Privacy Policy

Information Collection and Use

The Application does not ask you for your email address, your name, a password, or any other contact details. It signs you in anonymously with a random player ID, and linking Google Play Games is optional.

Information connected to the Application is handled in the following ways:

• Your progress, settings, daily rewards, and quests are stored on your device. See "On Your Device" below.
• Firebase Authentication creates an anonymous player account with a random player ID. See "Player Account" below.
• Your leaderboard entries and your cloud save are stored with Google Firebase under that player ID. See "Leaderboards and Cloud Save" below.
• If you play the Arena or join a guild, your Arena profile, your castle setup, your raid records, and your guild membership are stored with Google Firebase under that player ID. See "Arena and Guilds" below.
• Google processes device and advertising information when ads are requested or shown. See "Advertising" below.
• Google Play processes the purchases you make. See "In-App Purchases" below.
• Gameplay events may be sent to Google Analytics for Firebase to improve the game. See "Gameplay Statistics" below.
• If you turn on reminders, they are scheduled on your device. See "Reminders" below.
• If you email the Service Provider, your email address and the contents of your message are used to answer you.

The Application requests only these Android permissions:

• Internet and network state, so it can sign you in, run the leaderboards and cloud save, load ads, process purchases, and send gameplay statistics.
• Advertising ID, so Google's ads SDK can use your device's advertising ID where you allow it.
• Vibration, for optional haptic feedback, which you can turn off in Settings.
• Notifications, only for the optional reminders. On Android 13 and later, Android asks you first, and nothing is shown unless you turn reminders on.

The Application does not request access to your location, camera, microphone, contacts, photos, or files, and it shows no notifications unless you turn on reminders.

Player Account

The Application uses Firebase Authentication's anonymous sign-in. It creates a player account identified only by a random player ID. No email address, name, or password is attached to it. This player ID is what your leaderboard entries and your cloud save are stored under, and the security rules only let you change your own data.

Where available, you can also choose to link Google Play Games to the same player account, so you can keep your progress when you move to a new device. Play Games gives the Application a one-time sign-in code and your Play Games name, and Firebase Authentication uses the code to confirm who you are. Firebase Authentication then keeps your Play Games player ID and name with your player account so that you can sign in again. These are never shown on the leaderboards, and the Application never receives your email address or your Google password. Linking is optional: if you don't link, the Application keeps working with the anonymous account.

Leaderboards and Cloud Save

The Application has a trophy leaderboard for the Arena, a guild leaderboard, and leaderboards for its weekly events. Each player entry is stored in Cloud Firestore and holds:

• Your display name, which you pick from a list of kid-friendly preset names or type as a short custom name that is checked by a word filter.
• The avatar you picked from the game's set of avatars.
• Your score: your Arena trophies and league, your best level cleared, or your best score in a weekly event.
• Which board the entry belongs to: the trophy board, a past season's board, or the weekly event and week it is for.
• The time the entry was last updated.

Leaderboard entries are public: anyone using the Application can see your display name, avatar, and scores. They are stored under your player ID, which other players do not see.

The Application also keeps a cloud save of your game progress in Cloud Firestore, under your player ID. Your cloud save is private: the security rules only let your own player account read or change it, and it is used only to restore your progress.

To run the leaderboards and cloud save and to prevent abuse, Firebase also processes your IP address and technical details about the Application when it signs in, sends scores or your save, or loads a leaderboard. Connections are encrypted. To delete your leaderboard entries, your cloud save, and your player account, see "Your Rights and Data Deletion" below.

Arena and Guilds

The Arena lets you raid copies of other players' castles for trophies. Nothing is taken from the player whose castle you raid. To run it, the following is stored in Cloud Firestore under your player ID:

• Your public Arena profile: your display name, avatar, trophies, league, best trophies, level, castle strength, guild, and when you last played. Other players see it in the Arena, on the leaderboards, and in guilds.
• Your castle setup: your troop, hero, and castle levels, so other players can raid a copy of your castle. It contains game data only.
• Your Arena state: raid tickets, recent opponents, rewards waiting for you, and your defense log of raids on your castle.
• Raid records: both castle setups, the battle's random seed, the time of each tap you made during the raid, and the result. Google Cloud Functions replays each raid with the game's own battle code to check the result and prevent cheating. Raid records are deleted automatically after 30 days.

Guilds are groups of up to 30 players. A guild has a name that is checked by a word filter, a preset badge and tags, and a member list with each member's display name, avatar, trophies, and role. Guild members talk only through preset quick messages chosen from a fixed list, and the guild feed shows these messages and automatic lines such as joins and raid wins. There is no free-text chat. Guild data is visible to other players, and the feed is kept only as a short recent history.

All changes to Arena and guild data go through Google Cloud Functions, which check the rules of the game. To delete your Arena profile, castle setup, Arena state, defense log, and trophy leaderboard entry, see "Your Rights and Data Deletion" below.

Advertising

The Application is free to play and has no forced ads. It only shows rewarded videos through Google AdMob, and only when you tap to watch one for an in-game bonus.

When ads are requested or shown, the Google Mobile Ads SDK may collect and process information such as:

• Your device's advertising ID.
• Your IP address, which can indicate your approximate location.
• Device and operating system details, such as model, language, and screen size.
• Information about the Application and about how you interact with ads, such as views and taps.
• Diagnostic information, such as ad loading errors and performance data.

Google uses this information to deliver and measure ads, limit how often the same ad appears, and detect fraud and abuse. Where you allow it, Google also uses it to show personalised ads. If you don't give consent, the ads you choose to watch are non-personalised. Google acts under its own privacy policy, linked in "Third Party Access" below.

Your Ad Choices

Where the law requires it, for example in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, the Application uses Google's User Messaging Platform to ask for your consent before ads are requested. The same platform offers the privacy choices required by US state privacy laws, such as opting out of the sale or sharing of personal information. When those privacy options apply to you, you can review or change your choice at any time in the Application's Settings. You can also clear the Application's data in your Android settings to see the consent form again.

You can also reset or delete your advertising ID, or opt out of personalised ads, in your Android device settings. You can manage how Google personalises ads in My Ad Center.

In-App Purchases

The Application offers optional in-app purchases with fixed, listed contents, such as Remove Ads or a Starter Pack. It does not sell random items: you always know exactly what you get before you buy. Purchases are processed by Google Play Billing. Google handles your payment details, and the Service Provider never receives your card or billing information.

To deliver a purchase, and to restore it after reinstalling or on a new device, the Application receives confirmation details from Google Play. These include the product purchased, a purchase token, and an order ID. The Service Provider does not store your payment details.

Gameplay Statistics

The Application may send gameplay events to Google Analytics for Firebase so the Service Provider can improve the game, for example by finding where the tutorial is unclear or where levels are too hard. These events describe how the game is played, such as tutorial steps completed and level progress. Firebase links these events to a random app instance ID, not to your name, email address, or Google account, and the Application does not use them for advertising.

Optional Reminders

Reminders are off unless you turn them on, and you can turn them off at any time in Settings. They are local notifications: your device schedules them, and no information is sent to the Service Provider or to any server for this.

Data On Your Device

The Application saves the following in its private storage on your device:

• Your game progress, such as your level, castle, troops, heroes, upgrades, and rewards.
• Your daily rewards, quests, and weekly event progress.
• Your settings, such as volume, vibration, and your reminders choice.
• Your anonymous sign-in session and your leaderboard display name and avatar.

Apart from the cloud save and leaderboard entries described above, this data is not sent to the Service Provider. It is deleted when you clear the Application's data or uninstall it.

Legal Bases

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, information is processed on these legal bases:

• Your consent, for personalised advertising and for storing or accessing information on your device for advertising where consent is required.
• Legitimate interests in keeping the Application free, measuring ads, and preventing fraud, for non-personalised advertising.
• Performance of a contract, for your player account, leaderboards, cloud save, the Arena and guilds, and the purchases you make.
• Legitimate interests in fair play, for replaying Arena raids to prevent cheating.
• Legitimate interests in improving the game, for gameplay statistics.
• Legitimate interests in helping you, for answering messages you send.

Your Rights and Data Deletion

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access, correct, or delete your personal data.
• Restrict or object to how it is used.
• Receive a copy of your data.
• Withdraw consent at any time.
• Complain to your local data protection authority.

Apart from your anonymous player account, the Service Provider does not keep an account or a profile for you. To delete your data:

• Data on your device: clear the Application's data in your Android settings, or uninstall the Application.
• Leaderboard entries, cloud save, Arena and guild data, and player account: email contact@zipistudios.com with the subject "Delete my Moatmates data" and your display name. The Service Provider deletes your leaderboard entries, your cloud save, your Arena profile, castle setup and defense log, removes you from your guild, and deletes your Firebase player account. Raid records are deleted automatically after 30 days.
• Gameplay statistics: email contact@zipistudios.com with the subject "Delete my Moatmates data" to have events already sent deleted. Google Analytics keeps statistics events for at most 14 months.
• Advertising data: reset or delete your advertising ID in your Android settings. Google keeps ad data under its own policies.
• Purchase records: Google Play keeps your order history in your Google account under Google's own policies.

For anything else, including help with information Google processes, contact the Service Provider at contact@zipistudios.com.

Your California Privacy Rights (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have these rights:

• To know what personal information is collected.
• To delete or correct it.
• To opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information.
• Not to be discriminated against for using these rights.

The Service Provider does not sell personal information for money. Information collected by the ad SDK for personalised advertising may count as "sharing" under California law. You can opt out with the privacy choices in the Application's Settings, by turning off ad personalisation or deleting your advertising ID in your device settings, or by contacting contact@zipistudios.com.

Third Party Access

The Application relies on third-party services that handle data under their own privacy policies:

• Google Privacy Policy, which covers Google AdMob, Google's User Messaging Platform, Google Play Billing, and Google Play Games services.
• Firebase Privacy and Security, which covers Firebase Authentication, Cloud Firestore, and Cloud Functions, used for your player account, the leaderboards, the cloud save, the Arena, and guilds, and Google Analytics for Firebase, used for gameplay statistics.
• How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
• Godot Engine, the engine the Application is built with. It does not send data on its own.

The Service Provider may disclose information it holds, such as support emails:

• As required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena, or similar legal process.
• When it believes in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect its rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request.
• With trusted service providers who work on its behalf, do not have an independent use of the information, and have agreed to follow this privacy policy.

International Data Transfers

Leaderboard entries, cloud saves, and Arena and guild data are stored in Cloud Firestore in the United States (Google Cloud region us-central1), and Arena raids are checked by Google Cloud Functions in the same region. Google, including Firebase Authentication, Google Analytics for Firebase, and Google Play Games services, may also process information in countries other than your own, including the United States. Where the law requires safeguards for these transfers, they rely on recognised mechanisms. These include adequacy decisions and Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission. Data protection laws in other countries may differ from those where you live.

Opt-Out Rights

You can turn off reminders at any time in Settings, change your ad privacy choices, and decide whether to watch ads at all. You can stop the Application from processing information by uninstalling it. Uninstalling removes the data stored on your device, but it does not delete your leaderboard entries, your cloud save, your player account, or information Google has already received for ads, purchases, and statistics. See "Your Rights and Data Deletion" above for how to delete it.

Data Retention Policy

• Data on your device: kept until you clear the Application's data or uninstall it.
• Player account, leaderboard entries, cloud save, Arena profile, castle setup, and guild membership: kept until you ask for them to be deleted, or until the Service Provider removes old weekly event or season boards or ends the online features.
• Arena raid records: deleted automatically 30 days after the raid.
• Gameplay statistics: kept by Google Analytics for at most 14 months, then deleted automatically.
• Support emails: kept for as long as needed to help you, and for no more than 24 months after the conversation ends, unless the law requires longer.
• Advertising and purchase information held by Google: kept according to Google's own retention policies.

Children

The Application is not directed at children under 13 and is not part of Google Play's Families program. The Service Provider does not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you are below the age at which you can consent to data processing in your country, please use the Application only with a parent or guardian's permission.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has sent the Service Provider personal information, please contact contact@zipistudios.com. It will be deleted.

Security

Data saved by the Application stays in its private storage, which Android's app sandbox protects from other apps. Google's SDKs use encrypted connections to communicate with Google's services. The Cloud Firestore security rules only let a player change their own event leaderboard entries and read or change their own cloud save, and all Arena and guild changes go through the server. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, but the Service Provider keeps the information it handles to a minimum.

Data Breach Notification

If a data breach occurs that affects your personal data, the Service Provider will notify you as the law requires. Where required, that notice will explain what happened and what is being done about it.

Changes

This privacy policy may be updated from time to time, for example when the Application's features or services change. Updates are posted on this page with a new "Last updated" date. Where the law requires it, the Service Provider will ask for your consent to material changes before they take effect.

This privacy policy is effective as of 2026-10-31.

Your Consent

Where processing is based on consent, you give it through the ad consent form, and you can change it in Settings at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing that happened before you withdrew it.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about privacy while using the Application, or about these practices, please contact ZiPiStudios at contact@zipistudios.com.