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#17208: "Better Privacy: Hide Game History, Online Status, and only Mutual Friends"

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Suggestion: in my opinion, the following would greatly improve the website

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Suggestion: in my opinion, the following would greatly improve the website

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#	Status	Votes	Game	Type	Title	Last update

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27. May 2025 11:46 • Countes-Olivia-Manny • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

How many votes are needed for this suggestion to be implemented?

27. May 2025 13:33 • Homesick89 • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Came here the same day as the first comment but not related, how many likes do you need anymore?

8. Jun 2025 04:02 • headkace • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Hide game history?!? Is that serious? That's a great big NO. Serious players of serious games want to review the games of their tough opponents. And they're not worried about the vice-versa either.

This is also one of the key ways for middle ranked players to advance. You study the games of the masters.

Online status, friends: nobody cares. If game history goes, I'll probably quit this place.

9. Jun 2025 03:26 • jess_ • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

I agree with headkace, I am strongly against hiding game history.

9. Jun 2025 05:40 • pee_dee_cee • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Agree with headkace and jess_, I am strongly against hiding game histories.

The replay system is excellent for learning from better players and losing this feature would be a big loss to the site.

10. Jun 2025 17:27 • mikkashar • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

The report history for this request appears to've been truncated. Also the things requested here, while all privacy related, have very different implementation requirements & ramifications. Perhaps this should be separated into different bugs?

Mutual friends only was implemented long before 2025-05-27 (earliest comment currently visible). See boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23290

Hiding online status has other single-topic bug reports, including boardgamearena.com/bug?id=81191. I suggest using that report for online status setting and/or visibility.

Hiding completed games seems of limited use. Completed games do give some past timing history, but they don't allow direct interaction with the players, which appears to be the overall focus of this request. Hiding completed games makes a lot of useful information including game play & strategy learning opportunities, game popularity, and examples for recognizing patterns, diagnosing problems, & supporting bug reports.

Not asked for in this request, but IMO more useful in preventing harassment, would be allowing an individual to hide their list of current active games and/or open tables.
-- Letting people hide their playertables page (boardgamearena.com/playertables?player=[ID]) might be useful, but (especially with the reputation history missing) also means a current or prospective opponent can't gauge whether their opponent is playing more games than they can keep up, or hasn't made any moves at all in an extended period. Being able to look at someone's current tables is also useful when someone has a question about an active game, be it game play, UI, metagame, or bugs.
-- Letting people hide all their open tables seems counter-productive for game matching. Making friends-only or group-only tables visible only to people who can join them would be reasonable, IMO. But there are currently bugs with group tables not always respecting that requirement (possibly related to other issues respecting game options & restrictions), and there are requests (ex: boardgamearena.com/bug?id=23285) for better finding group-restricted games that might combine well with limiting visibility of restricted tables.

19. Jun 2025 13:22 • unwill • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

The problem with game history is that is also shows how many hours ago, I mean is that really necessary ?

19. Jun 2025 14:44 • bern22 • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

J'ai eu 2 bugs à la suite, 2 parties qui m'ont coutées 60 pts de pénalité et des karmas, F5 n'a rien résolu, ce n'est pas de ma faute surtout qu'aux 2 parties je gagnais alors quel intéret j'aurai eu de partir en cours , je suis très déçue par BGA, comme le dernier part avec qui j'ai joué ,il a eu le même problème, quand BGA est responsable, vous pourriez remettre les pts perdus,
Cordialement

20. Jun 2025 22:40 • ReltzSev • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Came here to say that they put out a survey instead of looking at these highly upvoted issues with no official response which I find pretty sad. But while I'm here I'll pitch in my 2c:

I think the simple ask of privacy makes for a very complex solution especially in a space that is looking to be open and connect players. Personally I like the openness of data because I've thought about making a bot that can notify me on other platforms like discord when I have an available move (I'm just not that big at e-mails especially how much spam I get) and the openness of data would allow for others to discover and utilize that bot without having to go through more steps, like friending the bot.

On the other hand I haven't experienced harassment or felt attacked in anyway on BGA, perhaps because I mostly place exclusively with friends. But just wanted to state a form of opposition that others might not have considered.

10. Jul 2025 10:34 • JohnnyMnemonic7z • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

I don't even understand how people here can oppose a feature just because they don't need it. It's simply a feature that some people need in specific situations, as evidenced by the number of votes. The only reason I can think of to reject this privacy option is if you want to monitor someone and don't want them to be able to avoid you.

16. Jul 2025 18:13 • DJB is da GOAT • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

BGA does not allow down votes, so you can't just look at the number. I am personally very strongly against game history as I don't really see the benefit and as some players mentioned help others find the strategies used by higher players. Online status I don't really mind either way, and obviously one-sided friends at the time was a huge problem.

20. Jul 2025 20:04 • KSpooky • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

@JohnnyMnemonic7z - If you allow players to hide their game history, then:
- you may not be able to watch replays of some top-ranked players for a given game
- you may have issues reporting a bug, if you have that option on

So, it is not only about not being interested into using that feature yourself, it also has some consequences. Having information when exactly the game took place helps other to recognize what replay the have already watched, or may help to find a specific game. Why would you even want to hide it in a first place? Because you feel ashamed about yourself how long you stayed last night? Or you promised someone else you will do something, but eventually you spend that time on BGA? Well, conduct yourself better, then you won't have to hide anything ;)

Better privacy for your status (online/offline), friends, etc. its fine. But game history should remain public.

25. Jul 2025 03:10 • Lawyer • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

I accidentally voted "yes". I thought by clicking the "vote" button I would be able to vote "no". Too bad you can't undo your vote.

5. Sep 2025 18:41 • ToughCookie • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

I'm here to chime in on the online status showing as offline. It gets distracting and annoying when friends come and interrupt my game to chat or constantly send invites to games I don't want to play. There are days where I just want to play in peace without chatting. I would remove the friends so people couldn't find me as easily, but there are times where I would like to play games with my friends.

21. Sep 2025 23:26 • ribidilus • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

where are all the messages to this report??

9. Oct 2025 13:32 • yazavats • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

I agree on the NO for hiding game history. On top of reviewing someone's games being both educative and entertaining, adding the option to hide them would make it easier to rig games for elo/arena gain and get away with it since the community wouldn't be able to examine possible collusions.

21. Oct 2025 02:16 • Otter Rivervalley • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

I think that for privacy reasons the game history should be hidden from other users. The comments regarding learning strategy from other players .. it seems like cheating to me. People should learn by playing not by spying on others.

21. Oct 2025 03:09 • Otter Rivervalley • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

@yazavats I don’t know anything about “rigging games” for ELO but if it is possible to cheat in games this should be solved by the developers not by the community.

@KSpooky This is not about how people conduct themselves but a basic privacy concern.

The game history definitely should be hidden and not accessible by players who did not participate at that table.

24. Oct 2025 23:01 • maxstark39 • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

It should be at the player who je decide to let people see his history, every one, friend or nobody

25. Oct 2025 09:06 • Otter Rivervalley • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

@maxstark39 I absolutely agree with you.

1. Nov 2025 13:09 • Ruediger_Klings • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Hiding the game history is a horrible idea. This is not sensible data, which needs protection. Quite the opposite, it helps everybody to improve. I can sympathize with hid online status, or show only to friends.

2. Nov 2025 11:35 • aloof-rabbit • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

My vote is game history should NOT be hidden and two recent examples where it came in handy:

Example 1: When first starting to play Catan C&K the trades between the two other players at the table were strange. They didn't once trade with me and then one party would immediately offer like 4 cards and only receive 1 in return. A quick check of their game history and sure enough those two players always seem to play at 3 player tables and always together so were clearly colluding. (and no the same IP address alert didn't appear at the start). It didn't really help since they continued to do it but I reported them at the end for king making.

Example 2: Recently about 5 mins into a game of Catan C&K one player loses their city immediately and asks to abandon the game claiming they didn't realise they were playing C&K and didn't know how to play that version and was only familiar with he base version. A quick check of their game history showed that the player was clearly lying as within the last week they had played C&K multiple times (even winning one). Needless to say the request to abandon was rejected.

4. Nov 2025 18:32 • MasterMystery • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

there is not downvote button

game history has to stay, but if privacy settings are relevant one could hide, when games are played/game durations if people want that.

15. Nov 2025 13:26 • Zem06 • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Strongly against this idea, if you want to hide this informations, no interest to play online

23. Nov 2025 19:56 • Detriment • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Keep game history, it'd be frustrating to go backwards. Online status is fine, most players will probably just set to 'offline forever' aka why have online status at all.

Leave it be, it works well enough.

1. Dec 2025 16:39 • Isar • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

What privacy are we talking about here? The small amount of people who want to keep their games anonymous can make an anonymous alt account. Yes there are some specific edge cases that would still have problems with this but thats gotta be less than 1% of the playerbase.

Like many mentioned already, having a massive database of the highest level play of all games is incredible, it would be a HUGE loss if that was removed. Anytime I wanna get into a new game I watch replays of the top players to learn. Removing that sounds like a complete non-starter.

Of course giving players the option to hide the specific time of playing (or other personal statistics that dont involve making the replays unavailable) is totally fine though.

1. Dec 2025 20:55 • zhenya17 • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

What confidential information is contained in the history of games? This is useful information for finding players with common interests.

4. Dec 2025 11:56 • pirin • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Game History is a way to figure out king making, so I voted against this poroposal.

7. Dec 2025 18:39 • KohanaChan • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Hi. For privacy, it would be nice to hide online status and the exact time of each game. In history, an approximative date is enough (month and year for example). The rest of history information is useful to all players I think, so let's keep it as it is.
Thank you

7. Dec 2025 18:45 • JediGyoza • This suggestion has not been analyzed by delopers yet:

Hi, I'm happy to let public the game history and list of games visible. I would just suggest to hide the time details for logs, so that no one can know at which time and date you played.

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#17208: "Better Privacy: Hide Game History, Online Status, and only Mutual Friends"

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