Privacy Policy: Don't Drop Dinner

Effective date: 1 September 2026

This page describes what information Don't Drop Dinner handles, and why, in as plain a manner as we can manage. There is no account to create, and the game never asks for your real name, your email address, your phone number, or your location. It does ask you to choose a nickname if you want to appear on the leaderboard, and it asks, once, for your year of birth. Sections 1 and 2 explain what happens to those two answers.

1. What stays on your device

Your high scores, achievements, settings, your chosen nickname, and your year of birth are stored on your device only. The game does not sync them to the cloud, which means we hold no copy of them and are unable to restore them if the app is removed or the device is replaced. We know that losing progress is frustrating, and we are sorry that we cannot recover it on your behalf.

The game asks for your year of birth the first time you open it. It is used for one purpose only: to tell the advertising service whether the player is under 13, so that a child is shown only non-personalised advertisements rated for a general audience. The year itself is never sent anywhere and never leaves your device. If the question is left unanswered, the game treats the player as a child, which is the more protective of the two settings.

2. The online leaderboard

Don't Drop Dinner is played by two people on one device, and a run produces a single shared score. That score is posted to the leaderboard under one nickname, on behalf of both players.

When a score is posted, these things are sent to our leaderboard service, and nothing else:

The random ID is a string of randomly generated characters. It is not your name, not your email address, not your Apple Account, not your device's serial number, and not Apple's advertising identifier. We generate it ourselves, and it exists for two reasons: to keep one leaderboard row per device rather than a new row for every game, and to let you rename your entry later. It cannot be used to work out who you are. The password value is what stops a stranger from renaming your entry; it is stored in a way that no other player can ever read.

No email address, no location, no contacts, and no advertising identifier are sent to the leaderboard. As with any internet service, the servers that receive the score see the connection it arrives on, which necessarily includes an IP address.

The game assigns you a random nickname such as Chef_4821, which you may change. Because nicknames are shown publicly to every other player, we would encourage you to avoid using your real name or other personal details.

Leaderboard data is stored with Supabase, Inc. Further information is available in the Supabase Privacy Policy.

3. Reporting an offensive nickname

Because nicknames are public, the leaderboard lets you report one that is offensive. If you send a report, three things are sent: the reported nickname, the random ID belonging to that entry, and your own random ID. Your ID is recorded so that the same person cannot file the same report over and over. It is never shown to the player you reported, and it is not shown publicly anywhere.

Reports are stored with Supabase and are forwarded to us as an email message and a chat message, so that we can look at them quickly. Those messages contain the reported nickname and the random IDs described above, and nothing more. When a nickname does break the rules, we reset it to a default one such as Chef_4821. Nobody is barred from playing the game.

4. Advertising

Don't Drop Dinner displays advertisements supplied by Google AdMob, which is how the game is able to remain free to play. To serve those advertisements, Google may collect an advertising identifier from your device, together with general technical information such as device type, country, and app version. We do not receive this information ourselves and have no means of connecting it to you.

As described in section 1, if the player is under 13, or if the age question has not been answered, every advertisement request the game makes is tagged as child-directed and as coming from a player under the age of consent, and the advertisements shown are non-personalised and limited to a general-audience rating.

On iOS, no app may use the device's tracking identifier unless you have allowed it in the permission request Apple shows. You are free to decline. The game behaves identically either way; you would simply see advertisements that are less relevant to you. This choice can be changed at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Tracking.

Google’s own explanation is available here: How Google uses information from apps that use our services.

5. Purchases

If you purchase the ad-free upgrade, the transaction is handled entirely by Apple. We do not see or store your payment details at any point. The game records only that the upgrade is active, and it does so on your own device.

6. Children

Don't Drop Dinner is a family-friendly game and may be played by children as well as teenagers and adults. Apart from the year of birth described in section 1, which never leaves the device, the game requests no personal information from any player beyond a nickname of their own choosing. The only information it sends off the device is a nickname, a score, and the two random values described in section 2, plus a report if a player chooses to send one.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe that a nickname on the leaderboard identifies your child, please contact us at the address below and we will remove the entry. No explanation is required.

7. Removing your information

You may request the removal of a leaderboard entry by writing to us with the nickname it appears under. We will delete that entry and the stored score history behind it. Please be aware that nicknames and scores are shown publicly on the leaderboard, so we have no way to confirm from that information alone that an entry belongs to the person asking for its removal. We may therefore decline requests that appear to be made in bad faith, and we may decline repeated requests. We aim to complete removals within 30 days.

All other information the game holds resides on your own device, and deleting the app removes it immediately.

8. Third parties

These services are involved in the running of the game: Google AdMob for advertising, Supabase for storing the leaderboard and any reports, Apple for app distribution and purchases, and an email service (Resend) together with a chat service (LINE), which deliver report notifications to us. We do not sell your information, and we have no intention of doing so.

9. Changes to this policy

Should this policy change, the effective date shown at the top of this page will be updated accordingly. We may also note significant changes in the app’s release notes.

10. Contact

Questions about this policy, and requests relating to your information, may be sent to ddd.game@varavara.net. Don't Drop Dinner is made by one person, so we are not able to guarantee a response to every message, but requests made under sections 6 and 7 above are prioritised.