Privacy Policy: CEO Life: Business Decisions

This Privacy Policy describes how the Android game CEO Life: Business Decisions ("the App", "we", "us"), published by PlayBrain, handles information. The App is a single-player card game: characters ask you for decisions about a family firm and you answer by swiping a card left or right, then hand the firm to an heir. There is no wagering of any kind, nothing can be won or cashed out, and nothing random is ever sold for money.

The short version

• No account and no sign-in. The App never asks for your name, email, phone number, location, contacts, photos or files, and it has no text field.
• Your progress is saved on your device.
• The App sends anonymous gameplay analytics to our own server. Every event is listed below.
• Gameplay recording is optional and off until you choose Allow.
• Adverts come from Google AdMob, with Google's consent form where the law requires it: rewarded videos you choose, and a capped full-screen advert after a tenure has ended. There is no banner.
• Optional in-app purchases go through Google Play. In the first version the store is closed and nothing can be bought yet.
• An optional daily reminder is a local notification, off until you switch it on.

What is stored on your device

The App saves the following in its own private storage on your phone:

• your family firm and its heirs, your coins and gems, your goals, perks, desks and family holdings, your records, your daily streak, daily gift and petty-cash briefcase,
• the tenure in progress, so a closed app can continue it,
• your sound, music and vibration settings, when the App last asked for a rating, the analytics identifier and any events not yet sent, whether the daily reminder is on, what you own from the store, your gameplay recording choice and at most one recording waiting to be sent, and a cached list of our other games.

Google's consent form keeps your advertising consent answer in the App's storage through Google's own SDK.

Settings, Reset progress erases your progress and keeps anything you bought. Uninstalling the App, or clearing its storage in Android settings, deletes everything above.

What is sent to our own servers

The App sends anonymous gameplay analytics over HTTPS to a server we run at playbrain.games. Events are queued on the device and sent in batches. Each batch carries:

• a random identifier the App generates for itself on first launch, so one installation can be told apart from another. It is not your advertising ID or any hardware identifier, nor derived from either,
• a random session identifier,
• the app version and the platform,
• the events below, each with a timestamp.

What is never sent: your name, email or any account, your advertising ID, your location, prices or payment details, your contacts, photos and files, or anything you typed. Every value is a number, true or false, or a short word chosen by the App's own code, such as a tenure number, the family or daily mode, the outcome of an advert, which bonus an advert was offered for, the name of a perk, or the name of the in-game currency (coins or gems).

In this game a "level" is one heir's tenure in charge of the firm, or Today's heir. The level events record which it was, how far into a full tenure it got as a percentage, how long it lasted, and whether it ended by a meter running out or by retirement. They never record which cards you saw or which answers you chose.

The complete list of events. Nothing outside it is sent:

• first_open: the app was opened for the first time after install
• session_start: a play session began, and how many sessions this install has had
• session_end: a play session ended, how long it lasted and which screen it ended on
• first_interaction: the first time you touched anything, and how long after opening
• screen_view: which screen you are on, and which screen you came from
• tutorial_start: the first tenure's tips began
• tutorial_step: which of the first tenure's six tips was shown
• tutorial_complete: you finished the first tenure's tips
• level_start: a tenure began: which heir of the family it was, or Today's heir
• level_complete: a tenure ended in retirement, how long it lasted and how far into a full tenure it got
• level_fail: a tenure ended because a meter ran out or filled up, and how far into a full tenure it got
• level_abandon: a tenure was left unfinished, and how far through it was
• currency_earned: coins or gems were earned, and from what (a tenure, a goal, the daily gift, the holdings, an advert)
• currency_spent: coins or gems were spent, and on what (a perk, a desk, carrying on)
• ad_offer_shown: an optional advert was offered, and for which bonus
• ad_offer_hidden: an optional advert was not offered, and why
• ad_offered: you tapped an optional advert offer
• ad_load_result: whether an advert was available, and how long it took
• ad_result: how the advert ended
• ad_reward_granted: the reward for watching was given
• interstitial_check: whether a full-screen advert could be shown after a tenure, and why not
• interstitial_shown: a full-screen advert was shown
• interstitial_result: how a full-screen advert ended
• iap_store_open: the store screen was opened
• iap_offer_shown: a purchasable item was shown
• iap_purchase_start: you tapped buy
• iap_purchase_result: whether the purchase completed, was cancelled, is pending, or failed
• iap_restore_start: you asked to restore purchases
• iap_restore_result: whether the restore found anything
• iap_entitlement_changed: what you own in the game changed
• iap_unavailable: the store could not be reached
• feature_used: a part of the game was opened, completed, claimed or switched, such as Today's heir, a perk or the daily gift
• review_prompt_shown: the rating prompt was requested
• review_prompt_skipped: the rating prompt was not shown, and why
• reminder_offer_shown: the game offered to send you reminders
• reminder_offer_result: whether you said yes or not now to that offer
• reminder_permission_result: whether your phone allowed notifications when asked
• reminder_scheduled: a reminder was set, what kind and how many hours away
• reminder_opened: you opened the game from a reminder
• cross_promo_open: the More games sheet was opened
• cross_promo_click: another of our games was tapped
• app_error: something went wrong, which kind of error and on which screen, with no message and no personal data

An error report carries the kind of error, the screen it happened on and a short hashed code-location fingerprint. No error message, stack trace, file path or anything you did is included, and no third-party crash service is used. Purchase events carry a product identifier chosen by our code (such as ceolife.coins_small) and a price tier (a bucket name such as t1, not a price), never an amount of money, a currency, a card number or a receipt.

The More games sheet downloads a list of our other games with a request that carries no identifier.

We use these events to understand retention and progression, see which features are used, measure adverts and cross-promotion, and find bugs. They are not used for advertising and are not sold. To request deletion, email [email protected].

Optional gameplay recording in this game

Recording is off until you choose Allow, either on the "Help improve this game" invitation or in Settings, Gameplay recording, where you can also turn it off at any time. Declining changes no gameplay, reward or purchase.

A recording holds only screen changes, where you tapped as a position on the screen, timing, and the gameplay events listed above. It never holds a screenshot, video or audio, and it carries a random session identifier, never an advertising or hardware identifier. Each recording lasts at most ten minutes and is capped in size, and our server accepts only a limited number of new recordings a day across all of our games, so most sessions are not recorded even with Allow switched on. Recordings use the same PlayBrain server, are never shared with a third-party replay service or used for advertising, become unavailable after seven days and are deleted in the daily cleanup.

Rating prompt

The App may occasionally ask Google Play to show its own in-app review dialog, never straight after an advert. Google decides whether it appears. Any rating you leave goes to Google Play, not to us.

Advertising (Google AdMob)

The App includes Google's Mobile Ads SDK and shows adverts from the App's own AdMob advert units. Before it requests any advert, the App runs Google's consent form. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland the form is shown and nothing is requested until you have answered; if the answer means adverts may not be requested, none are. Where required, Settings shows a Privacy options row that reopens the form.

A rewarded video plays only after you choose a bonus marked AD: carrying on after a meter runs out, three times the coins a tenure paid, seeing the exact effects of the next eight cards, doubling what your family holdings earned, doubling the daily gift, seeing two different heirs, bringing back a lapsed daily streak, opening the petty-cash briefcase on Home, or taking the golden handshake at the start of an heir's tenure. Declining costs you nothing you already had.

One advert is not optional: a short full-screen advert may play when you tap to leave the result card after a tenure has ended. It never plays while you are answering cards, never on the way out of your first tenure, never in the first ten minutes of play in a session, never within four minutes of the last one, never within a minute of a rewarded advert you watched, and never more often than a fixed cap allows. Adverts request non-personalised ads only. There is no banner.

For any of these, Google and its advertising partners may process, to deliver, secure and measure ads:

• device or other identifiers, such as your advertising identifier,
• diagnostics,
• the approximate location derived from your IP address,
• interaction with the advert (views, taps).

Declining personalised ads, or having no advert available, does not block play. Google's handling of this data is governed by its own policies: Google Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services. You can reset or delete your advertising identifier in Android settings.

Buying "No adverts" does not take the bonuses away. It removes the full-screen advert, and every bonus above stays: they become free, with no advert to watch.

In-app purchases

In the first version (1.0.0) the store is closed: no product can be bought. It opens in an update once the products exist on Google Play. The optional purchases will then be: No adverts, a permanent coin doubler, a starter pack, three sizes of coin pack, three sizes of gem pack, and a 28-day pass. Nothing in the game is locked behind them: every perk and every character can be reached by playing, nothing sold wins a tenure, and nothing random is ever sold.

Payment is handled entirely by Google Play. We never see, receive or store your card number, billing address, name or receipt. No purchase-management service sits between the App and Google Play, and the record of what you own stays with your Google account, so a purchase can be restored on a new device by signing in with the same account. Restore purchases is in Settings and in the store. Coin and gem packs and the pass are consumable: once used they are gone. We record, for our own analytics, which product was shown and which was bought, as the product identifier and a price tier, never an amount of money. The billing permission in the App's manifest lets Google Play take a payment if you choose to buy something, and grants access to nothing else.

Daily reminder

An optional reminder that Today's heir is ready, and a nudge if you have not played for a couple of days. It is off until you switch it on in Settings, and switching it on is the only thing that makes Android ask for notification permission; the App never asks at launch. It is scheduled and shown on your phone: nothing is sent to us or to anyone else, and there is no push service. Switching it off cancels anything already scheduled.

Permissions and the microphone

The App uses internet access (analytics, adverts), vibration, audio settings for its sound and music, notifications (only if you switch the reminder on) and billing (for purchases once the shop opens). The advertising library adds the advertising ID and network-state permissions it needs. The App plays sound but does not record audio: the microphone permission and access to your files are blocked in its configuration.

Children

The App is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children; if you believe a child has used the App and want data removed, contact us.

Deleting your data

To request deletion of analytics connected to your installation, email [email protected] with the App's name and, if available, the installation identifier. We may ask for information needed to locate the record, but never for a password: the App has no accounts. Data sent to us is encrypted in transit, is not sold, and is shared only with infrastructure providers acting for us and, for adverts, with Google and its advertising partners. Analytics is kept only as long as reasonably needed, and gameplay recordings become unavailable after seven days and are deleted in the daily cleanup.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when the App or its service providers change. If the App's data practices change, this policy will be updated before that version ships, and the date above will change with it.

Contact

[email protected]