Withheld
Privacy Policy
PixelArc Ventures Ltd · Effective 11 August 2026
Withheld is an interactive audio fiction app: fictional characters call you
and the story unfolds through those calls. This policy explains what data the app handles,
why, and the choices you have. The short version: no account, no email, no real
identity — your player is a random identifier, and your voice is never stored as audio.
Who we are
PixelArc Ventures Ltd (United Kingdom) is the data controller for Withheld.
Contact: hello@pixelarcventures.co.uk.
What we collect
- A pseudonymous player ID. Created randomly on your device the first time
the app runs. It is not linked to your name, email, phone number, or any account.
- Story progress. Which calls you have received, the choices you made,
and story flags — so the plot can remember what you did.
- Call window and timezone. The hours you choose during which the story may
"call" you, and your device timezone, so calls arrive at believable times.
- Spoken replies as text. If you enable the optional microphone feature,
your speech is converted to text during a call (using your device's speech recognition).
The resulting text of your reply is sent to our server to advance the story and is
kept as part of your story transcript. The audio itself is never uploaded or
stored. Every story is fully playable by tapping instead of speaking.
- Purchase entitlements. Whether your player has an active subscription or
season pass. Payments are processed entirely by Google Play or the Apple App Store — we never
see your payment details.
- Push token. A token that lets us deliver the notification that rings when
a character calls.
We do not collect your name, email address, contacts, location, photos, or
advertising identifiers, and we run no third-party analytics SDKs.
Who processes data for us
- Microsoft Azure (UK South) — hosts our servers and story data.
- OneSignal — delivers call notifications (processes your push token).
- RevenueCat — manages subscription state (processes your player ID and
store purchase receipts).
- Anthropic — when you speak a free-form reply, its text is processed by an
AI model to choose the character's response. The text is not used to train models.
- Google AdMob — shows ads to free players. AdMob may process device data to
serve and measure ads; see
Google's advertising policy.
Subscribers and season-pass holders see no ads.
Retention and deletion
Your player record (progress, transcripts, entitlements) is kept while you play. Deleting the
app removes the local player identity; to have the server-side record deleted too, email us the
request — since players are pseudonymous, include the support code shown in the app's settings
screen so we can find the right record. We delete within 30 days of a verified request.
Children
Withheld is a thriller and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect
data from children under 13.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data, and you can
object to or restrict processing. Contact us at the address above. You can also complain to the
ICO (ico.org.uk).
Changes
We will update this page when the policy changes and update the effective date above.
Material changes will be flagged in the app.