Legal
Privacy Policy
The short version: EMBER has no accounts of its own and no analytics of its own. Your progress is saved on your device and never leaves it. If you are signed in to Apple's Game Center, your scores are sent to Game Center for the leaderboard; that is optional and handled by Apple. The game shows advertising from Google AdMob, and Google collects some device data to do that. You can limit that collection by answering the age question honestly, by declining tracking when iOS asks, by refusing consent if you are in Europe, or by buying the one-time ad removal, which stops ads entirely.
This policy explains how EMBER (“the app,” “the game”) handles information. EMBER is published by Noah Friedrich Breithaupt, an individual developer based in the United States (“I,” “me”). If you have a question about anything here, write to support@emberthegame.com.
Information I do not collect
EMBER itself does not ask for, gather, or transmit any of the following:
- Your name, email address, phone number, or any other contact information
- Account credentials of any kind. EMBER has no account system; the optional Game Center sign-in is handled entirely by Apple, and the game never sees your Apple Account details
- Precise location data
- Contacts, photos, camera, microphone, calendar, or health data
- Your age, beyond the on-device use described below
I run no analytics, attribution, or crash-reporting service of my own, and I operate no server that the game talks to. The only third-party software inside the app that handles data is the Google AdMob advertising kit described in the next section, and the Apple frameworks that handle purchases, the Game Center leaderboard and the App Store rating request.
Advertising
EMBER shows ads supplied by Google AdMob. There are three placements: a short interstitial after a run ends, and two optional rewarded videos that you choose to watch in exchange for a second life or a shard bonus. Rewarded ads never play unless you tap the button asking for one.
To request and show ads, Google's software inside the app collects information about your device and how the ads perform. Depending on your choices, this can include:
- A device identifier used for advertising, including the IDFA if you have allowed tracking
- A coarse location inferred from your IP address
- Which ads were shown, viewed, and tapped
- Crash and performance diagnostics relating to the ad software
Google handles that data under its own policies. See Google's privacy policy and how Google uses information from apps that use its services. I receive only aggregated, anonymous reporting from Google about ad revenue and impressions. I never see anything that identifies you.
The age question
When EMBER launches, it asks your age. The answer is stored on your device and is used for one thing: deciding what advertising the app is allowed to request. Younger answers restrict ads to more limited content tiers. If you say you are under 13, the app tells Google to treat you as a child under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which turns off personalised advertising for you. If you say you are under the age of digital consent in Europe, the app flags that too. The age you enter is never transmitted anywhere; only those flags travel with each ad request.
Tracking permission (App Tracking Transparency)
If you tell EMBER you are 18 or over, iOS will ask once whether the app may track you across other companies' apps and websites. That permission controls access to your device's advertising identifier. Choosing Ask App Not to Track means you still see ads, but they are not targeted using that identifier. You can change your answer at any time in iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking. The app never asks players under 18 for this permission.
Consent in the EEA, UK and Switzerland
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, EMBER shows Google's consent form before requesting any ads, so you can consent, decline, or manage the purposes and partners individually. You can revisit and change that decision at any time from Settings > Privacy options inside the game.
Removing ads
A one-time in-app purchase removes all advertising from EMBER. After that purchase the app makes no ad requests, so the collection described above stops. The two rewards that ads normally unlock are granted without a video instead.
Game Center leaderboard
From version 1.1, EMBER has a global leaderboard run on Apple's Game Center. It works only if you are signed in to Game Center on your iPhone, and signing in is optional: the game is fully playable without it.
If you are signed in, the score of each run you finish is sent to Game Center when the run ends, and your best score is sent again when you open the game, so a record set while offline still arrives. Game Center links those scores to your Game Center player profile and shows them, with your Game Center nickname, to other EMBER players on the leaderboard. To draw the leaderboard screen, the game downloads the current rankings from Game Center: the nicknames, ranks and scores of the players listed, and your own. Those are shown on screen and not kept.
All of this goes between your iPhone and Apple. None of it reaches me, and I have no server that stores scores. Game Center data is governed by Apple's privacy policy, and you control it in iOS Settings > Game Center, where you can change your nickname and profile visibility or sign out. Signing out stops EMBER sending any further scores.
Rating request
A few times over the life of the app, EMBER may ask iOS to show Apple's standard App Store rating prompt. The prompt, and any rating or review you leave, belongs to Apple; EMBER is never told whether you rated or what you chose. Nothing in the game is given or withheld depending on it. To time these requests, the app counts on your device how many times it has been opened and remembers which requests it has already made. You can turn these prompts off for every app in iOS Settings > App Store > In-App Ratings & Reviews.
Purchases
EMBER offers three optional in-app purchases: two shard packs and the one-time ad removal. All purchases are processed entirely by Apple through the App Store. I never see your payment card, billing address, or Apple Account details, and I receive only anonymous, aggregated sales figures from Apple. To recognise a purchase you already own, the app stores a record of the transaction on your device and can ask Apple to confirm your entitlements through Settings > Restore Purchases. That check uses your Apple Account and sends nothing to me.
Information stored on your device
To let you pick up where you left off, EMBER saves a small amount of game state inside its own sandboxed storage on your iPhone:
- Your best altitude and score
- Your shard balance
- Which skins you own and which one is equipped
- Any power-ups you have banked but not yet used
- Your sound and haptics settings
- Your age answer and the advertising flags derived from it
- Whether you own the ad removal, and identifiers for completed purchases so they are never delivered twice
- How many runs you have played and how many times you have opened the app, and which rating requests have already been made
None of this identifies you, and none of it leaves your device. (Your scores reach Game Center separately if you are signed in, as described above.) It is not backed up to any server I control. Deleting the app deletes it. Your ad removal is separately recorded by Apple against your Apple Account, which is what lets you restore it on a new device.
How to delete your data
Delete EMBER from your iPhone. That removes the app's storage container along with everything listed above. I hold nothing about you anywhere else and there is nothing to request from me. Leaderboard scores are held by Apple's Game Center rather than by the app, so deleting the app does not remove them; they are managed through your Game Center account. Data that Google collected to serve ads is held by Google; you can exercise your rights over it through Google's My Ad Center and the links above.
Children
EMBER is suitable for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13. The age question exists so that, if a child does play, advertising is restricted and personalised ads are switched off in line with COPPA. I do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and the game itself collects none from anyone. If you believe a child has somehow provided personal information through the app, contact me and I will look into it.
This website
The site you are reading is hosted on Netlify and serves plain static files. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics, embeds no advertising or social widgets, and loads its fonts from this same domain rather than from a third party, so nothing about your visit is shared with anyone else. Like every web server, Netlify keeps short-lived request logs that include the visiting IP address for security and reliability purposes; I do not use those logs to build any profile of you. There is no form on this site and no way to submit information through it, so the only thing you can send me is an email, which I keep only as long as it takes to answer you.
Apple's role
EMBER is distributed through the Apple App Store. Apple collects its own information when you browse the store, download an app, make a purchase, use Game Center, or leave a rating, and that activity is governed by Apple's privacy policy rather than mine. See apple.com/legal/privacy.
Your rights
Privacy laws including the GDPR in the European Economic Area and the CCPA in California give you rights to access, correct, delete, and port the personal data an organisation holds about you, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. I hold no personal data about you, so there is nothing on my side to access, correct, port, or delete, and I sell nothing. Leaderboard data is held by Apple's Game Center and managed in iOS Settings > Game Center. The data collected to serve advertising is held by Google, and the controls in this policy — the tracking prompt, the European consent form, the in-game privacy options, and Google's own ad settings — are how you exercise choice over it. If you want written confirmation of what I do and do not hold, ask and I will send it.
Changes to this policy
If a future version of EMBER changes how information is handled, whether through a new feature, a new ad partner, or anything else, this page will be updated before that version ships, and the effective date at the top will change. Continuing to use the app after an update means the revised policy applies.
Contact
Noah Friedrich Breithaupt
support@emberthegame.com
United States