Privacy

In short

• No account to create, no name, no email address, no location, no purchase.
• Your progress (scores, badges, clothes, settings) stays on your phone; only a summary (number of races completed, best score band, number of badges) goes with the statistics.
• If you use Google Play Games, your achievements and your best Free Roll score are saved there, for achievements and the leaderboard. This is optional.
• The game sends usage statistics to help us improve it. You can turn them off at any time in the Options.
• The game sometimes shows an ad. It is never personalised, it suits all ages, and the game doesn't use the phone's advertising ID.

Who we are

Hamster Go is published by W LAB. For any question about your data: wlabnorth@gmail.com.

What stays on your phone

Scores, records, races completed, badges, gifts, seeds, clothes bought and settings are saved in the phone's memory. Only a summary of your progress goes with the usage statistics (see below), if they are on. Uninstalling the game erases everything.

Google Play Games

If Google Play Games is installed and you are signed in, the game signs in to it automatically (otherwise, a "Sign in" button is in the Options). This is optional: the game works the same without it.

• The game sends Google your badges (shown as achievements in Play Games) and your best Free Roll score (for the leaderboard).
• The leaderboard shows your score next to your Play Games nickname and avatar, according to your Play Games profile settings.
• With your consent (a Google window asks once), the game can read your Play Games friends list, only to show your rank among your friends. It doesn't store it.

This data is handled by Google under its privacy policy. We have no access to it beyond the game's achievements and leaderboard. You can sign out or delete your game data from the Google Play Games app.

Usage statistics

To understand how the game is played and improve it (for example to spot a race that is too hard or a phone on which the game is slow), Hamster Go uses Google Analytics for Firebase, a Google service.

The game sends:

• game events: mode chosen, races started and finished (time, place, stars), distance and score in Free Roll, cause of a crash, badges and gifts won, hamster and clothes chosen, sound and vibration settings, how smoothly the game runs;
• a summary of your progress, to see how far players go: number of Time Attack races completed, the band your best Free Roll score is in (for example "5-10k"), number of badges;
• technical information added by Firebase: a random identifier for this installation of the game, the phone model, the Android version, the language, the country (from the connection), the game version, session length.

This data contains no name, no contact, no precise location, and is never used for advertising. We don't sell or share it. Google Analytics doesn't store IP addresses. Detailed data is kept for 14 months at most.

To turn them off: Options → Statistics. Sending stops at once.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in improving the game, which you can object to at any time from the Options.

Advertising

The game shows a full-screen ad now and then, when a race is chosen, through Google AdMob.

• Every ad request is tagged "child-directed" and "under the age of consent": ads are never personalised and are limited to content suitable for all audiences.
• The game doesn't ask for access to the phone's advertising ID.
• To show an ad and fight fraud, Google may receive technical information (IP address, phone model, Android version). See how Google uses information from apps that use its services.

Children

Hamster Go is for everyone, children included. We don't ask for or collect any information that could identify a child. Ads are set for a young audience. A parent can turn statistics off in the Options. Google Play Games follows Google's rules for children's accounts (it's often unavailable on a supervised account); without it, the game works the same.

Where the data goes

Statistics, advertising and Google Play Games go through Google (Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC). Data may be processed outside the European Union, in particular in the United States, under the safeguards provided by the GDPR (EU–US Data Privacy Framework, standard contractual clauses).

Your rights

You can ask for access to your data, its deletion, or object to its processing by writing to wlabnorth@gmail.com. As we don't know who you are, the simplest is often to turn statistics off in the Options and uninstall the game, which creates a new random identifier if you reinstall it. You can also lodge a complaint with your data protection authority (in France, the CNIL).

Changes

If this policy changes (for example if the game adds a new feature), the new version will be published on this page with its date.