Browser game save data: what gets stored

A browser game can remember three different things. A cookie proves who you are for a while. Browser storage keeps data on one device. An account lets a game find a save held elsewhere. They are easy to lump together as “the save,” right up until a browser cleanup does three very different things to them.

At Toxic Games, Landlord and Acres keep their ongoing games against your account. Clearing cookies signs you out. It does not clear your portfolio or field. Melee needs no account and has no progression to recover: open the link, pick a weapon, and start a round.

That is the short answer. The longer one makes it much easier to know what a browser game can lose, and what it can get back.

A cookie remembers a session

A cookie is a small value that the browser sends back to a site with later requests. For a signed-in game, it usually works like a coat-check ticket: it lets the site look up the account without asking for a password every time a new page loads.

The ticket is not the farm. It is not the list of buildings, the balance, or the weather for next Tuesday. A good session cookie is just an opaque bit of proof that the browser is currently allowed to act as a particular account.

Toxic Games uses one session across its game subdomains. Sign in on the account page, then Landlord and Acres can recognize the same account. Delete that cookie, or let it expire, and the browser loses its ticket. The next visit asks you to sign in again. The account and its game state remain where they were.

This is why “clear cookies” and “my save is gone” are different reports. The first is usually an inconvenience. The second depends on where the game kept its actual state.

Browser storage remembers one device

Browsers have larger places to keep data than cookies: local storage, IndexedDB, and a few other browser-managed stores. A small game can keep settings there. A bigger one can keep its entire save there. It is fast, cheap, and requires no account at all.

It also belongs to one browser profile on one device. Play a local-only game in Firefox, then open it in Chrome or on a phone, and there is no automatic reason for the new browser to know anything about the old one. Private browsing is even more temporary. Its storage is often discarded with the private session.

The browser’s “clear site data” control is a blunt broom. It can remove cookies, browser storage, and cached files together. For a game that stores its save only in the browser, that can erase the whole thing. A browser game with a local-only save deserves an export or backup before that cleanup happens.

Local saves are not bad saves. They are a sensible fit for a puzzle, a one-session game, or anything where carrying progress between devices would be more ceremony than value. They are a poor fit for a management game that expects you to return to the same world next week.

An account gives a save somewhere to live

An account-backed game saves its lasting state on the service and associates it with a player. The browser still has a session cookie, but the cookie only opens the door. The state behind it can survive a new laptop, a cleared browser, or a sign-in that happens on a different device.

That matters for games where time passes between visits. In Landlord, rent arrives on a schedule and decisions such as repairs and tenant screening wait for you. In Acres, the season, weather, crops, soil, and market keep moving through their own rules. The game has to know which property portfolio or field is yours when you come back.

The trick behind that time away is still arithmetic done on return, not a live farm running all night. We wrote about that part before. The saved state and the stored timestamp give the game enough to catch up. Keeping that state against an account means the calculation is attached to a player rather than to one browser tab.

What Toxic Games keeps for returning players

Landlord and Acres need an account because they are persistent games. The account identifies the player; each game uses it to locate the world that belongs to that player. A Landlord returning after a browser cleanup gets the same buildings, tenants, cash, and pending work after signing back in. An Acres player gets the same field and season, with the usual consequences of time having passed.

Melee makes the other trade. It has short rounds and nothing to unlock, so the match does not ask for an account before play. The absence of a lasting player world is part of why it can drop you straight into a match. Synth is different again: it makes a sound and can export a WAV file to your device. A downloaded file belongs to your downloads, not to a game save.

There is no store or purchase history tied to a Toxic Games account. The account exists so the persistent games can remember a player, and so the same sign-in works across the shelf.

What to expect after a cleanup

Clearing cookies from a browser that has played Landlord or Acres means a fresh sign-in. After that, the account can find the existing game again. Clearing all site data may also remove local preferences a browser keeps, but it does not erase the account-backed progress.

For a local-only browser game elsewhere, the result can be harsher. If its save lived in that browser storage, the cleanup removed the only copy. An account can be useful there, but the useful question is more specific: does the game restore the actual world after a new sign-in on a different device? If it does, the durable save is probably separate from the browser. If it does not, treat its browser storage as the save and back it up when the game offers a way.

The durable part of a browser game should be clear before it matters. For Landlord and Acres, the answer is your shared account. Cookies get you back in; the account points the game at the world you left behind.