Privacy Policy

Critters Studio (“we”, “us”) develops and publishes games, including Merge Zoo, Cat Simulator, Dog's Life and Critters Quest. This policy explains what data our games collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

It applies to our mobile applications published on Google Play and the Apple App Store. Where one of our games is played through a third party platform, that platform's own privacy policy applies to it in addition to this one.

1. Who is responsible for your data

Critters Studio is the data controller for the data described below.

Contact: contact@crittersstudio.com

2. Data we collect

We do not ask you to create an account and we never ask for your name, postal address or phone number. Our games and the third party services embedded in them may nevertheless collect the following:

Device and advertising identifiers

Google Advertising ID (Android), Identifier for Advertisers (iOS), App Set ID, and other resettable identifiers.

Device and technical information

Device model, operating system version, language, country, screen size, network type, app version, and IP address (used to derive an approximate country or region, never a precise location).

Gameplay and app activity

Level reached, sessions played, progression events, buttons pressed, ads requested, ads shown, ads clicked, rewards granted, and similar in game events.

Purchase information

Whether a purchase was made and which product was bought. Payment itself is handled entirely by Google Play or the App Store. We never see or store your card details.

Diagnostics

Crash reports and error logs, which may include device state at the time of the crash.

We do not collect precise GPS location. We do not collect contacts, photos, microphone or camera data.

3. Why we use it

• Displaying advertising: Serving personalised or non personalised ads inside the game
• Measuring advertising: Counting impressions, clicks and revenue so we can be paid
• Attribution: Understanding which campaign or channel a new player came from
• Analytics: Understanding how the game is played so we can improve it
• Stability: Detecting and fixing crashes and bugs
• Purchases: Delivering the content you bought and restoring it
• Fraud prevention: Detecting invalid traffic and abusive behaviour

4. Legal basis (EEA, United Kingdom, Switzerland)

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we ask for your consent before any advertising identifier is read or shared, using a consent form built on Google's User Messaging Platform. The form appears the first time you launch the game.

• Personalised advertising, advertising measurement, audience research and analytics rely on your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR).
• Serving non personalised advertising, keeping the game secure and preventing fraud rely on our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• Processing a purchase relies on performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR).

You may refuse consent. If you do, the game remains fully playable and you will still see advertising, but it will be non personalised and based only on contextual signals.

5. Changing your mind

You can change or withdraw your advertising consent at any time from the Privacy settings entry in the game's settings menu. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing carried out before the withdrawal.

You can also reset or delete your advertising identifier at the operating system level:

• Android: Settings, then Google, then Ads, then “Delete advertising ID” or “Reset advertising ID”
• iOS: Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Tracking, then turn off “Allow Apps to Request to Track”

6. Who we share data with

We work with the following categories of partner. Each acts as an independent controller or as our processor, and each has its own privacy policy.

Advertising and mediation

• Unity LevelPlay and Unity Ads (Unity Technologies) — unity.com/legal/game-player-and-app-user-privacy-policy
• Google AdMob (Google Ireland Limited) — policies.google.com/privacy
• Pangle (Bytedance) — pangleglobal.com/privacy
• Mintegral (Mintegral International Ltd) — mintegral.com/en/privacy

Advertising demand partners bidding through these networks are listed in the consent form itself, under “Manage options”, and that list is kept up to date automatically.

Attribution

• AppsFlyer Ltd — appsflyer.com/legal/services-privacy-policy

Analytics and diagnostics

• GameAnalytics ApS — gameanalytics.com/privacy
• Unity Cloud Diagnostics (Unity Technologies)

Distribution and payments

• Google LLC (Google Play) and Apple Inc. (App Store)

We do not sell your personal data for money.

7. International transfers

Some of these partners are established outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States, Israel, Singapore and China. Where that is the case, transfers are covered by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, by an adequacy decision, or by another mechanism permitted under Chapter V of the GDPR.

8. How long we keep data

We do not keep raw event data ourselves beyond what our analytics and attribution providers retain on our behalf, which is typically between 90 days and 25 months depending on the provider and the type of record. Aggregated statistics that cannot identify you may be kept indefinitely.

9. Your rights

If you are in the EEA, the United Kingdom or Switzerland you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, and object to the processing of your personal data, and to data portability.

If you are a California resident, you have the right to know what personal information is collected, to request deletion, to correct it, and to opt out of its “sale” or “sharing” as those terms are defined by the CCPA as amended. Sharing an advertising identifier with advertising partners for personalised advertising may qualify as “sharing”. You can opt out by refusing consent in the in game privacy settings, or by writing to us.

To exercise any of these rights, email contact@crittersstudio.com. Because our games have no accounts, please include your advertising identifier so that we can locate the relevant records. Without it we may be unable to identify your data. We answer within one month.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your national supervisory authority. In France this is the CNIL (www.cnil.fr).

10. Children

Our mobile games are not directed to children. They are rated for players aged 13 and over (16 and over in some jurisdictions where local law sets a higher age of digital consent) and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children below that age.

If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us at contact@crittersstudio.com and we will delete it.

11. Security

We use encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS) for all data in transit and rely on our providers' security controls for data at rest. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect the limited data we handle.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when our games or our partners change. The “last updated” date at the top always reflects the current version. Material changes affecting how we use your data will be signalled inside the game.

13. Contact