Privacy Policy: Anvil Hero: Merge Swords

Anvil Hero is published by PlayBrain. The game has no account system and does not ask for a name, email address, location, contacts, photos or free text. Your forge, blades, zones, coins, gems, embers, stars, codex, streak and settings stay on your device. Nothing can be won or cashed out, and nothing random is ever sold for money.

The app is built to offer optional in-app purchases. In the first released version the store is not open yet, so nothing can be bought and no product or price tier is recorded. When it opens, Google Play handles the payment and we never see your card or billing details: see the "In-app purchases" section below.

Data used for analytics

The app uses a random identifier that it generates for itself on first launch. It is not the advertising ID, a hardware ID, or derived from either. We use it to tell one installation from another for retention analytics. The app records a limited vocabulary of gameplay events with a timestamp and the app version:

• first_open, session_start, session_end and first_interaction
• install_attribution: where this install came from: a Google ad, the Play Store, another PlayBrain game, or elsewhere, plus the ad campaign name (never the ad click identifier). Sent once, after install
• screen_view
• tutorial_start, tutorial_step and tutorial_complete
• level_start, level_complete, level_fail and level_abandon
• currency_earned, currency_spent and currency_blocked
• ad_offer_shown, ad_offer_hidden, ad_offered, ad_load_result, ad_result and ad_reward_granted
• interstitial_check, interstitial_shown and interstitial_result
• ad_revenue: what one advert earned, as reported by the ad network (amount and currency only)
• iap_store_open, iap_offer_shown, iap_purchase_start, iap_purchase_result, iap_restore_start, iap_restore_result, iap_entitlement_changed and iap_unavailable
• feature_used
• review_prompt_shown and review_prompt_skipped
• 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 and cross_promo_click
• app_error

Our server also records the country you are in, which it works out from your network address when the app first reports; the address itself is not stored.

In this game a "level" is one ZONE (five waves, the last a boss), or one attempt at the daily forge. The level events record which zone it was, whether it was a campaign zone, an endless zone, the daily forge or the first guided zone, how far through its waves the hero got, how long it took, how many merges were made and how many stars the boss paid. The tutorial events record which step of the first-minute guide was reached and how long it took.

The app records its own errors, as the app_error event above. What is sent is the KIND of error and the screen it happened on. No message text, no stack trace, no file path and nothing you typed or did is included, and no third-party crash-reporting SDK is used.

Properties are limited to values chosen by the app, such as a zone number, the mode, the outcome of an advert, which bonus an advert was offered for, the id of an upgrade bought (or one that cost more coins than you had, with its price and your balance), and the name of the in-game currency, which is coins, gems or embers.

Gems can be bought. A purchase is recorded as a PRODUCT IDENTIFIER such as swordforge.gems_s together with a price TIER, which is a code-chosen bucket name such as t1. A tier is not a price. No amount of money, no card number, no billing address and no receipt is ever collected or sent.

No player-entered text is sent. The events are sent to PlayBrain's first-party endpoint at playbrain.games and used to understand retention, progression, feature use and aggregate cross-promotion performance.

Advertising

The app shows three kinds of Google AdMob advert.

A rewarded video plays only after you choose a bonus marked AD: collecting the coins your hero earned while you were away a second time, doubling what a zone's boss paid, 15 more seconds on a boss's clock after it ran out (offered only when 15 seconds could win), every blade the forge drops landing two tiers higher for three minutes, the forge merging pairs by itself for five minutes, doubling today's daily gift, or keeping a daily streak going after a missed day. Declining costs you nothing you already had.

One advert is not optional: a short full-screen advert may play when you leave a cleared zone's card. It never plays during a fight, in your first session or before your fourth boss, never right after a rewarded advert, and never more often than a fixed cap allows.

There is no banner advert anywhere in the game.

Your consent choice can be changed at any time from Settings, Privacy options, where that row is shown in your region.

For any of these, Google and its advertising partners may process device or other identifiers, diagnostics, approximate location derived from an IP address, and ad interaction data to deliver, secure and measure ads. Where required, the Google consent form is shown before the ad SDK requests an advert. Declining personalised ads, or having no advert available, does not block play.

Google's privacy policy is available at https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Buying "No adverts" or "Lifetime" does not take the bonuses away. It removes the full-screen advert between zones. The optional bonuses above stay available, exactly as before.

In-app purchases

The app offers optional purchases: a Starter pack with fixed contents (300 gems and 30 minutes of Auto-merge, once), Auto-merge (the forge merges pairs by itself, for good), Forge +1 (every blade the forge drops is one tier higher, for good), No adverts, Lifetime (No adverts, Auto-merge and Forge +1 for one price) and gem packs. Nothing is locked behind them: every blade is forged by playing, coins and gems are earned by playing, 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 available in Settings and in the store. Gem packs are consumable: once spent 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, exactly as described above. We never record an amount of money.

The com.android.vending.BILLING permission is in the app's manifest so that Google Play can take a payment if you choose to buy something. It grants access to nothing else.

Daily reminders

The app can send you a local reminder that the daily forge 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 asks Android for notification permission. The app never asks at launch.

The reminder is LOCAL: it is scheduled on your own device by Android and fires there. Nothing is sent to a server, there is no push service and no third party involved. Turning the switch off cancels everything already scheduled.

Storage, sharing and retention

Analytics data is encrypted in transit. We do not sell it. It is shared only with infrastructure providers acting for PlayBrain and, for adverts, Google and its advertising partners. Local progress is deleted when the app's storage is cleared or the app is uninstalled; Settings, Reset progress erases it on request and keeps anything you bought. Server analytics is retained only as long as reasonably needed for the purposes above.

Deletion and contact

To request deletion of analytics connected to an installation, email [email protected]. Include the app name and the installation identifier if available. We may ask for information needed to locate the record, but never an account password, because the game has no accounts.

We may update this policy when the app or its service providers change. The effective date above will change with it.

Gameplay diagnostics and optional session recording

The app reports a closed error category and a hashed code-location fingerprint so PlayBrain can identify bugs. Exception messages, stack traces, account details and typed text are not transmitted.

Gameplay recording is optional and off until you choose Allow. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland the question is one toggle inside Google's consent form, and Settings, Privacy options reopens that form so you can withdraw at any time. Everywhere else the app asks once itself, and Settings, Gameplay recording lets you withdraw at any time. Declining changes no gameplay, reward or purchase. A capture contains screen changes, taps, timing and the gameplay events listed above. There is no screen video and no audio.

A random session identifier is generated for each capture, without an advertising or hardware identifier. Captures last at most ten minutes, use the existing PlayBrain backend, become unavailable after seven days and are deleted in daily cleanup. Nothing is shared with a third-party replay service or used for advertising.

Contact

[email protected]