Couple things:

• When Google entirely reworked their APIs and added the new Health Recording API (which we use) that’s offline and doesn’t need Google account. Google claims the data on it stays on your phone but you’ll need to trust their word for it. Link to Google’s documentation on this

This API is accountless, meaning it does not require a Google Account to use the service, and data is stored on-device.

• We tried doing our own step counting system early on. But creating your own pedometer is nearly impossible these days and takes enormous amount of time that you’d be spending making the game itself. It’s just not possible, especially when you have the platform APIs for pedometer available and those work much more reliably than anything we could do.