What the game collects, who else receives it, how long it is kept, and how to get rid of all of it.
Last updated 11 October 2026 · Applies to the game
Mech Drop on Android and iOS (com.tentaculo.mechdrop), and to nothing else.
You can open this page from inside the game too: OPTIONS → PRIVACY POLICY.
The game is made by Tentaculo, an independent game studio (tentaculogames.pt). We decide what the game collects and why, and we answer for it. Every question about this page goes to hellotentaculo@gmail.com.
| What | Why, and who can see it |
|---|---|
| An account id | A random string that identifies your save, made by Firebase Authentication the first time the game goes online. If you play as a guest this is all we have. Other players' games use it to show your profile and send you gifts. |
| Your Google account details optional |
Only if you tap SIGN IN WITH GOOGLE: Google gives Firebase Authentication your email address, your name and profile picture address as Google shows them, and your Google account id. They are kept with the sign-in so you can sign in again. Your email is shown back to you on your own PROFILE so you can tell which account you are using. No other player ever sees any of them. |
| Your Apple account details optional, iPhone |
Only if you tap SIGN IN WITH APPLE: Apple gives Firebase Authentication an email address (your own, or a private relay address if you chose to hide it) and an Apple account id. We keep no Apple name. The email is shown back to you on your own PROFILE. No other player ever sees it. |
| Your progress | A private copy of the whole save: credits, your sector and its planets, records, runs, the ARMORY and the BESTIARY, the avatars and banners you own and wear, your leaderboard name, your charisma and your sound and haptics settings. Only your account can read it. |
| Your leaderboard row | The name you type, the avatar and banner you wear, your points, your sector, the planets you liberated, the wardens you slew, your moon runs, your number of runs and wins, your fastest win, the credits you have earned in total, how much of the ARMORY and BESTIARY you have found, and when the row reached its points. Every player of Mech Drop can see it. |
| Your charisma | The charisma you have received, in total and today, and the id of the last gift you received. That id contains the account id of the player who sent it. Every player can read it, one player at a time. |
| Gifts received | Each gift sent to you: which kind (signal flare, ration crate, power core or valor medal), the day and time, and the sender's account id. You can list them; a sender can look up only the gifts they sent you themselves. The sender's name is never stored with the gift: your game reads it from their leaderboard row. |
| Player reports | Only if you tap REPORT on another player's profile: your account id, their account id, their leaderboard name, the reason you picked (offensive name, cheating or other) and the time. If another player reports you, the same is stored with your account id as the reported one. Read only by us, in the Firebase console, to review abuse and cheating on the leaderboard. |
| On the phone only | The players you blocked. Nobody else receives that list. The phone also keeps its own copy of your save. |
| Ad data (through Google AdMob) | To serve the optional reward videos, Google AdMob may collect your phone's advertising identifier, information about the device and its connection (such as model, system version, language and IP address) and how you interact with the ads. Google receives this directly; we do not store it. See Ads below. |
| How the game is played (through Google Analytics for Firebase) | So faults can be found and the game balanced: sessions and time played, the screens you open, game events (a run starting and ending with its planet, sector, time, level, nests, kills and credits, what ended it, wardens slain, planets liberated, sectors reached, the first training run, continues and reward videos with your answers, credits earned and spent in the shop, unlocks, signing in) and in-game error messages, plus app version, device model, system version, language and approximate country. Filed under a random id for this install of the app, never under your name or email. Google Analytics deletes the detailed events after at most 14 months. |
| Crash reports (through Firebase Crashlytics) | If the app crashes, Firebase Crashlytics (Google) receives a report: the stack trace (where in the code it failed), device model, system version, app version, the time, and a random Crashlytics id for this install, never your account, name or email. Used only to find and fix crashes. Google keeps crash reports for 90 days. |
The game does not ask for your location, your contacts, your photos, your microphone or your camera, and it holds no permission that would let it: on Android it asks only for internet access, the network state, vibration (the haptics) and the advertising identifier (for the reward videos). It sends you no notifications. It measures how the game is played and reports crashes only as described above. There is nothing to buy with real money; credits are earned by playing.
Everything above that is not on the phone, apart from ad data, the gameplay measurement and crash reports, is sent over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) to Google Firebase (Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore). Cloud Firestore keeps it in the European Union. Firebase Authentication is a global Google service, so your sign-in may be processed outside your country, including in the United States, under the safeguards Google provides for such transfers, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
Nothing is sold, and nothing is handed to anyone not on this list unless the law requires it.
The leaderboard name is the one thing one player types and another reads. Names are 1 to 16 letters, digits or spaces, and the game refuses names on a short list of offensive words, both when you type one and when it shows someone else's (a refused name is shown as plain “Pilot”). This check runs on your phone; nothing is sent to us for it.
On another player's profile, REPORT asks why (offensive name, cheating or other), stores the player report described above, and blocks them. We look at every report; a name that breaks the rules is removed from the leaderboard. BLOCK hides a player on your phone only, from the leaderboard and from your gifts: it tells nobody, and it stays through signing out and deleting your account. UNBLOCK ALL at the foot of the leaderboard clears it.
To report something the buttons do not cover, write to hellotentaculo@gmail.com.
The app shows no banners and no ads between runs. When your mech is destroyed it offers a reward video you can choose to watch: to continue the run where you fell or, after a short run, to keep all of its credits instead of half. Nothing happens if you never tap it. The video comes from Google AdMob, which keeps one video loaded in the background so it is ready, so the app contacts AdMob even if you never watch one.
To serve it, AdMob may collect your phone's advertising identifier, information about the device and its connection (such as model, system version, language and IP address) and how you interact with the ads, and uses them under Google's own policy: how Google uses information from apps that use its services.
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, Google's consent screen appears before any ad is requested, and what you choose there decides whether ads are personalised, or shown at all. You can change your answer at any time: in the game, open OPTIONS → PRIVACY SETTINGS, which brings Google's screen back. That button appears wherever the law requires the choice, including the EEA and the UK.
On iPhone the game then asks for permission to track, with Apple's own prompt, before any ad is requested. The advertising identifier is read only if you allow it; if you do not, the video still plays, without it. You can change that answer at any time under Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
You can also reset or delete the advertising identifier at any time: on Android under Settings → Privacy → Ads, on iPhone by turning tracking off as above. Doing so does not stop the video; it stops it being tied to what you did before.
The gameplay measurement waits for the same answer. Where the consent screen applies, it keeps an identifier on your phone only if you allowed storing information on your device; if you did not, it sends only counts with no identifier attached.
There is a Delete account option inside the game: tap your avatar at the top left of the orbit screen (or OPTIONS → ACCOUNT), then DELETE ACCOUNT, and tap it a second time to confirm. It removes your leaderboard row, the gifts you received, your charisma profile, your save and the account itself, and starts the game again from nothing, as a new guest. There is no undo.
If you would rather someone else did it, write to hellotentaculo@gmail.com and tell us the Google account or Apple ID you signed in with. The full details are on the delete your data page.
You can also keep your account and ask us to delete only the player reports you sent, or the ones made about you. One email does it.
Deleting the app on its own does not delete anything stored against your account, only the copy on that phone.
The game is not aimed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly keep anything about them. If you believe a child has an account here, write to the address above and it will be removed.
You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, object to how it is used, or ask for it in a form you can take elsewhere. In the EEA and the UK these are your rights under data protection law, and you can also complain to your local data protection authority. One email to hellotentaculo@gmail.com does any of them. We do not charge for it and we do not need a reason.
If what the game collects changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves.