Privacy Policy

Last updated October 25, 2026

Embergloam is a free game run from the United States. This page says what the game keeps about you, why, who else sees any of it, and how to have it deleted. Questions and requests go to [email protected].

What the game keeps

• Your account: its name, your password (stored only as a salted hash, never as the password itself), and your email if you give one. The email is used to recover a forgotten password or account name, and to tell you when the account's password or email changes. Nothing else is sent to it.
• The address you last connected from, kept with the account so staff can see when accounts are shared or misused. Each login replaces it.
• Your characters: their names, the choices you made for them, the description you write, and everything about them in the game.
• Mail you send or receive in the game, until it's taken or thrown away. After that a copy stays 90 days, which only staff can read.
• Reports you file with bug, typo, idea or feedback: your words, and where you were and what you had just seen and typed. A report about a player (report <player>) keeps what you heard and said in the 15 minutes before, your own tells and party chat included, what that player said in the open in that time, and the commands they had lately used (private ones by name only, never what was said).
• How you play, recorded as you play, as most online games do: what your characters kill and what kills them, quests taken and finished, coin earned and spent, the abilities and commands used, where you were, how long levels and sessions take, which kind of client connected and whether a screen reader is on. It never includes what you say or write. It's used to balance and fix the game, and to catch cheating, duping, bots and one person playing many accounts. It's part of playing and can't be turned off. Detailed records are kept 90 days, then only daily totals with no one named. A connection also leaves a scrambled code made from its network address, which can't be turned back into the address, changes every month and is dropped after 30 days. help privacy in the game has the full list.
• Trades and market sales between players, so problems with them can be looked into.
• Moderation records: mutes, suspensions and bans, and the reasons given.

Chat is not stored, except as part of a report (any report keeps the lines you had just seen) and on the OOC channel, whose lines are also posted to the game's Discord server under the speaker's character name.

The website and the web client

No cookies, no analytics and no ads. The web client remembers your display and sound settings in your browser's own storage, where they stay on your device. The site's fonts and sounds are served from the site itself.

Who else sees it

• Cloudflare carries all traffic to embergloam.com, so it sees your network address.
• Amazon Web Services hosts the game and its backups, in Ohio.
• Proton Mail sends the game's emails, so it handles your email address and those messages.
• Discord receives OOC lines, the death feed (who fell, to what and where; deathfeed off leaves your name out), and ideas and feedback that staff choose to post there, without your name. Reports of players go to a channel there that only staff can read: who reported whom, and what they wrote. What was said around it stays on the game's own staff dashboard. If you link your Discord account with discord link, the game keeps your Discord user ID, name and picture address so you can talk on OOC from there; discord unlink removes them.

Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared for advertising. Data is handed over to anyone else only when the law requires it.

How long it's kept

Your account and characters are kept until you delete them, or until we close the account under the Terms. Mail and gameplay records age out as described above. When you delete an account, its characters, email, Discord link and gameplay counts go with it. Trade records and reports you filed stay, with your names replaced by "(deleted)". Mutes, suspensions and bans stay on record, so deleting an account is no way around one. The game's database is backed up every day, and a deleted account is gone from the backups within about five weeks.

Your choices

• Delete a character or the whole account from the character list: delete <number> or delete account in a MUD client, or the buttons in the web client.
• Change or remove your email from the character list.
• Ask for a copy of what the game keeps about your account, or ask for it to be deleted, by writing to [email protected] from the account's email, or naming the account and how we can confirm it's yours. We answer within 30 days.

Security

Passwords are stored only as salted hashes, and the web client's connection is encrypted. Telnet connections are not encrypted: what you type there, your password included, could be read on its way. Use a password you don't use anywhere else.

Children

You must be 13 or older to play. If we learn that a player is under 13, we delete their account. A parent who believes their child under 13 has an account can write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

Where the game is run

Embergloam is run from the United States, stores its data there, and is not directed at residents of the European Union or the United Kingdom.

Changes

When this policy changes, the new version goes here with a new date, and a change that matters is announced in the game.