Privacy Policy for Arkade

The short version

Arkade has no account to create, no sign-in, no ads, and no analytics beyond an anonymous count of plays. The only thing that ever leaves your phone with your name on it is what you put on the world's high score board: a three-letter name, a name you may choose to add, and your scores. Your coins and your records stay on your phone and in your own iCloud, where we cannot see them. Here is exactly what the app keeps, what it sends, and how to take any of it back.

What stays with you

Your coins, your purchases, and each machine's own high score table are stored in the app's private storage on your device. Nothing that could be traced to you is sent to us; the anonymous play counts below do include how many coins a sitting spent and had left.

Your name — the three letters you file a score under, and the longer name you can claim on the world board — is kept on the device as well, so the machine remembers you next time.

Your iCloud holds a copy. All of the above is mirrored into your own iCloud through Apple's key-value store, so a new phone or a fresh install picks up where you left off, and a phone and an iPad on one Apple account share one pocket. That copy lives in your Apple account under Apple's terms, not on any server of ours: we cannot read it, and we cannot delete it. A device with no iCloud account simply keeps its local copy.

Your keychain holds two small things: the anonymous player identity described below, and a one-bit mark that your welcome coins were paid. They outlast the app on that phone, and Apple carries them to your other devices through iCloud Keychain.

The world board

Every cabinet has a public top-ten board that anyone using Arkade can see. Each time you set a new personal best on a machine, the app sends that score, the cabinet it was set on, and your three-letter name to our server, which keeps the scores you send under your anonymous identity and shows your highest on each machine. The longer name, if you claim one, is sent when you set it; as you type one, the app asks the server whether it is free, and the drafts are not kept. Other players see only the ten best on each machine; you also see your own line beneath them. That is the whole record. It contains no email address, no real name, no location, and no device identifier.

To make sure only you can rename or replace your own entry, the app creates an anonymous player identity the first time it opens with a connection: a random identifier issued by our database provider, with nothing personal attached to it. It is kept in your iCloud Keychain so the same player follows you to your next phone, and it is not shown to anyone.

If the house gives you coins — a thank-you, or a top-up for a tester — that gift is recorded on our server against the same anonymous identity, with the date it was collected. Your coin balance itself is never kept on our server.

The board is hosted for us by Supabase, Inc. Like any server, theirs also notes the network address and device type of each connection and keeps ordinary short-lived request logs. Their handling of the data on our behalf is covered by their own policy at supabase.com/privacy.

The knock-off notification

If someone takes your place in a top ten, Arkade can tell you — but only if you say yes when it asks for notification permission. Saying yes stores the push token Apple assigns your device alongside your anonymous player identity, and nothing else. When it happens, the server also keeps a note of it — the machine, the letters and score that took your seat, and when you were told — so the bell rings once. Switching TOP TEN ALERTS off on your card tells our server to forget your device straight away; turning notifications off for Arkade in Settings ends it too, and tokens Apple reports as no longer valid are removed.

Counting plays

So we know which machines get played, the app reports that a run happened — which cabinet, how long it lasted, roughly how it scored, whether a coin paid for it, the hour of the day, and the app's build number — and that a sitting began and ended: how many minutes, how many runs, how many coins it spent, and how many were left. These reports carry no player identity, no device identifier, and no token. They cannot be connected to you, and they are not visible through the app.

Purchases

A roll of twenty coins and Own the Arcade — Free Play, in the app — are sold through Apple's App Store. Apple processes the payment; we never see your payment details or the account you bought with. Restore Purchases asks Apple, not us. Your coin balance is kept on your phone and in your iCloud, as described above.

Bluetooth

Arkade asks for Bluetooth for one reason: to show your score on the marquee of an Idessa arcade cabinet when you play beside one, at a convention for instance. It asks only when an arcade controller is plugged in, never at launch. The connection is local, between your phone and that cabinet, and no information is collected or stored through it. If you decline, everything else works the same.

The physical coin

An Idessa coin carries a tag that opens a page on this site with the coin's code in the address. Loading that page tells our website nothing beyond the code and the ordinary details any web request carries. If Arkade is installed, the tap opens the app instead of the page.

Analytics and tracking

The play counts described above are the only analytics Arkade has, and they carry nothing that points at you. Beyond that there is no analytics SDK, no crash reporting, no advertising identifier, no third-party framework that phones home, and nothing that follows you across other apps or websites. Apple may pass us crash reports and aggregate usage figures if you have chosen to share analytics with developers in iOS Settings; those come from Apple, under Apple's policy, and carry no identity.

This website

idessa.io is hosted by Vercel, which keeps the ordinary short-lived server logs any host keeps. The site sets no cookies. It does count visits, with Vercel Web Analytics: for each page view it records the page, where the visit came from, the country and city, and the kind of device, browser and operating system. Visitors are told apart by a hash of the request that is discarded after a day — no cookie, no identifier that follows you between visits or across other sites, and no IP address stored with it. Vercel describes it at vercel.com/docs/analytics/privacy-policy.

If you sign up for updates, the address you give is kept at Resend, our email provider, from the moment you enter it, marked pending; it receives one confirmation link and nothing more until you click it. Unconfirmed addresses stay on file as unsubscribed. Every message tells you how to be removed, and asking ends it.

Children

Arkade is rated for ages four and up. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included. The world board holds three letters and a number, and, if a player chooses to add one, a longer name of their own choosing. The app never asks for a real name, an email address, or a birthday. If a child has put their real name on the board, email us and we will remove it.

Taking it back

Your scores and name on the world board: email us the name on your card, or your three letters and the cabinet, and we will remove the entries.

Notifications: switch TOP TEN ALERTS off on your card, turn notifications off for Arkade in Settings, or ask us to delete your token.

Everything on your phone: delete the app. That clears the app's own storage. The two keychain items above and the copy in your iCloud are yours, not ours: they stay with your Apple account, out of our reach, and a fresh install will read them back.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the date above.

Contact

Questions, or a request to remove something: support@idessa.io