1. Who is responsible?
BackToEarth is operated by Ratman Studio AB, organisation number 559598-8550. We are the controller of the personal information we use to operate the game. Some providers also use information for their own purposes, as explained below.
For support or a privacy request, email backtoearth@ratmanstudio.com or write to Ratman Studio AB, Noras Väg 36C, 145 70 Norsborg, Sweden.
2. The essentials
- Your device stores game progress and preferences. Online features use a game identifier, and linking an account enables cloud backup and recovery.
- Your leaderboard nickname, rank, score and progression information are visible to other players. Choose a nickname, not your real name or contact details.
- Rewarded advertising and optional gameplay reporting have separate privacy controls. You can decline either and continue ordinary gameplay.
- You can request deletion of your game account and data. Uninstalling the game alone does not delete information held by online services.
3. Information used to run the game
Progress and preferences
We use information about your inventory, currencies, equipment, upgrades, missions, stars, tutorials, rewards and purchases to provide the game. Saves include revisions, timestamps and delivery records that help recover progress and prevent duplicate rewards. Your device also stores settings and privacy preferences. We ask for an age range rather than your full date of birth.
Game identity and cloud saves
Unity Authentication provides a game identity, including when you play without linking a named account. The service uses a player identifier and authentication/session information. An identifier-based account is not the same as having no personal information collected.
You can link a Unity Player Account for recoverable sign-in. Unity handles that sign-in; the game receives service-issued identifiers and credentials, not your account password. Unity may collect an email address for its own account service.
Cloud backup requires a linked, recoverable account. Unity Cloud Save stores your player identifier, backup time and game progress, including a previous save copy used for recovery. Recovery depends on a successful backup. Online services also receive connection information such as your IP address.
Public rankings
Qualifying mission wins update your leaderboard record automatically. We use your player identifier, career score, player level, sector and mission to maintain rankings. Other players can see your nickname, rank, score and progression information. Turning off optional reporting does not hide leaderboard entries. Contact us to object to the use of your information for public rankings or to request removal.
Purchases and reward recovery
Apple or Google processes payments through the relevant app store. We use Unity In-App Purchasing and product, order, transaction and delivery information to deliver purchases, recover interrupted transactions and prevent duplicate grants. The game does not ask you to enter payment-card details.
Unity's purchasing service also processes player and installation identifiers, device information, session identifiers and country information. This is separate from optional gameplay reporting. See Unity's purchasing privacy information.
Our reward-recovery service uses Cloudflare Workers and D1 to record verified ad-reward confirmations and delivery status. Records include a pseudonymous player identifier, the relevant save/reward identifiers, the offer and reward, provider event identifiers, timestamps and verification information. This lets us restore earned rewards after interruptions and avoid granting the same reward twice. Service providers also process connection and security information needed to operate the service.
Support and notifications
If you contact us, we receive your email address, message and attachments you choose to provide. Send only information needed for the enquiry, and never send passwords, sign-in tokens or full payment-card details.
With your device's permission, the game can schedule local reminders. These are scheduled on your device, not through a game-operated remote push service. You can turn them off in your device settings.
4. Optional gameplay and error reporting
If you opt in and are eligible, Unity Analytics helps us understand game balance, where players stop or struggle, tutorial completion and reliability problems. Our reports cover selected gameplay events such as mission starts and outcomes, checkpoints, stars, deaths, revives, time spent, tutorial steps and predefined error categories.
Error reports may include the game version, screen and mission, a restricted code-location label and an error fingerprint used to group similar problems. You can choose to share the tester ID shown in the game with support to help us investigate.
Our custom reports do not include complete saves, player nicknames, purchase receipts, passwords, sign-in tokens, free-form exception messages or raw logs. Reporting is not anonymous: Unity also processes Analytics identifiers, session and device information and standard service events.
Use Settings → Optional Reporting to change your choice. Turning reporting off stops future optional reporting; it does not erase reports already sent. Use Request Analytics Deletion in that window to request deletion of the Analytics data associated with that installation's Analytics identity. Contact us about other devices or identities. Request submission and completed deletion are different stages.
This choice does not disable technical processing needed by accounts, cloud saves, purchases, reward delivery or other separately explained services. Technical service information can include device/app versions, identifiers, connection information and security or operational logs.
5. Optional rewarded advertising
You can choose to watch a rewarded ad to receive the benefit shown in the game. BackToEarth uses Unity LevelPlay, including ironSource advertising services, and Google AdMob. Our advertising configuration requests non-personalised ads, rather than ads based on a profile of your interests.
Non-personalised does not mean no data is used. Advertising services can process IP addresses, approximate location derived from an IP address, device and app information, permitted device or advertising identifiers, ad requests and interactions, diagnostics, consent choices and reward-confirmation records. These support ad delivery, frequency controls, measurement, security, fraud prevention and reward delivery. SDKs and device storage are used for these purposes.
The privacy message explains the applicable advertising purposes and participating partners. You can review those choices or turn optional ads off through the game's privacy controls in Settings. Where consent is required, it is requested before the relevant processing. Refusing or withdrawing consent does not prevent ordinary gameplay, although rewarded ads may not be available. Turning ads off does not cancel a reward already earned.
Read how Google uses information from apps using its services and Unity's game-player privacy notice for these providers' processing and choices. The partners shown in the consent message may have their own notices.
6. Why we use information
Where the GDPR applies, we rely on the following bases for our processing:
- Performance of our service agreement: information objectively necessary to provide the services you request, including game-account access, saving and recovering progress, purchase delivery and delivering rewards you earn.
- Legitimate interests: operating fair public rankings, protecting accounts, preventing fraud or duplicate deliveries, resolving service failures and answering ordinary support enquiries. We balance these interests against your rights, use only necessary information and consider objections.
- Consent: optional gameplay reporting and advertising-related processing or device access for which consent is required. You can withdraw consent through the relevant controls without affecting the lawfulness of earlier processing.
- Legal obligations: responding to statutory privacy requests and keeping the specific records required by applicable accounting or other laws.
Information required for an online feature is needed to provide that feature; for example, cloud recovery requires a game identity and a backed-up save. Optional reporting and rewarded advertising are not required to play. Reading or accepting this policy is not blanket consent to optional processing.
7. Who receives information?
- Unity: game authentication, linked Unity Player Accounts, cloud saves, leaderboards, purchasing, optional Analytics and LevelPlay advertising.
- Google: AdMob advertising, Google Play purchases and the email service used for support.
- Apple: App Store accounts and purchases on Apple devices.
- Cloudflare: hosting and storage for our ad-reward confirmation and recovery service.
- Other players: the public leaderboard information described above.
- Authorities and professional advisers: where necessary to comply with law, protect legal rights or handle a specific dispute.
Providers act on our instructions where they are our processors. They may also be independently responsible for specified processing, such as their own account services, store transactions, advertising or legal duties. A request to us does not automatically delete an account you hold directly with a provider.
Information may be processed outside Sweden and the European Economic Area. Where applicable, transfers use recognised safeguards, such as an adequacy decision or Standard Contractual Clauses with appropriate additional safeguards. You can contact us for information about the safeguards relevant to your data.
Further information: Unity's data-processing terms, Google's privacy policy, Apple's privacy information and Cloudflare's privacy policy.
8. How long information is kept
Retention depends on what the information is used for. We remove or anonymise personal information when it is no longer needed for that purpose, unless specific information is required for a legal obligation or an unresolved dispute.
- Device saves and settings: kept in the app's storage until replaced or removed. Your operating system or device backups may retain additional copies.
- Game identity and cloud saves: kept to maintain your game account and requested recovery service, until account deletion or until the account/recovery information is no longer needed. Previous save copies are replaced as backups are updated.
- Leaderboard entries: kept while they form part of the game's career ranking or necessary ranking history. Player-related entries are removed through the game-data deletion process; ranking history is not a reason to retain an identifiable deleted profile indefinitely.
- Purchase and reward records: kept as needed to deliver and recover entitlements, prevent duplicate grants and resolve transaction disputes. Where law requires selected transaction records longer, that does not justify retaining the whole game save.
- Support and privacy requests: kept while resolving the request and necessary follow-up, and only as needed afterwards to demonstrate handling of the request, resolve a specific dispute or meet a legal duty.
- Optional Analytics: Unity retains raw events for 13 months. Its dashboard metrics and user profiles remain until player-requested or developer-initiated deletion. The 13-month period is not an expiry for all Analytics data. See Unity's Analytics retention explanation.
- Provider-held records: provider retention varies by service and role. Unity IAP documents orders retained until deletion and service logs retained for 90 days. Advertising providers and app stores explain their independently controlled retention in their privacy notices.
When responding to a deletion request, we explain any information we must retain, why it is retained and the applicable retention period or criteria.
9. Your choices and deletion requests
Use Settings → Account & Privacy → Delete Game Account & Data to start a game-account deletion request. Review the warning and confirm with Permanently Delete. This concerns your BackToEarth identity and associated game data, including cloud saves, leaderboard information and relevant reward records, subject to the limited retention exceptions above. Progress, items and unused in-game currency cannot be recovered after deletion.
A request is not confirmation that every service has finished deleting information. Follow its status and contact us if you need help. Signing out, unlinking an account or uninstalling the app is not the same as deleting online data. For a request without access to the game, use the instructions on our account and data deletion page.
Analytics has a separate deletion control under Settings → Optional Reporting. If you want all data associated with you reviewed, including reports from other installations, state that in your request to us.
Your wider Unity Player Account is separate. To delete that account, use Unity's Player Account deletion page. Deleting that account alone does not erase every game's records. For information Unity controls independently through its purchasing service, contact unity-iap-contact@unity3d.com; contact us for purchasing data processed on our behalf.
Depending on applicable law, you may request access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability, and object to processing based on legitimate interests. Email backtoearth@ratmanstudio.com. Include your game player ID if available and explain your request. We may need proportionate information to verify that the data is yours; do not send identity documents unless we explain why they are necessary and how to provide them securely.
For GDPR requests, we normally respond within one month. If a permitted extension is necessary, we explain it within that first month. You can complain to a relevant supervisory authority, including Sweden's Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY). See IMY's explanation of your rights.
10. Younger players
BackToEarth is intended for players aged 13 and over; this is separate from an app store's content rating. Age and regional requirements affect the availability of optional ads and reporting. An unknown or under-13 age range prevents these optional features. We do not use personalised advertising in the game.
Where a young person cannot provide the required consent independently, the affected optional processing is not enabled without the legally required consent. If you are a parent or guardian with a concern about your child's information, contact us.
11. Changes to this policy
We update this policy when our services or information practices change and show the revision date above. We explain material changes before a new use starts and request new consent where required. An earlier privacy choice is not permission for an unrelated new purpose.