Sylvania — Privacy Policy
Last updated: 23 September 2026 · Applies to Sylvania 1.0.2 and later
The short version: Sylvania is a single-player puzzle game. Your scores, settings and saved game are stored on your device only; your coin balance is also kept by our server under an anonymous id, so purchases survive a reinstall. There is no Sylvania account and no analytics that watches how you play.
What stays on your device
Everything you build up in Sylvania — your best score, the power-ups you have unlocked, your sound and music settings, and the game you have in progress — lives in the app’s private storage on your phone, which other apps cannot read. Deleting the app deletes all of it; there is no server-side copy of your progress. The one exception is your coin balance: so that purchased coins survive a reinstall and a refund can be honoured, the balance is also kept by our server under the anonymous id described below.
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 — Sylvania neither adds to it nor reads from it.
In-app purchases
Coin packs and the daily ration are purchased through Apple’s App Store or Google Play — Sylvania never sees your card or payment details. To confirm a purchase, the store’s purchase receipt/token and an anonymous in-app player identifier are sent to Sylvania’s own server for validation before coins are granted. Those messages contain the store token and the anonymous player id and nothing else — no name, email, contacts, or location. The same anonymous id is used to fetch your purchased-coin balance from that server; the id is a random, opaque string that our server mints the first time the app needs one; it is not linked to your Apple or Google account, your device, or any name. Apple and Google also notify our server when a purchase is refunded or revoked, so the coin balance can be corrected; those notices carry the store’s transaction identifiers, not your identity.
When it starts, and when you open the coin store, the app also asks our server for its current settings (which products exist, whether the store is open, and whether a soundtrack link is available). That request carries no identifier at all.
Advertising
The two optional rewarded videos — “watch for coins” in the coin store, and the offer to continue a finished run — are served by Google AdMob (the Google Mobile Ads SDK). To show ads and prevent ad fraud, Google’s SDK processes device and diagnostic identifiers under Google’s policies. Sylvania does not show an App Tracking Transparency prompt and does not track you across other companies’ apps and websites; where you have not consented, ads are served non-personalized. You only ever see an ad if you choose to tap for one.
Where the law requires consent for personalized ads (for example in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland), Google’s consent form is shown before the first ad, and you can change your choice at any time from Settings → Privacy options in the app. When you finish a rewarded video, Google sends our server a signed confirmation containing your anonymous player id, the ad unit and a transaction id, so the coins can be granted exactly once; it contains nothing else.
What our server keeps
Our server keeps one record per anonymous player id: a ledger of coin grants and spends, the purchases behind them (as a truncated hash of the store’s receipt or token, which cannot be turned back into the receipt), rewarded-video confirmations, and any refunds. The ledger is kept for financial record-keeping and fraud prevention; it contains no name, email, device identifier or location, and it is not shared with or sold to anyone. Request logs are written the same way — the anonymous player id and the outcome, never a receipt, a token or an account identifier. Your network address is used only momentarily, in memory, to limit abusive request rates; it is not stored or logged. There is no analytics or advertising software on our server.
In App Store and Google Play terms
The stores ask developers to describe data collection in fixed categories. For Sylvania they are:
| Category | What | Why | Linked to you? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers | An anonymous player id minted by our server | App functionality (your coin balance) | No — random, opaque, not tied to your account or device |
| Purchases | Your coin-pack and Daily Ration purchase history, as store receipts/tokens (hashed on our side) | App functionality, fraud prevention | No — held only under the anonymous id |
| Advertising data and device identifiers | Collected by Google AdMob when you choose to watch a rewarded video, under Google’s policies | Advertising, ad-fraud prevention | Handled by Google; personalized only with your consent |
| Diagnostics | None collected by Sylvania; the Google Mobile Ads SDK may collect crash and performance data under Google’s policies | — | Handled by Google |
| Everything else — name, email, contacts, location, photos, health, browsing or usage analytics | Not collected | — | — |
Your choices and deleting your data
You can withdraw or change ad consent at any time from Settings → Privacy options, and you can turn off the Daily Ration reminder in your phone’s notification settings. Deleting the app removes everything held on your device. To have the record held under your anonymous id deleted or anonymised, email us at the address below; because the record contains nothing that identifies you, we may need details from your Apple or Google purchase receipt to find it. We will remove what we hold about that id, keeping only the minimal purchase records the law requires us to retain, which cannot identify you.
Notifications
If you buy the Daily Ration, the app can show one quiet reminder in the evening on days when ration coins are waiting to be collected. The reminder is scheduled and shown by your device: there is no push service, no notification token, and nothing about it leaves your phone. The app asks for notification permission once, right after the ration is bought (never at launch), and you can withdraw it at any time in your phone’s settings. Players who never buy the ration are never asked.
Ratings and reviews
After some runs the app may show your platform’s own rating sheet (Apple’s or Google Play’s). That sheet is provided and handled entirely by the platform; Sylvania only remembers, on your device, that it has asked, so it does not ask again for a long time. The main menu’s “A Kind Word” button opens the store’s review page in the store app. Neither sends anything to us.
Links that leave the app
Three things open outside Sylvania, and only when you tap them: the privacy policy link in Settings, the store review page described above, and — when you turn on Continue music in background — a one-time offer to listen to a longer version of the soundtrack on YouTube. Choosing “Listen on YouTube” opens YouTube in your browser or the YouTube app, where YouTube’s own privacy policy applies. Sylvania sends nothing to YouTube; it only asks our server whether such a link exists, and that request carries no identifier. Choosing “Not now” does nothing at all.
Permissions
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Internet | Used only by the in-app purchase validation, the optional rewarded videos, and the settings request described above. The game itself plays fully offline. |
| Notifications | Asked only after a Daily Ration purchase, for the local reminder described above. |
| Background audio | Only if you turn on “Continue music in background” in Settings (off by default), so the soundtrack can keep playing while another app is in front. It plays sound and nothing else; it does not record, listen, or transmit. |
Sylvania requests no camera, photos, microphone, location, contacts, or device-storage permissions.
What Sylvania does not do
- No account, sign-in, or cloud sync of your progress (only the coin balance is held by our server, under the anonymous id)
- No analytics or behavioural tracking of how you play
- No push notifications and no messages from us; the one reminder is local and only for Daily Ration owners
- No App Tracking Transparency prompt; no cross-app/website tracking
- No selling of your data — Sylvania has nothing of yours to sell
- No access to contacts, location, microphone, camera, or photos
Children
Sylvania is a general-audience puzzle game. It collects no personal information from anyone, including children. Ads are non-personalized absent consent, as described above.
Changes
If a future version changes any of the above, this policy will be updated before that version ships.
Contact
Questions about this policy: contact the developer at hearthlightstudio2@gmail.com, or see the support page.