Terms & Privacy

1. What this is

Saylias is a party word game: one player explains a word without saying it, their team guesses, and every word guessed moves the team along a map. It runs in a browser at saylias.com and costs nothing.

It is an independent project, not a company product. There is no advertising, no sponsored placement and no affiliate link anywhere on the site, and no third-party analytics, no advertising network and no tracking script of any kind — these pages load nothing from anywhere but this site. We do count how many people arrive, on our own server and as numbers with nobody in them; the section on what the server writes down says exactly what that means and what it deliberately cannot do.

By playing you accept what is written on this page.

2. How you get in

There are three ways, and they collect different things.

• As a guest. You type a nickname and play. We store the nickname and a random identifier your browser makes for itself, so the same browser comes back to the same guest account. No email, no password, no name.
• With an account. Username, email address and password. The email is required and it is not a formality: it is the only way back in if the password is lost, and the only address a reset link can go to. The password is stored hashed, never in readable form.
• Through Telegram. If you open the game as a Telegram Mini App, Telegram hands us a signed block about you; from it we keep your Telegram user id, and use the display name and language it carries to set the account up. We never see your phone number and never get access to your messages.

A guest who later registers keeps the same account and everything on it.

3. What we store

On our own server, in our own database:

• Your account — nickname, username, email address and whether it has been confirmed, the hash of your password, your Telegram id if you linked one, your interface language, your game settings, which notifications you want (about games, about conversations) and whether Telegram last told us its bot may write to you, the times the account was created and last seen, and — only if it happened — when it was suspended.
• Your friends — who you are friends with, friend requests sent and received, and anyone you have blocked. A block is one row naming the two of you and the day it was made; it is what keeps you out of each other’s games, so it is kept until you undo it.
• Your games — every finished game: which room, language, difficulty and board length, who was on which team, how many words each team guessed and skipped, who won, and the rating change each player got. Since 17 October 2026 also who created the room the game was played in — the one who judged its rounds — and, for a card whose mark the creator changed while judging, the mark the person explaining had given it. A game is kept as a record of that game and is not rewritten afterwards.
• The words you played — one row per word, player and game, so the game can avoid repeating a word at you and can learn which words work. Your ratings of words (bad, so-so or good) are stored the same way — and so is your opinion of a word’s level, when you give one: the level the card showed you and the level you named. From a card’s sheet you may also say which dictionary a word belongs in (and, in a dictionary that has parts, which part of it) — a dictionary of the game or one of your own, below — and write a short note about it — one line of at most 140 characters, with markup and invisible characters taken out. All of it is kept with the word and the game, read only by the people who write the dictionary and never shown to other players; it is in your data export and goes when your account is erased. You may also propose a word, a dictionary or a part of a dictionary — from the home screen, from a card’s sheet, or from the page of your proposals. A dictionary or a part you propose becomes yours: only you see it, and in a card’s sheet you may put words into it as into a dictionary of the game. Each time you do, we keep the number of your dictionary or part and the name it had at that moment; when you rename it, we keep the names it had, each with the date. What is kept of a proposal is what you wrote (the word or the name — one line, cleaned the way a note is), the dictionary and the part you chose, the game’s or yours, if you chose them, the level you named, the language, when you sent it, when you last changed it and how many times, and whether you were one of the game’s testers at the time; a proposal sent by an older version of the app (before 11 October 2026, or from a tab not reloaded since) also keeps what it was about, examples and a note, if you wrote them. No more than twenty a day. We answer every proposal: it waits, it was accepted — and as what: the word, the dictionary and part, the level — or it was turned down, and why, in our words. You may change a word while it waits, rename your dictionaries and parts whenever you like, and take back a word, a dictionary or a part of yours; what you took back you no longer see, but we keep it — with the names it had and the words and cards put into it — until your account is erased. Proposals are read only by the people who write the dictionary and never shown to other players; you see your own, with their answers, on the page “Your proposals”, not in your journal. They are in your data export and go when your account is erased.
• Notifications you turned on — for browser notifications, the subscription your browser issues (an address at Google, Apple or Mozilla, plus two keys). That address identifies your device; nothing else about it is stored.
• Invitations — who called you into a game, onto a seat in one or into a conversation, when, and into which one, and whom you called. The ones you received are what you see under “You are being called”; one you sent is seen by the person you called, with your name on it. An invitation is deleted an hour after the game or the conversation it called to is over, and a day after it was made at the latest — and at once when you and the person who called you are in one game or one conversation, because meeting answers it. A call into a game that is over is not shown at all; a call to talk that is over is shown until then, with a way to call back. Both kinds are in your data export, and both go when your account is erased.
• Password resets — a hash of the reset link, valid for one hour and deleted afterwards.

Live games are held in the server’s memory while they are played, and a copy is written down so a game survives a restart. That copy carries what is on screen — the room, its players and their nicknames — and is removed when the room is over. When you start a new game, the server also keeps in its memory which game it was and when, for a day, and a game keeps when you last walked into it for as long as it lasts — so that another screen of yours that slept through the new game does not walk you back into the one you left. A restart forgets both.

4. What other players can see

Three settings, each of which you control, and none of which we change on your behalf (what may reach you outside the game is a fourth thing, and has its own section below):

• Your profile — everyone, friends only, or nobody. Everyone by default.
• Whether you are online — friends only by default; can be everyone or nobody.
• Who may ask to be your friend — by default, only people you have already played with; can be everyone or nobody.

The game keeps three public boards, and that first setting is what takes you off them. The hall of fame ranks players by rating. The lineups board ranks sets of people who have played on the same team, by how many words a minute they guess together — so it says who plays with whom, which nothing else in the game says out loud. The board of who gathers a table (since October 2026) ranks the people who created games, by how many games they created with at least two people at the table and then by how many different people sat at them — numbers only: nobody who sat at those tables is named on it. All three list only players whose profile you are allowed to see, and a lineup with one such player in it is left out whole rather than shown with a gap in it, because a gap is itself the fact somebody is there. Set your profile to nobody and you are on none of the boards, and neither is any lineup you were part of.

Since September 2026 a profile also carries a journal — the games that player has finished, newest first, with the teams and the score of each. It is part of the profile and behind the same setting: a profile closed to somebody has no journal for them either. One game opens in full only to the people who played it, and what it shows is the score, the rounds and the seats — never a list of the words that were played.

The journal grew twice more in that same month, and nothing new was written down for it: beside the games it now carries a few records (the best round, the longest run of cards taken), which decks and which subjects that player’s cards came from, up to three cards they themselves called good, and who they play fastest with. Every one of those is counted out of games already stored, and every one lives behind that same profile setting. The one thing that is never about anybody else is the fact of the day on the home screen: it is addressed to whoever is reading it, and it is not sent about another player at all.

In October 2026 the journal grew once more, and this time two things were written down for it: who created each game, and the mark the person explaining had given a card where the judge changed it (see “Your games”). What is shown from them, and to whom. On the certificate of a game, a card says who judged it and how — how many last words were counted on the gong, how many marks were brought back and how many taken away — to everybody at that table, who saw those corrections being made anyway. In your own journal two cards are for you alone, and are never sent about you to anybody else: your table (the games you created, how many people sat at them, who most often — named only when that is a registered player whose profile is open to you — and how you judged) and how you were judged (what the judge did with the cards you explained). Beside each pair you play in, how often the pair’s last word was counted on the gong; and on a profile, how many games that player created and how many of them with you — both behind that same profile setting. What share of somebody’s marks a judge corrected is shown nowhere and to nobody.

Invitations say a little about where people are, and this is exactly what. A friend who may see whether you are online also sees, while you are out of the game, whether an invitation from them would reach you there — not by which way. When a friend calls you in, they are told how it will reach you — a postcard in the game, a notification, or only the line in your list — unless you hide whether you are online from them; then they are told only that you were called. When you call somebody in, they learn where you are — which lobby, which conversation — even if you hide whether you are online from them: an invitation is a way in, so it says where, to that person only and only while it lives. When you are called into a conversation, you see the names of the people already in it whose presence is open to you, and how many others there are; the same names go into the Telegram message or the browser notification, where they stay in that history. And when somebody is called into a conversation you are in, everybody in it sees their name on the line of those called, whatever they are to each of them.

Your email address is never shown to another player and is never used for anything but signing in, resetting a password and confirming the address itself. There are no newsletters, and no email is ever sent that you did not ask for.

What always travels to the people in your room is the nickname you chose. Pick one accordingly.

5. Video and voice

In online games the video and voice go through a media server we run ourselves, on the same machine as the game. It is not a third-party service, and nothing goes to one.

Nothing is recorded. The media server passes sound and picture between the people in the room and keeps no copy: recording is not configured, and no file of your call exists anywhere.

During a round the sound is deliberately split in two, so hints cannot travel from the room to the pair playing. That is a rule of the game, enforced by the server — not a promise of privacy from the people you sat down with. They can see and hear you, and they can record their own screen like anyone can. Play with them accordingly.

Your camera and microphone are opened by your browser and only after your browser has asked you. Either can be switched off at any moment inside the game, and closing the tab releases both.

How well the call was working is written down, and nothing of what was said in it. While you are in a call with somebody, every half-minute your phone measures its own connection — and when you are in a call alone, it writes a line only when the way the sound leaves your phone changes, when you were sharing a phone’s sound with somebody or had that door open, or when you tap “send this to the log” on the call report yourself — kilobits in and out, how many packets were lost, how uneven their arrival was, how much of an incoming voice your browser had to invent because what arrived was not enough to play, how often and for how long the incoming picture froze, the round trip to the media server, how well your phone’s own echo canceller was coping, and the browser’s own one-word reason for not sending a better picture. Beside them it notes which way out of your phone the sound was going — its own loudspeaker, a wired headset or a Bluetooth one — and never the name of the device, because those names usually carry somebody’s own. Beside it, how loudly you have set other people’s voices to play — a number off your own screen, and about nothing but this phone; how that way out was known at all — read from the open microphone, held to a device you picked, or assumed; what kinds of input the phone was offering, as kinds only — a Bluetooth one, a wired one, the phone itself — and again never their names; and how the last attempt to move the sound ended — where it was heading, where it arrived, and the browser’s own one-word reason for refusing, how long that answer took and how far into the call it came — with no device names. Beside it, how many of the other people in the call your screen was showing a face for, against how many were there — two numbers, never whose faces. It also notes what the game’s camera check did: how many times it restarted your camera, and why, how many times you restarted it yourself, how many times it switched your camera back on after the phone had turned it off while the app was in the background, and the frame rate it measured. Nothing of the picture is looked at or kept. It notes, as numbers, how loud your own microphone was over that half-minute, and for each voice coming in — numbered, never named — how loud it was played, how many of its packets arrived, how much of it your phone actually played, and whether the element playing it was running, paused or reported an error; how much sound in all your phone handed to its speaker and with how much delay; and how many times the app had to restart the playing of every voice because none of it was reaching the speaker; and, separately, whether and how often it restarted them because they were going out by the phone’s media path rather than the call’s, where they play quieter, with the two delays that told it so. Nothing of the sound itself is recorded: a level is one number per half-minute. It notes whether at any point in that half-minute you were sharing one microphone with somebody (a sofa) or had the door to one open, and on what grounds the server thought somebody in that game might be sitting beside you — a scanned code, an address, a home network — but never whom: the grounds are kept, the person is not. And it notes which build of the app took the reading, and whether the app was running inside Telegram, as an installed app or in a browser tab. Those numbers, the phase of the game and how many people were in the call are stored against your account for two weeks and then deleted. It is a diagnostic and it exists because “I could barely hear him” has four different causes and no way to tell them apart afterwards. It contains no sound, no picture, no words, and nothing about anybody else — only this phone’s own pipe. It is in your data export, and it goes when your account goes.

If you run the sound check, what your ears say reaches us with no name on it. The sound check is a button in the settings: it plays four tones and asks you how loud each one sounded — which is the one thing about its own loudspeaker that a browser cannot measure. What is sent is those four answers and what the browser says about its own audio while they play: the rate and the delay it opens at with the microphone shut and with it open, what the microphone came back as when asked for, how many output devices your phone is willing to name, and which browser it is. No account is attached to any of it. At the end the screen shows you a five-character code, and that code is the only way anybody can find that run again, ourselves included. Your microphone is opened during two of the tones because opening it is the very thing that changes how a phone plays sound — nothing is listened to, nothing is recorded, and no sound leaves your phone. Runs are kept for ninety days and then deleted. Belonging to nobody, a run is not part of your data export and there is nothing in it to erase when your account goes.

6. Notifications

While the game is closed, a friend can still call you — into a game, onto a seat in one, or into a conversation — and the game can tell you so in two ways. Those two ways are never used for anything else. On your own profile, under Notifications, you choose what may reach you (calls into a game, calls to talk — both on until you switch them off) and which ways. While the game is open, an invitation arrives only as a postcard inside it.

• In Telegram — the bot writes to you, and only if you linked Telegram and the bot may write to you. That is on from the moment you link it, for the reasons you left on. Switch it off on your profile — or stop or block the bot in Telegram itself — and it stops. Opened inside Telegram, the game asks Telegram’s own permission before switching the bot back on, and we keep what Telegram last told us about it — yes, when Telegram says so as you open the game there, when you allow it, or when a message gets through; no, when you refuse it or Telegram refuses a message.
• In your browser — only after your browser has asked you and you agreed. It then issues a subscription, which we store and use for these messages alone. Switching it off in the game or in the browser removes it; “switch off everywhere” removes the subscriptions of every device of yours at once.

A message says who is calling you and into what: the code of the room, or for a conversation the names of the people already in it whose presence is open to you, and how many others there are. Its button opens that invitation in the game, so the link carries the invitation’s own number — in Telegram that link stays in your chat history along with the text; the query string never reaches the server’s log. At most one message an hour about a room’s lobby and, separately, one an hour about a seat held for you in it; at most one a day about a conversation; and at most three an hour from any one friend for each of the two reasons. They are counted by the game’s running server, and a restart of it starts the count afresh.

If two of your accounts become one — which happens when you link a Telegram that already had an account of its own — a reason or a way switched off on either of them stays off on the one that remains.

7. Cookies and browser storage

This site sets no cookies at all — not one, of any kind, ours or anybody else’s. Nothing here follows you anywhere, because there is nothing to follow you with.

What the game does use is your browser’s own storage, on this site only, for the things it would otherwise have to ask you twice: your sign-in token, the random guest identifier, your nickname, your language, your theme and visual style, your sound, vibration and camera preferences, which microphone and camera you picked, how tall your phone’s keyboard is, so that a field can stand on it at once, a note that your phone’s default microphone once left the other players silent (the game then opens the microphone by its name, and forgets the note when your browser updates), how you like the page of your proposals to show them (by dictionary or by time) and which of its dictionaries you left open, and which room you were in, so a reload puts you back. All of it stays in your browser and goes when you clear this site’s data. The page about the game keeps three of these — the theme, the look and the language — if you switch them there, and writes nothing else.

None of that needs a consent banner, which is why there is not one: it is strictly necessary for a service you asked for, and there is no advertising or tracking storage here to consent to.

8. What the server writes down about the request itself

The web server keeps an ordinary access log: the address a request came from, the time, the path, the response, your browser’s user-agent string and the page you came from. It is used to see that the site works and to look into abuse.

Asking for the bare address of the site — saylias.com with nothing after it — sends you on to the page in your language, and the only thing that decision reads is the list of languages your browser offers every site it visits. It is used in that one moment and kept nowhere: not in the log, not in the counting, not against your account. Every language also has an address of its own, and a link to one of those opens in that language for everybody.

The query string is deliberately kept out of that log, because on this site it can carry a session token. Log files are rotated daily and kept about seven weeks. Database backups are taken daily and kept fourteen days.

We also count arrivals, and the shape of the counting is the whole of it. Opening a page of the site, the game or this document adds one to a number: which day, which of those three, in which language, which site you came from if your browser said so, and whether the browser is a phone one. There is no row for you anywhere in it — no address, no identifier, no time finer than the day — so there is nothing in those tables to find, to correct or to erase, and nothing that could be joined to you later.

One person reloading a page is not a crowd, and telling those two apart is the only place this touches you at all. The server works out a number from your address and your browser string under a secret it invents when it starts and never writes down; that number is held in memory for the day and then dropped, and what is kept is how many different numbers there were. Restart the server and the same person is a different number — which is exactly what makes this a count of arrivals rather than a record of visitors.

The same trick answers one more question. Two phones in one room with both microphones open howl at each other, and the game can only stop that if it knows they are in one room — which, since 30 September 2026, only you can say. So when you walk into a game or a conversation the server compares a number worked out from your address — under that same secret it never writes down — with the numbers of the people already there, and if you scanned the QR code off somebody’s screen it knows that too. When only the address matched, the two phones then briefly check between themselves whether they are on one home network — a direct connection that carries no content, tells neither phone anything about the other’s network, and, if it does not succeed, means the match is dropped. What comes of a match is small, and the game silences nothing by itself. When you go into a call where other people already are, the screen in front of it asks whether one of them is next to you and shows their faces; the faces the server matched come already ticked (a scanned code, a confirmed home network) or stand first without a tick (an address alone, which two strangers behind one carrier can share), and the screen never says which, or why. The door to the sofa — the button with two people on it, shown while you are in a call — offers the same faces the same way whenever you open it. Only your choice puts two phones on one sofa. A sofa you said yes to is kept in the server’s memory for as long as any of you stays connected to the game, and for an hour at most after the last of you was seen; your phone steps off it when you restart the app, as soon as it connects again; and while you sit together in a room, the sofa is also part of that room’s copy described above — who sits with whom and whose phone carries the sound, nothing else — and goes with it. A face you leave unticked is not asked about again until you restart the app; your phone remembers that in its memory alone. Where the server had matched that face, it stops suggesting the two of you to each other — unless one of you scans the other’s code again — for an hour at most, and less if either of you restarts the app or has been disconnected for two minutes; that refusal lives in the server’s memory alone. The numbers go when the server restarts; your address is not stored anywhere in this, and neither is what was matched.

9. Who else touches your data

As few as we could manage. The game, its database and its media server all run on one rented server; nothing about you goes anywhere else except these:

• Amazon SES sends our email — password resets and address confirmation, and nothing else.
• Telegram, if you linked it, receives the message the bot sends you — who is calling you and into what, with the names described under Notifications.
• Your browser’s push service (Google, Apple or Mozilla, depending on the browser), if you turned browser notifications on, delivers the notification, which carries the same words.

Beyond that, nobody buys your data, receives it or is shown it. It is not sold, not shared, not used to build a profile of you, and not used to train anything.

10. How the game is operated

There is a small operator console, reachable only by us and only from an account that has been granted it. While a game is being played it can show which rooms are live, who is connected to them, and — for diagnosing the game itself — the word currently on the explainer’s screen. It is used to find out why something broke, and it can end a stuck round or close an abandoned room.

It is mentioned here because it is the one place where the game’s own privacy rule is deliberately set aside, and a page like this ought to say so rather than let it be discovered.

11. Why we are allowed to hold it (EU/UK GDPR)

For your account, your games, your invitations and everything the game needs to work: performance of the service you asked for. For the Telegram bot’s messages: our legitimate interest in letting a friend reach you when they call you into a game or a conversation — the bot writes only then, it is switched off in two taps on your profile (or by stopping the bot in Telegram), and you may object to it at any time. For browser notifications: your consent — your browser asks you for it, and you withdraw it by switching them off in the game or in the browser. For the server log and the arrival counters: our legitimate interest in keeping the site running, in seeing whether anybody is finding it, and in dealing with abuse.

12. Your rights, and how to use them today

If you are in the EU or the UK — and in practice we will do the same for anybody who asks — you can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to export it, ask us to erase it, and object to our holding it.

Two of them are buttons in the game, on your own profile — the page your name on the home screen opens. Your data hands you one JSON file with everything above in it — your account, your friends, your games and which of them you created, your invitations, your words, your rating — except the cards of each round with the marks on them, the judge’s corrections included, which are the record of the game rather than of you. It is both a copy for you and a form you can take to somebody else. Delete account erases you: it asks for your own name typed back, and for your password if the account has one, and it cannot be undone.

For anything else — a correction, an objection, a question about what a line here means — write to info@saylias.com from the address on the account, or from Telegram if that is how you signed in. We answer within one month, as the law requires, and normally far sooner.

One limit is worth stating plainly: erasing your account cannot un-play the games you were in. Those games are other players’ records too — their scores and their rating changes were computed from them. So when we erase an account we take you out of them as a person: your name, login, address, password, Telegram link, friends, invitations, words and rating all go, and what is left is a game in which one seat has nobody in it — and if you created that game, the place of its creator has nobody in it either.

What the export leaves out, and says so in itself: your password, which is stored only as a hash and is of no use to anybody including you, and anything about other players beyond the names that were already on your own screen.

13. How long it is kept

• Your account and everything attached to it: while the account exists.
• Password reset links: one hour, then deleted.
• Invitations: an hour after the game or the conversation they called to is over, and a day at the most; at once when the two people are in one game or one conversation.
• The saved copy of a live room: while the room is live, and swept up after it is abandoned.
• Server access logs: about seven weeks.
• Arrival counters: as long as the site is here — they are daily totals with nobody in them.
• Database backups: fourteen days.

We do not currently delete accounts for being inactive. If that changes, it will be said here in advance.

14. Age

You should be at least 16 to have an account. If the law where you live sets a lower age for agreeing to a service like this one — in parts of the EU it is 13, 14 or 15 — that age applies instead; below it, play only with a parent or guardian’s agreement.

We do not ask your age and have no way to check it. If you believe a child has an account here who should not, write to us and we will remove it.

15. How to behave

The game gives you a nickname, a voice and a camera, and that is enough to be unpleasant with. Do not take a nickname that is hateful or obscene, that impersonates somebody else, or that exists to harass; do not use the voice or the camera for anything you would not do at a table with the same people.

We cannot see or hear your games and do not moderate them. What we can do is remove a nickname and suspend or delete an account, and we will, on report, for anything unlawful or abusive. Report it to info@saylias.com.

Blocking somebody is the tool that works at once, and it is yours rather than ours. Blocking ends the friendship and any pending requests between you, stops either of you seeing the other’s profile or where they are playing, stops calls, and means the two of you are never in the same game again — you will not be let into a room they are in, and they will not be let into yours. If you block somebody you are in a game with, you leave that game; if you are the host of it, they do. Nobody but you can undo it: the list of people you have blocked is in your settings, and unblocking is one tap. It is not a report and nobody reads it — which is exactly why it acts immediately.

The words in the game are written by us; they are ordinary vocabulary and are not meant to offend. If one does, tell us and we will retire it.

16. The game is provided as it is

Saylias is free and comes with no warranty of any kind. It may be unavailable, it may lose a game in progress, it may lose data, and it may change or stop. To the maximum extent the law allows, we accept no liability for any loss arising from using it or from relying on it.

Saylias is in beta. That is a description, not a legal term: the game is played for real and is free, and it is still being built — updates land almost every day, something may break, and a game in progress may be lost. The paragraph above is what that means in law; this one is what it means at the table.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks the rules above, and we may change or discontinue any part of the game.

17. Which law applies

Saylias is offered free and from the European Union. If you use it as a consumer, the mandatory consumer-protection law of the country you live in applies to you whatever this page says, and you may bring any claim before the courts where you live. Nothing here takes that away or sends you elsewhere to argue — a clause that tried to would not be worth the line it took up.

18. Changes

This page will change as the game does — that is the point of it. The date at the top is the version you are reading. A change to what we hold about you, or to what we do with it, is worth telling you about inside the game, and we will.

19. Contact

This is a small independent project kept deliberately low-key, so no company or personal name is published here. For anything on this page — privacy, your data, a report, or a legal request — write to info@saylias.com.