Privacy Policy

What Hardwood Is

Hardwood is a basketball career and general-manager simulation game. You can play it in your web browser at playhardwood.com or in the Hardwood iPhone app. Both run entirely on your own device: there is no account system, no login, and no server that stores your games.

What Information We Collect

No personal information. Hardwood does not ask for your name, email address, date of birth, or anything else about you, and it does not use cookies, advertising trackers, or fingerprinting. The only thing measured is an anonymous count of visits to the website — see Analytics below.

Game saves (local storage)

When you save your career or franchise, that save is written using your browser's built-in localStorage — a small amount of storage space every website can use on your own device. This data (your roster, stats, season progress, and settings) never leaves your browser. It is not uploaded to any server, and no one else — including us — can see it. Clearing your browser's site data, using a different browser, or switching devices will erase or leave behind these saves, since nothing is backed up anywhere else.

Game saves in the iPhone app

In the iPhone app, saves are kept in the app's own storage on your phone. The app also keeps a second copy of the same saves in its private app folder, so that iOS freeing up space can't wipe your careers. That folder is part of your normal iPhone or iCloud device backup, which Apple handles, and we never see it. Deleting the app deletes the saves.

Your player's face

If you choose a photo or draw a picture for your MyCareer player's face, it is shrunk to a small image and stored inside your game save on your own device, like the rest of the save. It is never uploaded or shared. In the iPhone app, Hardwood asks for camera or photo access only when you tap to add a photo, and only uses the one picture you pick.

Bug reports you choose to send

Hardwood has a Report a Bug option. Nothing is sent unless you write a report and choose to send it. A report contains what you typed plus a few game details that help us find the problem: the game mode, the screen you were on, the season and era, the app version, and your device and browser type (the "user agent"). It does not include your saves or any personal information unless you type it in yourself.

You can send a report by email, which you send from your own mail app, or by posting it on the public r/PlayHardwood community, where Reddit's own privacy policy applies. If an in-app form is added later, it will go through a form service (Formspree) that delivers it to our inbox. We use reports only to fix the game, never for advertising, and we delete them once they're no longer needed. If you'd like a report you sent to be deleted, email us.

Standard hosting logs

Like effectively every website, Hardwood is served through a hosting provider that may automatically record basic technical information for security and reliability purposes — things like your IP address, browser type, and the pages you requested. This is ordinary web server behavior, not something Hardwood itself collects or has access to, and it is not used to build a profile of you.

Advertising

Hardwood has no advertising — no ad networks and no third-party tracking pixels. If that ever changes, this policy will be updated first to describe exactly what's added and why.

Analytics (website only)

The website at playhardwood.com uses Vercel Web Analytics to count visits, so we can see how many people play. It uses no cookies and stores nothing on your device. For each visit it records the page, the time, the referring site, your approximate location (country, region and city), and your device type, operating system and browser. Visitors are counted with a temporary hash of the request that is discarded after 24 hours, so visits aren't tied to you, your IP address or your activity on other sites, and the numbers are only ever seen in aggregate.

The Hardwood iPhone app does not include this and sends no analytics at all. Your saves and anything in your game are never part of it. You can block it with any content blocker without affecting the game.

Children's Privacy

Because Hardwood does not collect personal information from anyone, it does not knowingly collect personal information from children either. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to submit.

Your Choices

Your data stays on your device, so you're already in full control of it. To delete one save, press and hold the ✕ next to it. To delete them all, use Settings → Clear All Saved Games. On the web you can also clear this site's data in your browser. In the iPhone app, deleting the app removes everything.

Contact

Questions about privacy or anything else: support@playhardwood.com. For help and common questions, see the support page.

Changes to This Policy

If Hardwood's data practices ever change — for example, if analytics or ads are introduced down the line — this page will be updated to reflect that, and the "Last updated" date above will change accordingly. Since there's no account system, we have no way to notify you individually, so it's worth checking back here occasionally if you're curious.