Privacy

Last updated 2026-11-01 (cloud saves and Author Mode purchases added).

The short version

You can play Gatelife without an account, and then there are no cookies and your saves stay in your browser. Cloud saves are optional: they need no email, no password and no name. We count a few anonymous gameplay events so we can see how many people play and where the game breaks. You can turn that off in the game.

Your saves

Your lives, records and settings live in your browser's local storage on this device. Without a cloud account they are never uploaded. Clearing your browser's site data deletes them.

Cloud saves (optional)

If you create a cloud account, the game copies your saves to our server so you can carry on from another device. An account is a random number and a recovery code that is shown to you once. We never ask for an email, a password or your name. We keep only a one-way hash of the code, so we cannot read it or send it to you again: if you lose it, we cannot recover the account.

This is everything we store for an account:

• Your profile: past lives' records, titles, unlocks, codex, Houses and settings.
• Your current life's save, the time it was saved and the random id of the device that saved it.
• One record per finished life, marked if it was an authored or custom life.
• The hash of your recovery code and the date the account was made.
• Your sign-ins: a hash of each sign-in token, with the date it was made and when it expires (180 days).
• Counters that limit sign-ups, sign-ins and saves per hour, kept under the account or under a salted one-way hash of your IP address. The IP address itself is never stored.

It is kept in private storage at Vercel Blob in Frankfurt, in the EU, and only our own server functions at this site's /api address can read it. It is kept until you delete the account.

Signing in sets one cookie, __Host-gl_session. It is strictly necessary for the sign-in, holds only a random token, is never readable by scripts and is removed when you sign out. Nothing is set before you create an account or sign in.

You can download all of it as a file (export) or delete the account at any time from the game's account settings, or by writing to us. Deleting removes every stored file for the account at once. Saves on your own device stay until you clear them.

Buying Author Mode

When Author Mode is on sale, it is bought on Stripe's own checkout page, not on this site. Stripe is the seller of record: it collects your payment details, email and billing country, handles tax and receipts, and keeps them under Stripe's privacy policy. Your card details never reach us. A purchase needs a cloud account, so the unlock can be restored on any device.

For a purchase, this is everything we store with your account:

• That the account has Author Mode, the date it was unlocked, and the date it was removed if the purchase was refunded or disputed.
• A one-way hash of Stripe's payment reference, so the same payment is not counted twice and a refund can find the right account.
• One-way hashes of the payment messages Stripe has sent us, so none is handled twice.
• Counters that limit checkout and restore attempts per hour.

We never store your email, name, card details or address. Purchases are included in the export, and deleting the account deletes them too (Stripe keeps its own sale records, as the law requires).

Anonymous stats

Stats are off entirely until the site owner sets up an analytics key. When they are on, we use PostHog, hosted in the EU, through our own address (/ingest), so your browser only ever talks to this site.

These are the only events we send, and the only fields in them:

• load: the game opened. No fields.
• born: a new life started, with its life number.
• reading_seen: your Reading was shown, with the rank and seconds since the game loaded.
• gate_result: a gate's rank, whether it was cleared, and whether it was your first gate.
• life_end: a life ended, with its age, the kind of ending and the number of turns.
• life_start: you started another life, with the seconds since the last death.
• redraft: you were offered a redraft, and whether you accepted it.
• share_tap: you tapped share on a record. No fields.
• share_done: a share finished, with the method (share sheet, download or copy).
• daily_played: you played the Daily Gate. No fields.
• error: something broke, with whether it was an error or a rejected promise and the first line of the message, with web addresses, file paths, emails, seeds and long numbers removed.
• perf: load speed in milliseconds (first paint, first contentful paint, time to playable).
• ref: where the visit came from, only if it is one of: card, tiktok, reddit, itch, discord, x, youtube, instagram, creator, portal, bluesky, mastodon, tumblr, lemmy, gamejolt, intfiction, hn, friends.
• author_interest: you tapped "Author Your Life" on the title screen. No fields.

PostHog adds its own basic properties to each event: browser, operating system, screen size, and the page address without its query or hash.

What we do not collect

• No analytics cookies, and nothing stored on your device for analytics (PostHog runs cookieless, in memory only).
• No identify call and no device id: we never link events to you.
• No names, seeds, stack traces, referrers or IP addresses.
• No session replay, autocapture, advertising or cross-site tracking.

Your save has a random id so the game can tell your lives apart. It never leaves your device unless you turn on cloud saves, and it is never sent with stats.

Turning stats off

Open the Ledger tab, then Settings, and switch off Share anonymous stats at any time. Nothing more is sent from this browser. Only that on/off choice is kept on your device. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, stats start off.

Age

Gatelife is rated 13+. We do not knowingly collect any data from children.

Hosting

The site is hosted on Vercel, which keeps standard server logs for security and reliability.

Contact

Questions or requests: privacy@gatelife.app.