Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Chart Topper (the iOS game) and the chart-topper.com websites collect, how it's used, and the choices you have. It applies to the game and this website, both operated by Cartoon Baseball (“we”, “us”), a trade name of DavidPM, LLC, a Washington limited liability company. Short version: we collect what the game needs to run your career and sync it across sessions, purchases go through Apple, and we don't sell your data.

Information we collect

Account information. You sign in with Sign in with Apple, which gives us a unique account identifier and, only if you choose to share them, your name and email address (Apple's private relay email counts). We don't receive your Apple ID password or payment details.

Game data you create. Your artist name, songs and song titles, setlists, albums, feed posts, likes, reports you file, chart history, achievements, and in-game progress. Some of this is public by design, as described under "Public content" and "Sharing a song to the web" below. Text you type is screened for prohibited content before it's accepted; see "Content moderation" below.

AI generation prompts. If you use in-game AI features (song titles, lyrics, song clips, cover art, tour posters), the prompts you write and the game context needed to fulfill them (including your saved "Define Your Sound" voice settings, for song clips) are sent to our AI providers (see "AI-generated content").

Purchase data. In-app purchases are processed entirely by Apple. We receive signed purchase receipts so we can grant what you bought; we never see your payment method.

Device and usage data. Standard technical data needed to operate the service: device type, OS version, IP address, crash and performance diagnostics, and timestamps of game actions. Our backend runs on Google Firebase, which processes this data on our behalf.

Advertising data. Free versions of the game may show a limited number of ads served by Google AdMob. Where consent is required, we ask first (including Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt and a consent form in applicable regions). AdMob may collect device identifiers and ad-interaction data as described in Google's privacy policy. Players who purchase ad removal see no ads.

Website data. The chart-topper.com sites use HeyCatch to count visits and see which pages people read. It tells us things like which guide is popular, roughly what country visitors are in, and which link someone followed to get here. It is there to measure an audience, not to build one: we do not use it for ad targeting, and there are no advertising cookies on these sites. If you would rather not be counted, any browser tracking protection or ad blocker will stop it, and we do not treat you differently for it.

Launch email list. Chart Topper is out, so this list is closed and the site no longer asks for an address for it. If you gave us one before launch, that address is all we stored, along with the date and the sentence you were shown when you gave it. It was used once, for a single email saying the game was on the App Store. It is not a newsletter, we do not pass it to anyone, and it is not connected to a game account or to anything else on this list. Write to support@davidpm.pro and we delete it.

Android list. The same terms apply to an address given on the Android page: we store the address, the date, the sentence you were shown, and whether the browser that sent it was on Android, an iPhone, or a computer. We use it once, to send one email when Chart Topper is on Android, and we count how many people are on the list. Reply to that email, or write to us, and we delete it.

Visit counts. Separately from HeyCatch, our own server keeps a daily tally of visits by device type (Android, iPhone, computer) and of views of the Android page. It is a set of numbers per day, with no address, cookie, or identifier attached to any visitor.

How we use information

To run the game (saving progress, settling the shared 6-hour game weeks, publishing charts and leaderboards), to grant purchases, to generate AI content you request, to moderate the community and enforce our terms, to fix bugs and keep the service reliable, and to respond when you contact us. We do not sell personal information and we do not use your game data or AI prompts to build advertising profiles.

AI-generated content

AI features are fulfilled by third-party model providers, currently Google Vertex AI (Gemini for text and images, Lyria for song clips), with OpenAI and Anthropic as fallbacks for text and images. Your prompt and the minimum game context needed are sent to the provider to produce the result, subject to that provider's data terms. Generated content is stored with your game data so it can be shown in-game; generated audio may carry an inaudible AI-content identifier (Google SynthID) added by the provider.

Content moderation

Text you type into the game (artist names, song and album titles, label names, AI prompts) is screened before it's accepted, so the shared charts and feed stay clean. Most of this happens on your device, including Apple Intelligence on devices that support it, and in those cases the text never leaves your phone. When an on-device check can't decide, the text is sent to OpenAI's moderation service to be classified; it's a pass/fail check against the content rules in our terms (slurs, hate, harassment, hard profanity, sexually explicit wording, and content that encourages suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating), OpenAI doesn't use API data to train its models, and we don't build any profile from it.

Public content

Chart Topper is a shared world. Your artist name, song titles, cover art, chart positions, and community-feed posts are visible to other players, and the live charts and winners board are also published on chart-topper.com. Public pages never include account identifiers, only the artist name and content you chose. In-game promotional placements from real-world artists are clearly labeled as sponsored.

Sharing a song to the web

You can publish a song to a page on chart-topper.com so you can send it to people outside the game. This and Chart Topper Radio are the two places where something of yours reaches people outside the game, so both are worth reading in full.

It only happens when you ask for it. Nothing is published because a song charted, or because you played well. You tap Share on a song you released, and the first time you do we tell you what it does before anything goes up.

What goes on the page. Two pages are created. The song page shows that song's cover art, its title, its lyrics, its chart position, the 30-second clip if it has one, and a description of the singing voice you set in "Define Your Sound". The artist page shows your artist name, the character you have equipped, your best chart position, and the songs you have shared. Both carry a stamp saying the content is from a game and made with AI.

What never goes on the page. Your real name, your email address, your sign-in identifier, your account balances, your purchases, and anything you have not shared. The name shown is the artist name you chose, not a legal name. We check the title and words of a song before publishing it and refuse to publish contact details such as phone numbers, addresses, email addresses or links.

The link is the key. Page addresses contain a random code and are not listed anywhere, not linked from the rest of the site, and marked so search engines do not index them. Anyone you give the link to can open it and pass it on, so treat it as public. If we feature your song in the gallery on this site we will index that page, and we ask you first.

Taking it down. You can unshare a single song, or take your whole artist page down in one action, from the game. Both take effect immediately: the pages stop loading and the clip stops playing. Deleting your account removes them too. What we cannot undo is a copy someone already made. If a link was posted somewhere, a screenshot taken, or a preview image cached by another service, that copy is outside our reach.

Chart Topper Radio

Songs you have shared are eligible to play on Chart Topper Radio at chart-topper.com. Listeners do not need an account or the app. The same clips also play from the chart rows and song cards elsewhere on this site, and a play counts the same wherever it happens.

What a listener sees and hears. The clip, the song title, its cover art, your artist name, the genre, the description of the singing voice you set in "Define Your Sound", and how the song is doing (its rank for the week and its likes from other players). The page carries the same stamp as your song pages, saying the content is from a game and made with AI. Nothing that is not already on your shared song page appears here.

What we learn from listeners. We count how far into a clip a listener got, because a play of at least half the clip is what ranks you for a share of the Airplay pool at the next Payday. We do not ask listeners who they are and we do not require an account. To tell one person replaying a song from ten people hearing it once, the site keeps a random id in the listener's own browser and we count from a one-way hash of it, falling back to a hash of the network address when the browser stores nothing. Those counting records are deleted after three days. What reaches your game account is a number, not a person.

Coming off the radio. Unshare the song, take your artist page down, or delete your account. Any of the three removes it from rotation and the clip stops playing.

Sharing

We share data only with the service providers that run the game and the sites: Apple (sign-in, purchases), Google Firebase (hosting, database, storage), Google AdMob (ads, free tier only), HeyCatch (website visit counts), Discord (where the artist forms notify us, so it receives what you type into them), and the AI providers above. Our Discord community server is optional and separate from your game account: joining it is a relationship between you and Discord under their terms, we never link a Discord handle to a player account, and you do not need one to play. OpenAI also provides the pass/fail text check described under "Content moderation". Beyond those, we disclose only what is required by law or needed to protect the service and its players. No sale of personal information, no third-party marketing lists.

Retention and deletion

We keep your data while your account is active. You can delete your account at any time in the game under Settings → Delete Account, which removes your sign-in and your game data from active systems (short-lived backups age out on a fixed schedule). This includes any pages you published to the web: your artist page and every song page come down with the account, the clips stop playing, and the songs leave Chart Topper Radio. You can also email us to request deletion or a copy of your data.

One thing survives deletion, in anonymized form. Chart Topper is a shared season played by everyone at once, and the standings are a record of what happened to all of the players in it. When you delete your account we keep the bare fact of a placement: the position, the song title or the season it was for, and the date. We remove your artist name and every link to your account, so the entry is no longer about you and cannot be traced back to you. Everything else goes.

The launch email list is kept only until it has done its job. Once the launch email has gone out, the list is deleted.

Children

Chart Topper is not directed at children under 13, and you must be at least 13 (or the higher minimum age in your country) to play. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13; if you believe we have, contact us and we'll delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (including the EEA/UK under GDPR and California under CCPA/CPRA), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port your data, and to object to or restrict certain processing. Use the in-app deletion flow or email us; we'll respond within the time required by the applicable law. We don't discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

Security

Data is stored in Google Firebase with industry-standard encryption in transit and at rest, and game-critical state is server-authoritative. No system is perfectly secure, but we design so that clients can't tamper with the shared world.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we'll update the date above and note the change in-game or on this site before it takes effect.

Contact

Privacy questions or requests go to Cartoon Baseball at support@davidpm.pro.