Cratergut privacy policy
What Cratergut collects
Cratergut itself asks for nothing. There is no Cratergut account to create and no way to type anything that is sent anywhere. Everything except online play works without signing in to anything at all.
Apple's Game Center is the exception, and it is worth being exact about. Three things use it: the ten achievements, the leaderboard, and online play. iOS may ask you to sign in with the Apple Account your device already has, and Cratergut never sees that account, your email address or your password.
What leaves your device, if you are signed in to Game Center, is your progress towards the ten achievements, and — once you have won one — the number of online series you have won, which is the leaderboard entry. Both go to Apple rather than to us, and both happen during ordinary solo play. An online match adds the opaque player identifier Apple hands the game and the moves of the match itself. There is no chat, and no name, roster or free text is ever sent.
If you are not signed in to Game Center, none of that leaves your device, and everything except online play still works.
Advertising is what keeps it free, and the advertising networks do collect things. In Europe, the United Kingdom and Switzerland none of it happens unless you agree to it first — see Choosing below.
- A device identifier, used to count how often an advert has been shown and to detect fraud. It is not used to choose adverts based on your interests: Cratergut asks Google for non-personalised adverts on every request, everywhere in the world, and there is no setting that changes it.
- Approximate location, worked out from your internet address, at roughly the level of a city or region. Not your precise location.
- How you interact with adverts: that one was shown, and whether it was tapped.
- Diagnostics, such as a record of a crash, to work out what went wrong.
Who collects it
One company: Google, through AdMob. There is no mediation layer and no other advertising network in the game, so Google's privacy policy is the only other one that governs anything here. If that ever changes, this page changes with it before the change ships.
Choosing
Cratergut does not track you, and never asks to. Apple requires an app to ask permission before tracking, and you will never see that request from this game, because there is nothing to ask for — which also means Cratergut will not appear in the iOS Settings app under Privacy & Security → Tracking. That list only holds apps that asked.
In Europe, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Cratergut asks before it shows you a single advert. Until you answer, and for as long as you say no, no advert is requested and nothing about advertising is stored on or read from your device. Saying no costs you nothing: the game is complete and unchanged either way.
There is a mismatch in that form worth being plain about, because it is not ours to fix. The form is Google's, and it describes personalised advertising and content, because it is the standard form the whole industry shares. Cratergut only ever asks Google for non-personalised adverts — on every request, everywhere in the world, with no setting that changes it — so the form is broader than what this game actually does. We cannot reword it.
Between 5 and 25 September 2026 we responded to that by showing no adverts at all in these countries, and we have now reversed it. Switching the adverts off also switched off your say in them, and leaving you no choice at all is worse than offering one whose wording describes more than the game does.
In the American states with their own privacy laws there is no form when the game starts, and that is deliberate rather than missing: those laws are opt-out rather than opt-in, so there is nothing to ask for up front. The control is standing instead, inside the game under Settings → Privacy Options, and that is where you say no to the sale and sharing of personal information. Elsewhere there is no prompt at all.
Wherever the rules that apply to you give a standing right to change your mind, that same Settings → Privacy Options row is where you do it. It appears only while the game is showing you adverts: buying Remove Ads stops the advertising software from ever starting, so the row goes with the adverts it controls. If you gave consent under an earlier version of the game, that row is still there and still withdraws it.
Declining costs you nothing. The game is identical either way.
Buying Remove Ads ends the subject. It stops every advert in the game, the optional watch to unlock one as well as the one after a finished match: from your next launch onwards the advertising software is never started at all, so nothing is asked of Google on your behalf and nothing is sent to them.
Online play
Playing against someone else uses Apple's Game Center. Apple handles finding your opponent and carrying messages between you; what passes between the two devices is which buttons were pressed, and nothing else. Your opponent sees the display name your Game Center account already shows to other players, and nothing you type in the game is ever sent to them.
Children
Cratergut is not directed at children under 13 and is not in the Kids Category. It does not knowingly collect information from children under 13.
Keeping and deleting
Nothing is stored on our own servers, because there are none. Almost everything the game knows about you — your settings, your record, what you have unlocked — lives on your device and goes when you delete the game.
Two things do not, and they are the two Game Center holds: your progress towards the ten achievements, and your leaderboard entry if you have one. Those belong to your Game Center account rather than to the app, so deleting Cratergut does not remove them — install it again and your achievements come back. Apple's Game Center settings are where you manage or remove them, and Apple's privacy policy governs what Apple keeps.
What the advertising networks retain is governed by their own policies, and the links above explain how to ask them about it.