Meowtropolis
In effect from 28 October 2026 (ads now depend on the age given; before that, 13 October 2026)
Meowtropolis is made by one person, Ben Dabas. The whole game, the leaderboard and the small servers behind it are his. There is no company, no marketing team, and nobody else with access. You can always reach him at bendabas1@gmail.com.
This is not a promise about how we behave. These things simply are not in the game — there is no code anywhere that asks for them.
The first time you open Meowtropolis, the game writes a long random number into its save file on your phone. Every match result the game sends carries that number, so the leaderboard knows that today's run and last week's run belong to the same player.
It is a fresh random number, not anything taken from your phone. Nobody can work backwards from it to a person, a device or an account. Deleting the game deletes the save file, and the link is genuinely broken — a new install starts again as somebody new.
One exception, and it is your choice: if you use the feature that links two of your own phones, you type the same short code on both, and that code becomes the player number on both of them.
To make friends possible, the game also gives you a friend code: eight random letters and numbers, such as K7M2QX9A. Like your player number, it is made up by the game and is not taken from you or your phone. It is what you give a friend so they can add you.
Friends are keyed to the account Unity gives your copy of the game (see playing against other people), not to your player number. That account number is never shown to anyone.
The first time you open Meowtropolis, it asks how old you are, once. The game uses the answer for two things: how your name is shown to other players (below), and which kind of ads you can be shown — children's ads under 13, ordinary ads without personalisation from 13 to 17, and possibly personalised ads from 18 (see Ads). The game keeps only which of those groups you are in, not the age itself.
The game gives you a two-word cat name from a fixed list of cat words — SleepyBiscuit, GrumpyWaffle, and so on. You can roll a new one, or type your own instead.
If you are 13 or older, your name is public inside the game. It is printed next to your score on the leaderboards, it is shown to other players when they meet a recording of one of your runs, it is shown to the people you play live matches with, and your friends see it on their friends list. Please treat it as something the world can read, and do not type your real name, your school, or anything you would not want a stranger to see.
If you are under 13, other players never see the name you chose. Everywhere this page says other players see your cat name — leaderboards, recordings of your runs, live matches, friend requests — they see a nickname the game makes up for you instead. Only friends you have accepted see the name you chose.
A typed name has to be 3 to 14 letters or digits, with no spaces or symbols, and it is checked against a list of rude and hateful words on both the phone and the server. That check catches the obvious ones. It cannot catch everything, so if you ever see a name that should not be there, please tell us and it will be removed.
When a match finishes, the game sends one small record of that match to our own server. It contains:
Those last numbers exist for one reason: they let the game replay your run as an opponent for somebody else. When you play the online mode, some of the cats around you can be recordings of other people's matches, played back. Yours can become one of them.
From the same match, the server keeps your best result on that map — your name, your cat, your score, your rating, your wins and your rank badge — so the leaderboard can be ordered. After a 1 v 1 duel, the game also sends your duel rating, your wins, your losses and your best winning streak, for the duel ladder.
When the game asks the server for a leaderboard, it sends your player number so that the server can point at your own row and tell you your position. The server never sends anybody's player number back to anybody. All you ever see about another player is the name, the cat and the numbers on their row.
Meowtropolis records what happens in the game itself, so it can be made better: which maps people stop choosing, which skills nobody buys, where in the tutorial people give up. These records carry your player number and, once the game has connected to Unity, your Unity account number (see below), so that a reinstall or a new phone counts as the same player. There is no free text of any kind in them.
Each batch of records also describes the copy of the game that sent it: the game's version, Android or iPhone, whether it was installed from Google Play, the country the phone is set to (taken from the SIM card, the mobile network or the phone's language setting — never a position), the phone's language, its model name, how much memory it has, how many hours ahead of or behind UTC it is, and when the game was first opened on it. This is so the numbers from real players can be told apart from our own test phones, and read by country and by kind of phone.
The records themselves are:
| When | What is recorded |
|---|---|
| You open the game | the version of the game, how many matches you have played, how many coins you have |
| A match starts | the map, the cat, the skills you equipped, the skin, effect and accessories your cat is wearing, and whether it is an online match or a bot match |
| A match ends | the map, the cat, the skills, your final size, your tier, your place, how many rivals, how many cats you ate, coins and stars earned, how many seconds it lasted, and how it ended |
| You quit mid‑match | the map, the cat, your size and how many seconds in you left |
| You spend coins | what you bought (a cat, a skill, a skill level) and how many coins you had afterwards |
| You collect a reward | which daily gift, mission or achievement, and the coins it paid |
| Tutorial | which tutorial step you finished |
| You tap a reminder | which reminder it was |
| You use an item in a match | which item, and on which match of a solo run you used it |
| You change what your cat wears | which skin, effect or accessory, on which cat, and whether you put it on or took it off |
| You move around the game | which screen you opened; and when you leave the game, how many seconds it was open, the last screen and how many matches you played |
| You go up a level | your new level |
| You buy with real money | which pack it was and what it gave you — never a receipt or a payment detail |
| The game asks for a store review, or offers an update | that it asked or offered, and what happened |
| An online match ends | what kind of phone it ran on (the model name, the system version including the phone maker's build number, the graphics chip, the amount of memory and the number of processor cores), how smoothly the match ran and how steady the connection was. Only for online matches that lasted at least a few seconds |
Times are recorded only to the nearest whole second, and nothing here records where you are (beyond the country the phone is set to), what else is on your phone, or anything you typed. The phone details describe the kind of phone, so we can tell which phones the game runs badly on. They contain no serial number and no device ID. The build number is the version of the phone's software, the same on every phone of that model that has the same update; it does not identify your phone.
So that coins cannot simply be made up by a changed copy of the game, our server keeps the count. After matches, gifts, videos and purchases, the game sends what you earned, spent and unlocked, and the server keeps your coins, fish, levels and everything you own, under your Unity account number (see below), together with your player number, a random number for each phone you play on, and the times of your recent matches, so it can check that the numbers are possible. The count on your phone is a copy of the server's.
The live modes — 1 v 1, the online city match, Catball and Cats vs Dogs — connect phones through Unity, the company whose software the game is built with. Unity provides the room where players meet and the connection their phones talk over.
Unity also gives every copy of the game an account of its own when the game starts, so that its services will answer. It has no name, email or phone number on it. It has a number, and it holds your friend code, your friends list (see Friends) and a copy of your save, so your progress can come back if you sign in on a new phone.
What the phones in a match tell each other is: your cat name, which cat you are wearing, your skills and their levels, your rating or rank, where your cat is moving and what it has eaten. In the online city match, the room also holds a number saying how well your phone can run the match, so the strongest phone can host it. Your player number is not sent. The other phones in the room can see your Unity account number, because that is how Unity's rooms work, and it is never shown to anyone.
To find players who are near you first, a waiting room shows other phones looking for a match how many hours ahead of or behind UTC the phone that opened it is — for example, “three hours ahead”. That is the time-zone setting on the phone, never your position. The country the phone is set to is used only in the usage records described above, so the numbers can be read country by country; it is never shown to other players.
After a live match, each player's game keeps a short “played with you” list on their own phone, the last 25 players, with their cat names and cats, so they can send a friend request. So the people you played with keep your cat name in that list, and you keep theirs. A friend request does nothing until it is accepted.
The friends list, friend requests, blocks and the messages between friends are run by Unity, on the Unity account described above.
While the game is open, it tells Unity what you are doing, and Unity passes that on to your friends only: whether you are online, on the menus or in a match (and which kind of match), your cat name, your cat, your level, and when you were last seen. Their game also receives your time-zone offset from UTC, which it does not show.
There is no typed chat. Friends can send each other one of eight fixed phrases — LET'S PLAY!, GOOD GAME!, ONE MORE?, WAIT FOR ME, NICE!, SORRY!, THANKS! and BRB — and invitations to play together. Only the number of the phrase travels, never words, so nothing else can appear on anybody's screen. Only friends can send them.
You can remove a friend or block anyone. Blocking removes the friendship and stops every request, invitation and phrase from that player.
On Android, the game can show a notification when a friend comes online: “Maya is online · Tap to play together”. It works like this.
To stop alerts, switch off ALERTS on the friends screen in the game, or turn off notifications for Meowtropolis in your phone's settings. On Android 13 and later the game asks for permission to show notifications when you make a friend, or when you switch ALERTS back on — never when the game first opens. If you say no, no alert is shown. There are no friend alerts on iPhone yet.
On Android, Meowtropolis has reward videos: a short ad you choose to watch in return for something in the game. There are no other ads — no banners, no ads that open by themselves, never an ad during a match and never one when the game starts. A video plays only when you press its button, in one of three places:
The videos come from Google AdMob, Google's ad service. There are no ads on iPhone.
What the game asks Google for depends on the age given when the game first opened:
When ads are not personalised, Google does not pick them from what it knows about you and does not follow you with ads from other apps or websites. For a player under 18, Google's ad library does not use the phone's advertising ID.
The ad library is Google's own code running inside the game. To fetch, show and count videos, and to stop fraud, it sends Google: your phone's internet (IP) address; what happened with each ad (loaded, shown, finished, tapped); diagnostic information about how the ad library is running; and an app set ID — a number Android gives to the apps of one developer on one phone, which cannot be used to follow you into other companies' apps. For a player who said they are 18 or older, it can also send the phone's advertising ID, which is what lets Google personalise ads; you can reset it or delete it in your phone's settings. On most phones the game loads one video in the background once the home screen appears, so it is ready when you press; that loading already sends Google these things, even if you never watch. Google handles this under its rules for apps that use its services and Google's privacy policy.
So that a changed copy of the game cannot collect rewards for videos it never played, when a video starts the game gives Google two things to pass on to our server: your Unity account number and a random code used for that one video. When you earn the reward, Google sends both to our server in a message only Google can sign, and the server pays the reward only for a video Google has confirmed. Each confirmation is kept for 30 days, then deleted.
Tapping an ad can open a web page or a store page outside the game. The ads are made by other companies and chosen by Google; if you ever see one that does not belong in a game children play, please tell us.
On Android, the game quietly asks Google Play Games who you are when it starts. This exists so that the things you own — especially coins you paid for — can survive a new phone instead of living only on this one.
Google gives the game a short one-time code, which the game passes straight to Unity so Unity can link its account to your Play Games account. The game itself never receives or stores your Google name, your email address or your Google ID.
If you have no Play Games account, or you say no, or you are offline, nothing bad happens: the game carries on exactly as before. The only thing you do not get is the ability to recover your progress on a new phone.
Coins can be earned by playing, and they can also be bought with real money. Buying is handled entirely by Google Play. The game never sees your card, your billing address or any payment detail — it only hears back from Google whether the purchase succeeded.
The receipt Google returns (the order number and purchase token) is kept on your phone until the purchase is settled, and it is sent to our server, which asks Google whether the purchase is real before giving you what you bought. The server keeps one record of each purchase — a scrambled form of the purchase token, which pack it was, the order number and the time — so that one purchase can never be paid out twice. It never holds a card, a name or any payment detail.
So that a purchase can be recognised as yours if you change phone, the game gives Google a scrambled, one-way version of your player number. It cannot be turned back into anything.
Apart from that check, what leaves your phone about a purchase is the line in the usage records above: which pack, what it gave you, and your new balance. No price and no payment details.
All of it is deleted when you uninstall the game.
Match results, leaderboard rows, names and usage records are stored in a small Google Firebase database in Europe (Belgium), reached through a program written for this game alone. The friend-alert records, the friend-code records and player cards, your coins and what you own, the purchase checks, the invite gifts, the video confirmations and deletion requests are kept apart from those, in a second database of their own, also in Europe, reached through a second program written for this game.
Two other companies are unavoidably involved, each under their own privacy policy: Google (which hosts the databases and our servers, runs Play Games sign-in, takes the payments, delivers friend alerts on Android, tells the game which friend's link it was installed from, and shows the reward videos through AdMob) and Unity (which provides the game's account, the copy of your save, the rooms and the connection for live matches, and the friends list, friend status and messages between friends). You can read Google's privacy policy and Unity's player privacy policy. As with any internet connection, their systems see your device's internet address when your phone talks to them; the game itself does not record or keep it. The Unity engine's own hardware statistics and engine diagnostics are switched off, so the engine does not report on your phone to Unity by itself.
Being honest about this: the game has no automatic deletion schedule. Nothing is set up to erase data after a certain number of days. What actually happens is:
So: your data stays until you delete your account, or until it is cleared out as described above. If that changes, this page will say so.
Meowtropolis is a cat game for everyone, and children play it. It was built with that in mind, and this section is written for parents.
The same as from any other player, as described on this page, and nothing more: the random player number and the Unity account number; the age answer; a cat name; the results of matches; your child's coins and what they own; the usage records (which include the country the phone is set to and the kind of phone); and, only if they are used, friends, friend alerts, invites and purchases. The game never asks a child for a real name, an email address, a phone number, a photo, their voice or their location, and there is no way to type a message to another player.
All of it is used only to run the game: to keep progress, run leaderboards and live matches, keep friends lists, stop cheating, and learn which parts of the game work. None of it is sold, and none of it is used for advertising.
Parents should also know that the game sells packs for real money, between roughly one and twenty US dollars. Please use your phone's or Google Play's parental controls and password protection if a child plays on your device.
In the game: Settings → YOUR ACCOUNT → DELETE ACCOUNT, then hold the red button. Your account is deleted 7 days later. Until then the game shows a notice each time it opens, with a button to keep your account, in case you change your mind or someone else pressed it; the same notice has DELETE NOW if you do not want to wait.
Without the game: use the account deletion page. It asks for your friend code and your cat name, because together they are how we find your account. A request from the web is carried out after the same 7 days, and whoever still plays that account can keep it from inside the game during that time. Or write to bendabas1@gmail.com with your cat name and, if you used Friends, your friend code.
Deleting your account removes: your progress and coins (including bought coins) on the phone and in the cloud copy of your save; your leaderboard rows, your duel row, your stored match recordings and your claimed name; your usage records; your friend-alert record, your friend code and your player card; the server's count of your coins and what you own; your invite records; your reward-video confirmations; your friends list, friend requests and blocks; and your game account with Unity. Coins are not refunded.
If you delete your account in the game, all of this goes at once when the 7 days are up (or when you press DELETE NOW). If you ask from the web page and never open the game again, everything on our own servers goes when the 7 days are up; your account with Unity (sign-in, friends list and the cloud copy of your save) goes at the same time or, at the latest, within 30 days.
You can remove friends and block players yourself at any time, inside the game.
What deleting your account does not remove: Google Play's record of anything you bought, and the Google Play Games link if you signed in with it (you can delete that at play.google.com/games/profile); routine request logs kept by our hosting provider, which are deleted automatically within 30 days; the record of each real-money purchase, which stays with nothing left in it that points to you (the pack, the order number, the time and a scrambled purchase token); what Google's ad library sent Google, which Google keeps under its own policies; and your cat name in the “played with you” list on the phones of people you played live with, which we cannot reach.
If the game starts collecting something new, this page will be updated before that version is released, and the date at the top will change. This page is the current version at all times.
That includes advertising. Earlier versions of this page said the game had no ads; this version describes the reward videos above and the age question. If the ads ever change — a new kind of ad, a new ad company, or ads that are personalised for anyone — it will not change quietly: this page will say so before that version is released, the date at the top will change, and what Google Play shows you about this game's data will change with it.
Questions, deletion requests, or anything on this page you think is wrong:
bendabas1@gmail.com