Slow Grove privacy

Last updated 31 October 2026

Your maple stays on your device

Slow Grove runs entirely in your browser or headset. Your maple, its journal, your field notes and where the display sits on your desk are saved in this browser's local storage, on your device. The game has no accounts, no analytics and no advertising, and it sets no cookies; its only server is the small seed shop below, which knows nothing about who you are. Clearing the site's data in your browser removes everything kept on your device.

Sharing a maple

When you use Share, the whole maple is written into the link itself. Anyone you give the link to can see that maple and keep a copy of it. Nothing about the link is stored by us.

Buying seeds

On the web, seeds are paid for on Stripe's own checkout page: your card details and email address go to Stripe, under Stripe's privacy policy, and never to Slow Grove. Slow Grove's server keeps a record of each sale: Stripe's reference for the checkout, the seed's number, its cultivar and the day, and nothing about who bought it. The shop page remembers the seeds bought in this browser in its local storage, so that a closed tab does not lose one.

In the headset, seeds are bought through the Meta Horizon Store, under Meta's terms. Slow Grove's server keeps a one-way fingerprint (a hash) of the purchase, with the seed's number, cultivar and day.

When you plant a seed from a link, the game sends the seed's packet (its number, its cultivar, the number the tree grows from and the day it was issued) to the server, which notes the first time each seed is planted. Nothing about you is sent with it.

Mixed reality

In a headset the game asks for hand tracking, the room's surfaces (planes and meshes), anchors, and eye tracking on devices that offer it, so the maple can sit on your desk and be shaped with your hands. The game uses this only while you play; it is not recorded or sent anywhere.

Hosting

The site is served by Netlify, which, like any web host, may keep standard request logs (such as your IP address and browser type) to run the service; see Netlify's privacy policy. While the site is on Netlify's free plan, Netlify may add its own small badge to the page.