Privacy Policy for Emberseam
Emberseam ("the app") is developed and published by Machinaut Studios LLC ("we", "us"). This policy explains what data the app handles. The short version: there is no account and no server of ours. Your progress, stats, daily results, coins and settings are written to your phone and stay there. The app requests no permissions of its own. Two things touch the network — the ads, served by Google, and your purchases, handled by Apple or Google.
Information we collect
None. We run no server for Emberseam, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no tracking of any kind — there is no analytics SDK and no crash reporter in the build. There is no account to create and no sign-up: we never ask for your name, email address, phone number, or contacts. We build no profile of you, and we have nothing to sell, rent, or trade. We hold no record that you exist.
What the app stores, and where
Everything the game remembers is written to your device's own local app storage and stays there. That is:
- settings — sound, haptics, the ember palette you picked, and whether you asked for reduced motion;
- lifetime statistics — boards cleared, boards burned out, clears exactly at par, moves spent, cells burned, pieces freed, seams completed;
- your daily results, keyed by calendar date — the day's number, whether you cleared it, moves used, par, stars, and the scar map that day's share card draws — and the streak they add up to;
- campaign progress: your best star rating for each level, and which ember palettes you have unlocked with coins;
- your coin balance, and the running total you have earned;
- the two boards you are part-way through, saved in separate slots — one for the campaign, one for today's Daily — so opening one can never discard the other, and so a board survives the app being closed or killed;
- a local flag recording which purchases you own, together with the expiry time of any ad-free window you bought with coins.
None of it is uploaded, backed up to us, or synced between your devices — we have nowhere to sync it to. Deleting the app deletes all of it; see Deleting your data.
The game runs on your device
Every board Emberseam ships — the whole 150-level campaign and three years of daily puzzles — is generated, solved and proved before release and bundled inside the app as data. Nothing is handed out by a server, and the app does not phone home to find out what today's board is: the Daily is keyed to the calendar date, which is exactly why every player worldwide gets the identical board. Your moves, your times and your results are never sent anywhere. Apart from loading ads, Emberseam is fully playable offline.
Permissions
Emberseam itself requests none. No camera, no microphone, no
location, no contacts, no photo library, no notifications. Neither the
Android manifest nor the iOS Info.plist declares a single
permission or usage description of its own. The entries that do appear in
the built app belong to the software development kits it bundles:
ordinary network access for loading ads, the advertising-identifier and
ad-services entries that come with Google's ad SDK, and Google Play
Billing for purchases. None of those are runtime permissions — none of
them shows you a prompt, and none of them reaches anything on the list
above.
Advertising
Emberseam is free, and ads are what pay for it. They are served by Google AdMob. There are two kinds:
- Interstitials between cleared campaign levels — never during play. Your first five cleared boards are ad-free entirely; after that an interstitial can appear at most on every third clear, never less than 90 seconds after the last one, and no more than four times in a session. It is never shown after a board you lost, and never after the Daily.
- Optional rewarded ads — a revive that hands back three moves on a burnt-out board, and a free tool when you are short of coins. Both are offered, never imposed; skipping one costs you nothing but the boost.
We hand Google nothing about you, because we have nothing to hand over. But an ad network is still a network. To select, deliver, measure and cap ads, Google's SDK receives information from your device directly — typically device model and operating system, language, coarse location derived from your IP address, your device's resettable advertising identifier, and which ads were shown and interacted with. Depending on your device settings and your region, that information may be used to personalize the ads you see. Google's handling of it is governed by the Google Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services. What comes back to us is an aggregate dashboard — impressions and revenue — never anything about an individual player.
Where consent is legally required first — the EEA, the UK and Switzerland — Emberseam asks before any of that happens. On first launch, before the ad SDK is even started, the app presents Google's consent form through the industry-standard UMP framework and honours what you choose. Decline personalization and the ads still appear, because they are what pay for the game, but they are selected without using your data to profile you. You are not stuck with your first answer: wherever that consent is required an Ad privacy choices row appears in the app's Settings screen and reopens the same form whenever you want. Outside those regions the row is deliberately absent rather than present-but-dead — a control that opens nothing is worse than no control at all.
Purchases
Emberseam offers four things you can buy: a one-time Remove Ads purchase that ends the between-level interstitials, and three consumable coin packs for players who would rather buy tools than earn them. Coins are also earned by ordinary play, and the tools, the 24-hour ad-free window and every ember palette are priced in coins, not money — nothing in the game is behind a paywall, and no purchase makes a board solvable that wasn't. There is no subscription. Purchases are processed entirely by the store you downloaded the app from — Apple's App Store on iOS, or Google Play Billing on Android. We do not receive or store your payment details, card information, or billing address. On iOS, payment handling is governed by the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions and the Apple Privacy Policy; on Android, by the Google Play Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy. The app stores only a local flag for what you own, and "Restore purchases" asks the store, not us.
Sharing a daily result
The share button hands a short block of text — the day's puzzle number, your moves against par, your streak, and the scar map drawn in coloured squares — to your device's ordinary share sheet. You choose where it goes. It does not pass through us, and we never see it.
Data sharing
We do not sell, rent, or trade your data, and we have none to share. The only third parties in the picture are Google, whose AdMob network serves the ads described above, and Apple and Google as the stores that distribute the app and process payments.
Children's privacy
Emberseam is an abstract puzzle game. It has no chat, no accounts, no user-generated content, and no way for one player to reach another; the content is suitable for all ages. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included. The part worth a parent's attention is advertising: ads come from Google's network, which receives the device information and advertising identifier described above and may use it to personalize what is shown. Ad personalization can be limited in your device settings, and the Remove Ads purchase removes the between-level ads entirely — the rewarded revive and free-tool ads remain, and remain opt-in.
Your choices
- On iOS, limit ad personalization in Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising, and stop apps from asking to track you in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
- On Android, reset or delete your advertising ID in Settings → Privacy → Ads.
- Buy Remove Ads to end the between-level interstitials for good, or spend coins on a 24-hour quiet window.
- Decline the rewarded ads. They are never required — a revive you don't take just ends the attempt, and every board can be replayed.
- Play with the network off. The game works; the ads simply do not load.
- Delete the app, which removes everything it stored.
Deleting your data
Every piece of Emberseam data lives on your device, so you delete it yourself and it is gone. There is no account for us to close, no copy on a server, and no request to file with us. To erase it:
- 1. Android — open Settings → Apps → Emberseam → Storage and tap Clear storage. Every level of progress, statistic, daily result, coin, setting and saved board is erased; the app stays installed.
- 2. Android — or touch and hold the Emberseam icon and choose Uninstall. The app and all of its data go together.
- 3. iOS — touch and hold the Emberseam icon, tap Remove App, then Delete App. This removes the app along with everything it stored. (Choosing Offload App instead deliberately keeps the data.)
- 4. Either platform — that is the entire procedure. Nothing about you exists off the device, so there is nothing left to request, revoke, or wait on.
Purchases are the one exception, and they are not ours to delete: the record of what you bought is held by Apple or Google. Deleting the app does not cancel a purchase, and reinstalling and tapping "Restore purchases" brings Remove Ads back. Coin packs are consumable — the coins were spent into a wallet that lived on the deleted device, so they do not come back.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date above.
Contact
Questions about this policy can be sent to info@machinautstudios.com.