Club NYC Privacy Policy
Early access This is a plain-language policy for a game in early access.
The Short Version
- Club NYC is free and has no ads. We collect what we need to run the game and keep it safe.
- No advertising cookies and no third-party analytics. We don’t sell your personal information or share it with advertisers.
- You can play as a guest without giving us an email address. If you link Google, X, Discord or your email, we keep only the basics.
- If you join the waitlist, we keep your email address to tell you when Club NYC opens. Every waitlist email has a one-click unsubscribe link.
- Chat messages are deleted automatically after 72 hours.
- You can delete your account at any time in the game: Player Card → Account → Delete Account.
- Club NYC is for people 13 and older.
1 Who We Are
Club NYC is a free game you play in your browser, set in a cartoon New York City. It’s run by [COMPANY NAME] (“we” or “us”), which is responsible for the personal information described here.
This policy covers the Club NYC game and this website. It explains what we collect when you play, why we collect it, how long we keep it and what choices you have. If you have questions, email [CONTACT EMAIL].
2 What We Collect
This is what we store about you on our servers, grouped by where it comes from.
Your Account
- A random account ID, which is how our system tells players apart.
- When your account was created, when you last visited, and your total play time.
- That you’re old enough to play. When you create your New Yorker we ask for your birth month and year, check that you’re 13 or older, and then forget them: we don’t store your birthday.
- Which version of our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Community Rules you agreed to, and when.
Your New Yorker
- The in-game name you choose, your avatar’s look, your neighborhood team and your title.
- Your member number and “member since” date.
Sign-Ins You Link (Optional)
“Play Now” creates a guest account instantly, with no email address. If you link Google, X (formerly Twitter), Discord or your email so you can keep your account across devices, we store which one you used and the account ID it gives us, plus:
- Google: your email address and name.
- X: your @username.
- Discord: your display name (or your username, if you haven’t set one).
- Email: your email address. It’s how we find your account when you sign in.
We never see your password for any of these services. Signing in with email doesn’t use a password at all: we email you a link that works once, for 15 minutes. For each link we keep the address we sent it to, when we sent it, and a scrambled (hashed) version of the link’s code, and we delete these records after a day.
The Waitlist
Before Club NYC opens, you can join the waitlist on our website. You don’t need an account. If you do, we store:
- Your email address.
- Where on our website you signed up (for example, the top of the home page).
- The in-game name of the player whose invite link brought you there, if one did.
- When you joined, when you confirmed your email address, and when we sent you the email saying Club NYC is open.
We may ask you to confirm your address by clicking a link in an email first. We use your waitlist address only for Club NYC: to confirm your spot and to tell you when the city opens. We never sell it or use it for ads.
Your Game Progress
- Your wardrobe, stamps, apartment furniture, quests and settings.
- Your coins, including a history of how you earned and spent them.
- Your leaderboard scores, and your job runs (when you started and finished each job).
Friends and Social Features
- Your friends, your friend requests, and the players you’ve blocked.
- Guestbook notes and likes you leave for other players, and the ones you receive.
- Invite records, meaning who invited whom.
Chat
We keep the chat messages you send, with when and where in the game you sent them, for 72 hours for safety and moderation. After that they’re deleted automatically. If a message is attached to a report (see below), it’s kept with that report.
Safety and Moderation
- Reports you file, and reports other players file about you, including the recent chat attached to them.
- Moderation records: warnings, mutes, suspensions and bans, and the reasons for them.
Technical Information
- Crash reports. When the game hits an error, it sends us the error message, where in the game’s code it happened, the address of the page and your browser’s “user agent” (a short line of text that names your browser and type of device). If you’re signed in, the report is linked to your account. We keep crash reports for 30 days.
- IP addresses. Our servers use your IP address briefly, in memory, to limit how many requests can come in at once and to prevent abuse. We don’t save it in our database, but it may appear in our hosting provider’s server logs.
If You Email Us
We’ll have your email address and whatever you write, and we use them to reply to you.
3 How We Use It
We use your information to:
- Run the game: keep you signed in, save your progress, show your New Yorker to other players, and power chat, friends, apartments, guestbooks and leaderboards.
- Keep Club NYC safe and fair: filter chat, look into reports, take moderation action, limit abuse, and spot cheating, such as job runs that finish impossibly fast.
- Fix bugs: crash reports tell us what broke.
- Talk to you: when you email us.
- Email you: if you join the waitlist, a link to confirm your spot and an email when Club NYC opens; if you sign in with email, the sign-in links you ask for.
- Follow the law: when we’re legally required to.
We don’t use your information for ads, we don’t build advertising profiles, and we don’t sell it.
If you’re in the European Economic Area or the UK, here are our legal reasons for using your information. We use it to provide the game you asked to play (performance of a contract), to keep Club NYC safe, fair and working (our legitimate interests), and to meet our legal obligations. We email the waitlist because you asked us to (your consent), and you can take that back any time by unsubscribing.
5 Who Can See Your Information
Other Players
Other players can see your New Yorker (your name, look, team, title and the details on your player card), plus your chat messages, the guestbook notes you leave and your leaderboard scores. Your friends can see when you’re online and where you are in the game. Other players never see your email address or your IP address.
If you share your invite link, anyone who opens it can see your New Yorker’s name and look, and whether you’re in the city right now, but not which place you’re in. People who make a New Yorker through your link become your friends automatically (as friends, they can see where you are, like any friend).
Our Moderators
Moderators can see reports, recent chat and moderation records, so they can keep the game safe.
Services That Help Run Club NYC
- Railway, our cloud hosting provider, runs our servers and stores our database in the United States.
- Google Fonts. The game and these pages load their fonts from Google’s servers, so your browser connects to Google to download them. When that happens, Google receives your IP address and basic browser information, just as any website you load does.
- Google, X and Discord handle your sign-in if you choose to use them, under their own privacy policies: Google, X and Discord.
- Resend, our email delivery service, sends our emails (waitlist confirmations, the email saying Club NYC is open, and sign-in links), so it receives your email address and the message. It’s based in the United States. Resend’s privacy policy.
When the Law or Someone’s Safety Requires It
We may share information with the relevant authorities when the law requires it, or when we believe it’s needed to protect someone from serious harm. For example, we might do this if a player threatens someone or shares sexual content involving a minor.
If Club NYC Changes Hands
If Club NYC is ever sold or merged with another business, player information may be transferred as part of that deal. We’ll tell players before their information is covered by a different privacy policy.
We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t share it with advertisers or data brokers.
6 How Long We Keep It
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Your account, New Yorker, progress, coin history, friends, blocks, guestbook notes, likes, invite records, leaderboard scores, the reports you file and the email address you sign in with | Until you delete your account |
| Your waitlist email address and signup details | Until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. When you unsubscribe, we delete your address and keep only a scrambled fingerprint of it, so we never email it again by mistake. |
| Email sign-in links (a scrambled code, the address and when we sent it) | The link works for 15 minutes; the record is deleted after a day |
| Guest accounts where the player never finishes creating a New Yorker | Deleted automatically after about a day |
| Chat messages | 72 hours, then deleted automatically |
| Job runs (start and finish times) | About 7 days |
| Reports filed about a player (with the chat attached to them) and moderation records | As long as they’re needed for safety and moderation. They can be kept after that player deletes their account. |
| Crash reports | 30 days |
The club_sid sign-in cookie |
30 days, renewed as you play |
The oauth_state and oauth_verifier cookies |
10 minutes |
The club_preview cookie (testers only, before launch) |
90 days |
| IP addresses | Only briefly, in memory. They may also appear in our hosting provider’s server logs. |
| Database backups | About 7 days (plus any backups our hosting provider keeps), then overwritten |
7 Your Choices and Rights
Leave the Waitlist
Click Unsubscribe at the bottom of any waitlist email, or use your email app’s own unsubscribe button. That takes you off the list straight away, with no questions. To have your waitlist details deleted completely, email [CONTACT EMAIL] from that address and we’ll delete them.
Delete Your Account
In the game, open your Player Card → Account → Delete Account, then type your name to confirm. This permanently removes your account and the data linked to it from our live database. The exception is safety records: reports other players filed about you, and moderation records, can be kept to help keep the community safe. Copies in our backups are overwritten within about 7 days. Deleting can’t be undone, so your coins, items and progress go with it.
Deleting in the game also clears the copy of your progress saved in that browser. Copies in other browsers stay there until you clear this site’s data in those browsers.
You can also email [CONTACT EMAIL] with your in-game name and ask us to delete your account. We may ask you to confirm that the account is yours first.
See, Fix or Get a Copy of Your Data
Email [CONTACT EMAIL] with your in-game name to ask for a copy of your data, to correct something, or to ask how we use it. We may need to confirm that the account is yours before we act on a request.
Extra Rights, Depending on Where You Live
In some places, such as the EU, the UK and some US states, you may have legal rights to access, correct or delete your information, to get a portable copy of it, and to object to or limit how we use it. Email us to use any of them. If you’re in the EU or UK, you can also complain to your local data protection authority.
Safety Tools in the Game
Click any player to open their player card, where you can mute, block or report them. You can also mute chat sounds. See the Community Rules for how reporting works.
8 Kids and Teens
Club NYC is for people 13 and older. When you create your New Yorker we ask for your birth month and year. If you’re under 13, you can’t create one, and the guest account made for that visit is deleted right away, so nothing from it is kept.
We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have, we delete the account. If you’re a parent or guardian and think your child under 13 is playing, email [CONTACT EMAIL] with their in-game name and we’ll take care of it.
If you’re a teen, some places require a parent’s or guardian’s permission to use online games at your age. See Who Can Play in our Terms of Service.
9 Security and Where Your Data Lives
Our servers run on Railway, a cloud hosting provider, in the United States. If you play from outside the US, your information is sent to and stored in the US, where privacy laws may be different from those where you live.
We take reasonable steps to protect your information. For example, scripts on the page can’t read your sign-in cookie, and our database stores only a scrambled (hashed) version of your sign-in token. No online service is perfectly secure, though. If a security problem affects your information, we’ll let you know as the law requires.
10 Changes to This Policy
This policy will change as Club NYC grows. When it does, we’ll update the “Last updated” date at the top. If we make an important change, like collecting something new, we’ll ask you to read and agree to the new version in the game before you keep playing.
11 Contact Us
Questions, requests or worries about your privacy? Get in touch:
[COMPANY NAME][MAILING ADDRESS]
[CONTACT EMAIL]