Games Privacy Policy

Who we are

This policy covers the mobile games published by 61 West Labs Ltd (“61 West Games”, “we”), a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17425611, registered office 46 Trelawney Road, Hainault, IG6 2NH. Today that is Bones. Bubbleton has its own notice: see the Bubbleton privacy notice and how to delete Bubbleton data. Questions about this policy, or about your data, go to hello@61westlabs.co.uk. Data collected through our website is covered by our website privacy policy.

The short version

You can play without an account. We don’t ask for your name, email or phone number to play. We don’t show ads, we don’t use advertising IDs, we don’t track your location, and we don’t sell data. If you choose to sign in with Google or Apple, we keep only an id that Google or Apple gives us for your account, never your email, name or photo.

Playing as a guest (everyone starts here)

Progress, settings and purchases are saved on your phone. Deleting the game removes them.

Online leaderboards (Bones’ Daily Island, the weekly Island Cup and the season standings) are optional and on by default; you can switch them off in Settings → “Show me on leaderboards”. When you use them, your phone gets a random install code and a player id, and your player gets a made-up name such as “Brave Pelican 42”. With your finished runs we store your score, the rounds cleared, the time played, the app version and a replay of your moves, so our server can check the score is genuine. Season standings are worked out from those checked scores; nothing extra is collected for them. A made-up name isn’t linked to you as a person. Your name, scores, rank and season standing are visible to other players; nothing else is.

There is no chat and no messaging between players.

Optional features for players aged 13 and over

The games themselves are suitable for all ages. Signing in and typing your own name are for players aged 13 and over, and the game says so before the first sign-in on a phone.

• Sign-in with Google or Apple, to keep your progress in the cloud and choose your own leaderboard name. Google sends our server a signed token proving which account signed in; it always includes your name, email address and photo. Our server checks it, keeps only the account’s subject id (a number the provider uses for your account in our app) and throws the rest away straight away. From Apple we ask for no name and no email. We store the provider, that subject id, which player it belongs to, and when it was created.
• Cloud save: a copy of your game progress (stats and bests, unlocks, achievements, Circuit Rank, Tide Task and Weekly Card progress, puzzle stars, run history, the run, duel or classic game in progress, challenges, settings, cosmetic choices and your names), plus a random id for each phone that saves and when it saved. Leaderboard codes, sound settings, your analytics choice, crash reports and purchases are never in the cloud save.
• Typed leaderboard names (3–16 characters), shown publicly. Names are checked automatically against rude and reserved words and must be unique.

Reporting names

Players can report a leaderboard name. The game sends only an anonymous code for the reported player, and our server looks up which player that is. A report stores which player sent it and which player was reported (our internal player ids, which only we can see), the name that was reported, the reason (a fixed choice, with no free text), when it was made, and whether and when we resolved it. A name reported by 3 or more players is hidden automatically until we review it, and we can hide a name ourselves; the player can then choose another.

Playing a friend (turn-based matches, optional)

In Bones you can start a game with someone by a short match code, which you share yourself; we never contact anyone for you. For each match our server stores the two players’ ids, the game and its options, the moves each player made and when, how the match ended, and the game’s random seed and position. The seed and the hidden bones stay on our server and are never sent to either phone, so each player only sees what they could see at a real table. There is no chat and no free text: the other player sees only your name (made-up for guests, or the name you chose if you signed in), which can be reported. You can block a player: we store the pair of player ids, end your matches together and stop either of you joining the other’s codes.

Anonymous analytics and crash reports (optional)

Analytics: where a build has them, the game sends coarse game events (such as “table reached” or “run ended with score N”) to our own self-hosted Plausible server, which uses no cookies and stores no device identifiers or IP addresses.

Crash reports: if the game crashes or hits an unexpected error, it sends a short report to our own server; we don’t use a third-party crash service. A report contains the kind of error and its message (shortened, with anything that looks like an email address, a code, a token or a long number removed), the part of the game’s code where it happened, the app and game-rules versions, the kind of phone system and its version (for example “Android 14”), and which screen was open. It does not contain your player id, install code, account, any name or your progress, and we don’t store your IP address with it. The same error is sent at most once per session, and at most 5 reports per session; if you’re offline, a few wait on your phone until next time. We use them only to fix bugs, and delete each kind of crash 90 days after it was last seen.

Both follow one switch: Settings → “Share anonymous stats”. Turning it off stops analytics and crash reports, and deletes any reports waiting on your phone.

Purchases

Purchases go through Google Play or the App Store and are managed for us by RevenueCat, which receives purchase receipts and an app user id: a random anonymous id or, if you signed in, your game account’s random player id (never your email or your Google/Apple account id), so your purchases work on every phone or tablet you sign in on. We never see your payment details. See RevenueCat’s privacy policy. Purchases are restored through the store (in Bones: Store → Restore), not the cloud save. We suggest parents use the parental controls on their child’s device to approve purchases.

What we don’t do

No advertising, no ad IDs, no location, no contacts, no microphone or camera, no selling or renting of data, and no profiling.

Where data is kept, and who can see it

Leaderboard, account, cloud-save, report and crash-report data is stored on a server we run at IONOS in London, United Kingdom. All traffic is encrypted (HTTPS). The database is backed up every night; backups are encrypted with our own key before they leave the server, stored in Google Drive (Google can’t read them) and deleted after 30 days.

IP addresses: our server sees your IP address when your phone connects. It uses it only in memory, to limit how often one address can call it, and never writes it to the database or its logs. The proxy in front of the server keeps no access log. Its error log can occasionally record the IP address of a connection that fails before reaching the game server (for example a broken or timed-out secure connection); those entries aren’t linked to any player and are deleted after at most 30 days (plus up to 30 days in our encrypted backups).

Our service providers are Google and Apple (sign-in and app distribution), RevenueCat (purchases), IONOS (server hosting) and Google (encrypted backup storage). We don’t share your data with anyone else.

How long we keep things

• Cloud save, sign-in link and chosen name: until you delete your account.
• Leaderboard scores: for as long as the boards run, or until you delete your account (signed-in players). Guests can ask us by email to remove theirs.
• Name reports: at most 12 months. Every report, open or resolved, is deleted automatically 12 months after it was made. Reports about a player are deleted sooner, when that player deletes their account; reports a player sent stay until their 12 months are up, but are then no longer linked to any account or phone. A name we hid stays hidden after the reports about it are deleted.
• Friend matches: deleted automatically 90 days after the match ends (played out, resigned, forfeit or cancelled); a match nobody has touched for 90 days, and a code nobody joined, are deleted too. Blocks stay until you delete your account.
• Crash reports: 90 days after that kind of crash was last seen. They aren’t linked to you, so they can’t be looked up or deleted per player.
• Server logs (no IP addresses): until the log file fills up and rotates. The proxy’s error log (which can contain the IP address of a failed connection): at most 30 days. Copies of both in our encrypted backups are deleted after 30 days.
• Backups: 30 days, so anything you delete is gone from the backups within 30 days too.

Deleting your data

• In the app: Settings → Account → Delete account removes your sign-in link, cloud save, chosen name, all your leaderboard scores, and your friend matches and blocks, and hides your player. You can also choose to erase the progress on that phone.
• Sign out only forgets the account on that phone. It deletes nothing.
• Guests: deleting the game removes everything on your phone. To remove guest scores from a leaderboard, email us the leaderboard name and the approximate date and we’ll remove them once we can match them.
• By email: hello@61westlabs.co.uk. We reply within 30 days, and you don’t need the app installed to ask.

Children

Our games’ content is suitable for all ages, and everything can be played without an account. Players under 13 can play as guests with a made-up name; we don’t ask for or collect a child’s name, email, age or location. Signing in and typing a name are for players aged 13 and over. We don’t verify ages; if you think a child under 13 has signed in, email us and we’ll delete the account.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask to see, correct, delete or move your data, and object to how we use it. We process game data on the basis of contract (accounts, cloud save, purchases) and our legitimate interests (leaderboards, keeping scores fair, moderation, security, anonymous analytics and crash reports). Email hello@61westlabs.co.uk to use any of these rights. If you’re not satisfied, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Changes to this policy

If we change how our games handle data, we’ll update this page and its date, and mention anything important in the game’s release notes.