Paleo Planet Simulator (the iOS app, and this companion website) is operated by The Convergence Zone, a one-person studio run by Joe Boomgard-Zagrodnik. This policy describes what data the app and site collect, why, and how to remove it. If anything here is unclear, email joejoezz@gmail.com and ask.
You do not need to sign up, give an email address, or create a password to use the app. On first launch it generates a random device id and a secret, stored only on your device, and registers them with our server to get back an account id. That account id is how your runs, credits, and settings are tied together -- it is not tied to your name, email, or any other identity unless you choose to link one (see below).
If you delete the app or reset your device, that account is not recoverable through the device alone -- linking Sign in with Apple first is the only way to move an account to a new device.
You can optionally link Sign in with Apple to carry purchased credits to a new device. We store only the opaque Apple user identifier Apple gives us for your Apple ID -- not your name or email. Apple lets you share an email with apps that use this feature; we do not currently store it even when Apple offers it, since we have no use for it yet.
Credit packs are bought through Apple's App Store, using Apple's own payment system. We never see or store your card details -- Apple handles all of that. To credit your account and prevent a purchase being redeemed twice, we store the App Store transaction id alongside your account. That's the extent of what we keep about a purchase.
If you turn on notifications (for example, "your planet finished" or "you were knocked off the podium"), the app registers a push token with Apple's push service and we store that token against your account so we know where to send it. You can turn notifications off at any time in the app; the token is removed when you do.
This is a game about comparing planets, so a finished run's results -- its name, its picture, its climate metrics, and its rank on the leaderboards -- are public and visible to anyone in the app's Explore tab and leaderboards, the same way a posted high score is public. The recipe that produced the planet (the sliders you set) stays hidden from other players by design -- working it out from the result is the point -- but the planet itself, once finished, is not private.
We do not attach your device id, account id, or any other identity to what's shown publicly beyond the display name you chose for that run.
No advertising. No tracking of you across other apps or websites. No third-party analytics SDKs collecting behavioural data. We don't sell or rent any data, to anyone, ever. The only outside services this app talks to are Apple's (Sign in with Apple, StoreKit purchases, and push notifications) and our own backend on AWS, which stores exactly what's described on this page.
The app's Settings has a "Delete account" action. Using it:
This is permanent. If you'd rather ask us to do it by hand, or have any other question about your data, email joejoezz@gmail.com.
The app isn't directed at children and doesn't knowingly collect data from anyone who tells us they're under 13. Since accounts are anonymous by default and we never ask for an email or a name, we have very little to knowingly collect in the first place.
If this changes in a way that matters, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, for a material change, say so in the app.