Privacy policy

Last updated 27 August 2026

The short version

Heirloom sends anonymous gameplay analytics. No email, no location, no advertising and no tracking. I use it to see which parts of the game people actually play and where they stop. Your save never leaves your phone.

There is one optional extra. If you join the weekly challenges, the nickname and the character you make for the leaderboard are stored on a server and shown to other players, because that is what a leaderboard is. Nothing else about you goes with them, and if you never open the challenges, nothing is ever sent.

This website collects nothing. There is no sign up form, no cookies, no analytics and no tracking pixels.

I am Deniz. I build Heirloom on my own. My email is deniz1lapsekili@gmail.com.

1. What this policy covers

Two things, described separately because they behave differently.

• The app. Heirloom for iPhone, currently in beta through TestFlight.
• The website. playheirloom.app, the page you are reading.

2. What the app collects

The app sends anonymous analytics about how the game is played, using PostHog. Apart from the weekly challenges in section 3, that is the only thing it sends anywhere.

What goes out is gameplay:

• which activities and screens you used, and how often. Reading, running, chess, lessons, conversations, clubs, minigames, the tutorial, the title screen.
• how a life is going as numbers. Your character's age, school grades, skill levels, how many friends and how many books, whether a life ended and at what age.
• how long a session lasted, whether you came back the next day, and how many lives you have started.
• technical details that come with any app request. Device model, iOS version, app version, screen size, language and whether the build came from TestFlight.

What does not go out, ever:

• Anything you typed. Your character's first name and surname stay on the phone. The app is built so that no text a player writes can reach an analytics event, and that rule is checked in code rather than remembered. The challenge nickname in section 3 is the one piece of typed text the app sends, it goes to a different place for a different reason, and it never enters the analytics.
• Your location. The app never asks for it and never reads it. Location lookup from IP address is switched off for this project, so no city, postal area or coordinates are derived or stored.
• Any way of identifying you. There is no account, no login, no email address, no advertising identifier and no device identifier. The only id attached to the analytics is a random one the app makes up the first time it runs. It is not derived from your phone or your Apple Account, it is not shared with anybody, and if you delete the app it is gone. The challenges use a second random id of their own, described in section 3.
• Your save. The game itself is never uploaded.

None of this is tracking. Nothing is combined with data from other companies' apps or websites, nothing is sold or shared, and there is no advertising anywhere in the project. The privacy manifest inside the app declares no tracking and no tracking domains, and the App Privacy answers on the App Store say the same.

The app asks for no permissions. It never requests contacts, photos, location, microphone, camera, notifications or tracking. There is nothing to buy, so there is no payment information.

3. If you join the weekly challenges

Heirloom runs challenges some weeks, with a leaderboard. It is entirely optional. If you never open it, nothing in this section ever happens and nothing about you is stored anywhere.

If you do join, three things are stored on a server:

• The nickname you pick. You type it, and it is shown to every other player on the leaderboard. Pick something you are happy for strangers to see. It is not checked against your real name and I would rather it was not one.
• The character you build for it. Hair, face, clothes and colours, stored as a list of choices so your portrait can be drawn beside your name.
• Your score, and a random id. The id is made up on your phone when you join and kept in your device's keychain. It is not your Apple Account, not your device's identifier and not derived from your hardware. Its only job is to know which row on the leaderboard is yours.

That is all of it. The lives you play are not uploaded, the characters inside your save are not uploaded, and the score is a single number per challenge rather than a record of what you did.

This data lives with Supabase, who host the database for me. Their policy is at supabase.com/privacy. The connection is HTTPS, and as with any internet request their servers see the IP address the request came from as part of delivering it. I do not store IP addresses and I have no way to connect one to a leaderboard row.

Deleting it. This is the one part of Heirloom I genuinely can delete on request, because it is the one part with a row that has a name on it. Email me the nickname and I will remove the row, the character and the scores. Deleting the app also stops anything further being sent, although a row already on the leaderboard stays until you ask me to remove it or the challenge data is cleared.

The legal basis is legitimate interests: running a leaderboard that somebody chose to join, with the smallest amount of information that makes one work.

4. Who processes the analytics, and where

PostHog, on their European servers at eu.posthog.com, in the European Union. I chose the EU region deliberately so the data does not leave it. PostHog acts as my processor and does not use the data for their own purposes. Their policy is at posthog.com/privacy.

As with any internet request, PostHog's servers receive the IP address the request came from, because a request cannot arrive otherwise. It is not used to work out where you are, and no location is stored on the events.

Events are kept for twelve months and then deleted automatically. I am the only person with access.

5. Why I collect it

One reason: to make the game better. Which features get used, which get ignored, where a life stops being interesting, whether the tutorial works, whether a difficulty change helped. I am one person with no test team, and this is the only way I get to see any of that.

The lawful basis under UK and EU law is legitimate interests, which is the basis that fits anonymous product analytics with no profiling and no advertising. There is no consent banner because there is nothing here that needs consent: no cookies, no identifiers of yours, and nothing that follows you anywhere.

6. Where your save lives

On your phone. The whole save is written into the app's own storage using UserDefaults. There is no copy on any server. I cannot see it, read it or restore it.

To delete it, delete the app. The save goes with it, and so does the random analytics id. There is nothing to request from me, because I never had it. Starting a new life inside the game overwrites that slot.

If your iPhone backs itself up to iCloud or to a computer, your save may be inside that backup. That backup belongs to you and to Apple, and Apple's privacy policy covers it.

7. Apple's App Privacy label

The App Privacy answers for Heirloom are Usage Data, covering product interaction and other usage data, collected for analytics, not linked to your identity and not used for tracking. That matches the privacy manifest inside the app and matches sections 2 and 3 above. If any of the three ever disagree, the app is wrong and I want to know.

8. TestFlight

Heirloom is in beta through TestFlight, which is Apple's software rather than mine. When you join a beta, Apple runs the sign up, the install and the updates, and Apple collects tester information as part of doing that. I do not control any of it and I cannot switch it off.

Through App Store Connect, Apple shows me:

• how many testers there are, and counts of installs and sessions
• device model and iOS version, shown alongside crash reports
• crash logs, if your device is set to send them
• any feedback and screenshots you choose to send
• the email address you used, if you were invited by email rather than joining through the public link

If you join using the public link, Apple does not show me your email address.

I use all of this for one purpose, which is fixing the game. Apple's own handling of tester data is described at apple.com/legal/privacy.

9. This website

This site sets no cookies. It runs no analytics, no tracking pixels and no advertising. It loads no fonts, scripts or images from anybody else's servers. Every request your browser makes while reading this page goes to playheirloom.app and nowhere else. Nothing here follows you to another website. There is no form on it, so there is nothing for you to submit and nothing for me to store. The analytics described in section 2 are in the app only and are not on this site.

The site is hosted by Vercel. Like every web host, Vercel's servers receive your IP address, your browser's user agent and the address of the page you asked for, because a page cannot be sent to you otherwise. Vercel keeps short lived operational logs containing that information, for delivery and for abuse prevention. That is Vercel's own processing. I do not build profiles from those logs and there is no analytics product attached to this site. Vercel's policy is at vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy.

10. Discord

Heirloom has a Discord server. Joining it is optional and it is not required to play or to test.

Discord is a separate company with its own privacy policy, at discord.com/privacy. Anything you post in a public channel there is visible to everybody else in that server. If you message me directly at 3arii, that message travels through Discord and their policy covers it, not this one.

11. Everybody who touches any of this

• PostHog. Receives the anonymous gameplay analytics from the app and stores them on servers in the European Union.
• Supabase. Only if you join the weekly challenges. Stores the nickname, the character and the score described in section 3.
• Apple. Runs TestFlight and the App Store. Handles tester sign up, installs, crash reports and feedback.
• Vercel. Hosts this website. Receives the requests your browser makes and keeps short lived server logs.
• Discord. Only if you choose to join the server.

None of them are paid by me to advertise to you and none of them receive anything from me for marketing. I do not control Apple's, Vercel's, PostHog's, Supabase's or Discord's own handling of your data, and their policies apply to it.

12. Children

Heirloom is not aimed at young children. It deals with illness, death, grief, family breakup and social exclusion, and it is rated accordingly on the App Store. The analytics in section 2 are the same for everybody and contain nothing personal at any age: no name, no contact details, no location and no identifier of the person playing.

13. Your rights

If you are in the UK or the EU, you have the right to ask what I hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to receive a copy of it, and to restrict or object to its use. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office, at ico.org.uk.

If you are in California, you have the right to know what is collected, to have it deleted, to have it corrected, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. I do not sell or share personal information, I have never done so, and I do not do cross context behavioral advertising.

Being honest about what these mean here: the analytics carry no name, no email and no device identifier, so in almost every case I cannot tell which rows are yours, and I am not allowed to collect more information about you just to be able to find them. What I can do is delete on request if you send me the random id, and deleting the app removes it and stops any further data at the source. The challenge leaderboard is the exception and the easy case: it has a nickname on it, so tell me the nickname and I can find and delete that row. Email deniz1lapsekili@gmail.com and I will reply within 30 days and usually much sooner.

14. Security

The site, the analytics and the leaderboard are served over HTTPS. There are no credentials of yours anywhere, because there is nothing to log in to. The analytics sit in PostHog's EU cloud behind my own account. The leaderboard sits in a Supabase database where the app can only read the board and write its own row, checked by the database rather than by the app, and the key the app ships cannot edit anybody else's score or read anything else. The game itself sits on your phone.

15. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and anything meaningful is described on this page rather than slipped in. If I ever add something that collects information, such as a mailing list or an account system, it will be described here before it goes live.

The change on 22 August 2026 was the first real one. Until then this page said the app collected nothing, which was true of every build before analytics were added and stopped being true the moment they were. Nothing described above was ever collected while this page said otherwise, because the first build carrying analytics is the first build going out to testers.

The change on 27 August 2026 added section 3, the weekly challenges. The same rule was followed: the page describes them before the first build carrying them reaches anybody.

16. Contact

Email: deniz1lapsekili@gmail.com
Discord: 3arii

I am one person, so a reply usually takes a day or two.