Your data

Privacy Policy

Version 1.4, effective 17 September 2026

This page says what Nineholds stores about you, why, who can see it, how long it is kept, and what you can ask us to do with it. It is short because the list is short.

1. Who is responsible

The volunteer Nineholds team operates this fan project and is responsible for the data described here. You can reach us at contact@nineholds.com.

2. Age

Nineholds is for adults. You must be 18 years of age or older to play, and we do not knowingly hold data about anybody younger. If you believe we do, write to the address above and it will be removed.

3. What is collected

From Discord, when you sign in

The sign-in asks Discord for one permission, called identify, and nothing else: no email address, no list of servers, no messages. Discord answers with your user id, your username, the identifier of your profile picture, and a legacy discriminator that is "0" on most accounts. We keep those four fields, and the time you last signed in.

Your Discord password is never seen by Nineholds; you type it, if at all, on Discord's own page in your own browser. The one-time code Discord hands back is exchanged on our server for a short-lived token, that token is used for exactly one request to read the fields above, and it is then discarded. It is not stored and it is not written to a log.

A play session

When you sign in, the server mints a play session for you: an opaque value with no meaning outside Nineholds, valid for 30 days. It is kept in three places.

• By the identity service, as a hash, alongside your profile number, when it was issued, when it expires, and when it was last used.
• By the launcher, in its own folder under %APPDATA%\Nineholds, in a file called identity.json, together with your profile number and your Discord username. That is the whole file.
• By the game, in plain text, in a settings file in the game folder, so that the game can join the server without you typing anything. This is how the multiplayer client we build on was designed. The launcher writes that file, removes it when you press Switch account or Remove Nineholds files, and the session inside it stops working after 30 days regardless.

Pressing Switch account in the launcher removes both the launcher's copy and the game's copy, and you are signed out. Remove Nineholds files does the same, along with everything else the launcher installed. The Windows uninstaller removes only the launcher program; use Remove Nineholds files first if you want the rest gone.

Your character, on the game server

The game server stores your character's state in its database: where it is, what it is carrying, and what it does. That state is tied to your profile number, and it is kept for as long as the world exists.

Your voice, while you hold the talk key

Nineholds has proximity voice chat. Your microphone is captured by the launcher, and only while you hold the talk key: let it go and nothing is sent. What is captured is relayed, in memory, through our own voice host to the players the server decides are within range of your character, and to nobody else. It is never recorded: no audio is written to a file, kept in a database, or put in any log, by the launcher, the voice host or the game server. There is no third-party voice processor; the audio does not leave our infrastructure. When you close the launcher, or press Switch account or Remove Nineholds files, voice stops.

Local launch diagnostics

The game writes a random identifier for each launch and startup stage names to Data/Platform/Logs/nineholds-launch-logs.txt in your game folder. The launcher reads this file to show connection progress. This diagnostic file stays on your computer and is not automatically uploaded. You can delete it when the game is closed.

The services' own logs

The sign-in service and the server list write a line to their application log when you sign in, when a play session is issued, and when a sign-in is refused. Those lines carry your Discord id and your profile number, and nothing else about you. They are kept in the host's rotated container logs, which hold a bounded amount and then discard the oldest. The sign-in record itself keeps the time you first signed in and the time you last did.

The gateway's access log

The server that answers web requests, for this site, for the files the launcher fetches and for the sign-in, writes one line per request. Each line records the time, the network address the request came from, the request method, a route label such as "identity" or "content", the status code, the size of the reply, how long it took, and the TLS version. It never records the address you asked for, the query, the page you came from, or the name of your browser. Those are left out on purpose, so that a sign-in reference or a session can never land in a log.

Staff actions

When a member of the moderation team uses a staff command — in the game or from the team's Discord — the server keeps a record of it: which staff member issued it, the command, the player it concerned (by profile number), when, and whether it ran. If the command was a mute or a removal from the server, the staff member may type a reason, and that reason is stored with the record. These records are written by the server, not by the game on your computer, and they do not contain anything you said in chat or in voice.

Nothing else

Beyond the records above, there are no analytics, no trackers, no advertising and no third-party scripts, on this site or in the launcher. The launcher makes two kinds of connection, both to the server you are joining: one to fetch its file list and files, and one to sign you in. It sends no report about you to anybody, and it has no crash reporting that leaves your machine.

4. Why

• To know who is playing, so that one person is one character and staff can act on what the server records.
• To keep a place for you on the whitelist, which is a list of Discord ids the team edits by hand.
• To run a persistent world, which means remembering where your character is and what it has.
• To keep the service working, which is what the access log and the rate limiter are for.

5. Who sees it

The operator and the moderation team, and nobody else. Your data is not sold, rented or shared with any other party, except where the law requires us to hand it over. Other players see your Discord username and what your character does and says, because that is what playing together is. The staff-action records above are visible to the operator and the moderation team, and to nobody else.

6. How long

• The play session: 30 days from when it was issued, or until you sign out.
• Your whitelist entry: until it is removed, by you asking or by the team.
• Your character's state: for as long as the world exists.
• Staff-action records and mutes: for as long as the world exists.
• The access log: rotated on the server, with the oldest lines discarded as new ones are written. It keeps a bounded amount, not a number of days.

7. What you can ask for

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, for a correction, or for deletion. Deletion removes the record of your Discord account (its id, name, avatar identifier and sign-in times), your whitelist entry, any open play session and your character's state. Log lines that already exist age out with the rotation described above. Ask in the support channel on the Discord server, or write to contact@nineholds.com. The operator answers within 30 days.

8. This website

The website runs no script and sets no cookies of any kind. Downloading the launcher needs nothing from you: no form, no password and no account. The access log described above still applies, and it records no request paths.

Downloading the launcher is not the same as being able to play. Joining the world needs a Discord account the team has approved, and that approval is described in section 2.

The server status page at status.nineholds.com is served from Hostinger's infrastructure, not ours, so that it stays up when our server is down. Hostinger keeps its own request logs for that page, under Hostinger's privacy policy, and we do not control them. The page shows only whether the server is up, how many players are connected and the month's uptime; it holds no account, character or Discord data and sets no cookie. Nothing about your account depends on it.

9. Changes

This policy may change. When it does, the version and the date at the top change with it. Version 1.4 added the "Staff actions" record and its retention line.

10. Contact

The support channel on the Discord server, or contact@nineholds.com.