I published an Android app called "Never Have I Ever". The app was and still is live on Google Play. I updated the app once. Then the second time I tried to update the APK file, I was emailed a messaging saying that my app has been rejected for keyword spam. I updated my app 10 more times changing my app description to the bare minimum. I tried contacting Google Play. Yesterday I tried to update my app title from "Never Have I Ever" to "The Never Have I Ever Game" hoping that maybe it will finally be fixed. No, I was finally contacted by Google Play saying that my app was reviewed and that my app title matched another app "Never Have I Ever Game". Now, this is ridiculous to me. How is it that Google didn't see my other 10 updates, but only saw this last one? How is it my app "Never Have I Ever" was fine until, one day it got rejected? There are so many apps with the name "Never Have I Ever" on Google Play. I have an app "Truth or Dare" that never got rejected for having the name "Truth or Dare". Basically, I am frustrated that I have not been given any answers by Google, and that my title and description is definitely not worth of rejection. Maybe I am wrong, but would definitely need an answer.
Your app submission has been rejected for a violation of the Google Play Developer Programme Policy regarding Impersonation or Deceptive Behaviour. Please review the keyword spam policy help article, then modify your app's title and/or description and resubmit. Additional details have been sent to your account owner's email address.
Title: Never Have I Ever
Short Description: A fun way to party or drink!
Description: Enjoy the game with a group by using the application for questions. The app counts the number of people that have done the particular statement asked. When you are playing, simply swipe from right to left in order to go to the next question. Alternatively, swipe left to right in order to go to the home screen or simply press the back button. I hope you enjoy the game.
Why is the above information being rejected? I even tried again to change the title, this time to "Adult Never Have I Ever" and still getting rejected.
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So we just launched a beta closed test, and our account was completely terminated. I believe the reason was a deceptive name.
We filed an appeal, but we're not sure what to do next. We had no idea our name was violating anything, and if this appeal doesn't go through, we have to publish this app. We some big financial backers, and getting the account terminated completely was kind of a shock to all of us.
So, what to do next, if the appeal doesn't go through? Should we make a new account, and republish the app? Should I contact someone and tell them I just need to change the name? We're kind of freaking out here.
Thank you.
Please write an email to googleplay-developer-support#google.com
Ask if they can reactivate your account with changing the name to resolve the issue. Otherwise sure you can pay 25€ to register a new developer account if that is an option for you.
Make sure your developer name (and your apps) are not deceptive, check if your app description matches to their actual features, check if your app and developer names are already used (simply google the names) and if you feel like it it is always a good idea to check copyright and name brands. (Trademark checks)
If you want to do a trademark check it is a good idea to consult a lawyer, however you can do a simple trademark check yourself which is almost always enough for a small android publisher. Go to a trademark research site for your region, for example UK and EU https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmtext . I can recommend to search for "text" and "contains any" to get the best results. For example text="adidas" contains-any in clothing will return that it is already registered, therefore you shouldn't call a fashion app "adidas" or a deceptive version like "adi-das" or alike.
Same here in US region. I used a name that's not a trademark or anything. It took them 2 months (which's supposed to be "Up to 7 days") to get back to me saying they won't reactivate my account. I've tried to appeal and reach their customer service (it shows "server error" on online chat and the online help page is a dead end too). You may seek a legal assistance to get their attention.
I recently published on android app on the playstore and I had no problem or warning.
Although, people can't download the app because I had activated the "pre register feature"(without knowing what it was ....) and thinking It had no impact.
It looks easy to deactivate the feature on the play console developer dashboard, but every time I try to deactivate it, I am getting this error message :
"An unexpected error occurred. Please try again later. (668269003)"
I have successfully checked the "inactive" box all the countries but one hoping it will solve the issue but for now, I still can't download my own app.
Should I just wait and try again ? Any ideas ?
An other idea I had was to change the "Launch deadline: Nov 4, 2019" in order to make it shorter so that It would solve my issue, but I have no idea how to change that deadline date.... (I don't even remember seing that date when I uploaded my package on the store)
thanks for any help.
I received the same error #668269003 when trying to disable pre-registration for an app that I was trying to publish to the Open Beta track. Before disabling pre-registration, the console indicated that the Open Beta should be available and should override pre-registration for the pre-registered countries when using the SYNC WITH PRODUCTION setting.
To work around this, I did the same as you and disabled all but one country (not my country, or the countries I'm actually interested in for now) in pre-registration, which does appear to save without the error.
From there, I went into the release track for the release I'm interested in (in my case, Open Beta), and selected CUSTOMIZE AVAILABILITY and manually ticked the countries that used to be enrolled in pre-registration.
After saving and letting the Google server pixies do their "processing update" shenanigans, the app finally showed up with the option to install rather than pre-register.
I've opened a request with Google, if in the unlikely event they get back to me for some reason I'll update this reply.
I assume that these steps should also work for the production track, but I'm not yet in a position to test there.
Note that the launch deadline is the date you enable pre-registration in a given country, plus 90 days. I don't believe it is editable.
Similar to #repentspinner, with the new google console I was able to enable pre-registration for a small country I didn't care to release to, then I was able to disable it for the actual country I was targetting. This triggered a review process which took <24 hrs. Once past review the app now shows 'install' as expected.
I've written to Google Play's support about this issue. At first the flatly denied it, but after I submitted screenshots, database logs, etc... they said they were "looking into it."
Basically every time I submit my app to Google Play... the word "Text" is inserted into almost every EditText field. This includes, Comments, Editable profile fields, etc...
According to the screenshots this appears to be caused by Google Play's automated testing. I've verified that the IP address of the poster does indeed belong to Google.
I've never seen anything like this in over 30 years of programming and I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do... It happens ONLY when I submit an app update to Google Play.
There's really nowhere else I could think of to ask. Has anyone ever SEEN anything like this? How can I prevent this from happening?
When you upload your app, it goes through the Pre-Launch Testing, where it will use test devices to automatically click/type/use your app and try to find bugs and see whether it will crash anywhere.
If you don't want this:
Go to your app in the Google Play Console
Click Release Management on the left
Click Pre-Launch Report
Click the settings tab
Disable it
One of my apps been in the market for 3 weeks now. Got a few good ratings, but one of the ratings I got is a 1. Unfortunately the user didn't leave any review so I got no way of telling why is she/he dissatisfied as such.
Is there a way that I can find what device/android version etc...they're using?
FYI, In the developer console, I can't find any details of this rating under "Ratings & Reviews". I am only able to see information on the ones with reviews.
I have an an analytics event triggered when the user clicks the rate button but of course no information about the rating itself.
The latest 1 star ratings from my apps say "good app thank you" and "can't download it". Apparently the first user tapped on the wrong button and the other has a bad network connection and wasn't able to download the app from the store.
As you can see, you shouldn't worry about low ratings until you get more detailed reviews (you will get some eventually).
Some people trying to do in-app purchase within my Android game report that they can never complete the purchase -- that they always get an error message. (I.e., The market app reports an error to my application, and I show the user this error.)
Unfortunately, I don't have any real log data for this one, because it only happens for certain customers of my game, not for me.
What's strange is that after updating to a new version of the app, for some users the problem goes away, and for some users the problem starts. So user A might have the problem in version 1 of the app, but it clears up when they update to version 2. User B might not have the problem in version 1, but it appears when they update to version 2.
I say "intermittent" above, but by that I mean that it only seems to affect a small number of users. But for any given user, once they get in this state, they seem to get the message all the time. HOWEVER, I have had some cases where the problem does clear up suddenly, without an app update. I'm not sure if, for instance, power cycling, or, say, making an in-app-purchase in another app is away to "break out" of this state.
I realize that without a specific error message or API call to name/blame, this question is difficult to answer. I'm just trying to understand if this pattern -- of some users mysteriously getting stuck in a state where they are unable to make any in-app-purchase within a given app -- sounds familiar to anyone for Google Play in-app-purchase.
Also, I build my apps on top of Marmalade, so it's possible that the problem is in the Marmalade layer, not in my app or in the Google Play market itself.
The same problem here: a lot of users can buy items in my app but some users send me emails complaining why they can't buy considering that they can successful purchase items in other apps. I think it occurs because of a temporary problem on the Google Play server or is something to do with the service on Android. I am still looking for an answer to this weird problem...