Privacy
Updated 7 October 2026. Covers Scrap Heap on iOS and Android.
Scrap Heap is made by The Next Beacon. You never have to sign up. The game backs your save up under an anonymous account so it can come back on a new phone; it only learns who you are if you choose to sign in with Apple or write to us with your email.
Below is every field the game sends. Not categories, the actual fields. This list comes from the code that sends them, so it can be checked against the game rather than taken on trust.
What it sends
The game reports anonymous crash and gameplay events to a server we run. We use it to find crashes, see which screens people quit on, and balance the game.
About the device, once per batch
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
vendor_id | The identifier the phone gives us (Apple's identifierForVendor, Android's SSAID). It's scoped to us as a publisher, so it can't follow you into anyone else's apps, and it resets if you delete all our apps. |
install_id | A random id the game makes up on first launch. Ours, local, gone if you reinstall. Not derived from you or your hardware. |
platform, os_version | iOS or Android, and the version. Lets us tie a crash to an OS release. |
model_class | Just "phone", "tablet" or "desktop". A model name is close to a fingerprint and all we need is which of those three. |
locale, tz_offset | Language region, and how many minutes you are from UTC. More on these below. |
About the app
Version, build, and whether it's a release or a dev build.
The events themselves
Each one has a random id, a name, a timestamp and a counter. The names
are app_open, session_start,
session_end, screen_view,
ui_tap, run_start, run_end and
error.
The values attached to them are facts about a run, and this is the whole
list: cold, screen, control,
mode, class, kit,
ascension, outcome, depth,
pressure, gold, duration_s,
resumed. Which hero you picked, how deep you got, whether
you won. Nothing about you.
What it doesn't send
- No name, phone, address or birthday. The only place an email goes in is the in-game message form, and only if you type it there.
- No advertising id. There are no ads, so we never ask for it.
- No location. No GPS, and your IP address isn't stored anywhere by us.
- No contacts, photos, files, mic, camera, health data or purchase history.
- No third-party analytics or ad SDK. The server is ours. Nobody else gets any of this.
There's also a filter on the server that throws away any field whose name looks like personal data (email, phone, address, coordinates, and so on). It exists so that this section stays true even if we break something in a future update.
Cloud save, messages and feedback
Cloud save. On your first launch the game makes an anonymous account on our save server and keeps a copy of your save file there, so a reinstall or a new phone picks up where you left off.
Sign in with Apple (iPhone and iPad, optional). If you use it, Apple gives us a private id for you, and your cloud save is tied to it so you can restore it on any of your devices. Apple lets you hide your real email; we don't ask for your name.
Messages. Settings has a form for writing to us. What you send, with the email you type so we can answer, is kept under your account and our replies show up in the same place.
Quick feedback. The feedback box sends what you typed with the game version and where you were in the run. It doesn't carry your account or any id. Please leave personal details out of it.
Two things worth saying out loud
Language and timezone are rough location hints. Neither store counts them as "location" and neither one gets you closer than a whole timezone or language. Somebody was going to ask, so: that's what they are, and we use them to decide which languages are worth translating into.
Our hosting provider sees your IP, like every network in between does. Our code never reads it and it isn't in anything we store. So the claim is that we don't collect or keep your IP. It is not that no IP was involved in getting the request to us, which would be nonsense.
Buying things
There's one optional purchase that unlocks the full game. Apple or Google handle it end to end. We never see your card, your billing address or your store account. All the game keeps is a yes/no about whether you own the unlock, and that lives on your phone.
Kids
The game isn't aimed at under-13s. There's no chat, nothing social, and nothing players write is shown to anyone else.
Keeping it, and deleting it
Events are kept for up to 24 months and then dropped.
To delete your cloud save and account, use the delete option on the account screen in Settings; it removes them from our server straight away. For the anonymous gameplay events, which aren't tied to that account, the game shows you an installation id to quote.
Open Settings → Data & Privacy in the game and copy your installation id, then mail it to info@thenextbeacon.com and ask us to delete it. We'll remove every record carrying that id within 30 days and confirm when it's done. Deleting the app stops all collection immediately, without asking us.
Depending where you live you may also have the right to ask what we hold, object to us processing it, or complain to a data protection authority. Same address for any of that.
If this changes
The date at the top changes with it, and we update the same summary inside the game under Settings.
Reaching us
info@thenextbeacon.com — The Next Beacon.