Privacy policy

The short version

BlahPlay keeps what it needs to run your account, your friends list and fair relay limits. No ads, no selling data, no tracking across other sites. You can delete your account yourself, any time, from the account page.

What we keep

• Account: your BlahPlay name (from Patreon), vanity name if you set one, member number, and a salted hash of your passphrase (never the passphrase itself).
• Patreon link: your Patreon user id, email (as verified by Patreon), membership status, pledge amount and tier, so we can secure your name and set your tier. We never see card details.
• Website subscription: your Stripe customer and subscription ids, plan, status and paid-until date. Payment details stay with Stripe.
• Email: stored privately, never shown to players. Used for update emails only if you opt in; every email has an unsubscribe link.
• Social: friends, requests, blocks, favourites, invites and short "pokes" (canned messages, no free text). Pokes and invites expire within minutes.
• Sessions: sign-in tokens are stored only as hashes and expire after 7 days.
• Reports and safety: reports you send or that are made about you (reason, optional description, time, session code), your mute list and voice setting, and any warnings, suspensions or bans with their reasons. Reports are kept until reviewed plus 12 months, also if an account is deleted. The reported player is never told who reported them. If a suspended or banned account is deleted, we keep a one-way hash of its Patreon id and email so the same person cannot sign up again during the suspension or after a ban.
• Top scores: when every player in a session confirms the same final scores, your BlahPlay name and score appear on the public Top scores boards (each player's best per game). Your member number is never shown.
• Relay usage: weekly counters of relayed time per member, to enforce fair-use limits.
• Calibration (optional): if you share calibration results, they are stored against a one-way hash, not your member number, and only as aggregates.
• Diagnostics (optional, on by default): with "collect forensics" on, session logs, frame fingerprints, calibration results and crash reports, used to fix sync problems. Never ROMs, saves, personal files, or inputs tied to your name. Switch it off any time in settings on each platform.

What we do not keep

Game content, ROMs, voice audio, or your gameplay video. Games are never sent through BlahPlay.

Voice chat is private

BlahPlay has no listening, recording or transcribing feature. What you say in voice chat is a private conversation between the players in your session: it is never stored, never transcribed and never analysed, by us or anyone we work with.

Voice and game data are encrypted with ChaCha20-Poly1305 (the same cipher used by TLS 1.3 and WireGuard), with a new random 256-bit key for every session. They travel directly between players' devices; when a router forces a relay, the relay only ever carries the encrypted data and cannot hear you.

To be exact: the lobby creates each session's key and hands it to the players, so this is encryption in transit rather than end-to-end encryption in the strict sense. The lobby never receives your audio.

Who processes data for us

• Cloudflare: hosting for the lobby and website, and relays for players behind strict routers.
• Patreon: sign-up and Patreon memberships.
• Stripe: website subscriptions and payments.

Your choices

• Turn update emails on or off on the account page, or use the unsubscribe link.
• Delete your account on the account page: your name, friends, invites and settings are erased. Cancel any website subscription first; Patreon memberships are managed on Patreon.
• Ask for a copy of your data: [contact to be added by the owner].

Children

BlahPlay is not directed at children under 13, and Patreon and Stripe require users to meet their own age rules.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date above changes, and members who opted in to updates are told by email.