1. Who we are
Rikuto Yasuda is responsible for the information practices of MicroField. This policy describes the current version for Japan and the United States. Send questions, privacy requests or complaints to ricton513@gmail.com. Our address and other legally required operator information are available without undue delay on request.
Guests have a shared-play identifier. Guest play is not a guarantee of anonymity: names, places and timing can be combined to infer a player’s usual area.
2. Information on your device
Your device stores organism names, appearance, seeds and IDs; resources and evolution; infection, immunity and research; place names, locations and visit times; in-game walking distance; blocks and pending operations. These support gameplay, recovery from local records and prevention of duplicate rewards.
The device also stores the version and time of terms acceptance, the age band you declare, confirmation of required guardian consent and privacy choices. We do not ask for your date of birth or identity documents during ordinary game setup. We also store your acknowledgement of the advertising notice and whether you enabled ads. If you choose ads or explicitly check Google advertising settings, Google’s consent-management tools also store the applicable privacy-choice state on your device.
3. Location and motion choices
With location permission, we use location to find nearby places, validate local placement and encounters, and measure walking. Normally collection occurs while using the field screen. A walk you explicitly start can continue in the background, subject to a one-hour limit and operating-system interruptions. We do not request Always location permission.
Optional Core Motion integration converts available step and estimated-distance history, up to seven days, into game resources on your device. Raw step counts are not uploaded. Daily distance reconciliation keeps up to eight days of entries locally, pruning older entries at the next reconciliation. We do not use HealthKit, Apple Watch health records or Bluetooth proximity exchanges.
Apple processes map-area and place-search requests under its own privacy terms. Change location and motion permissions in iPhone Settings, and sharing or walking integration in the app. Declining limits the relevant location features, while features such as demo mode remain available.
4. When you choose shared play
When you opt into shared encounters, we send approximately 110-meter location cells and times, organism IDs, public names, appearance and traits, your chosen researcher name and carriage/relay information to our game backend on Supabase. This distributes organisms to nearby or encountered players. Public names and placements may reveal areas you visited.
Regional reach sharing is a separate option. Only opted-in placements contribute to regions of approximately 0.1 degrees. Regions are shown to the organism’s owner only after conditions including at least three source profiles other than the owner and a delay of at least six hours are met. Profiles are not verified individual people. The regional display omits fine routes and source-player IDs.
Disabling shared play stops new uploads and discards pending placements. Disabling regional sharing withdraws previous regional visibility markers after server confirmation. Pending removal is shown and retried if a connection fails. We cannot fully retrieve material already displayed to other players or copies such as screenshots.
5. Guest play and game records
The initial release does not offer Apple linking, cloud saves or restoration on another device. This app does not collect Apple sign-in identifiers, tokens or authorization codes. Game progress and walking distance are saved on your device and may be unrecoverable after device failure or app removal.
When you join shared play, a shared-play credential is stored in your device Keychain and its hash on the server. Information needed for sharing is sent as described in section 4, but your complete local save and walking distances are not uploaded as a cloud backup. We do not collect a hardware-specific device ID.
6. Requests, moderation and support
Service infrastructure processes IP addresses, request times and technical errors during network requests. Our game-specific rate limiter uses an IP-derived hash that changes daily to limit abuse.
Reports contain the target organism, a reason, the reporting profile and handling status; blocks identify the target organism. These support moderation and preventing further encounters. We do not disclose the reporter’s identifier to the reported player.
Support uses the email address, message and attachments you submit to respond, verify relevant ownership, investigate problems and protect rights. Do not send unnecessary location data, passwords, authentication tokens or health information.
7. Providers, processing locations and safeguards
Supabase provides game storage, authentication, shared-play processing and delivery of public legal documents. The primary game database is in Tokyo, Japan (ap-northeast-1). This does not mean all cloud operations, support, subprocessors, Apple processing or email processing remain in Japan. Apple receives information needed for maps. Support email is processed through Google Gmail. When you use advertising privacy settings or, in a future enabled version, ads, Google AdMob and UMP process information for ad delivery and privacy choices, potentially in the United States and other countries. Third-party sites or apps opened by tapping an ad have their own terms and privacy policies.
We select and manage processors for the stated purposes and apply legally required safeguards and disclosures for international processing. Contact us for details of processors and safeguards. Except for applicable legal exceptions, such as lawful requirements or necessary protection of life or physical safety when consent is impracticable, we do not disclose information beyond the described purposes without consent.
Safeguards include encrypted transport, owner authentication, restricted access and hashing of shared credentials. No system offers an unconditional security guarantee. If an incident occurs, we will investigate, contain it and provide legally required notifications.
8. Retention
Local game records remain until in-app or device-side removal. Consent receipts and age bands are kept separately from ordinary game-data deletion to remember acceptance and prevent bypassing an age restriction, and remain until the app is deleted from the device.
Server placements remain active for 24 hours, carriage for 12–24 hours and historical encounter matching for up to 48 hours. Expired records are excluded from game processing and cleaned periodically. These periods differ from natural game decay or copies already stored on other players’ devices.
Unlinked shared profiles are scheduled for deletion after 90 days without contact. Cumulative relay records remain until organism deletion; reports are scheduled for deletion after 90 days. Anti-replay and deletion-confirmation identifiers are cleaned on a 48-hour basis.
Support records are kept while a matter is open and as needed for follow-up, normally reviewed for removal within one year after resolution. Legal retention duties or actual disputes may require limited additional retention. Infrastructure logs and backups follow provider contracts and configured retention; deletion may not remove every backup copy immediately.
9. Advertising and privacy choices
This version bundles Google AdMob and the User Messaging Platform (UMP). Live ads are disabled in the initial release. Enabling delivery requires an updated app version after configuration and required review are complete. Where available, ads are only for users who declare they are 18 or older and separately acknowledge the advertising data notice and choose ads. Before terms acceptance or for declared under-18 users, the app does not initiate Mobile Ads SDK initialization, ad requests or UMP consent-update requests. While ads are off, the app does not initialize Mobile Ads or request ads. An adult who has accepted the terms may explicitly check Google advertising settings; that action contacts UMP to refresh privacy-choice information and show an applicable form even while ads remain off. It does not enable advertising.
In a future version with ad delivery enabled, if you choose ads, we first contact Google to update privacy-choice information and present any required forms. That check itself requires a network request, including information such as your IP address and app information. We start the ad SDK only after that session’s update and any required form processing succeed and confirm ads can be requested. If the check fails, ads stay off and you may retry. A record of terms acceptance alone does not start advertising.
When serving ads, Google may process your IP address and approximate region inferred from it; device, OS and app information; app- or developer-scoped device identifiers; ad impressions, clicks and other interactions; and crash or performance diagnostics. Uses include ad selection and delivery, measurement, fraud prevention, troubleshooting and service improvement. Actual data varies by SDK features, device, region and choices.
We request non-personalized ads and restricted data processing (RDP), and disable Google’s publisher first-party ID feature. We do not ask for ATT tracking permission or permission to use the IDFA. We do not supply game GPS locations, visit history, steps, walking distances, health-related records, organism or researcher names, or game IDs in ad requests. This does not mean advertising requests process no IP addresses or other identifiers.
Turning ads off in Settings removes the banner and stops new ad requests. It does not immediately erase requests already in progress or records lawfully retained by providers. Where required, advertising privacy options in Settings reopen Google’s choice form. Core gameplay remains available without ads, and turning ads off is free.
Google handles advertising information under its advertising and privacy notices and applicable contracts. Retention varies by information, purpose, fraud prevention and legal needs; the game’s 24-hour placement expiry does not apply. Consult Google’s explanations (https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads and https://policies.google.com/technologies/retention) and in-app privacy choices. You may send requests to the contact in this policy.
We do not bundle Firebase Analytics or mediation SDKs for other advertising networks. The public legal documents set no advertising or analytics cookies.
The public-document delivery infrastructure may use Cloudflare’s security cookie (__cf_bm) and process IP addresses to prevent abusive traffic. This cookie normally expires after 30 minutes of inactivity. It is not used for advertising, and processing may occur in the United States or other countries. The documents bundled in the app can be read without a web request.
10. Your choices and rights
Change your public name under Researcher and Game Records. Delete shared records or all game records in Settings and Privacy. Pausing sharing does not delete existing records. This app does not create or link an Apple Account and has no action to delete your Apple Account.
Email ricton513@gmail.com to request information about purposes, access or a copy, correction, deletion or restriction of use. We verify identity or an authorized agent’s authority only as reasonably needed. Ordinary requests have no fee. Where we must deny or limit a request, we explain as required by law.
Depending on applicable US state law, you may have rights to access or obtain a copy, correct or delete information, opt out of sale, sharing or targeted advertising, limit certain sensitive-data uses, and appeal a refusal. Use the same contact for requests and appeals. We do not unlawfully discriminate for exercising rights. We request non-personalized ads and restricted data processing; Settings lets you turn advertising off and access applicable advertising privacy choices. We do not require identity documents or account creation for opt-out requests where verification is not legally required. We may ask only for information needed to identify the relevant records.
The legal pages do not implement advertising tracking regardless of Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signals. App ad requests specify restricted data processing. We will honor additional choices or signals where required by applicable law.
11. Children
The Service is intended for people 13 and older and is not designed to knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If the age check identifies a user as under 13, game start, location features and sharing do not proceed.
Parents who believe we hold a child’s information should contact us. Following appropriate verification, we will restrict processing or delete information as required by law. Minors aged 13 or older must also have parental or legal-guardian permission. We do not show ads or initiate Google advertising or consent-update requests for users who declare that they are under 18.
For a one-time inquiry from someone we know is under 13, we respond only as legally permitted and promptly delete their contact information after responding. If we do not respond, we do not retain that information. The ordinary support-retention guideline does not apply.
12. Updates and provider notices
We display the last-updated date and version when this policy changes. New uses or material changes will be communicated appropriately, including in the app, with advance consent where required. Material changes to advertising eligibility, data uses or delivery require a separate updated notice.
Provider information: Supabase https://supabase.com/privacy and data processing terms https://supabase.com/legal/dpa ; Apple https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/ ; Google for support email and advertising https://policies.google.com/privacy . These notices do not replace our own responsibilities.
Delivery security cookies: https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/policies-compliances/cloudflare-cookies/ .