Change Up! — Privacy Policy

The short version: Change Up! is local-first. Your saved games, your Change Token progress, which currencies you have unlocked, and your settings are stored on your device only. There is no Change Up! account, no sign-in, and no analytics. The game is free to play and includes an optional rewarded video ad and one optional one-time purchase — both entirely opt-in, neither required to finish or enjoy the game. What can leave your device is described in full below.

What stays on your device

Every in-progress and completed run, your Change Token balance, and which currencies you have unlocked live in the app’s private storage on your phone, which other apps cannot read. Nothing about your play is uploaded, synced, or backed up to any Change Up! server. Deleting the app deletes all of it; there is no server-side copy.

If you use your operating system’s device backup (Android backup / iCloud device backup), the app’s files may be included. That backup is made and encrypted by your OS under your Google or Apple account settings — Change Up! neither adds to it nor reads from it.

The leaderboard (optional)

Change Up! has an optional online leaderboard. It activates only in builds where a leaderboard server has been configured; some builds ship with it disabled entirely, in which case nothing in this section applies and no network request is ever made.

When the leaderboard is available and you finish a round, you may choose to type a nickname (up to 16 characters, chosen freely — not your real name, not an account) and tap Submit. Only then does the app send:

• the nickname you typed
• your score and how many transactions you completed
• which mode (Classic or Endless) and which currency you played
• an internal random seed used to reproduce and verify the run
• an optional two-letter region code, read from your device’s language/region setting — not GPS or any location service. Change Up! never requests location permission and has no way to read your position.

This is sent over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection to the developer’s own leaderboard server. Nothing is sent unless you type a name and tap Submit. The app checks the nickname against a built-in list of offensive words before sending, entirely on your device. The server limits how often any one connection may submit, which means it sees your network address briefly for that purpose, as every web server does; the address is not stored with your score. Browsing the leaderboard without submitting sends only the mode/currency/region filter you are looking at — no personal data.

Submitted scores are kept indefinitely so the board stays populated. There is no self-service way in the app to delete a past submission, but you can ask (see Contact) and it will be removed by hand.

Rewarded ads (optional)

Change Up! includes an optional rewarded video ad you can choose to watch for a bonus of in-game Change Tokens. It is never shown automatically, never interstitial, and never forced between rounds — it appears only when you tap an explicit “watch an ad” button, and everything it rewards is also earnable for free just by playing.

Showing an ad uses a third-party advertising network. The current integration is Google AdMob, whose handling of the data below is governed by Google’s Privacy Policy and its advertising data disclosures in addition to this page; if the network ever changes, this page and the store listing are updated together — see Changes. Watching an ad can share the following with that network and its advertising partners: a device or advertising identifier, coarse technical information about your device (OS version, model, language, approximate region derived from your network connection), and engagement data about the ad itself. This is governed by that network’s own privacy policy in addition to this one.

On iOS, if the integration requests your advertising identifier for personalized ads, iOS shows Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt before any ad is requested; you can decline, and ads still show — untargeted, without cross-app tracking. On Android, you can reset or opt out of ad personalization for your advertising ID at any time in Google Settings → Ads.

In the EEA and the UK, a consent form appears before the advertising SDK is initialised, and your choice there governs whether any of the above is shared for personalised advertising.

The ad SDK may initialize when the app opens, so an ad is ready sooner if you do choose to watch one, even in a session where you never tap the button. That initialization is normal for ad networks and does not depend on you watching an ad — unlike the leaderboard submission above, which truly sends nothing unless you act.

The optional purchase

Change Up! offers one optional, one-time, non-consumable purchase — Unlock All — for players who would rather unlock every currency instantly instead of earning them through play. Nothing in the game is otherwise paywalled.

Purchases are handled entirely by Apple’s or Google’s payment system. Change Up! never sees or stores your card number, billing address, or any other payment detail — that goes directly to Apple or Google. The app receives only a purchase confirmation (a signed receipt token issued by the store).

To make sure a purchase is genuine before unlocking, the app sends that store-issued token — and nothing else — over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection to the developer’s own server, which asks Apple or Google to confirm it. The token identifies the transaction and the product, not you: it contains no name, email, card or address. It is checked and discarded; the server keeps no record of it beyond a short-lived operational log entry that contains no token. Until that check succeeds the game says “verifying” rather than unlocking; if the server cannot be reached, the store re-presents the purchase on a later launch and the check is retried automatically, with no second charge. Reinstalling? RESTORE PURCHASE on the CURRENCIES screen re-applies it with no second payment.

What Change Up! does not do

• No accounts, sign-in, or cloud sync of your saves or progress
• No analytics, tracking, or crash reporting of our own
• No forced or interstitial ads — ads are opt-in only, and nothing requires watching one
• No subscriptions, consumables, loot boxes, or randomized-reward purchases; the one optional purchase is a fixed, disclosed, one-time price
• No access to your camera, photos, contacts, or precise/GPS location
• No selling of your data — sharing is limited to what is described above, and only when you take the corresponding action

Permissions

Permission	Why
Internet	Used only for the optional leaderboard (submitting or viewing scores), for showing a rewarded ad, and for processing and verifying the optional purchase. Core gameplay, the tutorial, saves, and currencies earned through play all work with no connection at all.

Children

Change Up! is a general-audience arithmetic/arcade game, not directed at children, and the ad integration declares that to the ad network — traffic is not tagged as child-directed, and the app’s store age ratings say the same thing. It collects no personal information from anyone beyond the optional, player-typed leaderboard nickname described above.

Whether the ads you see are personalised depends on your own choice: where a consent form is shown (see Rewarded ads above), declining means ads are served non-personalised. Non-personalised ads still use a device identifier for things like frequency capping, fraud prevention and aggregate reporting — they are not anonymous, they are simply not targeted at you based on a profile.

If a younger player is using the app, we recommend enabling your device’s or app store’s parental controls for ads and purchases.

Changes

If a future version changes any of the above — switching ad networks, adding new ad formats, or adding new networking — this policy will be updated before that version ships, and the app’s store data-safety and App Privacy declarations will be updated in the same release.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request to remove a leaderboard submission: email hearthlightstudio2@gmail.com, or see the support page.