Privacy Policy

Who we are

Hay Bales Heat (the “game”) is operated by Aether Technologies LLC (“Aether,” “we,” or “us”) as a HOKA-branded mobile experience. This policy covers the Hay Bales Heat apps for iOS and Android and this website.

Aether is responsible for the game-account processing described here. Contact Aether Support at aethertechnologiesut@gmail.com for privacy questions, requests, or child-safety concerns. Apple, Google, and other providers may also act independently for their own account, store, or service operations.

Our business address is Aether Technologies LLC, 1313 E 610 N, Provo, UT 84606, United States.

The game is not set up to send HOKA your game account identifier, recovery identity, location, purchase receipts, or player-level analytics. We may share aggregate or de-identified reporting that does not identify individual players. When you tap a link to a HOKA product page, you leave the game and HOKA’s own privacy practices apply.

What we collect

To run the game, we collect and process:

• Game account identifiers. A persistent Firebase user identifier that starts as an anonymous profile, plus Firebase installation or device identifiers.
• Gameplay and social data. Your public nickname, a public team name if you create or rename a team, messages you send in member-only team chat, inventory, progression, run history, leaderboard results, friends, and team membership.
• Purchase records. Product, transaction, receipt-validation, refund, and fulfillment records. We never receive your payment-card number.
• Optional diagnostics in updated builds. In builds offering Privacy controls, diagnostics start off and require a separate opt-in and a declaration that you are at least 18. They include gameplay interactions, app version, device and operating-system information, performance measurements, and crash reports through Firebase Analytics, Firebase Crashlytics, and our authenticated product metrics. These reports can contain Firebase installation or game-account identifiers. Ordinary gameplay does not require this opt-in.
• Notifications. A push-notification token and your notification settings, if you turn notifications on.
• Location, only if you opt in. Latitude, longitude, accuracy, and a timestamp when you turn on nearby-event discovery or reminders and grant location permission.
• Athletic.net, only if you link it. Profile or mileage information when you choose to connect that service.
• Age/privacy choice and safety records. The child privacy mode choice, adult declaration and optional-diagnostics choice, community-rule acceptance, blocks, reports, limited report evidence, and support correspondence needed to apply privacy and safety choices. These choices do not require us to retain an exact birthday or exact age. Do not send passwords, authentication tokens, or unnecessary sensitive information to support.

We do not collect payment-card numbers, phone contacts, photos, or advertising identifiers through the game. The game contains no third-party advertising SDK and does not track you across other companies’ apps.

No external sign-in is required to play or to make an in-app purchase where purchasing is available. Protect Progress and Restore Progress are optional and are available only in supported builds and on supported platforms. If you use them, Apple or Google may share an email address or display name with Firebase Authentication so we can restore your profile later.

When Restore Progress replaces a temporary guest profile, the app may briefly keep that guest profile’s token and identifier in protected storage on your device so our server can delete the abandoned profile. The token is removed once cleanup is confirmed or its short retry window ends.

Music Disc shards and song unlocks are device-local in this release. They and some local preferences can be lost when app data is removed; server-account retention does not make them a cross-device backup.

Older installed versions: earlier builds may collect diagnostics without the new Privacy controls. Update to a build with those controls to use the separate adult opt-in and withdrawal setting. Contact Aether Support if you need help identifying your version or requesting deletion of diagnostics already held.

What other players can see

Your nickname can appear on leaderboards and in friend and team views. A team name can appear in the team directory, team views, and league results. Names are screened before they become public; if a name can’t be verified, the game shows a pseudonymous fallback such as Runner ABCD1234EF56.

Eligible signed-in players can open player profile cards from friends and leaderboards. These cards can show your nickname, equipped cosmetics and shoe, player level, quest rank, best run and current-week best distance, favorite shoe and level based on game mileage, and team name and member count. Fields appear when the corresponding game data is available.

Private run histories, inventory and currency balances, account contact details, and location are not shown on these cards. Friend-presence records remain restricted to you, your reciprocal friends, and your current teammates. Team rosters and team chat are visible only to current team members. Direct messages are turned off.

Please don’t put your real name, contact details, school schedule, or location in a nickname, team name, or message.

How we use information

We use this information to create and authenticate your game profile, save your progress, run gameplay and social features, validate purchases, prevent fraud and cheating, send notifications you asked for, power event features, find and fix crashes, understand how the game is used, provide support, and meet legal and app-store obligations.

EU and UK purposes and legal bases

Where EU or UK data protection law applies, the basis depends on the purpose:

• Providing requested game features: performance of our contract with you, where there is a valid contract, for account authentication, saved progress, purchases, and the gameplay or social features you request.
• Safety, security, and essential reliability: our legitimate interests in preventing cheating and fraud, enforcing community rules, responding to reports and support requests, and resolving faults in those essential services, subject to your interests and rights, with particular care for children.
• Optional diagnostics, notifications, and location: your separate consent to the relevant optional feature and permissions. The new diagnostics consent in updated builds additionally requires an adult declaration. You can withdraw it through Settings → Privacy controls, and notification or location choices through game or device settings. Withdrawal stops future optional collection and does not affect processing that was lawful before it.
• Legal records and requests: compliance with an applicable legal obligation, such as accounting, valid legal process, or consumer-rights requirements. Where keeping a record instead serves fraud prevention or a legal claim, we rely on that specific legitimate interest for no longer than needed.

Information needed to authenticate an account, validate a purchase, or protect the service is necessary for those features; without it, we may not be able to provide them. Optional location is not needed for ordinary gameplay. A device permission or acceptance of the Terms is not consent to unrelated processing, and a 13+ age label does not replace any higher local age-of-consent requirement.

Service providers and sharing

Our providers include Google Firebase and Google Cloud for game services, Google email services for Aether Support, the Apple App Store and Google Play for distribution and purchases, and Cloudflare for this website’s hosting. Cloudflare’s dormant game realtime service is not enabled in this release. Athletic.net is involved only if you choose to link it; the access code you provide is sent through our authenticated server to request the information you selected.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We may disclose information when required by law, to protect players or the game, or as part of a business transaction with appropriate safeguards.

International processing

Aether operates in the United States. Our providers may process information in the United States and other countries, whose laws can differ from those where you live. Where EU or UK restrictions apply to a transfer, the transfer requires an applicable adequacy decision, appropriate safeguards, or another legally available mechanism. The applicable mechanism depends on the recipient and transfer. Contact us to ask where your information is processed and for information about the safeguards applicable to it, including an available copy subject to necessary redactions.

Location

Location is optional and the game never asks for it at startup. If you turn on nearby-event alerts and grant permission, the game may store your coordinates and their accuracy to find nearby events and send reminders you requested. Location is never used as proof that you attended an event.

You can turn nearby alerts off, deny or revoke location permission, or disable location services. The app applies the changed alert preference and removes cached server coordinates when it next connects and synchronizes that change. If the app is offline or uninstalled, we may not learn about a device-permission change immediately. The server ignores location older than seven days for nearby-alert eligibility; that freshness limit is not a promise to delete coordinates on a seven-day timer. Everything else in the game keeps working.

How long we keep data

We keep saved game-profile progress associated with your account until you explicitly reset your progress or delete the account. Uninstalling the app does not request account deletion, and we do not automatically delete saved progress after one year of inactivity. Restoring server-saved progress requires access to the same account; unsynced or device-local data already removed from your device may not be recoverable.

Other records are kept according to their purpose: run-session and retry records for validation and duplicate prevention; report evidence and support correspondence for resolving the issue, safety, and any necessary legal claim; and purchase, refund, accounting, and fraud-prevention records for the relevant obligations and disputes. We delete, anonymize, or aggregate records when identifiable information is no longer needed, subject to a necessary legal hold and provider or backup processing.

Crash reports and analytics follow the relevant service’s retention settings and are reviewed for service reliability and improvement. Team-chat messages stay with the team until the team is disbanded, you delete your account, or we remove them through support or moderation. Retention is based on the record’s purpose, whether an issue is still open, legal requirements, and the need to retain identifiable evidence; it is not a promise to retain every operational record for the life of your game account.

Your choices and deletion

• Delete your account in the app: Profile → Clear My Data. This removes your public Runner handle, run history, leaderboard entry, friends, team memberships, push tokens, recovery profile, and local cache.
• Delete your account without the app: follow the steps on our account deletion page. We’ll verify that you own the account before deleting anything.
• Notifications: turn them off in the game or in your device settings.
• Location: turn off nearby alerts or revoke location permission at any time.
• Optional diagnostics: in updated builds, leave them off or withdraw through Settings → Privacy controls. The adult declaration and diagnostics opt-in are separate from ordinary gameplay, account security, purchase validation, and other essential records. Update an older build that does not offer these controls.

Deleting the app from your device does not delete your account. Depending on applicable law, you may ask to access or receive a copy of your information, correct it, erase it, restrict processing, obtain portable information, object to processing based on legitimate interests, withdraw consent, or challenge a qualifying automated decision and ask for human review. These rights have legal conditions and exceptions; account deletion may also remove game access and virtual items.

Your right to object: where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object because of your particular situation. We will stop that processing unless applicable law permits us to continue, such as for compelling grounds that override your interests or for a legal claim. Email Aether Support to exercise this right.

Email aethertechnologiesut@gmail.com with the request and your platform. We may ask for proportionate proof that the account is yours; do not email passwords or authentication tokens. We respond within the period required by applicable law and explain any permitted extension or refusal and available review or appeal route. You can complain to your local data-protection authority, including the authority in the EU/EEA country where you live or work, or the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. You do not have to contact us first. EU/EEA authority contacts are listed by the European Data Protection Board.

Younger players

The full online game is intended for players age 13 and older, primarily a high-school audience. An under-13 selection enables limited child privacy mode where available, rather than permission to use public or social features. That mode still uses a persistent game identifier and private game state needed to run and protect the game; it is not an anonymous or data-free experience. Social, notification, and location features are restricted in that mode. In updated builds, optional diagnostics are unavailable in child privacy mode or without a declaration that the player is at least 18. Parents using an older build should update and can contact us about information already collected.

A 13+ label is not a substitute for parental authorization where the law requires it, including a higher local age for consent-based online services. We do not offer a general parental-consent enrollment process for the full online game. If a child supplied information beyond the limited mode’s purposes, or a parent wants access, correction, or deletion, contact Aether Support at aethertechnologiesut@gmail.com. We will verify the request proportionately, restrict the affected features, and remove information that should not have been collected, subject to applicable legal obligations.

Security

We use encryption in transit and technical access controls to protect your information. No system is perfectly secure. If a security incident affects your information, we will notify you as required by law.

This website

This website does not use advertising or analytics cookies. If you play the mini-run at the top of the homepage, your best distance is saved only in your own browser’s local storage. Soundtrack audio and the trailer load only when you press play. Our hosting provider processes standard request logs, such as IP address and browser type, to deliver and protect the site.

Changes and contact

We may update this policy when the game or the law changes. The date at the top shows the latest revision. For significant changes, we will give notice in the game or on this site.

Questions, privacy requests, or deletion requests: aethertechnologiesut@gmail.com, or visit our support page.

Aether Technologies LLC