Pixalate's COPPA Manual Reviews: ‘Yasa Pets Christmas’

Welcome to Pixalate’s CTV & Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA, a series containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness.

The educators manually review thousands of mobile apps available in the Google Play & Apple App Stores as well as connected TV (CTV) apps from the Roku Channel Store and Amazon Fire TV App Store using the COPPA Rule factors shown below & make those results available to the public at ratings.pixalate.com.

This post takes a look at a popular mobile app (1 million+ downloads) from the Google Play and Apple App Stores. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to the app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children).

Manually reviewed in this post

Yasa Pets Christmas (Google) Yasa Pets Christmas (Apple)

The 10 COPPA Rule factors

The teacher will indicate the factors they relied upon in their assessment using the 10 factors shown below that reflect the 10 child-directed factors in the COPPA Rule.

Reviewed by: Crystal Pearson

Manual Review: Yasa Pets Christmas

Likely audience after manual review

Developer: Yasa Ltd (Google), Yasa Ltd (Apple)
Google Bundle ID: com.yasapets.xmas
Apple Bundle ID: 1309225271
Privacy Policy
Crystal’s Take: A highly interactive Christmas-themed game based around enjoying all the Christmas festivities.

COPPA factors used to determine audience

and and and

The gameplay screenshots for Yasa Pets Christmas show that the content is visually directed to children with a mixed audience based on the animated adorable kittens, and the different sections of the home in which the kitten family lives. It has enjoyable colorful graphics of adorable kitten families from generations of images that show how they celebrate the holiday season. Players have lots of options because there is so much to do. The dollhouse has a kitchen, outside area, bathroom, and two bedrooms to play with three generations of kitten families, dress up characters, sit by the fireplace with family, and much more. It is an entertaining game that stimulates soft skills, and challenges players to think and explore. The age of the characters such as brothers and sisters is likely to appeal to children. The description in the “about this game" section of the Play Store states, “interactive dollhouse…..variety of toys….magic and excitement of Christmas morning.” The language and keywords would suggest that this game appeals to children and adults.

The incentive is to dictate how the kittens celebrate Christmas morning by opening presents, playing with toys, cooking with family, and dressing up their characters for each part of the Christmas day.

The game is rated E for Everyone in the Google play store and 4+ in the Apple Store. There is no age gate. There is evidence that the app is used by children. A review posted in November of 2021 in the iOS Apple store says, “There’s a button that lets me get all the presents…seven is my age.”

Privacy:

The developer’s privacy policy states, “yasa pets apps do not actively collect any information from children."

Screenshots of Yasa Pets Christmas:

About Pixalate’s Trust & Safety Advisory Board

Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board was created to bring in individuals with experience using child-directed apps in the classroom to review and assess which apps are child-directed. This manual review process serves to quality check Pixalate’s automated review process. See our full methodology for more information.

Disclaimer

This blog post published by Pixalate is available for informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice. By viewing this blog post, the reader understands and agrees that there is no attorney-client relationship between the reader and the blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in the applicable jurisdiction(s), and readers are urged to consult their own legal counsel on any specific legal questions concerning any specific situation. The content of this blog post reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and this blog post is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings pertaining to mobile and Connected TV (CTV) apps.