Privacy Policy

Who we are

Archipelago Games makes the games Short Stack and WordGamr for Android phones and tablets, with iPhone and iPad versions coming soon, and runs this website, arcg.co. This policy covers both games and this website. You can reach us through our Support page (choose your game) or our Contact page.

What we collect in our games

Short Stack and WordGamr work the same way and use the same services, so this section covers both.

Your progress stays on your phone

Each game saves your progress, settings, the Styles and Music Tracks you own, your coins, your Revive Tokens (Short Stack) or Hint Tokens and Power-ups (WordGamr), and a record of the Chests you open on your phone. It isn’t sent to us, and we don’t run a server that stores it. Each game also makes a random player code, shown on its Account page, which you can give us when you ask for help.

Android’s own backup may copy a game’s data to your Google account, depending on your phone’s backup settings. Google handles that backup under its own policies.

Your age (Short Stack)

The first time you open Short Stack, it asks whether you’re under 13, 13 to 17, or 18 or older. Your answer stays on your phone and is used only to set the ads: players under 13 get ads treated as directed to children and suitable for them, and nobody under 18 gets personalized ads. If you’re under 18, Short Stack asks again a year later.

Purchases

Google Play processes every payment. We use RevenueCat to confirm purchases and subscriptions. RevenueCat gives your copy of a game an anonymous ID and receives a record of each purchase, including coin packs: the product, the date, a transaction ID and its status, such as active, renewed or refunded. We never receive your card or bank details.

Ads

Our games show ads through Google AdMob. To show and measure ads, AdMob may collect your device’s advertising ID, IP address, approximate location, how you interact with ads and diagnostic information about how the ads perform. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and other places that require consent, Google’s consent message asks you first, and you can change your answer later with Privacy Choices on the game’s Account page. If you say no, you still see ads, but they aren’t personalized. Google explains how it uses this data in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

Our other games

Each of our games checks whether our other game is installed on your phone, so it doesn’t suggest a game you already have. The answer stays on your phone.

Photos you choose

If you set one of your own photos as a Background, it stays on your device. We don’t upload it.

Messages to us

If you contact us, we keep your name, email address and messages so we can help you.

What we collect on arcg.co

This website has no ads and no analytics, and we don’t set cookies for visitors. (Our staff dashboard, which only our team uses, sets two cookies there and nowhere else: arcg_admin keeps our team logged in, and arcg_device remembers a staff browser for 30 days so it can skip the authenticator code.) It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes your IP address and basic request information to deliver the pages and protect the site from attacks.

Our contact form

When you send a message, we receive your name, email address, the game and topic you choose, your phone model if you give it, and your message. We also keep the country the message came from, your browser type and a scrambled (hashed) form of your IP address, which we use only to stop spam. Messages are stored in a database run by Cloudflare. To reply, we may forward a message to our team’s mailbox through our email provider, Resend. We use messages only to answer you, and we delete them after 12 months.

To keep out spam, the form uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which looks at information such as your IP address and browser type to tell people from bots. It isn’t used for ads. Cloudflare explains what Turnstile collects in its Turnstile Privacy Addendum.

How we use it

• To run our games and save your progress on your phone.
• To confirm and restore purchases, and to deliver coins, Chests and rewards.
• To show ads and keep them within the limits we set. Short Stack Subscription and Short Stack Lifetime, and WordGamr Subscription, WordGamr Lifetime and WordGamr Ultra, remove the ads between rounds or levels in that game.
• To prevent fraud and cheating, such as a purchase or reward being paid out twice.
• To answer your questions.

Who we share it with

We share data only with the services that help us run our games, and only what each one needs:

• Google, for payments and app distribution through Google Play, and for ads through AdMob.
• RevenueCat, to confirm purchases and subscriptions.
• Cloudflare, which hosts this website, stores contact form messages and checks the form for spam.
• Resend, which delivers contact form messages to our team.

We may also share information when the law requires it. We don’t sell your personal information.

How long we keep it

A game’s data stays on your phone until you delete it with Delete Account in the game, or uninstall the game. RevenueCat keeps purchase records while we use it to confirm purchases; we can ask it to delete yours (see How do I delete my account?). We keep a record of purchases for our accounting and tax records, no longer linked to you. Google keeps its own records of your purchases under its policies. We delete contact form messages after 12 months.

Your choices

• Delete your account from the Account button in each game, and ask us to delete your purchase records, as described on our Support page.
• Choose how ads use your data. Where the law requires it, use Privacy Choices on the game’s Account page. On Android, you can also open Settings and find the Ads option (under Google or Privacy, depending on your phone) to reset or delete your advertising ID.
• Your privacy rights. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see, correct, delete or export your data, or to object to how we use it. Send us a message through Support (choose your game, then contact its support) and we’ll help.

Children

Our games are made for a general audience and aren’t directed at children under 13. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. In Short Stack, a player who says they’re under 13 only gets ads treated as directed to children.

If a child under 13 has been playing one of our games, you can delete everything the game holds on their phone:

1. Open the game on the child’s phone.
2. On the home screen, tap the Account button (the person in the top right corner).
3. Tap Delete Account, then confirm.

This deletes their progress, the Styles, Music Tracks, coins and tokens they own and their Chest history. If they have a subscription, cancel it in Google Play first, using the steps on our Support page.

Security

We encrypt data in transit, keep payment keys out of the app and limit who can access our systems. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information.

Where data is processed

We and our service providers may process data in the United States and in other countries where they operate.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top of this page. If a change is significant, we’ll also tell you in the game. When our games come to iPhone and iPad, or add sign-in, we’ll update this policy first.

Contact

Archipelago Games. Reach us through our Support page or our Contact page.