Privacy

The short version

No cookies. No ads. No third-party trackers or analytics. Nothing is saved onto your device, and nothing here is tied to who you are.

Server logs

Like nearly every website, the web server keeps standard access logs: the address a request came from, the page it asked for, when, and the browser it claimed to be. They're looked at in aggregate, "how many people visited the games page", and rotate away after about a week. The pages also send the site a quick, anonymous ping when a game is started or made fullscreen, so plays can be counted, it sets no cookie and stores nothing about you, just another line in that same log.

Playing the games

When you finish a run of a game on this site, the page sends back a short summary of that run so the games can be made better: which game and version, how long it lasted, how it ended, and a handful of game-specific numbers like how far you got. There's nothing in it about you, no name, no email, no account, and nothing is saved onto your device. Those summaries are only ever sent by this site's own page around the game, which is why a run of the identical game on itch.io is never counted here.

Each run is also tagged with a scrambled code worked out from your network address and browser, so plays can be counted as "about this many people" instead of just "this many runs". It's a one-way hash with a secret mixed in, the address can't be recovered from it, it isn't a cookie, and nothing is stored on your device to make it. It's deliberately blunt: two people on the same home internet and browser look like one, and you'll look like someone new if your address or browser changes.

The games themselves make exactly one request of their own: when a game starts, it asks this site whether the page it's running on is one of ours, hibachicat.com or itch.io, and a copy of a game lifted onto some other site is told to behave as a demo. That request tells the site the name of the page the game is running on and which version of the game it is, and it lands in the same server log as any other request. It sets no cookie, stores nothing on your device, and carries nothing about you or how you played; and if it can't get through, whether from an ad blocker or no connection, the game simply plays. It's the same one question from the identical game on itch.io.

Comments

If you post a comment, the site stores the display name you typed and the comment itself. To slow down spam floods, it also keeps a salted hash of the posting address for rate-limiting, the address itself is never stored with your comment and can't be recovered from the hash. No email, no account, no profile.

Email newsletter

If you sign up for game-launch emails, the site stores the email address you typed, when you signed up and confirmed, which form you used, and the same kind of salted, non-recoverable address hash described above (that's the consent receipt). Nothing is ever sent to you until you click the confirmation link, typing someone else's address gets them exactly one "was this you?" email and then silence.

Every email includes an unsubscribe link that always works, no login or begging required. Unsubscribing keeps your address only as a "don't email this person" marker. The list lives in this site's own database and mail is sent from this site's own web host, no third-party mailing service holds your address.

What this site doesn't do

Sell data (there isn't any to sell), run third-party analytics, embed social widgets, load fonts or scripts from other people's servers, or set cookies to remember you between visits.

If this ever changes

If the site grows new features that touch any of the above, this page gets updated first, before those features go live.

Questions

hello (at) hibachicat (dot) com