Privacy Policy: Valebound

Valebound is published by PlayBrain. It is a story game: you read a short adventure one page at a time and choose what happens next.

The game has no account system and does not ask for an email address, location, contacts, photos or free text. Your journey, endings, boons, gems, page themes, streak and settings stay on your device.

The app contains a store for optional in-app purchases, which is not open in this first version. If it opens and you buy something, 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
• screen_view
• tutorial_start, tutorial_step and tutorial_complete
• level_start, level_complete, level_fail and level_abandon
• currency_earned and currency_spent
• ad_offer_shown, ad_offer_hidden, ad_offered, ad_load_result, ad_result and ad_reward_granted
• interstitial_check, interstitial_shown and interstitial_result
• 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, reminder_offer_result, reminder_permission_result, reminder_scheduled and reminder_opened
• cross_promo_open and cross_promo_click
• ad_revenue, once for each advert that is shown: what it earned, as reported by the advert network (the advert type, the amount and its currency)
• install_attribution, once per install: where the app was installed from (a Google ad, the Play Store, another of our games, or elsewhere) and the ad campaign name, never the ad click identifier
• app_error

In this game a "level" is one journey or one Daily Path. The level events record which it was (the journey's number, or the Daily Path's day), how far through it got as a percentage of a typical journey, how long it took, how many choices were made and how many times Peek was used. They never record which choices you made, the story's text, your stats or your items. The tutorial events record which of the first journey's three coached steps was reached.

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 journey number, the mode, the outcome of an advert, the name of a page theme, and the name of the in-game currency, which is gems. Gems buy page colours only.

Gems can be earned by playing and, once the store opens, bought. A purchase is recorded as a PRODUCT IDENTIFIER such as valebound.gems_small 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.

Once per install the app also records where it was installed from: a Google ad, the Play Store, another PlayBrain game, or elsewhere, together with the name of the ad campaign when there is one. Google Play tells the app this when it is first opened. The ad click identifier that Google Play also passes along stays on your device and is never sent. When the first report arrives, our server works out your country from the IP address of the connection and does not keep the address.

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 two kinds of Google AdMob advert, and no banner.

A rewarded video plays only if you choose it, from a control marked AD: to go back a page once your free go-backs are used, to Peek at what each choice on a page would do (free on your first three journeys), to double today's gift, or to keep a Daily Path streak you missed. None is offered at the end of a journey. Declining costs you nothing you already had.

One advert is not optional: a short full-screen advert may play when you tap New journey after a journey has ended. It never plays while you read, never on the ending itself or on the way to the home screen, never after your first journey, never in the first ten minutes of play in a session, never within four minutes of the last one and never within a minute of a rewarded advert.

Before any advert is requested, 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. Your choice can be changed at any time from Settings, Privacy options, where that row is shown in your region. Adverts may be personalised where the law allows it: in the EEA and the UK this follows the choice you make on that form, and you can turn ad personalisation off in your device settings (Android: Settings → Privacy → Ads).

When an advert is requested, Google and its advertising partners may process your device's advertising identifier, device information, your IP address and the approximate location derived from it, and your interaction with the advert, to deliver, secure and measure ads. Declining consent, or having no advert available, does not block play.

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

Buying "No adverts" does not take the extras away. It removes the full-screen advert, and every rewarded extra becomes free, with no advert to watch.

Google Analytics for Firebase

The app uses Google Analytics for Firebase to tell our advertising campaigns which installs went on to play: for example, finishing a journey, or opening the app again the next day. Google receives these events together with an app-instance identifier, your device's advertising identifier and an approximate location derived from your IP address, and handles them under Google's privacy policy (https://policies.google.com/privacy). Screen views and the Android device ID are not collected. In the EEA and the UK this follows the choice you make on Google's consent form, and nothing beyond these milestones is sent. You can reset the advertising identifier in Android's settings.

In-app purchases

The store is not open in this first version, so nothing can be bought yet. When it opens it will offer optional purchases: No adverts, and two sizes of gem pack. Gems buy page colours only. Nothing sold changes a roll, a stat, an item or where the story goes.

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. No third party receives a purchase identifier from us.

Restore purchases is available in Settings and in the store, without an account and without buying anything first. Gem packs are consumable: once used they are gone, and neither we nor the store can bring them back.

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 optional reminder notifications, only if you agree. It can remind you that a new Daily Path is open, that your journey is waiting, or that the daily gift can be taken. Reminders are off until you say yes, either to the app's own question (shown after a good ending or after taking the daily gift, never on the first launch) or with the switch in Settings. Only a yes opens Android's permission question. The app never asks at launch.

Reminders are LOCAL: they are scheduled on your own device by Android and fire there. Nothing is sent to a server, there is no push service, no token, and no third party involved. The time is worked out on the device from when you usually play (the start times of your last few sessions are kept on the device and never sent), at most one a day, never between 21:30 and 09:00, and they stop if you have not played for two weeks. Turning the switch off cancels everything already scheduled, and so does revoking the permission in your phone's settings.

The analytics events listed above record that the question was shown, your answer, whether your phone allowed notifications, what kind of reminder was set and how many hours away, and that you opened the game from one. The time of day you play is not sent. One install in ten is chosen at random, on the device, not to receive reminders, so that we can measure whether they help; everything else works the same for them.

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.

Deleting your data

To request deletion of analytics connected to an installation, email [email protected] with the app's name (Valebound), 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. Your progress on the device is deleted when you clear the app's storage or uninstall it, or from Settings, Reset progress.

Changes and contact

We may update this policy when the app or its service providers change. The effective date above will change with it. Questions: [email protected].

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. 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. The device stores the choice and at most one pending capture. Nothing is shared with a third-party replay service or used for advertising.