Privacy Policy

This policy explains what PewBeat does with your data. It applies to the PewBeat game on Android (com.pewbeat.game), Windows, Linux and web.

Summary

• There is no account and no sign-in. PewBeat never asks for your name, email address, phone number or date of birth.
• No advertising and no analytics. The game contains no ad networks, no analytics or crash SDKs, and does not read your advertising ID.
• Your progress lives on your device. It is written to an encrypted local save file.
• A small amount of data is sent to our servers so that cloud backup, account transfer, online co-op, the shared Galactic War and the two community boards can work. Every case is listed below.
• Your display name is the only free-text field, and you choose it. It is visible to other players in co-op and on the Ship Gallery.
• Online co-op is peer-to-peer, which means the people you play with can see your IP address. See Co-op and your IP address.

Stored on your device

PewBeat keeps an encrypted local save file. It is the authoritative copy of your progress and it holds:

• your gold, highest wave reached, upgrade and class levels, total kills and total play time;
• which ships, charge skills, Reinforcement Clones, decals and afterburner colours you own, and how you have arranged them;
• which redeem codes you have used, your Bestiary discoveries and your Galactic War claim state;
• your display name;
• a randomly generated device ID — the key to your cloud backup. It is generated on your device, is not derived from any hardware identifier, and is never transmitted to other players;
• device-only settings such as volume, mute, screen shake, effects level, the rhythm and metronome toggles, your planet preference and your beat-sync offsets. These are never uploaded.

Uninstalling the game removes this file. If you have never used the cloud features, uninstalling removes everything PewBeat knows about you.

What leaves your device

Each row below is a separate feature. Nothing in this table is combined into a profile, sold, or used for advertising.

Cloud backup and account transfer

When you press Upload, at a 10-wave checkpoint, when you exit, when you end a run with enough progress, when you press Give Up, or when you change your display name, your save is uploaded to our database.

Online co-op

Creating or joining a room over WiFi sends the room name you type and the technical information two devices need to connect (network candidates, including IP addresses) through a signaling server. Once connected, game data flows directly between players and not through us. Players in a session exchange display name, public ID, chosen ship, decal design and live gameplay state.

Galactic War

At checkpoints and at the end of a run, the game reports a planet name and a number of kills to the shared community war. Nothing identifying is attached to the contribution.

Offline Reinforcement

While this is on, the game keeps a small entry for you in a pool that other players draw from, so your ship can fight as an AI ally in someone else’s single-player run while you are offline. The entry holds your public ID, your Stronger Bullets level (that is what players are matched on) and the time you were last online in plain text, plus your ship, upgrade levels, charge skill, afterburner colours and display name AES-256 encrypted in the same way as your cloud save. Your device ID is never stored — it is sent only so the server can derive your public ID, then discarded.

Other players only ever receive the encrypted loadout and your public ID. They cannot see your device ID, and the pool only lists players who have been offline for at least 20 minutes. Turn Offline Reinforcement off in Settings › Gameplay and your entry is deleted.

Discord notifications

Off unless you paste your own Discord webhook URL into Settings › Notification. When it is set, the events you tick send your display name, the wave you reached, your gold, the planet and a picture of your ship straight to your Discord channel. The webhook is stored on that device only, and we never see it — the game posts to Discord directly. Clear the field to stop it.

The same events can also be delivered as native notifications on the device you are playing on — a Windows toast, a Linux or macOS banner, or a browser notification. Those are handed to your own operating system or browser and go nowhere over the network. On the web the browser asks your permission first.

Ship Gallery

Opening the Ship Gallery uploads your decorated ship designs — public ID, display name, which ship, which preset slot, the decal arrangement and the flame colours — so other players can browse them. This is cosmetic data only. If you never open the Ship Gallery, nothing is uploaded.

Music recommendations

If you host a game with your own MP3 folder, the game reports the title, artist and BPM of songs you play to a community “most played” board. No audio is ever uploaded, and nothing identifying is attached. This only happens on desktop, only for the host, and only for custom music.

Online BPM lookup (optional)

When analysing your own music folder, the game can look a song’s tempo up online. That sends only the song title and artist to a third-party endpoint. No audio is uploaded. It is a desktop-host feature and you can switch it off with Look up BPM online in the Host Music screen.

Update check

The game fetches a small version file to tell you when a newer build exists. This is an ordinary web request; no data about you is included, though the host serving it receives your IP address as with any web request.

Co-op and your IP address

Your device ID is never shared with other players. Co-op identifies you by a public ID derived from it through a one-way hash, so a teammate cannot work backwards to the key that unlocks your cloud save.

Your display name is visible to everyone in your session and on the Ship Gallery. Because you choose it freely, please do not put your real name, email address or anything else private in it.

Android permissions

While hosting Bluetooth co-op, your device temporarily prefixes its Bluetooth name with the room name so nearby players can find it, and restores the original name afterwards. Joining requires the password the host sets.

What we never collect

• Your name, email address, phone number, date of birth or any account credentials.
• Your location. No GPS, no network-based location, no location derived from Bluetooth scanning.
• Your contacts, photos, camera, microphone, files or documents.
• Your advertising ID, or any device fingerprint. There is no ad SDK in the game.
• Analytics or telemetry of any kind — no session tracking, no event logging, no crash reporting SDK.
• Any audio from your music folder. Only a song’s title, artist and tempo are ever transmitted.
• Payment details. See Purchases.

Purchases

On Android, PewBeat offers an optional in-app purchase of in-game gold. The transaction is handled entirely by Google Play Billing. PewBeat never sees or stores your card number, billing address or any other payment detail — the app receives only the product identifier and a purchase token from Google, which it uses to grant the gold and then consume the purchase. Your purchase history is held by Google under Google’s Privacy Policy, and refunds are handled through Google Play.

Children

PewBeat is intended for a general audience aged 13 and over and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information — in practice this could only be a display name they typed — contact us at pewbeatdev@gmail.com and we will delete the associated record.

Your choices

Retention and deletion

A cloud save is kept for as long as it is useful to you, so that you can restore it on a new device. Galactic War contributions and music-recommendation counts are aggregate figures with no identifier attached, and are kept indefinitely as part of the shared totals.

To have your data deleted, email pewbeatdev@gmail.com with your display name and roughly when you last played, so the record can be found. We may ask you to make a small change we specify — such as setting your display name to a given word — to confirm the save is yours before we delete it. We will then remove your cloud save row and any Ship Gallery entries associated with it, and confirm by reply. Please allow up to 30 days.

Deleting the cloud copy does not touch the save on your device — use Reset Progress or uninstall for that. Aggregate war and music totals cannot be unpicked into individual contributions and so cannot be removed.

Security

• Your save is encrypted with AES-256 on your device before it is uploaded, so the stored row and the network payload are both ciphertext.
• All network requests use HTTPS or an encrypted peer-to-peer channel.
• The community boards — Galactic War, music recommendations and the Ship Gallery — are read-only to the app; writes go through validated server-side functions that clamp what a client can submit.
• The cloud-save table cannot be read with the app’s public key at all. Every read and write goes through a server-side function that needs your device ID, so saves cannot be listed or enumerated — and neither can the device IDs that double as account transfer codes.
• The Offline Reinforcement pool works the same way: no direct access, only server-side functions, and the ally loadouts other players fetch are ciphertext.
• Because there is no sign-in by design, your account transfer code is the only thing protecting your cloud save. Treat it like a password and do not share or stream it.

No system is perfectly secure. We take reasonable measures to protect the limited data described here, but we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Third-party services

These providers process data on our behalf, or receive it as part of a feature you use:

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

International transfers

The services above operate globally, so the limited data described here may be processed on servers outside your country. By using PewBeat’s online features you consent to that transfer.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted at this address with a new effective date. Material changes will also be noted in the game’s release notes. Continuing to use PewBeat after a change means you accept the revised policy.

Data safety summary

A quick reference matching the categories used by the Google Play Data safety form.

Data is encrypted in transit, your save is additionally encrypted before it leaves your device, and you can request deletion by email — see Retention and deletion.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a deletion request: pewbeatdev@gmail.com

Flying Sky Whales · PewBeat (com.pewbeat.game) · Effective 28 August 2026

See also: Account & Saves · Co-op · Custom music