Last updated: August 9, 2026
Cook Out Games is a set of card and domino games you play with friends. This policy describes exactly what the app and its server do with information. It is written against how the software actually works, not from a template.
You do not sign up, and there is no password. We do not ask for or collect your email address, phone number, date of birth, contacts, photos, location, or any government identifier. There is nothing to log into and nothing to recover.
You type a name when you join a table. It defaults to “Player 1” and it can be anything you like — it does not need to be your real name. Other players at your table see it, and it appears in the table’s turn log (“Marcus played 5-3”). If you win a game with a high enough score, your name and score are added to the public leaderboard.
If you would rather not appear on the leaderboard, use a nickname.
While a table is in progress, the server holds the state of that game: the tiles in play, each seat’s score, the game options the host chose, and the most recent 60 lines of the turn log. This is what lets you close the app, lose signal, or switch phones mid-game and pick up where you left off. Everyone at a table is playing against one authoritative copy on the server, so this record is what the game is — not an extra thing collected about you.
When you take a seat, the server generates a random token and gives it to your device. It is a string of random characters — it is not derived from anything about you or your device, and it identifies a seat at a table, not a person. When you come back, your device presents the token and the server puts you back in your seat instead of handing it to a stranger. It stops being useful once that game is over and its state is removed.
If a host names a game to save it, that save stores the name given to it, the player names at the table, the game state, and the seat information needed to put everyone back in their places — including the reconnect tokens described above — so it can be reopened later. A save of an unfinished game therefore keeps those tokens until the save is deleted.
The leaderboard keeps the ten highest winning scores as name, score, and date. It is public — anyone using the app can see it. Only human winners are recorded; computer opponents are filtered out. When an eleventh higher score arrives, the lowest one drops off.
Your settings live only in your browser’s local storage or in the Android app’s own preferences. They are never transmitted to the server and no other player can see them:
One clarification, because the distinction matters: your saved defaults for target score and the house-rule toggles stay on your device. When you host a table, the values you pick for that table are sent to the server as part of that game’s settings, are stored with the game state, and are visible to everyone at the table. That is how the table knows what game it is playing.
The server runs on Google Cloud Run, and game state, saved games, and the leaderboard are stored in Google’s Firebase Realtime Database. Google processes and stores this data on our behalf as our hosting provider. Traffic between your device and the server is encrypted in transit.
As with any web service, ordinary technical connection information such as your IP address is visible to, and logged by, our hosting provider as part of delivering the traffic, and is retained by them for a limited period. The app itself does not record, store, or analyze it.
A table’s game state is kept while that game is live so you can rejoin, and is removed when the game finishes. A table that is never finished — the host walks away, nobody comes back — may keep its state until it is removed manually; there is no automatic expiry today. A named save is kept until it is deleted. Leaderboard entries stay until ten higher scores push them off. Device settings remain on your device until you clear the app’s data or uninstall it.
To remove settings and any saved reconnect information, clear the app’s data on Android, or clear site data for this address in your browser. To have a name removed from the public leaderboard, email us at the address below and tell us which entry, and we will remove it.
Cook Out Games is a family game and is suitable for all ages, but it is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Because there are no accounts and the only thing a player supplies is a freely-chosen display name, there is very little to collect. If you believe a child has entered identifying information as a display name, contact us and we will remove it.
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the updated version is published at this address.
Questions, or a request to remove something: doctechlabs@yahoo.com