Privacy Policy

Information stored on your device

Upstairs is a story game with offline gameplay. There is no in-game account. The game does not ask for your name, email, phone number, location or payment details.

Main-story progress, inventory, puzzles, journal entries, opened archive documents and answers, and language, audio and display preferences stay in the app’s local device storage. The app does not send this information to the developer or another server.

Sale notification

The only information that reaches the developer is the sale notification: when the game is first opened after it is bought, it sends Apple’s signed proof of that purchase and the App Store country code to the developer’s own service. The service uses it only to tell the developer that a sale happened; it keeps no name and no account, and keeps only a scrambled mark of the purchase for eight days so that one purchase is counted once.

The notification starts with version 1.0.2; earlier versions send nothing. About five seconds after launch, the game asks StoreKit for Apple’s signed proof that this copy came from the App Store (the app transaction). Only if that purchase is no more than 72 hours old does it send the proof and the three-letter App Store country code to the developer’s own service (bell.codebiy.com), which runs on Cloudflare. Once the service has accepted the notification, the game never sends it again; a copy bought more than 72 hours ago never sends one; refused attempts stop after five.

The proof contains no name, no email address and no Apple Account. It contains what Apple puts in it: the app, its version, the purchase date, and identifiers Apple creates for that purchase and for the device check.

The service checks Apple’s signature and sends a notification to the developer’s phone: a sale, this game, this country. It does not store or log the proof itself, and it keeps no IP address, name or account. The mark it keeps is a SHA-256 hash of the identifier Apple gives that purchase; for a notification from a test build (TestFlight) the hash is kept without a time limit, so that one test copy is counted once. For the game, the service also keeps the time of the last sale it reported and how many sales it reported in the current hour. Its log records that a sale notification arrived, for which game, and the result. Cloudflare, as the host, handles your IP address as it does for any web request.

On the App Store privacy label this appears as Purchases → Purchase History: not linked to you and not used to track you.

Tracking, permissions and audio

The app has no advertising, user tracking or third-party analytics SDK. It does not request camera, microphone, location, contacts or photo access. Ambient sounds are bundled audio files; the microphone is not recorded.

Apple services and purchases

Apple handles app downloads, the optional Building Archive purchase, restoration, payment and refunds. The app uses verified StoreKit purchase entitlement to unlock two extra cases. These checks may communicate with Apple services. The app does not receive or store card details.

Apple’s App Store, optional diagnostics and device backup services have their own terms. Purchase entitlement is separate from local story progress.

Retention and deletion

Starting a new game replaces the active main-story save while preserving archive progress and preferences. Deleting the app together with its data removes this installation’s saves and settings. Removing it only from the Home Screen or offloading it does not delete that data.

The game has no cloud synchronization. Device backups may contain app data depending on Apple/iCloud settings, and restoring a backup may restore earlier saves.

Support and contact

If you email support, we receive the information in your message to respond to your request. The game does not send email automatically. Contact Orhan Ege Bilge at [email protected] for privacy questions. This policy will be updated if the app’s data behavior changes.