Privacy Policy

Hook Heroes is made by OddEngine OÜ, a company registered in Estonia under registry code 17561323, at Ahtri tn 12, Kesklinna linnaosa, Tallinn, Harju maakond 15551, Estonia.

For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, OddEngine OÜ is the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at support@odd-engine.com.

This policy covers the Hook Heroes game. It also covers this website, which collects almost nothing — see “This website” below.

We do not ask you for your name, address or date of birth. What we do collect is:

• Device and app information — device model, operating system version, language, region, and the version of the game you are running.
• Your IP address — seen by every service the game talks to, and used to work out roughly where you are, at country or city level, so we can serve the right ads and read our own numbers by region. We never collect GPS or any precise location.
• Identifiers — your device advertising identifier (IDFA on iOS, Advertising ID on Android), an app-generated player ID, a Firebase installation ID, and, if you turn notifications on, a push token.
• Gameplay events — levels started and finished, distance reached, upgrades bought, session length.
• Crash and error reports — the stack trace, the state of the device at the moment it happened, and the game version. These are sent after the game closes unexpectedly, which is the only time we can learn anything useful from them.
• Purchase events — that a purchase happened and what it was for. We never see your card number: payment is handled entirely by Apple or Google.
• Saved progress — your level, upgrades and balances, stored against your player ID so they survive a reinstall.

To run the game and save your progress; to understand which parts are too hard, too easy or broken; to show ads that fund a free game; and to see which marketing actually brings players in.

Under the GDPR our legal bases are:

• Contract — running the game, saving your progress, and delivering what you bought.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the game secure, detecting cheating and fraud, and fixing the crashes that would otherwise keep happening to you.
• Consent — analytics, advertising and marketing attribution. In the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland we ask before any of those start, and you can change your mind at any time. Notifications also run on consent, everywhere.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland, the first thing Hook Heroes does is ask. Nothing is sent to an analytics or advertising service until you answer, and refusing everything is one tap, presented no less prominently than accepting.

On iOS you will then see Apple’s own tracking prompt. Decline it and your advertising identifier is never shared, whatever you told the first prompt.

You can reopen our prompt whenever you like, from Settings → Privacy inside the game, and withdraw consent as easily as you gave it. Withdrawing does not undo processing that already happened, and it does not cost you anything in the game.

One thing worth naming: even with tracking declined, Apple’s SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit still tell an advertising network that an install happened after its ad was shown. That is a mechanism Apple runs, deliberately built so the report cannot be traced back to you, and we cannot switch it off.

We do not sell your personal data. Two kinds of company see it.

Processors — they handle it only on our instructions, under a contract, and for nothing of their own:

• Unity Technologies — Unity Gaming Services: player authentication and cloud-saved progress.
• Google — Firebase: Google Analytics for Firebase, Crashlytics for crash reports, and Cloud Messaging to deliver notifications.
• AppsFlyer — marketing attribution, so we can tell which campaigns brought players to the game.

Independent controllers — they also use it for their own purposes, under their own privacy policies rather than ours:

• Unity LevelPlay and Google AdMob, along with the advertising networks they mediate — choosing, delivering and measuring the ads you see.
• Apple and Google — app distribution and payment processing. If you sign in with Game Center or Play Games, they also give us a player identifier that is scoped to us alone and is not your Apple Account or Google Account.

These companies may process data outside the European Economic Area. Where they do, those transfers rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or an adequacy decision.

Hook Heroes is free and is funded by advertising. Ads may be personalised using your advertising identifier. You can stop that at any time:

• In the game — Settings → Privacy, and turn personalised advertising off.
• iOS — decline when the game asks permission to track, or go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking and turn it off.
• Android — Settings → Google → Ads, then delete your advertising ID.

You will still see ads. They will simply stop being tailored to you.

We send push notifications only if you let us. iOS asks the first time, and so does Android 13 and later. Say no and nothing in the game is withheld from you.

If you say yes, we send you a note when something you were waiting for is ready, when a limited-time event is about to end, and now and then when there is new content. We do not put advertising in notifications.

To stop them: iOS Settings → Notifications → Hook Heroes, or Android Settings → Apps → Hook Heroes → Notifications. Your push token is deleted when you turn notifications off or uninstall the game, and Google expires tokens that go unused.

This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads nothing from anyone else’s server — the fonts and images come from this domain. There is no banner to dismiss because there is nothing to consent to.

The one exception is the trailer, and only if you press play: the video then loads from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com), and Google’s privacy policy applies to what it collects. Until you press play, the preview image comes from this domain and nothing is sent to Google.

Our host, Cloudflare, keeps ordinary server logs including IP addresses for a short period to keep the site up and fend off attacks. Nothing here profiles you or follows you anywhere.

• Saved progress — while your player profile exists, and for up to 24 months after you last play, then deleted or anonymised.
• Analytics events — up to 14 months.
• Crash reports — up to 90 days.
• Advertising and attribution data — up to 24 months.
• Push token — until you turn notifications off, uninstall, or it goes unused.

If you ask us to delete your data, we act on it as described below rather than waiting for these periods to run out.

Everything the game sends travels over an encrypted connection, and our providers encrypt it at rest on their infrastructure. Access is limited to the people who need it to run the game. We never hold your payment details, so there is nothing there for anyone to take. No system is perfectly secure, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the right to access your data, correct it, delete it, receive a copy of it, object to or restrict how we use it, and withdraw any consent you gave.

If you live in a US state with a comprehensive privacy law — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon and a growing list of others — you have the right to know what personal information we collect, to have it deleted, to correct it, to receive a copy, to opt out of targeted advertising, and not to be treated worse for asking.

California law defines “sharing” broadly: disclosing personal information to a third party for cross-context behavioural advertising counts as sharing even when no money changes hands. Because Hook Heroes shows personalised ads through the mediation partners named above, our use of your advertising identifier falls within that definition. We do not sell your personal information for money. You can stop the sharing at source at any time by turning off ad personalisation — the steps are in “Advertising and how to opt out” above — or by emailing us and asking us to action it for you.

To delete your data, follow the steps on our support page. For anything else, email support@odd-engine.com. We reply within 30 days. Because we do not collect your name, please write from a device where the game is installed and tell us roughly when you last played, so we can identify the right profile.

You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. In Estonia that is the Estonian Data Protection Inspectorate (Andmekaitse Inspektsioon).

Hook Heroes is rated for players aged 13 and over. It is not a children’s app, it is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. Because the game is not child-directed, we do not flag ad requests for child-directed treatment.

In parts of the European Economic Area the age at which you can consent for yourself is higher than 13 — it ranges from 13 to 16 depending on the country. Where our consent prompt indicates a player is below the age that applies where they live, we turn personalised advertising off for them.

If you believe a child has given us personal data, email support@odd-engine.com and we will delete it.

We update this policy when the game changes. The date at the top always reflects the current version, and material changes will be announced in the game before they take effect. Where a change needs your consent, we will ask for it again rather than assume it.