Nightporch privacy policy

Effective September 26, 2026. Nightporch is made and operated by Zachary James Kane, an individual developer. Questions: nightporchhelp@gmail.com.

Nightporch has no accounts, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking. Nightporch stores solo towns and settings on your device. Co-op uses network services to find friends, connect players and share a host’s town. The sections below describe these separate uses.

Solo play and device storage

Saved towns (up to five), recovery copies, a record of households whose runs ended (the Roll of Households) and settings are stored in your browser or app’s storage (local storage and IndexedDB) and are not sent anywhere during solo play. A co-op guest receives the host’s town but does not save it over their own solo town. Browser or device storage can be cleared by the device owner; clearing it can remove saved progress.

Your local co-op profile contains an identifier, display name, friend list, online preference and survivor preset. A temporary guest identifier can also be stored for the current tab. Profile transfer codes contain profile, name and friend information for you to export; those codes are not encrypted.

A previously online profile may reconnect when you open the game. Taking that profile offline closes its network connections. Removing the local profile deletes its local profile record; this does not establish that service-provider logs have been deleted.

Game Center, cloud saves and purchases (iPhone, iPad and Mac app)

If you are signed in to Game Center, the app shows your Game Center name on the title screen and uses it as your co-op name, reports the achievements you earn, and stores copies of your saved towns and your coin balance as Game Center saved games in your own iCloud account. Apple runs these services under its own privacy policy; the developer cannot read your iCloud data. Signing out of Game Center turns these features off.

Coin packs are bought through Apple’s In-App Purchase. Apple handles payment and never shares your payment details with the developer. Your coin balance and the looks you unlock are kept on your device and, when signed in to Game Center, in your iCloud copy. The web version sells nothing for money: its Shop takes only coins earned by playing.

Loading the game

The website and asset host receive ordinary web request information, such as your IP address, request headers and requested paths. Packaged app assets are stored locally. Web fonts are self-hosted in the current build. The game also checks for web app updates. These providers may keep ordinary request logs under their own policies.

Co-op connections

Other players in an accepted session receive display names, survivor appearances and state, the host’s town, gameplay events and chat. Direct WebRTC connections also exchange network addressing information. When you join a friend’s town, your device also sends that host a code made from your device key that works only for their town, and the host’s saved town keeps a salted one-way hash of it, so that nobody else can take over your survivor there. Co-op can use the following services:

If the services the game uses change, this policy is updated first.

Diagnostics you choose to share

The game can keep a small list of recent errors in memory and create a bug report locally. The report includes game and build versions, browser/device information, performance readings, game mode/day/seed, co-op connection type and player count, save sizes and recent errors. It omits the town contents and chat, and attempts to remove names and contact/network details from diagnostics.

Copying the report puts text on your clipboard, or shows selectable text if clipboard access fails. This action does not upload the report. Review the text before choosing to paste or send it elsewhere. Separately, to help improve onboarding, the game keeps anonymous aggregate step counters on your device (such as how many times a new town starts, the first neighbour is met, or a Horde Night is survived) and sends only those unnamed integer counts to the Cloudflare Worker; no profile id, name, device key, IP address or personal identifier is attached or stored with them, and you can view or turn off these counters at any time in Settings > Help & performance.

Reports about another player

If you use Report on a player, the game sends one message to the Cloudflare Worker described above, and only when you press Send report. That message contains: the reason you picked, the optional note you typed (up to 140 characters), the last 20 chat lines that player sent in that game, your profile name and profile id, the reported player’s name and profile id, whether you are on the web or the app, and the time. It does not contain your town, your save, your position, your friends list, your e-mail address or your IP address. Your network address reaches the Worker as it does for any web request, and the stored report contains no address at all: a truncated one-way hash of it is kept separately, and only to count how many reports one connection has sent (five an hour). That counter stops counting an hour after your last report, and is deleted the next time any report reaches the Worker.

Reports are stored in the Worker’s Durable Object storage for up to 90 days and are then deleted. Only the game’s owner can read them, using a command-line script and a secret held on the Worker; with no secret set, nothing can read them at all. For anything else, including questions about a report, write to nightporchhelp@gmail.com.

Muting and blocking another player are decided entirely on your own device. Those lists live in this browser, travel with your profile code if you move it, and are never sent to the Worker or to the other player, who is not told.

Retention

The co-op directory keeps only live connection state and clears it when you disconnect. For each town hosted online, the room relay also keeps a salted one-way hash of a random key your device creates, so that nobody else can host your town, appear online as you, or answer a friend’s direct connection as you; it is deleted after 30 days without hosting. There is no database of chat history or saved towns. Player reports are kept for up to 90 days, as described above. Hosting, signaling and relay providers may keep their own logs under their own policies.

Your choices and deleting data

Everything saved on your device can be deleted by deleting the app or clearing the site’s data in your browser. Game Center copies can be removed in your iCloud settings. To delete what the co-op server keeps for your friend code, open Play Together and choose Delete my online data: it deletes your town’s registration and the reports you sent. Reports other players sent about you are kept for up to 90 days so they can be reviewed. If you cannot use the game, write to the address below with your friend code: the developer can delete the reports you sent, but not your town’s registration, which lapses 30 days after you last host.

Children

Nightporch is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them. Co-op chat is filtered, and any player can be muted, blocked or reported.

Changes and contact

When this policy changes, the effective date at the top changes with it. Contact: Zachary James Kane, nightporchhelp@gmail.com.