Privacy

Novarchy — last updated 10 September 2026

Novarchy is a free hobby project. It is not a business: there are no ads, and nothing about you is sold or shared for marketing. Two things are measured, and neither leaves our own servers: visits to the website are counted without cookies, and we look at how far new players get through the first steps, to find where the game loses people — that one reads the account data listed here, not a tracker. This page describes exactly what the game stores and why — in plain terms, because a policy nobody can read protects nobody.

What the game stores

• The name you choose. If you play as a guest, that name is your account: no email, no password.
• Your email address — only if you sign in with Google. It is used to recognise you when you come back, and for nothing else. We never see your Google password.
• An identifier from Apple — only if you sign in with Apple. Apple gives us a code that means "this person", and that code is what we store to recognise you when you come back. It is meaningless to anyone else, and it is not your email: Apple may also pass on an address — a relay one if you chose Hide My Email — but we do not store it and nothing in the game uses it. We never see your Apple password.
• The first name Apple gives us, if you signed in with Apple and let it. Apple offers it once, on your first sign-in only, and we use it as your public commander name — the name other players see in chat and on the leaderboard. You can change it in the game at any time, and if Apple sends nothing we generate a name instead.
• Your game state: colony, buildings, fleets, research, battles, alliances. This is the game.
• When you signed up, when you were last online, and when you reached each of the first steps. The last one is what tells us which step new players give up on.
• The two-letter country code your connection came from — at signup only. Our own web server resolves the country your address belongs to (using the freely licensed IP-to-Country database by DB-IP), and at the moment your account is created only the two letters are kept: your IP address is not stored, and the country is never updated afterwards. It tells us where new players are finding the game. If it cannot be resolved, no country is stored at all.
• Which of our doors you signed up through — at signup only. One word, web, ios or android, sent by the game itself and kept once, when your account is created. It says nothing about your device, your browser or you: only which of our own builds you arrived on. We need it because the country above is resolved from the address your connection reaches us from, and app traffic often reaches us through the platform's own network — so without this we cannot tell a player in one country from a phone routed through another. Never updated afterwards, and if the game does not say, nothing is stored.
• Chat messages you send. The galaxy channel and your guild channel are read by other players by design. A private whisper is between you and one other person, and is not shown to anybody else.
• Reports and blocks: if you report a message we store the message text as it was, so it can still be judged if the message is later removed. If you block someone, we store that so we can hide them from you.

What is stored on your device

One item in your browser's local storage: a sign-in token, so you are not asked to identify yourself on every visit. A second one appears only if you use the button below to turn visit counting off — that flag is how your browser remembers the choice. No advertising or tracking cookies are used.

How visits are counted

We count visits to the website, so we know whether anyone is finding the game at all. It runs on a server we run ourselves, using open-source software called Plausible Analytics: no third party is involved — nothing about the counting leaves novarchy.com. It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device.

What is recorded: the page you opened, the site that linked you, your country, your browser, operating system and device type, how far down the page you scrolled and how long you were actually looking at it. Your IP address and browser are also used to build a scrambled key for the day, so two visits from you in one day usually count as one person rather than two; your IP itself is never stored, and once that day's key is thrown away the count can no longer be traced back to you. Nothing you click, download or type is recorded — this counter does not watch clicks, downloads or forms at all, so sending a chat message never reaches it. None of it is connected to your game account, and it does not run inside the mobile app.

If you would rather not be counted, the button below switches it off for this browser, and nothing is loaded on any later visit. If your browser offers “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control, turning either on does the same thing without asking us — we check for both. Safari has no such setting, and on iPhone every browser is Safari underneath, which is exactly why the button exists.

It is worth saying plainly why a button is needed at all: the counter is served from novarchy.com itself, so blocking an analytics domain will not stop it. Refusing has to be something we honour rather than something your ad blocker can catch for you. (A blocker that filters by path can still stop /n/s.js, and nothing in the game breaks if it does.)

Who else sees anything

• Google — the game's fonts come from Google Fonts, so opening the game reaches Google whether or not you ever sign in. The screens that offer the Google button — the sign-in screen, and account linking in settings — also load Google's sign-in script, before you have chosen anything; in the mobile app that button uses Google's own app instead. Those requests show Google what any web request shows: your IP address, your browser, and which page made the request. Your email address reaches us only if you actually sign in with Google.
• Apple — in a browser, the screens that offer the Sign in with Apple button load Apple's sign-in script, before you have chosen anything, exactly as the Google one above does: that request shows Apple your IP address, your browser, and which page made it. In the app no script is loaded — the button opens Apple's own sheet instead. What comes back to us if you go through with it is the identifier above; whether an address comes with it is your choice in Apple's sheet, not ours.
• Discord — the game mirrors some public chat into a Discord channel. Only messages written by the game's AI-run empires are mirrored. Messages written by human players are not sent to Discord.
• OpenRouter — the game uses an AI service, reached through OpenRouter, for four things. Messages you send to the galaxy channel or a guild channel are sent there to be translated into English before they are stored, so that everyone reads the channel in one language. The name you choose — your commander name, a colony name, a guild name — is sent there to be checked against the rules when you pick it. The AI empires' replies, whenever their voice is switched on, are written there, and the recent chat around them is sent along as context, so messages other players wrote can travel with them. The build advisor, if you open it, sends your colony's name and situation. What is not sent: your email address, your account identifier, and your name alongside your message — the text goes without them, and mentions of other players are replaced by placeholders first. Private whispers are not sent for translation. A whisper you send to another player stays on our server. (A whisper to one of the AI empires is different: it is the message their reply would be written from, so whenever their voice is on it is sent there like any other message they answer. A whisper sent while they are silent stays unread on our server — and would be sent if that voice is switched back on.)
• Stripe — if you support the game with a gift, the payment happens on a page run by Stripe, our payment processor, and only if you choose to open it. Your card details are typed there and never reach us: what comes back to our server is that a payment of a given amount succeeded, was cancelled or was refunded, together with Stripe's own identifiers for it. We keep a record of each gift (which amount, when) next to your account, and keep it after the account is deleted, because it is an accounting record. Stripe's handling of what you type on its page is described in Stripe's privacy policy. In the mobile app there is no store.

That is the whole list: no advertising networks, no analytics company, and nothing here is used to build a profile of you or to follow you to another site. The AI service above sees message and name text, and nothing else about you; the payment processor sees what you type on its page, and nothing else about your game.

Where it lives, and for how long

Your account and game data sit in the game's own database on a server we run ourselves. It is kept while your account exists. Ask us to delete it and we will delete the account and its game data; public chat messages you have already sent may remain in the conversation history, since removing them would tear holes in other people's conversations. The visit counts sit on a second server of ours, in Finland, and are not tied to your account: once that day's key is gone there is nothing in them left to point at you — and so nothing for a deletion request to reach.

Children

The game has open chat between players, so it is not intended for children under 13.

Your choices

• Play as a guest and give us no email at all.
• Block anyone you do not want to read. It is immediate, one-directional, and the other person is not told.
• Report a message that breaks the rules. A human reads reports; nothing is deleted automatically by report count.
• Ask for your account and data to be deleted.
• Say do not count my visits — one button, works in every browser, and after that the counter is not even downloaded. “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control, if your browser has them, do the same thing. Nothing in the game depends on any of it, so nothing breaks either way.