Machia · Battle by Numbers

Privacy

What Machia keeps, and how to stop it.

The short version

Machia is one person’s side project. It records how you play, so the boards can get better, and nothing else. Nothing is sold, nothing is shared, and there are no ads and no third-party trackers.

Turn the recording off and the game works exactly the same.

On your device · three things

These are the only things Machia puts in your browser.

• A cookie called machia_invite. It is what lets you back in, it lasts a year, and it holds your invite name and a signature. Without it the door stays shut.
• Your record. It lives in your browser and never leaves it on its own.
• One line noting which version you last loaded, so a stale tab refreshes itself once.

There is nothing else. No third-party cookies, no advertising ids, nothing that follows you anywhere.

Your record · what it holds

The record itself never leaves your device, and nothing copies it out but you, from Settings. While measurement is on, some of the same facts are written down again as the rows further down this page.

• Which version of the record this is, so Machia only reads a record it understands.
• Whether you have been through the lessons.
• Whether you played the lessons to the end or skipped them.
• Light, dark, or follow your system.
• Whether sound is on.
• Whether you have seen the opening screen.
• How far through the lessons you got.
• Which first run you were shown, so you are not shown it twice.
• Whether the first run was offered again after it changed.
• Every board you have finished: won or not, moves, resets, the capture symbols, the date, your time, and how many attempts the win took.
• Your best Endless score, your deepest wave, how many runs you have played, and the scoring version they were played under.
• Whether you have opened Endless.
• Whether you have put away the card announcing Endless.
• Which chapters of the Rules you have opened, so the contents page can mark them.
• How many resets you have spent on each board.
• Whether you have seen the card saying the daily counts from here.
• Whether home still owes you one pointer at the skirmishes.
• What you have let Machia measure, if you have changed it from the default.

What Machia records when you play

Each row is one thing that happened.

• A board opened.
• The first move of an attempt, and how long it took you.
• A move, and how many you have made.
• A board reset, and how many resets that is.
• A board won, with the moves, resets and time it took.
• A board lost, and whether that was running out of moves or your leader falling. Endless writes it twice more at the end of a run, once to close the run and once to record its score.
• The share button tapped on a result, whether or not the line reached the clipboard.
• A screen opened, by name.
• A choice in the first run, an invite offered or taken, an invite link put on a result you share, a record carried across, a change to what Machia measures, or Machia offering you a hint after a second loss on the same board.
• The verdict landed at the end of a board.
• The tab came back after being away, and how long it was gone.
• A hint asked for on a board, naming the piece.
• The second half of that hint, naming the square.

And every row carries the same handful of facts, whatever it is about.

• A number counting the rows, so they stay in the order they arrived.
• Your invite name again. It held a device id until August 2026, and rows written before that still carry one.
• A code made fresh each time you open the game, so the rows from one visit can be read together. It is never written to your device.
• Your invite name. It has never held an email address, whatever the column is called.
• What the row is about: a board, a screen, or a short name for anything else, such as an Endless run, an invite, or your measurement choice.
• Which day of the calendar it was, on a daily.
• Which of the things above happened.
• How many moves you had made. On the row that closes an Endless run it is the waves you reached, and on the row that records that run’s score it is the score.
• How many resets you had spent.
• How long the board had been open, or how long the tab had been away.
• Whether a loss was running out of moves or your leader falling. Endless rows always say the first of those, whatever ended them.
• The time your own device said it was.
• The time the server received the row.
• Your own local date, so a day counts as your day rather than a clock in another country.
• Which version of the game wrote the row.

None of it is anything you wrote. Nothing you type into Machia is sent anywhere: the box in Settings for pasting a record back reads what you paste on your device and stops there.

Your invite name

It isn’t your real name, and it was never meant to be one. A name beginning q- was made the moment you came in through a door, such as a printed card or the button on playmachia.com, and one beginning r- came with a friend’s invite, or was made the moment you came in through their share link. Either way it says which door you came through and nothing at all about you. A few early testers picked their own instead.

What it does do is tell your rows apart from everyone else’s, which is how coming back tomorrow counts as coming back. Your streak is not one of those rows: it is counted in your browser, from the boards you have solved.

The invite record holds these, and nothing else.

• The invite name itself.
• How it was made: at a door, from a friend’s invite, or through a friend’s share link.
• Which door you came in through, or that it was a friend’s share link.
• Whose invite or share link you came in through, if you did.
• When the name was made. For an invite that is when your friend made it, rather than when you used it; through a share link it is the moment you came in.
• When a friend’s invite was used, or when you came in through their share link.
• Which version of this notice you came in under.
• The handle on your share link, made the first time a result of yours is ready to share.

Who sees it

The person who builds Machia. Nobody else.

The one thing anybody else sees is the invite you came in on: whoever sent it is shown that their link was used. They see nothing about how you play.

Cloudflare hosts the game and carries every request, so its systems see what any host sees, including your IP address. Machia never reads it and never keeps it.

When somebody new comes through a door, a private channel gets a message saying which door, when, and how many have arrived all told. It carries no names, and nothing that could pick you out.

Turning it off

Measurement · Off. It takes effect straight away and stays, in every tab you have the game open in. There is nothing to ask for and nothing to pay.

• On records how you play: which board, how many moves and resets, how long it took, and how it ended. It is every row listed under What Machia records when you play.
• Off stops all of that. What is left is one row for a visit, saying somebody opened Machia that day and nothing else: no board, no moves, no result, no timing. It exists so that turning this off does not quietly make the game look less used than it is.

Each change to this setting is itself recorded.

Your streak, your solves and your best run are untouched by it. They live in your browser either way. The choice lives there too, so it is per browser: it does not follow you to another device, and it never rides along with a record you copy across.

Two things carry on. That somebody came through the door you used was written when you arrived and stays written. And if you invite a friend, or a result card gives you a link to share, the invite records that it came from you, because that is the only way an invite works.

How long it is kept

Machia deletes rows about play after 24 months. It keeps your invite record until you ask for your name to be forgotten. Forgetting a name does not shut the door on it, so clear its cookies too: playing on under it writes it down again.

Doing something about it

Two things are in your hands, and neither of them needs asking.

• Turn measurement off. Nothing more about how you play is written down.
• Clear machia.app’s cookies, and machia.pages.dev’s if you ever played there. Your invite name is what joins you to anything already written down, so clearing it cuts that link from your browser. Coming back depends on the link you still have and on whether it still works: an original invite sent to you by hand brings back the same name, and every other way in gives you a new one, with nothing written against it yet. A share link you have already posted keeps pointing at the same name until you send that link to hello@playmachia.com and ask for it to be forgotten.

There is no account here, no password and no address on file unless you write in, so apart from any mail you send, there is nothing else of yours to hand back. Clearing the cookies does not delete rows, and it does not need to: what is left carries a made-up name and nothing that points at a person.

To ask about any of this, write to Centone Games at hello@playmachia.com. If you do, your message and your address are kept so that it can be answered, and are never added to the rows about your play. The terms of use, which apply from 13 October 2026, are at playmachia.com/terms.

Where you stand

This measures how the game is used, so it runs on notice rather than consent: you are told what happens, and you can stop it whenever you like. If you think that is wrong, the Information Commissioner’s Office takes complaints at ico.org.uk.

If this notice changes, the version at the end of it changes with it.

Version 2026-10-12