see them. Your email address is never shown on a leaderboard. Pick a
nickname rather than your real name. Without an account, the leaderboard only shows the
profiles on your own device and nothing is published.
Deleting it. Sign out and clear your browser data and the device copy is gone. To have an account and its saved progress deleted from the server, email the address at the bottom of this page and it will be removed — there is no form to fill in and no waiting period beyond how long it takes to read the message.
Advertising
PLAYPILE carries advertising, and that is the one part of the site that involves somebody else. The adverts are served by Google AdSense.
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or to other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to PLAYPILE and/or other sites on the Internet.
- To do that, Google and its partners may collect and use information such as your IP address, your browser and device type, cookie and device identifiers, and web beacons (small invisible images or scripts that record that an advert was shown or clicked).
- You can opt out of personalised advertising in Google's Ads Settings (also reachable at myadcenter.google.com), and out of other vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at www.aboutads.info or, in Europe, www.youronlinechoices.eu.
- How Google handles this information is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services and in How Google uses cookies in advertising.
Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are asked for consent before any personalised advertising, through Google's own consent message. Without consent, Google shows only non-personalised or limited ads.
We do not pass anything to advertisers ourselves: no names, email addresses or other personal information are ever sent to Google in an ad request.
Playing online with a friend
HOOPS and INKVALE can be played by two people over the internet using a four-letter room code. To connect the two browsers, both briefly contact a free public matchmaking server run by the PeerJS project, which sees the room code and each browser's IP address. After that the game goes directly between the two browsers, which means each player's browser can see the other's IP address, as with any direct video call or online game. Nothing is stored about the game, there is no chat, and nobody can join without the code. Only share a code with people you know.
Your choices and rights
- On the privacy settings page you can switch to non-personalised adverts, see everything the site has saved in your browser, download it and delete it.
- Choosing non-personalised adverts is how you opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information for targeted advertising under US state laws such as the CCPA.
- If you are in the UK, the EU or another place with similar laws, you have the right to ask what data is held about you, to have it corrected or deleted, and to object to its use. For an account, email the address below; for adverts, Google's own tools are linked above. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.
- An account's saved progress is kept until you ask for it to be deleted. Data in your browser stays until you delete it.
Analytics
None. There is no analytics script on this site.
Children
PLAYPILE is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from them. If an account turns out to belong to a child under 13, email the address below and it will be deleted. A child can play every game on the site without an account, and nothing on the site asks for one.
Getting in touch
If you want anything on this page explained or removed, email liamlikescows@gmail.com.