Privacy Policy

Pofu · Erek Studio

What we collect

The game. Apart from the optional player chat and the Chat+ purchase check described below, we — Erek Studio — do not collect, store, or transmit any personal data. The game has no sign-up, no profile, no account, and no analytics service. The one other exception is the advertising, where Google processes data we never see or store; see “Advertising” below.

The player chat (version 2.1 and later). If you choose to use it, we process your chat account, profile, messages and the safety data described in Player chat below.

Chat+. When you buy or restore the Chat+ subscription, our server confirms the purchase with Apple, with or without a chat account; see Chat+ purchases.

What is stored on your device

Pofu saves a few values locally so it can remember where you are:

• Which level you have reached, and your best result (stars and touches) on the levels you finished.
• Your daily puzzle results and streak, the pofu you have discovered, your achievements and the skin you chose.
• Your settings: sound, vibration, colour-blind marks, the daily reminder, and the language you picked.
• Whether you own Pofu Pro, so the game knows without asking the store every time.
• How many levels you have won since the last full-screen ad, and when it was shown, so ads are paced; and when the game last asked for a rating, so it does not ask again too soon.
• If you use the player chat or buy Chat+ (version 2.1 and later): your chat sign-in tokens, kept in the iOS Keychain; the confirmed Chat+ status with its expiry date — for a purchase made without a chat account, also the App Store’s signed record of the purchase — so Chat+ keeps working offline until that date and no longer; your acceptance of the community rules and of the AI safety check; what you reported or hid in the chat, so it stays hidden for you, with any report still waiting for a connection; whether the chat has asked you about notifications, with the push token it registered; and, if a birth year entered on this device did not show an adult, a note of that in the iOS Keychain, so the chat stays closed on this device.
• On a device whose App Store country or device region is Korea (version 2.1 and later), a note of that, so the purchase screen and the chat follow the Korea rules.

The game’s own values stay on your device. If you use the chat, the only part of them sent to it is your total stars and the furthest level you have reached, shown on your Pofu card (see Player chat). Everything listed here is removed when you delete the app, except what the iOS Keychain keeps: the chat sign-in tokens until you sign out of the chat or delete your chat account, and the under-age note, which stays. “Reset progress” in Settings clears your progress but not your purchases.

Purchases

Pofu Pro is a one-time purchase made through Apple’s App Store. Apple processes the payment under its own terms and privacy policy; we never see your name, card or Apple ID. For Pro, the app only learns whether it is owned, and “Restore purchases” in Settings asks the App Store again.

Chat+ is the player chat’s subscription, sold next to Pro. In Pofu it also gives everything Pro gives, for as long as it is active. Apple processes its payment too; how our server confirms a Chat+ purchase, and what it keeps, is described in Chat+ purchases. “Restore purchases” brings back both.

Advertising

The free game is supported by ads: a full-screen ad between levels every so often, never while you are playing a board, and optional videos you can choose to watch for a help — another blast, your last touch back, clearing one hazard, a hint, more touches after you run out, escaping a black hole, or keeping a daily streak. None of them is ever required to finish a level. With Pofu Pro, or while a Chat+ subscription is active, there are no ads at all: the full-screen ads stop and every help is given instantly, without a video. If Chat+ ends and you do not own Pofu Pro, the ads come back.

Ads are served by Google AdMob. To do that, Google processes your advertising identifier, an approximate region derived from your IP address, device and app information, and your interaction with the ad, under Google's privacy policy. We only ever see aggregate revenue reporting — never anything about an individual person. Pofu does not ask to track you across other companies’ apps and websites. Nothing from the player chat is given to Google AdMob.

Where the law requires it (for example in the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK), a Google consent form asks for your choice before ads are served, and Privacy options in the game’s Settings lets you change it at any time.

Notifications

After you finish your first daily puzzle, Pofu asks whether you would like a daily reminder. If you say yes and allow notifications, the reminder is scheduled on your device; nothing is sent to us or to anyone else. You can turn it off in Settings or in your device’s settings.

The player chat can also tell you about new messages. If you are signed in to the chat and allow notifications, Pofu registers your device with Apple’s push service and our chat server stores its push token, as described in Player chat. Turning notifications off for Pofu in your device’s settings stops both.

Player chat (version 2.1 and later)

From version 2.1, on iPhone and iPad, Pofu includes a player chat shared with other Erek Studio games, such as Doltap and Orbion: one server and one account for all of them. You can play Pofu without it. Nothing below happens unless you open the chat, accept the community rules, agree to the AI safety check, and sign in with Apple. The chat is for adults only: 18 or older, and 19 or older in Korea. Because it asks only for your birth year, it opens in the calendar year in which you turn 19, so that everyone in it is at least 18.

• Sign in with Apple. We store only the identifier Apple gives us for your account. If Apple includes your email address, we do not store it.
• Sessions. Sign-in sessions are stored on the server only as hashes and expire after 90 days.
• Your chat profile. A nickname (required) and your birth year (required, never shown to anyone, used only to confirm you are an adult). Optional: a display name, country, city, gender and the languages you speak, an avatar picked from a built-in set, and a short “about” line. Gender is never shown to other players; it is used only for the setting “only people of my gender can message me” — when you choose it, and when you write to someone who chose it. City appears only on your full profile.
• Your Pofu card. Next to your nickname, other players see that you play Pofu, your total stars and the furthest level you have reached, which Pofu sends to the chat.
• Activity. Which Erek Studio games you have used the chat in, and when you were last active; other players see whether you were active now, today or this week. With each request the app also tells the chat server its version, your device’s region setting and your App Store country; the server uses the region and the country only to decide whether the Korea rules below apply.
• Messages. What you post in rooms and send in one-to-one messages is stored on Cloudflare’s network so it can be delivered. Message text is deleted after 180 days.
• Safety checks. Every message is checked by automatic rules before it is posted, and right after by an AI model from Anthropic (Claude), which classifies it for harassment, threats, sexual content, hate, spam, scams, content involving minors, self-harm and sharing contact details; a message it flags is withdrawn. (If the AI check cannot run, for example during an outage, the message stays up and can still be reported.) When something is reported, the same model also reviews the report: the reported messages and the reported person’s profile (nickname, display name, “about” line and city), and, for a report that someone may be under 18, also their 30 most recent messages. Anthropic processes this text only to return the classification and, under its commercial terms, does not use it to train its models. You are asked to agree to this, separately from the community rules, before you can use the chat.
• AI assistants. Guide_AI and Buddy_AI are AI bots, labelled as such; they are not human players. Apart from a one-time greeting in the English and Korean official rooms, they write only when you send one of them a one-to-one message, or write the name of one in an English or Korean official room. Then Anthropic (Claude) processes the message you addressed to the bot to write a reply — in a one-to-one chat, together with the latest messages of that chat, at most four in all; nothing else from the chat is sent, and ordinary room conversation is never sent for a reply. Anthropic uses this text only to write the reply and, under its commercial terms, does not use it to train its models. A reply is checked by the same rules and AI model before anyone sees it. Messages to and from the bots are stored like other messages. The two bots share a limit of 10 messages per account per day (UTC), across every game and device; Chat+ does not raise it. The record of each message counted toward that limit is kept for 7 days. You can block or report the bots like anyone else.
• Reports. If someone reports a message, we keep a copy of it, the five messages around it and the reported person’s profile as it was (nickname, display name, “about” line and city) for up to 365 days to handle the report and meet legal obligations. The report itself — who reported whom, when, the reason and any note added — and our log of moderation actions have no set deletion date: they are kept to enforce the rules, also after an account is deleted.
• Profile photo (Chat+ only, optional). If you add one, you pick it from your photo library; the app crops it to a 512×512 square and re-encodes it without its location and camera data before sending it. Before anyone can see it, it is checked by the same Anthropic AI model for nudity, children, violence, hate and contact details; as with messages, Anthropic uses the photo only for that check and does not use it to train its models. A photo that fails is never stored; we keep only a note that it was refused, and why. Approved photos are stored on Cloudflare’s network and shown on your chat profile while your Chat+ is active. Removing the photo or deleting your chat account deletes it. Pofu opens your photo library only when you choose to pick this photo.
• Player rooms. Chat+ members can create rooms of their own, public or private (entered with an invite code). We store the room’s name, optional description, language, owner, members and the people its owner removed. A room’s name and description are checked by the same rules and Anthropic AI model before a public room is listed, and anyone who can see a room can report it. If you leave someone’s private room, we keep a note that you were in it for 30 days, so that you can still report it. A room with no messages for 14 days is archived. Player rooms are not available in Korea mode.
• Notifications. If you allow them, we store your device’s push token to tell you about new messages and message requests. Notifications are delivered by Apple’s push service. A notification never contains message text or the sender’s name. A token that stops working is deleted.

Other players see your nickname, display name, avatar or photo, country, languages, “about” line, Pofu card, recent activity and what you post, and your city on your full profile. They never see your birth year, gender, email, or Apple identifier.

Korea mode. If your App Store country or your device region is Korea, the chat runs in Korea mode, in every Erek Studio game with the chat: you see only Pofu’s Korean room, there is no list of other players and there are no player rooms, and one-to-one messages are possible only between people who have both written in the same game room (the AI assistants excepted). Once an account is in Korea mode, it stays in Korea mode.

Service providers. The chat runs on Cloudflare’s network. For it, Erek Studio uses Anthropic for the safety checks and the AI assistants described above, and Apple for Sign in with Apple, purchase confirmation and push notifications. Your chat profile and messages are not used for advertising or analytics.

Deleting your chat account: in the chat, open Settings → Delete chat account, or ask by e-mail as described on the account deletion page. Your profile, photo, sign-in link, push tokens and message text are deleted immediately, together with the AI assistants’ replies to your messages. Report copies described above may remain for up to 365 days, and report records and the moderation log stay as described there. A Chat+ purchase record (transaction identifier, product, expiry) stays without a link to any account, so the subscription can still be restored. Your Pofu progress is not affected. Deleting the account does not cancel a Chat+ subscription; cancel it in your Apple ID settings.

Chat+ purchases

Chat+ is bought through the App Store, in the chat or on Pofu’s own purchase screen. We never see your name, email or payment details. To unlock it, the app sends the purchase record Apple signed to our server, which confirms it with Apple’s App Store Server API.

• If you are signed in to the chat, we store the transaction’s identifier, the product and the expiry date with your chat account, so Chat+ works in every Erek Studio game where you sign in to the chat. The server checks a subscription with Apple again shortly before it expires.
• If you buy Chat+ in Pofu without a chat account, the app sends the App Store’s signed record of the purchase to our server, which asks Apple whether it is active and answers with its expiry date. The server stores nothing from that request; to limit abuse it counts requests under a keyed hash of the network address, never the address itself. The app keeps the record and the expiry on your device, and sends the record again only to check it again, or to link it to your chat account if you sign in to the chat later; it is then stored with your account as above.

Children

The game is for everyone. Outside the optional player chat and the Chat+ purchase check, Pofu does not collect personal information from anyone, of any age. The player chat is for adults only — 18 or older, and 19 or older in Korea: it asks for your birth year before you can use it, a birth year that does not show an adult closes the chat for that account, and the same sign-in cannot open a new one. Our child safety standards are on the community rules page.

Playing offline

Every level and every daily puzzle is stored in the app, so the game is fully playable with no network. Ads cannot load offline, so a help you ask for is simply given without a video. The player chat, and confirming a Chat+ purchase, need a connection.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct or delete your data and to object to its use. Apart from the two numbers on your chat card, we hold no data about your game on our side. For the player chat, you can see and edit your profile in the chat, delete the chat account at any time, and write to us for a copy of the chat data we hold about you or with any other request. Your choices about ads are in Privacy options in the game’s Settings, where your region requires them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is published on this page with a new date below. Version 2.1 adds the optional player chat and the Chat+ subscription.

Contact

Questions about this policy, the app, or a request about your data: mustafasalimerek@gmail.com