Privacy
Last changed: 14 October 2026
Midnight Cafe is a browser game in which you furnish a cafe room, meet other people and chat. This page says which data the game keeps about you, why, and who else handles it.
Who is responsible
Philipp Schickling (private person, Germany). Contact: kontakt@philipp-schickling.de. The postal address is on the imprint page.
What is kept
| When | What |
|---|---|
| You play as a guest | A random account number and a guest name. No email, no real name. |
| You register with email | Your email address, your password in scrambled form (it cannot be read by us), the name you choose for the cafe, and the time at which you ticked the box "I am 16 or older and accept the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy" (see Age below). |
| You sign in with Google | Google passes on your email address, your Google name and profile picture address, and an account number. We use the email to recognise you. The name other players see is the one you pick yourself. |
| You sign in with GitHub | GitHub passes on your email address, your GitHub user name, your name if you set one, your profile picture address, and an account number. We use the email to recognise you. The name other players see is the one you pick yourself. We do not get access to your repositories. |
| You play | Your character's look, your rooms and furniture, beans and badges, pets, friends and friend requests, what you write in room chat, private messages, questions and answers on Q&A boards, guestbook entries, trades, room visits and likes, and where your character currently stands. Also the list of players you muted, and the texts you write for your rooms: room names, descriptions and tags, project stands with pitch and links, sticky notes, and the lines of a bot you set up. |
| You upload pictures or videos (accounts only, not guests) | Pictures for project stands (PNG or GIF) and pictures or short videos for picture and video displays (PNG, JPEG, GIF or MP4), with the link you attach. They are stored in a public folder: anyone who has the address can open the file, not only people in the room. Room preview pictures are stored the same way. Reports about a display (see the Report content page) are stored with your account number and the display. |
| You talk to a bot | The message you address to a bot (with @ and its name) and up to four recent chat lines of that room, each with the cafe name of whoever wrote it, are sent to an AI service, which writes the bot's answer. Your account number is used to limit how often you can ask. |
| You report a player, a room or a picture | Who reported (your account), who or what was reported, the reason you picked, the text you wrote, up to 10 of the most recent chat lines of the reported player that your game had shown you (the chat is not recorded for this on our side; only these lines go along), the room name, and the time. The operator reads the report and decides what to do. Only the operator can read reports; other players cannot. When a report arrives, the operator also gets an email with the same details. |
| You ask for a new password | An email with a reset link is sent to your address. |
| You have an account with an email address | At most one email a week: either a summary of how your rooms did (visits, likes, new followers), or, if you have not been in for a while, a short reminder (at most three, about 1, 3 and 6 weeks after your last visit). Guests get no emails. You can turn these emails off at any time in the game under Settings, or with the link at the bottom of every email; after that you get none of them. We keep your choice, a random code for the unsubscribe link and the date of the last email. Addresses that cannot be delivered or that mark the emails as spam are not mailed again. |
| Always | The servers that deliver the game see your IP address and browser type and keep short technical logs, as every website does. |
Room chat is visible to everyone in the room. Private messages are visible to you and the person you write to. Room chat and private messages are checked automatically against a list of forbidden words; a message with such a word is not sent and not saved. Your cafe name, your character, your rooms and your project card are public inside the game.
What is stored in your browser
The game keeps your sign-in, your settings and the name of the account last used on this device in your browser's own storage, so you stay signed in. For guests this includes the guest account number and the room items kept on the device. There are no advertising or tracking cookies.
Visitor statistics. We count visits to see where people drop off and which features get used. There are two levels. No advertising, no tracking cookies, no chat texts, and we never sell data. Statistics go to PostHog (PostHog Inc., servers in the USA).
1. Anonymous counts (everyone). Even if you have not said yes, or you said "No thanks", we count a few steps as plain numbers: the start page or game page was opened, the game finished loading, the Play button was pressed (guest or account), a sign-up was completed (email or Google), and the first room was entered. Each count carries only the event name, which of the two pages it was ("/" or "/play"), and where it applies "guest or account" or "email or Google". It carries no visit number, no account number, no screen size, no phone flag, no referring website, no campaign tags, no address of the page beyond "/" or "/play", and nothing read from your device; the time is the time our statistics service received it. We switch off the location lookup for these counts and send no internet address as event data, so the counts are not linked to a person or a device. Your internet address still reaches the service with the request itself, as with any website; it is not stored with these counts. Nothing is stored in your browser for them. Because these counts cannot be traced to you, we rely on our legitimate interest in knowing whether the game works (Art. 6 (1) f GDPR). If you have said yes, these anonymous counts are not sent; the detailed statistics below are used instead, so nothing is counted twice.
2. Detailed statistics. In the EU, the EEA (including Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and where we cannot tell where you are, detailed statistics are off until you allow them. When you first open the start page, a small banner asks. Until you click "Allow", no detailed events are sent and nothing for statistics is stored in your browser; events that happen before you choose are dropped, not saved for later. Your choice is saved in your browser (local storage, key mc_stats_consent) so we do not ask again. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) a GDPR and § 25 (1) TDDDG). In all other countries detailed statistics are on by default, and the start page shows a small note once ("We count visits to improve the game") with a "Turn off" button. The legal basis there is our legitimate interest in improving the game (Art. 6 (1) f GDPR); you have the right to object at any time, and "Turn off" is that objection. A choice you made earlier always wins, in every country. You can change your mind at any time: use the "Statistics settings" link in the footer of the start page, or switch "Visitor statistics" off (or on) in the game's Settings window; both places change the same saved choice. Sending stops at once and the random visit number is discarded. Turning it off does not affect what was counted before.
With detailed statistics on, we count events: the page was opened, the game finished loading, the Play button was pressed, a session started (guest or account), a room was entered (with the room name for public rooms), an item was bought (item and price) or placed, a photo was taken, kept, downloaded or hung, a note was posted, a cookie reward (a snack in the game, not a browser cookie) or a coffee-cart drink was taken, a teleporter was used, how many chat lines were sent (the number, never the text), and a signal every five minutes while the page is open. They contain no chat texts and no player names. No cookie is set. Before you start the game, an event carries a random number that exists only while the page is open; in the game it carries your account number, so that we can tell a returning player from a new one. The events also carry the address of the page without its query, the website you came from, the size of your screen, whether your device looks like a phone, the version of the game, and the campaign tags of a link if it has any. Your internet address reaches PostHog with each request, as with any website; we do not put it into the event data.
YouTube videos on displays
The pages that register, log in, start a guest session or send a password reset email use Cloudflare Turnstile to tell people from bots. Your browser then sends a few technical details (such as your IP address and browser type) to Cloudflare, and Cloudflare returns a one-time check result that we pass to our sign-in service. This is based on our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe from abuse (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
A room owner can put a YouTube video on a picture display. The display then shows the video's preview picture and a play symbol. The preview picture comes from our own server (our server fetches it from YouTube; your browser does not contact YouTube for it). Only when you click to play the video does your browser load YouTube's player from youtube-nocookie.com. YouTube (Google) then receives your IP address and technical details of your browser and may store or read data on your device, as described in Google's privacy policy. Before the first video, a notice in the player window says this and asks you to confirm; if you click "Cancel" or close the window, nothing is loaded from YouTube. The legal basis is your consent by clicking "Play video" (Art. 6 (1) a GDPR and § 25 (1) TDDDG). Your confirmation is remembered in your browser (local storage, key mc_yt_ok) so the notice does not appear again; clear your browser data to be asked again. The game itself stores only the video's 11-character id and an optional start time on the display, not the link.
Why, and on what legal basis
- To run the game and your account for you: performance of the service you asked for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
- To keep the service safe and working, for example technical logs, limits against abuse, moderation of public rooms and handling reports: legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
- To answer a bot you address with @: performance of the service you asked for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
- The weekly emails about your rooms and the reminders: legitimate interest in telling players about their own rooms and the game (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, and section 7(3) of the German Act against Unfair Competition for emails to existing users). You can object at any time, at no cost other than the basic transmission costs, in Settings or with the link in each email.
- To act on reports of illegal content and answer authorities: legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR) and legitimate interest.
Who else handles the data
| Service | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in and stored pictures | Frankfurt, Germany (EU) |
| Cloudflare | Delivers the game and carries the live connection between players | Worldwide network, company in the USA |
| Cloudflare Turnstile | Tells people from bots when you register, log in, play as a guest or ask for a new password | Worldwide network, company in the USA |
| Amazon Web Services (SES) | Sends account emails, the weekly emails about your rooms, and the operator's email about new reports | Frankfurt, Germany (EU) |
| PostHog Inc. | Visitor statistics: anonymous counts for everyone, detailed statistics by consent or opt-out depending on country (see above) | USA |
| Only if you choose "Continue with Google" | USA / EU | |
| GitHub (Microsoft) | Only if you choose "Continue with GitHub" | USA |
| OpenRouter and the AI model provider behind it (currently DeepSeek) | Writes the answers of the cafe bots | USA and other countries outside the EU |
| Google / YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com) | Only when you play a YouTube video: YouTube's player is loaded from Google and Google receives your IP address and may store data on your device | USA / EU |
| Internet radio stations | Only if a radio is switched on in a room you are in: your browser fetches the audio stream directly from the station, which then sees your IP address | Depends on the station |
Where data leaves the EU, this happens on the basis of the providers' standard contractual clauses or their certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Please do not put personal or confidential information into messages to bots.
How long
- Account and game data: until you delete your account (Settings, Delete account) or ask us to. This includes your email choice and the date of the last email.
- Guest accounts that are no longer used may be removed after 12 months without a visit.
- Pictures and videos: until you replace or delete them, or the room or account is deleted. Deleting the account removes the files you uploaded.
- Reports and our notes on them: as long as needed to handle the case and possible follow-up, and to prove what was decided.
- Technical logs: a few days to a few weeks, depending on the provider.
Your rights
You can ask what is stored about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its use, and receive your data in a portable form. Write to kontakt@philipp-schickling.de from the email address of your account, or tell us your cafe name. You can also delete your account yourself, see the next section. You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority, for example the one where you live. For us, that is the Berliner Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit.
Deleting your account
Open the game, click the gear button (Settings) and scroll to the bottom. There is a small "Delete account" link. It asks you to type DELETE, then removes the account at once. It works for guests and for registered accounts. Admin accounts of the cafe cannot be deleted this way.
What is removed: your profile and cafe name, your rooms with their furniture, bots, pets, notes and music settings, your inventory, beans and badges, achievements and progress, friends and friend requests, your mute list, what you wrote (room chat, private messages in both directions, guestbook entries, questions, sticky notes), your likes and follows, your invitations, the pictures and videos you uploaded, and finally your login (email address and password). Open trade offers are cancelled.
What stays, and why:
- Finished trades stay in the history of the other player, so that their history is not changed behind their back. Your name and account number in them are replaced by "Deleted player".
- Furniture you placed in someone else's room stays in that room, because the room belongs to its owner. The record of who placed it is blanked.
- Reports that you made or that were made about you stay, so that we can keep handling them. The link to your account is emptied; the report text and our notes remain (see "How long").
- Technical logs at our providers expire on their own schedule (see "How long").
Deleting is final; we cannot restore an account. If the deletion fails, the game says so and your account stays as it was. Your uploaded pictures and videos are removed first, so in that rare case they may already be gone. You can still write to kontakt@philipp-schickling.de if you prefer, or if something is left.
Age
Midnight Cafe is not meant for children under 16. To create an account with email you must tick a box saying that you are 16 or older and accept the Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy. Without the box no account is created. We store the time of this confirmation with your profile, as a record that it was given. Guests and people who sign in with Google or GitHub do not get a box; the start page says there that by playing you confirm that you are 16 or older, and no time is stored for them. The confirmation is not checked against any document: we rely on your word.
Changes
If the game starts handling data differently, this page is updated and the date at the top changes.