Privacy policy

In short: Castaway Lighthouse doesn't collect personal data. Your island is saved on your device. The game sends us a handful of anonymous counts, such as "a newcomer moved in today", with no way to tell who sent them. There are no ads, no accounts and no tracking.

Who we are

Castaway Lighthouse is made by mclabs ("we", "us"), an independent developer. If you have a question about this policy, write to support@mclabs.xyz.

What stays on your device

• Your island: your castaways, buildings, stores, story progress and settings. It's saved on your device and never sent to us. If you use iCloud Backup, it's included in that backup, which we can't see.
• The time of day: the island's evenings follow your phone's clock, and the game uses the time you were away to let your castaways carry on for a while. The clock is read on the device and never sent anywhere.

Deleting the app deletes your island.

Anonymous counts

To see whether the game is working for people, for example how many players welcome their first newcomer and come back the next day, Castaway Lighthouse sends our server a few anonymous counts. Each one is sent at most once per install:

• the game was installed,
• the first newcomer moved in,
• the free part of the story ended (the "Chapter 2 complete" card was shown),
• the unlock offer was shown,
• the unlock was bought,
• the game was opened on the day it was installed, the next day, or a week later.

Each message contains only the game's name, what happened, the game version and the date (the day, not the time). It contains no identifier of you, your device or your install, and no advertising ID. Our server, events.mclabs.xyz, runs on Cloudflare. It adds one to a total for that day and stores nothing else: it doesn't keep IP addresses, and request logging is turned off. Cloudflare handles the connection to deliver the message, as any network provider does. We see only totals, such as "40 first newcomers on 3 November", so we can't tell which player sent what.

The counts are never used for advertising or to track you across apps or websites, and they're never sold or shared. If your device is offline, they wait on the device and are sent later.

Purchases

Castaway Lighthouse has one optional in-app purchase, "The whole island", which unlocks the rest of the story. Purchases and restores are handled by Apple under its own privacy policy. The game uses Unity IAP, a software library from Unity Technologies, to talk to the App Store on your device. We get confirmation that the unlock was bought, and the price to show you. We never see your name, Apple ID or payment details.

Ratings

Once, after your village first gathers to celebrate, the game may show Apple's own rating prompt. Apple handles it; we don't see who rated or what they chose.

What we don't do

• No account or sign-in.
• No advertising, no advertising identifier, and no tracking.
• No third-party analytics or crash-reporting services.
• No location, contacts, photos, camera or microphone access.
• We don't sell or share personal data, because we don't collect any.

Children

Castaway Lighthouse is suitable for all ages. It collects no personal data from anyone, children included. Parents can turn off in-app purchases with Screen Time (Content & Privacy Restrictions → iTunes & App Store Purchases).

If you contact us

If you email us, we'll use your email address and whatever you write only to reply and help. We delete the conversation once it's no longer needed, and we never add you to a mailing list.

Your rights

Wherever you live (including under the GDPR, the UK GDPR and California law), you can ask us what personal data we hold about you, and to correct or delete it. Apart from any emails you've sent us, we hold none: the counts above can't be connected to you. Write to support@mclabs.xyz. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

This website

This site sets no cookies and loads nothing from third parties, and its fonts are served from the site itself. It's hosted on GitHub Pages. GitHub keeps visitors' IP addresses in its logs for security, under the GitHub privacy statement.

Changes

If what the game sends ever changes, we'll update this page and the App Store privacy details before that version is released. The date at the top always shows the latest version.