The short version
- We keep as little as possible, and say here exactly what it is.
- You can play without an account, a password or any personal details.
- There are no payments, so there is nothing to sell, and we sell nothing we keep.
- You can have a copy of everything we hold about you, or have all of it erased.
How we remember you
To hold your place, we store a first-party cookie on your device named pts_pid. It keeps a random id: not your name, not an email, just a code that lets your device pick up where it left off. If you clear it and have added nothing else, you simply start fresh.
What is kept when you play
Every game on the site keeps the same few things, and nothing more:
- Your nickname, if you choose one. Without one you play as a visitor.
- The runs you play, in each game: which game, which part of it you played, the look you played it in, the answers you gave, and how it ended. This is what lets Continue bring you back to a run you stopped, and what your record is made of.
What you can add
If you want to keep a record you can come back to, choose a nickname. It comes with a recovery key, so you can get your record back on another device. That is optional: you can play every game anonymously.
You can also choose to add an email address and a password. Both are optional. If you add an email, it is used to send you a way back into your record, and for a reminder to come back and play only if you ask for one. We never sell it or hand it to advertisers.
Your devices
When a device is signed in to your record, we note what kind of browser it is and the network address it last connected from, so a device can be signed out of a record and abuse of the site can be traced. The people who run the site can see this. Other players never can.
Counting how the site is used
To learn which games and pages work, the site counts what happens on it: which game and which page was shown, where on the site it was shown, which picture or clip was showing, whether it was tapped, whether a first move was made there and which answer it was, how much of a clip was watched, and when a run passed a turning point, ended or was shared. These counts never carry anything that identifies your device or your address.
We do not use ad networks, and we are not building an advertising profile of you.
What other people see
When other players see you, they see the nickname you chose to show, and nothing else. Your email, password and recovery key are never shown to anyone. A run you share opens for whoever has its link, under the name you played it with.
A copy, or erasure
You stay in control:
- Play anonymously and skip the nickname entirely.
- Remove your nickname, avatar, password or email whenever you want.
- Clear the pts_pid cookie to sign this device out; your recovery key gets you back.
- For a copy of everything we hold under your record, or to have all of it erased, email us at hello@playthesituation.com. The same address takes any other request or question.
Sample data on a preview
Before a page goes public, it may be checked on a private preview filled with sample players, runs and numbers. They are generated for the check, they belong to nobody, and every page that shows them says so at the top.