privacy

last updated 27 July 2026

the short version

riverling has no accounts, no ads, no analytics, and no server of mine for anything to be sent to. I do not collect personal information about you or about how you play. what little leaves your device goes to Apple, at your choosing, through iCloud, Game Center, and Apple's weather service. the rest of this page is the detail behind that sentence, and the section near the end sets it out in the terms the GDPR asks for.

who is responsible

riverling is made by one person, Alexander Moss, in the United States. for the little personal information riverling involves, I am the data controller. contact details are at the bottom of this page.

where the game hands something to Apple, iCloud, Game Center, TestFlight, and the weather service, Apple is the controller for what it then does with it, under Apple's privacy policy. I do not receive that data and cannot read it.

what the game keeps on your device

riverling saves your progress and your settings locally: streak, best depth, best score, which days you have played and how those runs went, whether you have seen the tutorial, and your sound and weather toggles. that is the whole of it. it lives in the app's own storage, it never leaves the device on my account, and deleting riverling deletes it.

iCloud

that same small block of progress is mirrored into your own iCloud key-value storage, so a streak follows you onto a new iPad and survives an uninstall. it is a few hundred bytes of scores and dates. it is your iCloud, not mine, and I cannot read it. if you are not signed in to iCloud, nothing syncs and the game plays exactly the same.

surviving an uninstall is the point of it, so it is worth saying what that means going the other way: deleting riverling does not remove the iCloud copy, and neither does switching iCloud off, which only stops the syncing. to actually delete it, open riverling's settings card and tap "delete all data". that clears this device and the iCloud copy at once, and leaves a marker your other devices read the next time they sync, so they delete their copies too. it cannot reach a device that never signs in again, and it does not touch Game Center, which is Apple's.

the daily challenge's count

there is one more thing in your iCloud, kept apart from the block above, and it is small: for each day you play the daily challenge, one record holding a random eight-character tag for the copy of riverling you played on, and how many of that day's three rivers it took. that is the entire contents. no name, no score, no location, nothing that says who you are. it lives in riverling's private database inside your own iCloud account, which I have no access to and cannot read.

it exists because "three rivers a day" has to mean three across all your devices rather than three on each. the progress block above cannot do that job: it syncs when iCloud gets round to it, so a phone and an iPad can both believe they have rivers left. a count that has to be exact needs somewhere both of them can see the same number at the same moment.

"delete all data" deliberately does not remove these records. if it did, deleting would hand back the day's rivers, and the button would be a way to play the daily as many times as you liked. they hold nothing about you, and they age into meaninglessness the moment their day is over. if you want them gone anyway, they are yours and you can remove them yourself: Settings, your name at the top, iCloud, Manage Account Storage, riverling, delete. that removes every trace of riverling from your iCloud, this included.

Game Center

if you are signed in to Game Center, riverling submits your scores to Apple's leaderboards: best daily score, highest run score, deepest valley. Apple handles the leaderboards and whatever nickname you have chosen to show there. if you are not signed in, no scores go anywhere and nothing else changes. a score earned offline waits on your device and goes up the next time it can.

weather and location

riverling can match the valley's sky to the weather where you are. if you allow it, the game asks iOS for your approximate location, at reduced accuracy, only while the game is open, and passes it to Apple's weather service to get a forecast. it never reaches me. what comes back is kept on your device as a single word for the sky, "rain" or "clear" and so on, for a few hours. your location itself is not stored.

this is optional in both directions, and it is the one thing riverling does that rests on your consent. decline the prompt, turn weather off on riverling's settings card, or revoke the permission in iOS settings, and the valley uses its own sky instead. withdrawing is as easy as giving, it takes effect immediately, and nothing else about the game changes.

the beta

while riverling is in TestFlight, Apple runs the beta. feedback you send through TestFlight reaches me with your screenshot, device model, and build number attached, because you chose to send it. crash reports reach me only if you have turned on sharing with developers in iOS settings, and they arrive as diagnostics rather than as anything that identifies you. Apple's side of TestFlight is covered by Apple's privacy policy.

when you email me

if you write to me for support, I have whatever you put in the email: your address, and anything you choose to tell me about your device or your run. I use it to answer you and for nothing else. I will not add you to a mailing list. I should be straight with you about how long I keep it: this is one person's inbox, not a system with a deletion schedule, so a thread stays there until I clear it out, and I cannot promise that happens on any particular timetable. ask me to delete yours and I will.

children

riverling collects no personal information from anyone, of any age, so there is no minimum age to use it. the game is rated 4+ and is meant for players of any age, which is what the terms say too. there is no account to make, no profile to fill in, no chat, and no advertising. there is therefore no age for me to verify and no parental consent for me to obtain, because I hold nothing to consent to.

if a child plays with iCloud or Game Center signed in, that sits under their Apple Account and its parental controls, which a parent can manage in iOS settings. if you believe I have somehow received personal information about a child, write to me and I will delete it.

for readers in the UK, EU, and Switzerland

the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR give you specific rights and require me to explain a few things plainly. riverling is built so that most of this section has very little to describe, which is the point, but you are entitled to the answers, so here they are.

what I process, and on what legal basis

• your approximate location, for weather. consent, GDPR article 6(1)(a). you are asked, you may say no, and you may withdraw at any time as described above. the location goes from your device to Apple's weather service. I never hold it.
• your progress, on device and in your iCloud. performance of a contract, article 6(1)(b): it is the save file that makes the game a game. I hold no copy of it.
• your scores and nickname in Game Center. performance of a contract, article 6(1)(b), for submitting the score you earned. Apple is the controller of the leaderboards themselves.
• your email address and whatever you write to me. legitimate interests, article 6(1)(f): answering a player who has asked me a question. you can object to this at any time, and the practical effect is that I delete the thread.
• TestFlight feedback and crash diagnostics. legitimate interests, article 6(1)(f), in fixing what is broken, and only for reports you chose to send or sharing you switched on.

I process no special category data, I do no profiling, and I make no automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects. I do not sell personal information, and I have never shared any for advertising. providing any of this is optional: refuse all of it and riverling still plays.

who receives it

Apple, in its role above. my email provider, for the mail you send me. me, for that mail and for any TestFlight feedback or crash report you send during the beta. no advertisers, no analytics companies, no data brokers, and no third-party SDKs in the app at all. I do not transfer your information to anyone for money or for anything of value.

where it goes

I am in the United States, so anything that reaches me is read in the United States. two things do. an email you send me travels there because it is necessary to answer the message you chose to send, which is the derogation at article 49(1)(b). TestFlight feedback and crash reports travel there too, on the same journey: you send feedback deliberately, and crash diagnostics only move if you switched sharing on, so that transfer rests on your explicit consent under article 49(1)(a) and stops the moment you switch it off. I want to be exact about this rather than let "it stays with Apple" cover a transfer that is really happening.

the rest genuinely does stay between your device and Apple. your progress, your iCloud copy, your Game Center scores, and the location that goes to the weather service never reach me at all, and Apple's own transfer safeguards apply to them.

how long it is kept

• on-device progress and settings: until you delete the app.
• iCloud progress: until you delete it, which the game will do for you from the settings card. deleting the app is not enough on its own, and neither is switching iCloud off, which only stops the syncing.
• Game Center scores: for as long as Apple keeps the leaderboard.
• the cached word for the sky: a few hours, then it expires by itself.
• support email: kept for as long as it is useful to have answered you, which in practice means until I clear the inbox. there is no fixed schedule and I am not going to invent one, because a retention period I do not keep to is worse than an honest description of the one I have. the criterion is that it stays while it is still of use for support, and it goes when you ask me or when I next clear out, whichever comes first.
• TestFlight feedback and crash reports: while that beta build is live, on Apple's schedule.

your rights

you have the right to ask for a copy of your personal information, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to how it is used, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw consent you have given. in riverling's case there is usually nothing for me to hand over, because I hold nothing but the emails you have sent me, and I will act on any of these for those emails, and for TestFlight reports you have sent me. the rest the game hands to you directly: "delete all data" on the settings card deletes this device's copy, the iCloud copy, and, through a marker your other devices honour when they next sync, the copies sitting on them. the weather permission is revoked in iOS settings.

I would rather the erasure right be a button you can press than a request you have to send me, given that I have no way to reach your data myself. the one thing the button cannot reach is a device that never syncs again.

Game Center is the exception, and I should be straight about why. Apple's GameKit lets a game submit a score and read a leaderboard; it has no instruction for deleting one. so riverling genuinely cannot remove your scores, and no button I add could. they are held by Apple under your Apple Account, and the way to reach them is Apple's own privacy request at privacy.apple.com, or signing out of Game Center so nothing further is submitted. if you ask me to, I will pass the request on, but I would rather tell you where the control actually lives than take a request I cannot fulfil.

ask me and I will answer within one month, free of charge. if you think I have any of this wrong, please write to me first. you also have the right to complain to your data protection authority: in the EU that is the supervisory authority for the country you live in, in the UK it is the Information Commissioner's Office, and in Switzerland it is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

changes

if riverling ever starts doing something this page does not describe, this page changes first, with a new date at the top. I do not expect that to happen. the game is built so that it does not need your data.

contact

riverling is made by one person, and that person is the one responsible for this notice.

Alexander Moss
[email protected]
9032 Memorial Parkway SW STE A #1208
Huntsville, AL 35802
United States