Accounts are optional: what signing in adds, and what it never will
VoltCade started with no accounts at all. It has them now, and you still never need one. Here is what changed, why, and what an account does and does not do.
For most of its life VoltCade had no accounts. You played, and if you scored well you typed three letters, the way you would on a cabinet. We wrote at the time that we would probably never add accounts. We have, so this post replaces that one, and it is worth being plain about what changed our minds and what did not change.
What did not change
You can still play every game and post a score to every leaderboard without signing up for anything. Nothing is held back for members. The guest path is not a trial version of the site; it is the site.
What three letters cannot do
Initials have two limits, and both got more painful as the arcade grew. The first is identity: anyone can type ACE. A leaderboard of initials cannot tell you whether the three ACE scores on it belong to one player or three. The second is memory: progress stored only in one browser is lost when you switch devices or clear your data. That was fine for a two-minute game. It is not fine for Dynasty Sevens, where a career lasts for seasons.
What an account adds
- A verified check next to your initials on every leaderboard, linked to your profile, so your scores are recognisably yours.
- Emblems: achievements earned from your own verified scores. You can pin up to three to your profile. (The older initials badges still exist for guests; because they belong to a set of initials, anyone posting as the same letters shares them.)
- Saved games that follow you. For games with long-running progress, your save is kept on the server as well as in your browser, so you can carry on from another device.
What we ask for
A username, a password, and the three initials you want on the boards. That is the whole form: no email address, no phone number, no date of birth. Passwords are stored only as a salted scrypt hash. Changing your password signs out every other device. Deleting your account deletes your saved games with it.
The cost of asking for so little is real and you should know it before you sign up: with no email address on file, there is no forgot-my-password link. If you lose the password, we cannot prove the account is yours.
Scores you posted before signing up
If you post scores as a guest and create an account later, you do not lose them. When you post a score, your browser keeps a private receipt for it. When you sign in, those receipts are used to move the scores onto your account, where they pick up the verified check. The receipt is what proves the score was yours, which is why it only works from the browser you played in.
The principle
We still think the default matters more than the feature list. On most game sites, signing up is the easy path and playing anonymously is the awkward one. Here it is the other way round. An account is something you add when you want what it gives you, and never something the site asks for first.