Gold Rush! Down the Line — Privacy Policy

The short version: Gold Rush! Down the Line is a single-player game that lives on your device. Your progress, stars, achievements, Field Notes, equipment, settings and any run you paused to resume later are stored on your device only. There is no Gold Rush! account, no sign-in, no analytics and no crash reporting. Three things use the network: the station leaderboards (every clear is sent to our server to verify it, under a random name that you can hide from the boards), the app store’s own purchase system if you buy a line pack, and one optional video ad that you have to choose to watch. What can leave your device is described in full below.

What stays on your device

Everything the game remembers lives in the app’s private storage on your phone, which other apps cannot read. Nothing about your progress is uploaded, synced or backed up anywhere; the only thing our server ever holds is the leaderboard entries described below. Deleting the app deletes everything on the device.

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 — Gold Rush! neither adds to it nor reads from it.

Station leaderboards

Each station has a leaderboard of the fastest clears. Your device makes up a random two-word name for you, such as Lucky Otter, from a fixed, family-friendly word list; you never type or choose a name; the game assigns it the first time it is needed and it cannot be changed. Your device also makes a random, meaningless key that lets our server keep exactly one best time per station for you and keep them under that name. The key is never shown and is stored on our server only in scrambled (hashed) form.

When you clear a station (bank enough gold for at least one star and extract), in the campaign or the Daily Mine, the game sends the clear to our leaderboard server: the station (or the date of the Daily Mine), your random name and key, your active play time (paused time, menus and the shop do not count), the number of turns and stars, and the run itself — its random seed, the equipment you brought and the list of moves — so the server can replay the run and check the time is real. Nothing else is sent: no device identifier, no advertising identifier, no location, region or language, no contact details. Our server uses your connection’s IP address only in memory for a minute to limit abuse; it is never stored or logged.

Every clear is sent to our server to verify it. That is how the server checks that the run is genuine and keeps a tally of the gold your verified clears have earned (used to unlock line packs with gold instead of a purchase). You can hide your name from the boards with the Hide me from the boards switch on the leaderboard screen: the clear is still sent and verified, but your name is not listed. A clear made while offline is kept on your device and sent when a connection returns. To have your entries removed, email us the name shown on your leaderboard screen and the stations; we delete them by hand.

Your verified gold and any lines you unlock with it are kept against your player key.

Line purchases

The East–West line is free. The other MRT lines are one-time, non-consumable purchases made through Apple’s App Store or Google Play. Payment is handled entirely by Apple or Google: Gold Rush! never sees your card, billing address or any other payment detail. The game receives only a signed confirmation that a line was bought and remembers it on your device. Restore purchases in Settings asks the store which lines your store account owns and re-enables them; nothing about you is sent to us. Nothing else is sold: no coins, no boosts, no subscription, no randomised rewards.

The optional ad

If a run ends away from base with gold in your pouch, the game offers to salvage part of it in exchange for watching one short video ad. You can always choose Let it go instead. The ad is never shown automatically, never between levels, and nothing in the game requires watching one.

Ads are served by 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. The AdMob software inside the app is only started the first time you tap the salvage option — if you never tap it, it never runs. When it runs, Google receives what any ad request contains: a device or advertising identifier (on Android only), your IP address, coarse technical information about your device (OS version, model, language, approximate region from your network connection), the app’s identifier, your consent choices and engagement data about the ad itself. The game adds nothing.

On iOS, the game never asks permission to track you and never reads the advertising identifier, so Apple’s tracking prompt does not appear; ads there are served without it. On Android, you can reset or opt out of ad personalisation 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 anything above is used for personalised advertising.

What Gold Rush! does not do

• No accounts, sign-in or cloud sync of your progress
• No analytics, tracking of our own, or crash reporting
• No forced, banner or interstitial ads — one opt-in rewarded ad, nothing else
• No subscriptions, consumables, loot boxes or randomised-reward purchases
• No access to your camera, photos, contacts, microphone or location
• No selling of your data — sharing is limited to what is described above, and only when you take the corresponding action
• No chat, no user-generated content, no social features

Permissions

Permission	Why
Internet	Used only for the station leaderboards, the store purchase system and the optional ad. The whole game plays with no connection at all.

Children

Gold Rush! is a general-audience puzzle game, not directed at children, and the ad integration declares that to the ad network. It collects no personal information from anyone. 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 ad formats, or adding any 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 your leaderboard entries: email hearthlightstudio2@gmail.com, or see the support page.