Privacy Policy for Pile of Cats
Pile of Cats has no accounts, no sign-in, and no server of its own. The developer does not collect, receive, or store any information about you. Everything the game remembers is written to your own device. The one exception is advertising: the game shows ads supplied by Google AdMob, and Google receives information from your device in order to serve them. That is explained in full below.
What the developer collects
Nothing. There is no account system, no login, no analytics SDK, no crash reporting, and no backend service belonging to this app. The game never uploads your scores, the skins you have unlocked, your settings, or anything else to the developer. There is no server for it to upload them to.
What is stored on your device
Your progress is saved locally, in the app's own private storage (a single record under the key grovefall.save.v1). It contains only:
- your best score
- your coin balance
- which cat skins you own, and which one is equipped
- the highest cat tier you have reached, for the collection
- the date and score of your most recent daily challenge
- a list of your last 30 finished runs (score and date only)
- a flag recording that you have seen the how-to-play card
This record never leaves your device. It contains no name, no email address, no device identifier, and no location. It is deleted when you delete the app, which is also how you erase your progress.
Advertising
Pile of Cats shows ads through Google AdMob. There are two placements:
- a small banner in a fixed strip at the bottom of the screen, present throughout the app;
- an optional rewarded video on the end-of-run summary, which you may choose to watch to double the coins that run paid out. It is never required, it never plays on its own, and skipping it costs you nothing but the extra coins. Depending on the release you are running and on available inventory, this offer may not appear at all.
There are no full-screen ads that interrupt play.
The developer does not see who you are, what you were shown, or what you tapped. Ad delivery is handled entirely by Google, and Google's collection is governed by its own policies. To serve and measure an ad, Google may receive information such as your device model and operating system version, your IP address (from which an approximate, city-level location can be inferred), which ad was requested and shown, and whether it was viewed or tapped. Apple's SKAdNetwork may also send Google an anonymised install-attribution report; that mechanism is designed by Apple not to identify you.
See How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services and the Google Privacy Policy.
Ads are non-personalised
Every ad request this app makes is flagged as non-personalised. Ads are chosen from general, contextual signals rather than from a profile of your interests or your activity in other apps. The app does not show Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt and does not ask for permission to track you, so it does not obtain your device's advertising identifier (IDFA) for that purpose. The app's App Store privacy declaration reports no tracking.
Google may still use a limited device signal for non-personalised ads to do things like cap how often you see the same ad and detect click fraud. Google describes this in the pages linked above.
Ad content is also limited to Google's G ("suitable for general audiences") content rating.
No account, no connection to the developer
The app makes no network requests of its own. It has no API, no cloud save, no leaderboard server, no newsletter, and no way to send a message from inside the game. Ad requests to Google are the only network traffic the app generates. If ads fail to load — offline, for instance — the game still works normally.
Sharing a score
The end-of-run screen has a share button. If you tap it, the app renders a picture of your score card and hands it to the iOS share sheet, where you choose what to do with it. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you pick a destination, and the image goes to the app you chose — never to the developer.
Children
Pile of Cats is a simple puzzle game with no chat, no user-generated content, and no way to contact anyone through it. It is not directed to children under 13, and the developer does not knowingly collect personal information from children. Because the developer collects nothing at all from anyone, there is nothing to collect from a child either.
Ads are non-personalised and limited to G-rated content, but they are supplied by Google and are not reviewed by the developer in advance. Parents who would prefer no ads at all should know that there is no paid option to remove them.
If you believe a child has provided personal information through this app, contact hello@thirddraft.io and it will be looked into, though as described above the app has no mechanism by which that could occur.
No purchases
There are no in-app purchases. Coins are earned by playing, or by choosing to watch the optional rewarded ad. They cannot be bought, so the app never handles payment information.
Your choices
- Erase your progress: delete the app. The saved record goes with it.
- Limit ad measurement: iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking and Apple Advertising control tracking and ad-identifier use system-wide. This app does not request tracking permission in the first place.
- Ask a question, or ask for data to be deleted: email hello@thirddraft.io. Note that the developer holds no data about you to hand over or delete.
Changes to this policy
If the app changes in a way that affects this policy — a new ad format, or anything that leaves the device — this page will be updated and the effective date above will change.
Contact
Questions about this policy or the app: hello@thirddraft.io.