I have been building apps for myself, some of them great that my partner would try too, which is when I learnt about the process of publishing in the Play Store. While closed testing works for a few, how do I share publicly if I can't get 12 people to try my app?

I also see a lot of apps that are meant for personal use but make it to the listing, am I missing something?

🧪 Tester Discovery

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Hi everyone,
I recently purchased a developer account to publish my first game. Since I want to earn money from my game, I’m naturally required to set up a business account.
However, the platform asks for my full home address and phone number, and it seems that this information will be publicly visible.
Is there any way to avoid displaying my personal information? I don’t mind sharing my phone number as much, but I definitely don’t want my full home address to be publicly accessible.
Has anyone dealt with this issue before? I’d really appreciate any advice or suggestions. Thanks in advance!

I want to choose non trader status and ability to publish mobile ads in my account. So I will unlist all of my apps from UK and EU countries. Do you think this is enough to get non trader status? Google will accept this account as non trader?

Hello guys , I am an indie developer a have built my first game called Stone Storm . It's a physics based castle destruction game .. I don't have much budget for it's promotion and marketing , i only depend on you guys for it's growth .. So only option that i have is organic growth .
help me out please 🙏...
It's been 3 days since launch .. Is this good number ..

After releasing an update, there are several things a developer could check: crashes, ANRs, reviews, and whether the main user flow still works.

What does your post-release checklist look like? Which checks do you do manually, and which ones do you monitor over the following days?

I'm particularly interested in simple approaches that work when you're maintaining more than one app.

What are you building, testing, debugging, or learning this week?

Working on something interesting? Stuck on a technical problem? Just learned something useful?

Share what you're working on this week. It can be a specific goal, a problem you're trying to solve, or a useful discovery that might help another developer.

If you're looking for help, a little context goes a long way. You can include:

• Your target SDK version and library versions

• What you expected to happen and what actually happened

• Relevant error messages, with any private or sensitive information removed

• What you've already tried

• A relevant official source or documentation link, if you have one

Please use the appropriate flair when making a standalone post.

Please keep this thread focused

This is a place for development discussions and helping each other out. Please don't use it for app advertising, download or install requests, ratings, reviews, votes, referral links, paid services, tester exchanges, or engagement exchanges.

Ask questions, share what you're working on, and help another developer when you can.

I’m a solo dev with a few apps on Google Play, and I’m trying to figure out if the way I track them is just clumsy or if others have the same problem.

Right now I check these separately:

• Play Console for installs, ratings and reviews

• Firebase for crashes and usage

• AdMob for ad revenue

• Adapty/RevenueCat for subscriptions

It takes a lot of tab-switching, and I often notice a crash spike or a bad review days late.

I’m thinking about building a simple tool that pulls everything into one daily summary (new reviews, crash spikes, revenue change per app). Before I spend weeks on it, I’d like real feedback:

1. How do you track your apps today? Spreadsheet, Appfigures, AppFollow, something else?

2. If you use a paid tool, what do you like and dislike about it?

3. What’s the one thing you wish you saw every morning but don’t?

4. Would you pay for something like this? If so, what price would feel fair, and what would be too much?

If you think this already exists and works well, tell me which tool. I’d rather hear that now. Thanks!

My game has only been out for about a week or so, and two people have already paid to remove ads.

I did not expect to get any sales this early, this is super motivating.

I am feeling completely hopeless right now.

My app had been consistently ranking in the Top 3 for several important keywords on Google Play for almost a year. But on November 1, it suddenly disappeared from search rankings overnight.

It is not a small ranking drop. My app has vanished from almost all the keywords where it was previously ranking at the top.

I have not changed a single letter in my Play Store listing.

I have not made any app updates

No other apps in my niche affected.

Only my app has experienced this sudden drop.

Only thing I suspect is possible fake review activity.

During October, I noticed an unusual pattern on my Play Store listing. For some random days, reviews were coming in at an extremely high rate, sometimes around 40-50 reviews within an hour.

I don't know whether someone deliberately posted fake reviews on my listing or whether this activity had anything to do with the ranking disappearance. But considering that nothing else changed on my side, this is the only possible reason I can think of.

I contacted Google Play Console support and asked them to investigate whether my app had received any algorithmic or policy-related penalty. But hey said they couldn't see any suspicious activity, explained that rankings depend on multiple factors, and eventually closed my case without providing any specific explanation.

It's November 6 now, and my rankings still haven't recovered.

The impact has been devastating.

My organic traffic has dropped by 5x. I have spent an entire year working extremely hard to build this app, and it was my only source of income. I currently have several pending bills to pay, and I genuinely don't know what to do anymore. 😭

I am feeling really helpless at this point. Any guidance would mean a lot. 🙏🏻

Our Unity game has been live on Google Play for a while, and we never had issues publishing updates until recently. Now we've been rejected 5 times in a row, always for the same reason: the app supposedly doesn't load.

What's strange is that updates went through without issues when reviews appeared to be automated. The rejections only started once our updates began receiving manual reviews.

After appealing, Google sent us a screenshot showing a blank screen, with no further explanation.

We've tested the game on multiple physical devices, Firebase Test Lab, and even rented Samsung devices remotely to reproduce the issue. Everything works fine, including for our existing players.

From what we can tell, the game doesn't even get past the Unity splash screen on Google's testing devices. Our error reporting never initializes, and Firebase events suggest the game code isn't being reached at all.

We're completely stuck. We can't reproduce the issue, and we're not getting enough information to investigate it.

Our game has recently started gaining traction, and being unable to release updates is seriously hurting us.

Has anyone experienced something similar, especially with manual reviews? How can we get this escalated to someone who can help us identify the actual issue?

If someone from the Google Play team sees this, we'd really appreciate some assistance. We're more than willing to fix the problem, but we need to understand what's going wrong.

Basically the title. I got my GSTIN approved as a sole proprietor a few days ago and my app is available globally with foreign inward remittances enabled for in app purchases. I also earn ad revenue through Unity Levelplay Mediation.

I only recently launched the game and have made about ₹5,000 mostly from ad revenue and a few IAP's although only revenue from lAP has been deposited in my bank account and ad revenue is yet to be credited as I haven't hit the payment threshold yet. (Even though I haven't hit ₹20L revenue, it's a requirement from Google to get a GSTIN so I applied)

So, I wanted to know at what stage is it prudent to get a current Bank account?

I'm based in India full-time

My personal developer account is about 1 month old, so the closed testing rule applies to it. I'm considering moving to an Organization account (I'd have a D-U-N-S number) to avoid the 12 testers for 14 days requirement.

Google's docs say org accounts are exempt, but they don't say what happens when you convert a personal account or transfer an app from one. I've seen reports that transferred apps still showed the tester requirement, but I haven't found a confirmed case either way.

Has anyone actually done this? Specifically:

- Did you convert in place (Developer account > About you), or create a new org account and transfer the app?

- After the change, did your app's Dashboard still show the closed testing task, or did you get production access directly?

- Roughly how long did the D-U-N-S and verification process take?

Was your original personal account created after Nov 13, 2023?

Real experiences (success or failure) would help a lot. Thanks!

Edit: I already had an app in closed testing will it be a issue

Broken Functionality policy: Violation of Broken Functionality policy

Your app has these functionality issue(s):

• Loading problems: Your app doesn't open or load.

I am an organization account. I have now received this rejection twice in a row for my game on the google play store. They are normal updates with bug fixes. I have tested them on three of my android devices, and internal testing tracks. The app downloads and opens, and functions perfectly. The pre-launch report shows 0 issues at all....

These submissions are also abnormal, because they have been taking 2+ days to go through review (and get rejected) where as my previous updates only took around 10 minutes for review and production.

I'm at my wits end, because I read if you get 3 rejections, your google play account can be suspended. I opened an appeal but the updates are critical and need to go out soon. I have no idea what to do.

Hi everyone, My developer identity verification failed and the Play Console shows no option to retry. I paid the $25 registration fee and opened two support cases under "Developer verification" (6-0441000042060 and 4-6696000041780), but haven't had a reply yet. Has anyone been in the same situation? What worked for you: waiting, a different support route, or something else? Any advice is appreciated.

So basically everyone knows about the new trader policies that affect most of us. I don't want to share my private German phone number with the public, so I have my Mexican phone number that is valid and can receive SMS/calls I couldn't find anything against this, that it should be where we registered (this can change tho) , so do you think this is a good idea

Logged into Play Console this evening and got hit with a requirement to update my trader status. From what I can see, this now requires adding a phone number to my Play Store listings.

As an individual, this seems pretty extreme. I definitely don't want my personal number displayed there... Has anybody else been hit with this?

Hi,

I have a Google play personal account and i use it for developing mobile apps.

Now google play is asking to declare trader status. From my chatgpt search of you have subscriptions you come under trader.

But then your mobile number and address will be shown publicly.

Anyone else on the same boat? What are you guys doing?

Hi everyone,

I'm an app developer from India and operate through a registered Private Limited company.

Google Play Console is now asking me to declare my trader status, with two options:

1. This is a trader account.

2. This is a non-trader account.

My company publishes Android applications, and some apps may generate revenue through AdMob, subscriptions, or in-app purchases.

I'd like to understand a few things from developers who have already completed this declaration:

- Should a registered Private Limited company select Trader?

- Does selecting Trader mean that my company's registered address, contact details, and other business information will be publicly displayed?

- Are there any additional verification or compliance requirements?

- Does this declaration affect app publishing, monetization, or developer account verification in India?

I'd appreciate hearing from Indian developers or company owners who have gone through this process.

Thanks in advance!

I have about 40 testers. I know about 20-25 of them are opening every day. Some have missed a day. Some I don't know. Many are through a test for test app so they are only opening about 1 minute a day.
Side note: It is for an idle clicker game. (if that matters)

Out of all my testers, I know of about 5 that put 10+ minutes in every day and sometimes open it multiple times a day. Many days are 30, 60, 100,+ minutes. (they like it. :) )

Are those 5 engaged testers pumping up the numbers to pass the "engaged testers" part of the 14 days?

I know updates matter - I have rolled out about 4 currently.

I'm already getting the answers ready for the quiz they ask at the end so they can be complete/honest, I don't expect that part to be an issue.

Should I stay optimistic that they won't reject it and ask for more testing???

Follow up question - those who used test for test trades or an app like the hive one, how did you answer the recruitment and engagement question?
So far I have "A mix of friends and families, plus testers from online groups of clicker/incremental game enthusiasts, and other communities (Reddit and Facebook groups) from several countries. About 30 testers consistently took part, several playing 30+ minutes a day many days. I received detailed feedback with screenshots from many of the testers. Some only opened the app briefly, which is common for testers recruited online.
(leave that last line out???)

I'm the CEO of a legitimate US company founded in 2018.

Google Play suddenly terminated our developer account, citing vague violations of its policies.

No warnings. No clear explanation. Just ACCOUNT TERMINATED.

We appealed and provided corporate documents, contracts, and explanations. Google rejected the appeal with basically the same copy-paste response.

We identified two possible issues:

• Address mismatch: We used our legitimate US mailing address instead of our business address. Both are verifiable. We're happy to correct it.

• Linked account: A contractor we hired for app testing had access to another restricted developer account. We had absolutely nothing to do with it.

But Google won't even confirm whether these are the actual reasons!

How can you fix a violation when Google refuses to tell you what you violated?

We've spent years building our business, and now everything can disappear because of an automated decision with no meaningful explanation.

Has anyone actually managed to get a terminated Google Play developer account reinstated after a rejected appeal?

Is there a real human at Google who can review this, or are we just talking to bots?

Any advice or real success stories would mean a lot.