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Josiah Padula avatar image
Josiah Padula asked

Does integrating a PlayFab Leaderboard into my iOS game require an App Tracking Transparency prompt?

Hello all.

I've recently been going back and forth with Apple regarding the submission of my first app to the App Store. My app contains a PlayFab Leaderboard I implemented that simply uses Unity's SystemInfo.deviceUniqueIdentifier as the CustomId for PlayFab, and then allows users to enter a custom DisplayName for use on the leaderboard.

On my App Store Connect submission, I disclosed that I was tracking User IDs, Device IDs, and Usage Data. I also clarified the data is not linked to the user's actual identity, but that it is used for tracking purposes.

My first submission was rejected, saying that if the above about tracking was true, I needed to present the user with an App Tracking Transparency prompt natively within iOS. So I implemented this asset from the Unity Asset Store. The asset did work as expected, but they then said I can't put any feature of the app behind the tracking permission...

Which brings me to my question. What have other developers implementing PlayFab done to get around this? Surely I can't be the only one trying to publish an iOS app running into these issues. Is using PlayFab even considered tracking? I assumed so based on the auxiliary information PlayFab collects.

Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks.

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Josiah Padula avatar image Josiah Padula commented ·

Meant to include this in original post, but the app does not contain any sort of ads, and I never request the user's IDFA.

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Sarah Zhang avatar image
Sarah Zhang answered

Did you try to navigate to your title’s [Game Manager]->[Title settings]->[Data Collection] to turn off the recording users’ IP addresses and the device info reporting? And for clarification, it’s not necessary to use the device ID as the custom ID, you can try to use an anonymous identifier, like a randomly generated XUID that can be stored locally or in the user's Apple Keychain.

Since we can’t give the specific suggestions about how to pass the Apple compliance, we would suggest you ask Apple the specific reasons why Apple Store rejected you. Then, if you have any detailed technical questions, please feel free to let us know.

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Josiah Padula avatar image Josiah Padula commented ·

Thank you for the suggestion about turning off Data Collection! I am new to PlayFab and didn't realize that doing so would be so easy. I think disabling that combined with using deviceUniqueIdentifier should be enough for me to honestly say I'm not tracking anything. From Unity's documentation, that request on iOS7+ returns a unique identifier that is exclusive to individual vendors, and not universal.

I did ask Apple for specific reasons why it was rejected, and was told that "Your app requires users to enable tracking in order to access your app's content and functionality." Apparently, even a side feature like accessing a leaderboard counts as "content and functionality," despite the whole game still being available without doing so.

But with your help, I think I can now allow users to access the leaderboard without it being considered tracking. Thanks again!

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