Privacy

Last updated 4 October 2026

Fireline is a game, not a data business. It has no ads and does no tracking. It collects a small set of anonymous gameplay stats to make the game better, and you can turn that off.

Who we are

Fireline is made by Eric Shickluna, an independent developer in Canada. “We” and “us” on this page means Eric. You can reach him at hello@playfireline.com.

Anonymous gameplay stats

While Settings > ANONYMOUS STATS is on (it is on unless you turn it off), the game sends us a record of how it’s played. This is what’s in it:

• A random install ID. The game makes up a random number the first time it runs and keeps it in its own settings file. It is not taken from your phone, your Apple ID, or Apple’s advertising or vendor IDs. It is deleted with the app.
• A random session ID, new each time you open the game.
• The game’s version and build, your phone’s language and region setting (for example en-CA), the control scheme you picked, and whether it’s a beta build.
• What happens in the game. Which missions you fly, how each run went (drops, hits, time to each fire, fuel, weapons used), menu taps, the “Fun?” rating you can give after a mission (three taps), whether you tap or skip the offer to talk to Hal, and the answers you give to in-game questions like the beta price question.
• How the game ran, in rough buckets: frame rate, a memory step, whether the phone was getting hot, and a chip class shared by several iPhone models (for example “A17 Pro (iPhone 15 Pro)”). Also whether the last session ended without closing cleanly, as a count. No crash logs.

Never collected: your name, email, Apple ID, Game Center ID or name, contacts, photos, location, IP-based location, advertising ID, vendor ID, device serial number or exact model, iOS version, anything you type (apart from the number you enter in the price question), or anything from outside the game.

The stats are not linked to you. We never join the install ID to anything else, and none of the events carry free text.

Where the stats go

The game first writes the stats to a small file inside the app on your phone. It then sends them over an encrypted connection to PostHog, an analytics service, on its servers in the European Union. PostHog is set to throw away the IP address the stats arrive from and not to look up a location from it. We use the stats to see which missions are too hard, what people play, and where the game runs badly.

Turning the stats off

Open Settings in the game and turn ANONYMOUS STATS off. Sending stops straight away. The game also deletes the stats file on your phone, empties anything waiting to be sent, and forgets the install ID. If you turn it back on, it starts again with a new random ID, so it can’t be matched to what was sent before.

Stats already sent can’t be traced back to you, so we can’t pick yours out to delete them. That is the point of keeping them anonymous.

The feedback chat with Hal

“Tell Hal what you think” opens a short voice chat about the game, on a screen inside the game. Hal is an AI voice interviewer, not a person: an AI listens and answers in Hal’s voice, and Eric reads the transcripts afterwards. It is optional. The game only offers it after you’ve played a while, it’s always in Settings, and a screen explains it before anything starts. The chat isn’t switched on in any build yet. This is how it works when it is.

• Who runs it. The AI is run by ElevenLabs (ElevenLabs Inc.), on our behalf. The chat screen is part of the game. It talks only to ElevenLabs, and has no ads, analytics or trackers.
• What is kept. The written transcript of the chat, and a short summary of it: what you liked, what bugged you, what you’d like to see, any bugs, the mission, and whether it was positive, mixed or negative. No recording of your voice is kept. Your voice is still sent to ElevenLabs while you talk, so it can be understood.
• For how long. ElevenLabs deletes each chat after 90 days. Eric keeps a copy of the transcripts and summaries on his own computer, never public, for as long as they help improve the game, and deletes them when they don’t.
• What the game sends. Only the build number, where you opened the chat (after a mission or from Settings) and the last mission you played. Never the install ID, a name, an account or anything else from your phone.
• What ElevenLabs sees. While you talk, ElevenLabs sees your IP address, as any server you connect to does. Your phone asks once to use the microphone, and the game uses it only while the chat is open.
• Please don’t share personal details. Hal never asks for your name, email, age or where you live. If you say one anyway, it’s left out of the summary.
• 13 or older. The chat is for players 13 and up. You confirm that on the button that starts it, and Hal ends the chat politely if someone sounds younger.
• Where it’s processed. ElevenLabs processes the chat in the United States. If you’re in the EU, the UK or Canada, your chat is transferred to the US, under ElevenLabs’ data processing terms and the EU standard contractual clauses. The anonymous stats go to PostHog in the EU. The two are kept apart.
• Can it be matched to you? No one can tell who you are from it. In principle the time of a chat could be lined up with stats sent around the same time, but neither leads to a person, and we don’t try to join them.

Our small server

To start a chat, the game asks our own small server, at api.playfireline.com, for a one-time pass. With the request it sends a token from Apple, and the server asks Apple to check that the request comes from the real game on a real iPhone. Apple sees that check, not the chat.

• What it keeps. A one-way scrambled fingerprint (a hash) of each Apple token, for one day, so a token can’t be used twice. And short-lived counters for its rate limits. Nothing else: no IP address, no device token, no ID. These are stored with Upstash (a Redis database service), through Vercel.
• What it logs. One line per request, with only the route and an outcome code, like “hal-session, ok”. Never your IP address, the token or anything else from the request.
• What the host sees. The server runs on Vercel. Vercel necessarily sees your IP address to deliver the request, and may keep its own short-lived platform logs under its own privacy policy, as any host does.

TestFlight, the App Store and Apple

The beta is delivered through Apple’s TestFlight app, and the finished game will be on the App Store. Apple runs both under Apple’s privacy policy. During the beta Apple shares some things with us: how many people installed and opened the game, crash reports, and any feedback and screenshots you choose to send from TestFlight, along with your device model and iOS version. If you joined with an email invite, Apple also shows us that email.

If you’re signed in to Game Center, the game can send your scores to its leaderboards. Apple handles that under its own privacy policy. Your Game Center ID is not part of our stats.

This website

playfireline.com sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from other companies. It is hosted by Vercel, which, like any host, sees your IP address and keeps standard server logs under its own privacy policy. We don’t use those logs to work out who you are.

Children

Fireline is made for teens and up and is fine to share with younger players. The game’s stats don’t identify anyone, at any age. The Hal chat is only for players 13 and older.

Your choices and rights

• Turn the stats off at any time in Settings. That deletes the local file and the install ID.
• Delete the app, and everything it stored on your phone goes with it.
• If you had a chat with Hal and want it gone sooner than 90 days, email us with roughly when it was. We’ll delete what we can find, and ask ElevenLabs to do the same.
• Depending on where you live (for example Canada, the EU or the UK), you have the right to ask what we hold about you, and to have it corrected or deleted. Because the data is anonymous, we usually can’t find anything that is yours, but we’ll always look. Email hello@playfireline.com.

Changes

If the game starts collecting something new, this page changes first and the date at the top moves. Anything bigger than a small fix will be in the beta’s release notes too.

Contact

Questions about privacy: hello@playfireline.com.