Privacy
Last changed: October 19, 2026
- Pick a fun name, not your real name. You don't need an email to play.
- We keep your hero, your items and your island so you can come back to them.
- We never sell anything about you, and there are no ads.
- When you talk to town people like King Poly, an AI writes their answers. Don't tell them your real name.
- A grown-up can ask us to delete your account at any time: write to polyworld.us@gmail.com from the email on the account.
What we keep
- Your account: the name you log in with, your password (scrambled, so nobody can read it, not even us), your colour, and an email address only if you add one.
- Play now: if you play without signing up, your browser keeps a made-up name and password for your hero, so you can come back on the same device.
- Your game: your level, items, island, quests, friends, guild, and what the story remembers about your choices.
- Messages: chat is shown to the players around you. Phone numbers and email addresses are hidden (they show as ***), so nobody can give theirs out by mistake. The game remembers only its last few lines, to show players who just arrived, and doesn't save it. Private whispers between two players are kept so both can read them later: we keep your newest 200 whispers, until 30 days after the last one. If you report someone, we keep the report with the recent chat around it, so we can check it.
- Talking to residents: when you whisper to a resident of the town (like King Poly), or chat with one of the game's AI adventurers, your message and your player name go to Claude, an AI made by Anthropic, which writes the answer. Its answers pass the same chat filter as players' words, and it is told to keep things right for kids and never to ask for personal details. The last few lines are kept so a resident remembers what you talked about, until 30 days after the last one. Your email is never sent.
- Your device: a random number your browser keeps for us, and your internet address. We use them to stop people from cheating the friend rewards (a "friend" who is really you on the same computer) and to stop too many sign-ups or wrong passwords.
We keep them for 90 days after your last visit. - Your first steps: for new accounts, which first steps they reached (into a game, a first win, the next levels, coming back another day), for 60 days. We count them together to see where new players get stuck.
- How the game runs: how smoothly the picture moves, your screen size, your browser and graphics chip, and any error the game hits, so we can fix lag and bugs. We keep only the newest 500 of these (a few days' worth).
- Server logs: our servers write down each request (with the internet address) for a short time, to find problems and attacks. They are deleted every time the game is updated (usually within a few days), and they never grow past a small size limit: the oldest lines are dropped first.
- Visits: we use Google Analytics to count visits to the site: which pages, from which kind of device, and roughly which country. It uses cookies.
We switched off Google's advertising features for it. You can block it with Google's opt-out add-on or an ad blocker; the game works the same.
Cookies and storage
- A login cookie keeps you logged in for 30 days. If you play Polyworld inside another game website, your login there is kept separate from ours.
- Your browser also keeps your settings (sound, quality), your Play now hero, and the device number above.
- Google Analytics sets its own cookies (see above).
Emails
If you add an email, we use it only to let you log in with it, to send a code that checks it's yours, and to send a new password if you forget yours. Emails are sent by Amazon's email service.
Who else sees it
- Other players see your player name, your hero, your place on the rankings and what you say in chat.
- The game runs on Amazon Web Services computers in the United States. Google (Analytics), Anthropic (the residents' AI) and Amazon (email) handle the parts above for us.
- We never sell or rent anything about you, and we don't show ads.
Kids and parents
Polyworld is a game for everyone, and many players are kids. We ask players not to use their real name, an email is never needed to play, and phone numbers and email addresses are hidden in chat. If you are a parent or guardian and want to see or delete what we keep about your child, follow the steps below.
Seeing or deleting an account
Write to polyworld.us@gmail.com from the email address on the account, and tell us the player's name. We will send you what we keep, or delete the account, its hero, its island and its messages.
No email on the account? Log in, add one on your Profile page, then write to us from it. We only act on a request that comes from the account's own email, so nobody can delete someone else's hero.
Changes
If what we keep changes, we will change this page and its date.