Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 30, 2026

Long Game is an iPhone app that helps people cut back on, take a break from, or quit video games. It is made by Beatbytes LLC ("we", "us"). This policy explains what the app keeps on your iPhone, what reaches our servers and the few companies that help us run it, why, for how long, and how to take it back.

The short version:

• Most of what you do in Long Game stays on your iPhone. Your Screen Time data, the games and apps you lock, and the person you choose to keep close never leave it.
• What we keep on our servers is your account and your record (your nightly check-ins and the plan around them), so it follows you to a new phone or a reinstall.
• Analytics are minimal and cover only how people move through onboarding, the paywall and plan setup. Never what you write, your hours, your games or your check-ins.
• No ads. We never sell your data. We don't track you across other companies' apps or websites.
• You can export everything and delete your account from inside the app, any time.
• If you're in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, section 14 sets out your rights under data protection law there. If you're in a US state with a privacy law, see section 15.

1. What stays on your iPhone

These are used by the app on your phone and are never sent to us or anyone else:

• Screen Time data. If you connect Screen Time, Apple's Screen Time framework lets Long Game draw your phone's usage on screen and apply the locks you set. The usage figures are drawn by Apple's own sandboxed extension, which has no network access; the app itself never learns them and never uploads them. The games and apps you pick are held as Apple's private tokens on your phone.
• App locks — which games and apps you lock, when, and each time a lock is opened.
• Your person — the name and contact you choose with Apple's contact picker. Long Game never contacts them. When you tap Message, Apple's Messages app opens with nothing written; anything you send is between you and them.
• The trial reminder switch and similar settings that only matter on this phone.
• What you type before it's checked by the crisis filter (see section 6).

Your notifications are all scheduled on your iPhone (local notifications). We don't use push notifications and we don't collect a push token.

We never ask for your location, camera, microphone, photos, Health data or full contacts, and we never show Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt because we don't track.

2. What reaches our servers

Your account

You create an account after you subscribe, in one of two ways:

• Sign in with Apple. Apple gives us a stable identifier for you and an email address, which can be Apple's private relay address if you choose "Hide My Email". We don't ask Apple for your name.
• Email. You give us your email address and we email you a one-time 6-digit code. There are no passwords; our database is set up so a password is never stored.

Our account system creates a random account ID. Your profile on our servers holds that ID and two dates (created and updated), nothing else.

Your record (so it can follow you to another phone)

Once you're signed in, Long Game backs up your record to our database:

• Your nightly check-ins: the hours you say you played, whether the night counted, and, on a night you played past your plan, anything you chose to add: your own words, what set it off, and which of seven kinds of place you were in (a tap, never GPS). Corrections and plan changes are new entries; a night is never silently rewritten.
• The rows around it: your plan and path, routines and their changes, routines you've ticked off, play sessions you log, checkpoint notes, the length of a Reset, urge sessions from the Room, your reason (in your own words), your evening and notification settings.
• What you told us in onboarding: the name you gave (it can be blank), your usual weekday and day-off hours of play, what you want back, other apps you named, and when you made your promise.

Some of this may feel sensitive to you. How much you play, what sets it off, and what you write on a hard night stay private to you: never shared, sold or used for advertising.

Totals are never stored on our servers. Your days, count and rank are worked out on your phone from the record.

Never on our servers: Screen Time data, your app locks and their picks, your person or their contact details, and anything the crisis filter caught. There are no tables for them, and our tests fail if one appears.

Your subscription

Purchases are made through Apple. Our subscription provider, RevenueCat, receives the purchase information Apple provides (such as the product, price, trial and renewal status, and transaction identifiers). Before you sign in, your purchase sits under an anonymous RevenueCat ID; after you sign in, it's moved to your account ID, so your membership follows your account. We don't receive your payment card details.

Messages you send us

If you email us (for example from Settings › Contact us), we receive your email address and what you write. Report a problem adds your app version, iPhone model and iOS version to the email so we can look into it; you can see and edit that before you send.

3. Analytics

We use PostHog to learn where people stop in onboarding, the app tour, the paywall and plan setup, so we can make those screens better. It's switched on only in the App Store and TestFlight versions of the app, and only in those first-run flows. It's off if your App Store country is in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland: we collect no analytics from you there.

What an event contains: the event's name (for example onboarding screen viewed, paywall viewed, plan selected), which screen it was, how many seconds you spent on it, which plan you selected (yearly or monthly), which plan-setup steps you skipped, whether you set nudges, a lock or a person (yes or no), the app version, and PostHog's library version.

What it never contains: anything you type, your hours, your games, Screen Time, your check-ins, the Room, your person, or your account ID. Everything else PostHog's library would normally add (device model, language, time zone, screen size) is removed on your phone before the event is sent. Session replay, automatic tap capture and automatic screen tracking are off.

How it's kept apart from you: PostHog gives your install a random ID kept on your phone. We share that ID with RevenueCat so we can see onboarding through to a subscription, and after you sign in RevenueCat keeps your subscription under your account, so the two can be connected. We never use this to look at one person, and events never contain your name, your email or anything you write. When you delete your account, the phone gets a new random ID.

Your IP address: your phone's connection necessarily reaches PostHog, but we've set PostHog to discard the IP address and not to look up a location from it.

Trials and purchases: RevenueCat tells PostHog when a free week starts, converts, renews or is cancelled, under the same random install ID, so we can see onboarding through to a paid subscription as one funnel. We've set PostHog to drop RevenueCat's account identifiers from those events before they're stored, and not to receive RevenueCat's customer attributes.

4. How we use information

• To run the app: your account, backing up and restoring your record, and your subscription.
• To improve onboarding and the paywall: the analytics above.
• To answer you: emails you send us.
• To keep the service secure and to meet legal obligations.

We do not use your data for advertising, we do not sell or rent it, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites. We don't use your check-ins or words to train AI models, and there's no AI in the app.

5. Who helps us (service providers)

These companies process data for us, only to provide their service:

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or as part of a sale or reorganisation of the business (in which case this policy continues to apply to your data).

6. The crisis filter

Some places in Long Game let you write in your own words (for example your reason, and what happened on a night you played). Before anything is saved, a small check on your iPhone looks for signs that someone may be in danger right now. It runs entirely on the phone, with no network.

If it fires, nothing you typed is kept, and a quiet line offers Get support, which opens a list of people you can reach. The check itself is never recorded: no flag, no score, no event, no log, nothing synced. We don't keep any mental-health information about you. (In the nightly check-in, words that don't fire are kept in that night's record as usual.)

7. How long we keep it

• Your account and record: for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account, they're deleted from our database immediately.
• After a deletion: if revoking your Sign in with Apple link or deleting your subscription record at RevenueCat doesn't go through at once, we keep only what's needed to retry (your former account ID for RevenueCat, and Apple's token for the revoke) for up to 14 days, then remove it. It isn't linked to any of your data, which is already gone.
• Database backups: kept for a limited time under our provider's standard retention, then deleted. Deleted data leaves the backups as they expire.
• Analytics: kept under our analytics provider's standard retention, then deleted.
• Subscription records: Apple and our subscription provider keep their own purchase records under their own policies.
• Support emails: as long as needed to help you.
• Service logs: our providers keep routine technical logs (which can include an IP address) for security and troubleshooting for a limited time.

8. Your choices and rights

• Export your data: Settings › Export everything gives you two files: a readable text file (each night with its answer and hours, your routines, your reason and what you want back) and a JSON file with everything we keep for your account. Screen Time, locks and your person aren't included, because we never have them.
• Correct it: you can edit your reason, what you want back, your routines and your settings in the app, and correct a night's answer.
• Delete your account: Settings › Account › Delete my account. It shows you what will go, offers an export first, then asks you to confirm with Apple or a fresh code. Your account and everything in it are removed from our servers, then everything Long Game kept on your iPhone is erased. We also revoke Sign in with Apple and delete your customer record at RevenueCat. Deleting your account doesn't cancel your subscription: Apple manages that (see our Support page).
• Sign in with Apple: if you stop using Apple ID with Long Game in your Apple Account settings, we sign you out everywhere and keep your data, so you can sign in again. If you delete your Apple Account, we delete your Long Game account too.
• Permissions: you can turn off Screen Time access and notifications at any time in iPhone Settings, or disconnect Screen Time in Long Game's Settings.
• Ask us: you can email us to ask what we hold, to delete it, or with any other privacy request. We'll answer within one month. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights, including to object or complain to a regulator; we won't treat you differently for using them. Section 14 covers the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, and section 15 covers US states.

9. Children

You must be at least 13 to use Long Game, or older if the age at which you can agree to data use yourself (the "age of digital consent") is higher where you live. In the EEA that age is between 13 and 16 depending on the country; in the UK it is 13. Long Game is not directed to children under that age, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. Long Game is rated 13+ on the App Store. If you believe a child under the minimum age has given us information, email us and we'll delete it.

10. Where data is stored

We're based in the United States, and our providers store data in the United States (AWS us-east-2, Ohio, United States). If you use Long Game from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in the US. Section 14 explains how we protect transfers from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland.

11. Security

Data travels encrypted (HTTPS). Every table in our database is protected by row-level rules so an account can read only its own rows; your record can only be added to, so a night can't be edited or removed once it's written (it goes only when your account does); and there are no passwords to leak. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep what we hold small on purpose: data we don't hold is data we can't lose.

12. Our website

This policy covers the Long Game app. The website uselonggame.com describes the app and counts visits with Vercel Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and doesn't identify you.

13. Changes

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top and, for a meaningful change, tell you in the app before it takes effect.

14. If you're in the EEA, UK or Switzerland

This section applies if you use Long Game in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland. It adds to the rest of this policy.

Who is responsible for your data

Beatbytes LLC, a Virginia limited liability company in the United States, is the controller of your personal data. Contact: hello@uselonggame.com, 8401 Mayland Dr, Ste A, Richmond, VA 23294-4648, United States.

The companies in section 5 process data on our behalf, under contracts that limit them to providing their service. Apple is responsible on its own account for the App Store, payments and Sign in with Apple.

Why we use your data (legal bases)

Your check-ins

Long Game is about a gaming habit. It doesn't diagnose anything, and your record stays private to you: it's kept to run the app for you and is never shared, sold or used for advertising.

The crisis filter (section 6) never keeps anything: when it fires, what you typed is discarded on the phone and nothing is recorded.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• Access the data we hold about you. Settings › Export everything gives you all of it at once, and you can also email us.
• Rectification: correct data that's wrong. Most of it you can change in the app (section 8); for anything else, email us.
• Erasure: have your data deleted. Settings › Account › Delete my account does it straight away (section 8).
• Restriction: ask us to limit how we use your data while a concern is looked into.
• Portability: receive your data in a machine-readable format. The export includes a JSON file for this.
• Object to what we do on the basis of legitimate interests.
• Complain to a supervisory authority, in the country where you live or work or where you think the law was broken. In the UK, that's the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). In Switzerland, it's the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (edoeb.admin.ch). We'd be glad to hear from you first, at hello@uselonggame.com.

We'll answer a request within one month. If it's complex we may need up to two more months, and we'll tell you why. We may ask you to confirm the request comes from your account, for example by writing from the email address on it.

Transfers to the United States

We're in the United States, and so is our database (Supabase, on AWS in us-east-2, Ohio). The other companies in section 5 also process data in the US. When your data moves from the EEA, the UK or Switzerland to the US, we protect it this way:

• where the company is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework (and its UK Extension and the Swiss–US Data Privacy Framework), we rely on that certification;
• otherwise, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, with the UK's International Data Transfer Addendum for UK data and the changes Swiss law requires for Swiss data.

You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards that apply by emailing us.

How long we keep it

See section 7.

Automated decisions

We don't make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects. Your days, count and rank are worked out on your phone from what you record, only to show them back to you. The crisis filter runs on your phone only to offer a way to get support, and it records nothing.

Children

You must be at least 13, or the age of digital consent where you live if that's higher (up to 16 in some EEA countries). See section 9.

15. US state privacy rights

Some US states, including California and Virginia, give their residents rights over personal information: to know what's collected, to access, correct and delete it, to get a copy, and to opt out of its sale, of sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising, and of profiling. We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We don't use it for profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. To use any of these rights, use Export everything or Delete my account in the app, or email hello@uselonggame.com. If you're refused, you can appeal by replying to that email, and we'll answer within the time the law sets. You can use an authorised agent where your state's law allows it. We won't treat you differently for using these rights.

16. Contact

Beatbytes LLC
8401 Mayland Dr, Ste A, Richmond, VA 23294-4648, United States
Email: hello@uselonggame.com