Normally I would have blame Google for it. But the whole post doesn't rhyme with me for some reason. The tone, the lack of information about themselves. I had to google it and found 6AceGames [1], all of their games are gambling games. Email address, Facebook and Twitter registered in May 2021. Lots of other small things.
The post says 15 developers, their website 65+. The reviews are written in the same broken English as their website.
Their flagship game, “Tonk”, is nowhere to be found in the Apple App Store, but there are two other games with a very similar logo, published by other India-based companies. The same on Play store, where a bunch of identical looking games, with different publisher names, share similar logos [1].
First of all, You may find my english broken but it is not my first language. We're india based startup.
Thanks reading our story. Let me answer some of your doubts.
the numbers are not right on website. We've team of only 15 devs.
Our games are not on app store because it is developed for android only in java.
You may find identical games with similar logos because of copy cats. Once they know that your games are doing good they'll start copying.
Tonk is a traditional card game popular in united states , we just made it more fun bringing it in mobile phones. So other devs also can make tonk games. It is not our pattern or anything like that.
this will arise a new question in you mind:
>>Why do we mentions address of UK on our tweeter handle?
1. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our uk address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other stuffs like GDPR and different other policies. For ex. You can send a later to the given address to get in touch with us!
OP is being opaque and probably exaggerating, And yet I still suspect that the underlying claim is true - Google likely did kill the project by killing their dev account.
This is still a fundamental problem with having only two global centralized app stores.
First of all sorry for my bad english. It is not my first language so.
It's my bad i should have mentioned more stuff to our medium post so that it won't leave users with any confusions. Please pardon me as this was my first post. I've never had written anything before.
You might got some questions like
Q: Who are we?
A: We are simply a india based gaming startup. We had 8-10 games published on our playstore account.
Q:Why do we mentions address of UK on our tweeter handle?
A:. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our uk address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other stuffs like GDPR and different other policies. For ex. You can send a latter to the given address to get in touch with us!
Q: what about your domain 6acegames.com?
A: Yes, our domain 6acegames.com is new. The reason behind it is very silly you may find it funny but still let me tell you!, at first we have bought domain sixacegames.com(you can check reg. details) thinking it will help in seo and all because we didn't want to include a number "6" in our domain. But later after our games got popular user started searching for 6Acegames that's why we bought this domain as well in may 2021 just to build the presence on google search.
Q: What about social media?
A:we are not very active in social media. As you can see in our tweeter handle we have 0 followers. The reason is simple we never promoted it to our users. Although we have some followers on our Instagram handle, but they follow us because we provide free perks occasionally to our audience.
Even if the company is sketchy, shouldn't they be told very clearly exactly why they were banned, so they can appeal it if it's wrong? Imagine how ridiculous it would be if you could lose a court case without having been allowed to see the evidence.
Not apologizing for Google but if you give out too many details of why you banned someone you give people a) leverage in a lawsuit, b) information on what you are what suspect triggers they are looking for, making it easier for people to avoid automated detectoin.
You only give people details if they're a good-faith actor. If a spam bot leaves garbage on my blog, I don't configure my spam filter to send them the exact words and phrases that get them detected.
I don't know anything about this company, but the other comments are giving the vibe that this company is similar in social status to a spam bot and Google's customer support is correct to cut them off with no explanation.
Mobile stores are different. If Google explains details, they will understand how google found out so they will develop better tactics to not be banned next time.
The manager of the company (we can guess likely the CEO since it's a small startup) was infected by a trojan that stole passwords from his computer, but they're certain it didn't infect the network because they "wiped the hard drive." And it couldn't have got to user data because that's hosted in the cloud. Of course the fact the login details are likely on infected computers makes no difference at all...
Yeah usually I am the first to grab my pitchforks against tech giants like Google but the devs are only telling a one sided story here and their business looks far from legit, and that team of amazing devs doesn't seem very competent either if they keep installing trojans.
> Email address, Facebook and Twitter registered in May 2021
Their Youtube is from August 2018, 2.5 years ago just like they claim in the post. Maybe they just got a new marketing person in May instead of it being a "smoking gun" of some conspiracy
Yes, I have the same feeling, something smells here, I'd expect them to be more humble once they got twitter account attention but replies look like incoherent blind swings.
Their actual website is https protected. The www one isn’t redirecting to it which I have seen at other places too, not exclusive to this developer. Dev is a game dev, not web or server dev so it’s understandable.
Hi there,
Thanks for reading our story. You may find my English broken because it is not my first language. We're an India based gaming company.
First of all, I'm sorry if you found my tont arrogant or malicious but I don't have a very strong hold on english so.
This will arise a new question in you mind:
>>Why do we mention the address of the UK on our twitter handle?
1. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our UK address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other issues like GDPR and different other policies.
>>All our games are gambling games?
- No. This is not true. In our games you can't bet any type of real money or anything like that. It's just a simulation like other games. Yes you can buy various perks through in app purchases but it is not the gambling. If we've provided any type of gambling related stuff in our games then google wouldn't have let you survive for 3 years either!
>>Email and Social media registered in May 2021
Yes, our domain 6acegames.com is new. The reason behind it is silly. You may find it funny but still let me tell you!At first we bought domain sixacegames.com(you can check reg. details) thinking it will help in seo and all because we didn't want to include a number "6" in our domain. But later after our games got popular users started searching for 6Acegames that's why we bought this domain as well in may just to build the presence on google search.
>>And about social media,
we are not very active in social media. As you can see in our twitter handle we have 0 followers. The reason is simple: we never promoted it to our users. Although we have some followers on our instagram handle, they follow us because we provide free perks occasionally to our audience.
>>Lack of information.
I'm very unfamiliar with stuff like blogging and all, This is the first post I've ever written. If i forget mentioning something please let me know i'll include all the information to the post it self
Maybe, but a gambling app with localized listings for the top markets (India, US, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico[0]) can get you to 1 million with very little effort.
This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of the mobile app distribution cartel.
Consider contacting your state's Attorney General office, and the US Attorney General office. Many states' AG offices have antitrust divisions[1].
The US Dept. of Justice also has an Antitrust Division[2], along with a page that details how and why[3] to get in touch with them:
> Information from the public is vital to the work of the Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an investigation.
The FTC has the Bureau of Competition[4], as well.
Awesome links! Google deserves the entire book thrown at them. This is so fucking unacceptable, we have built their fucking product lines for years with their bullshit every shifting APIs.
> This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of the mobile app distribution cartel.
No, it's an example of how small businesses are foolishly making their business model dependent on a company that is known to be unreliable. What should be happening is that mobile app distributors should not be depending on Google at all; alternate mobile app stores should be out-competing them by providing better service to developers. If there is a "cartel" that is making that difficult, it's not the mobile app store gatekeepers, it's the mobile phone companies that are tilting the playing field sharply in favor of the Android phones they distribute, which are tied to Google Play Store, instead of allowing free and open competition in phone operating systems.
What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do? Ask customers to sideload? Tell people to use f-droid? If they do that they're restricting themselves to a tiny fraction of the possible audience and thereby removing any chance they have of being profitable.
Phone OSes are hard. Tizen was a big play for it and that ended up being a dud. Windows Phone was also another well-funded competitor that fell on its face.
Really, the problem is that phone manufacturers want to be where the apps are, and app developers barely keep it together making native apps for the two dominant OSes. Another competitor would need to make it really, really easy to make apps performant when ported over with minimal work, because the ugly truth is that no one is going to hire a full third team to develop for another OS that's just starting out.
maybe if there was any other option. It's not like everyone on Android has a million distribution options. It's the most popular OS in the world and there is essentially one company that makes its own rules controlling what gets onto phones.
Might be similar to the last time this came up (i'm looking for it now, edit: found it[0]) where the developer worked with a sizable development-for-hire firm that were themselves associated with many other dev accounts, some of which ended up being suspended for ToS violations (possibly by this firm, possibly by the customer without the firm's knowledge). The anti-ban-evasion technology Google runs then effectively poisoned this firm's Play developer profile so that anyone working with them would be suspended for the potential ban evasion, eventually.
Note that, for this specific case, it might not be a firm but one of the developers themselves that has a poisoned account thanks to past dealings that violated ToS. I imagine the system only banning by associate if the $25 developer account itself ever uploads an app so that it doesn't ban associated Google accounts for non-play-developer purposes.
Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that.
It’s trivial to make a new developer account and release similar products, so as an App Store you can do things like looking for similarities between new apps and banned apps to root out simple “change of ownership” schemes like this.
Google can’t afford to take this lightly, games with fraudulent ad clicks can generate (i.e. steal) millions of dollars in ad spend from businesses who think they are getting legitimate impressions.
"It's not much more complicated than that" is the language of the oppressor. It's the view of the indifferent technocrat who would flatten the world into software, and is willing to steamroll over any human bits that stick out. Google's algorithmic reinterpretation of justice is a perversion of justice. The simplicity of its approach signs its abdication of its moral and legal responsibilities.
OP's story isn't remotely okay. Fraud is a complicated issue. Here's what's uncomplicated: OP are not frauds. Here's what uncomplicated: Google reneged on a (very one-sided) contract, and destroyed a business. Here's a really simple one: Google is an abusive monopoly.
Ad fraud = ban from everything a huge company offers? Seems a tad much when the company literally reaches into your pocket by owning your smartphone and/or livelihood.
Bans should be limited in time and scale.
This really must be regulated, Google and co should not be able to lock you out of your digital identity.
"Guilt by association" is a bad way to run companies - especially when you don't even know who and how someone is guilty. They also do not apply rules fairly. Bigger companies like Facebook, Uber etc get to have more of a "human" connection to sort out issues while the small developer doesn't even get told what exactly they did wrong.
One has to wonder how far this guilt by association goes. If my personal Google account is banned for one reason or another today, does that mean all the companies I have worked for in the past are also at risk of being banned? Could an app that I haven't had anything to do with for years get removed?
For any of the startup sized companies, this is totally a risk. I presume they wouldn't ban e.g. Twilio's account because one of their former or current employees got themselves personally banned, but there's certainly been accounts of it happening on HN to smaller companies where they hire a banned dev, and then the company's own accounts get banned (and on at least one occasion, their devs personal accounts too).
1) As you know this is super common and there is no recourse. Abandon Google, read something by Kafka, have some whisky.. life isn't over.
2) Take your IP and rearchitect your games for web or other platforms. Despite losing your user reviews and published applications, you clearly have something of value that was trending up. DO NOT let Google smite your startup by simply banning you. Android phones are not the only place where your IP can continue to thrive.
3) If you don't want to rearchitect, Consider selling your IP to another mobile developer. IP with a track record of positive reviews/downloads/cash flow is pure gold. There are websites where you can list your business and IP such as EmpireFlippers and Flippa.
4) Lastly.. having a team who is competent, you enjoy working together, and has success under your belt is also gold. What else can you do with this team to take the world by storm? I envy your position; I have not a team nor 1M+ users anywhere. Good luck friend.
What can I say... Oh yeah, that Google owes me a lot of money after terminating my adsense account for false reasons and added insult to injury by sending me a 50€ adword voucher to my _physical address_ like it solved anything?...
It was like 10/15 years ago, now everytime I have an opportunity to suggest businesses I work with not to use any of Google services, including GCP, I do exactly that.
I'd say, unless you signed an actual contract with Google, which agreeing to a bunch of random TOS really isn't, do not ever rely on Google services or SAAS, and certainly do not build your startup on any Google stack.
Why do you say "(and Facebook)"? Even if Facebook were this ban-happy, a lifetime ban from them is way, way less disruptive to most people's lives than a lifetime ban from Google is.
Google are horrendous (business partner), but at least you can publish and install .apk files without a store. Whether that's a sustainable business model is another thing entirely, but at least you can do it. Not even going to talk about Apple since that's just a more extreme example of the same problem.
From my POV, if you have a business and you rely entirely (or for the majority) of your income from these platforms, then your business is not sustainable and is not competitive. You're playing at a rigged game and you will most likely lose.
I stopped using 3rd party game engines for the same reason. I want to control my source and the potential income I get (if any). A lot of people won't agree with that. That's fine. Google and Apple's duopoly and their respective ecosystems are not good for the future of software. People have to take a stand at some point. These companies want to control every part of the tech stack (and our lives to extent), you should fight against that. We should all fight against that.
> You're playing at a rigged game and you will most likely lose.
Then the whole smartphone market is rigged. This is why I as a consumer will not buy a new smartphone anymore.
I went for a year or so without a smartphone at all. What I missed the most was maps, but you'd be surprised to learn how better off you are without social media pinging you 24/7.
I now use a second-hand smartphone without a Google account, and I use OsmAnd for maps.
Yes, it is rigged. I've had Android, WP (which I liked the most because of the tiles) and now I'm on iOS. I don't have social media on my phone. I use it for banking and maps mostly, but I also communicate with family through WhatsApp :/ I wish I could just get rid of it, but it's not possible for me to just use e-mail... At least not yet.
> As far as policy is concerned they have contacted us previously and we solved all of the issues to their satisfaction.
He admits they were in violation of policy previously and fixed it, but then repeatedly states they’ve never violated any policies. Curious what the original violations were for. While I know Google is notorious for things like this, it feels like they’re not telling the whole story.
Actually no, they didn't seem to admit any violations.
I've been in this game awhile, dealing with Google is a continuous stream of "we have a new policy and you now have 30 days to provide the URL of your official formal legal privacy policy." or whatever new policy they invent.
Usually its not terribly exciting or controversial. For example by next month ALL updated apps must target Android 11 aka API level 30 (AFAIK unless they've recently altered the date, etc). I'm not having a significant problem with that, but historically its been a pain occasionally.
AFAIK all in-app subscriptions have to support account hold and restore as of next month, as a policy example, I'm not in that game, but as I understand, its perfectly OK to not support that today; just make sure its all good by Nov 1st.
I see there's a new "data safety section" on the play app content page as of next April. I would casually interpret that as being similar but different from the privacy policy requirement in that the priv pol seems to cover all activities of a company whereas the app data safety section will lay out exactly what OS calls your app is making. Which begs the question of why the play store or the OS don't simply automate the whole thing seeing as they have a pretty good idea what the binaries are calling...
Anyway the play store list of requirements is in continuous flux and has been for years and probably will continue to change until it closes someday.
Just because they haven't announced the official deadline date probably sometime next year when you'll have to upload only Android 12 / API 31 as a minimum doesn't mean that just like clockwork "everyone" knows its coming in a year or two.
The legal contract says they only have to give 30 days warning; honestly they're almost always far more generous.
On one hand its continuous lifetime work for me until some random bot accidentally inevitably wipes me out; on the other hand its also not productive work and most of the changes Google demands don't really help anyone, not even GOOG. They're so random sometimes.
Yeah this part and the other comments about multiple malware infections makes me think this is an issue they caused with poor security practices.
Google support should still be better at this rather than banning with AI and never being flexible, but the developer is not exactly sounding blameless here.
The same thing can happen with Google Ads Accounts. I've seen a several ad agencies get totally destroyed when a client does something that violates the TOS and then you get the 'guilt by association' ban. Then this propagated out to all of their other client accounts because, well, guilt by association.
Rather than Google taking the time and effort to identify the single issue, it's FAR easier for them to just ban anything that touched those accounts. It is hands down my single biggest worry when working with Google. And why I immediately revoke access for anyone (including me) that does not need direct, active, access to any account. There is simply no way to talk to a real human and say, look, I've been working with you since you launched and this one account way over here that's 'new' did something you don't like and now I'm banned for life?
Would you consider password sharing the same account instead of inviting other people via email as a workaround? I'm thinking if it's only one account, the blast radius of 'guilt by association' is 0.
Or does Google associates even if you're logged in into multiple accounts in the same browser?
On the other hand,if all ad agencies were totally destroyed that would eliminate the incentive to collect our personal data and profile our browsing/purchasing information.
About 5 years ago I made a little app as a side project when I was learning to program. My play developer account was terminated without warning for breaking intellectual copyright rules.
I appealed and received an (automated?) response that my account would not be reinstated because I violated the publisher rules. The rule they said I broke? I integrated Spotify's API, which has a login page with the Spotify logo in it, and you're not allowed to use another company's logo inside your app.
Ridiculous, yes but it was more of a bummer than anything. This wasn't a startup, I didn't have investors or a lot at stake. I lost about $50 and a few hours time (and a Google Play Developer account).
The silliest thing was that if I could just get on the phone with a real human at a Google for five minutes they would have seen how ridiculous my ban was and the issue would have been resolved, no big deal. But alas, no human to be had, only an algorithm with too much power. I did some research on dev forums and found that several people had successfully sued Google and got their account back over wrongful terminations, (Didn't sound too expensive or difficult, most of the time Google didn't even show up in court) but according to the ToS you agree to, you have sue them in Mountain View if you bring legal action over anything.
I get why app stores ban publishers, I get why they don't just let everyone publish whatever they want. I bet for every false positive ban like mine, they ban 1000 Russian bot accounts spamming malware. We don't see the mountains of avoided malware, just the auto-banhammer going rogue from time to time. But if Apple and Google just had the slightest bit of customer support this would be much less of an issue.
To be clear, the root problem here is that Google gives their own app store an unfair advantage. Third-party app stores can't auto-update their apps, among other things, without the phone being rooted, which carries serious consequences for functionality (e.g., can't use the camera anymore on the Galaxy Z Fold 3, can't use Snapchat, Netflix, or Android Pay anymore on any phone, and on some phones you just can't root at all, period). If third-party app stores could fairly compete with the Play Store, then there'd be no issue at all with it having draconian and arbitrarily-enforced policies.
If you use Magisk you can just sideload Netflix from APK Mirror or Aurora Store and you're fine. Samsung stock ROMs specifically have extra Netflix DRM checks built in iirc, but if you're rooted disabling them should be easy, I'm sure there's open source scripts on xda that will do all this. Netflix is even fully functional on GrapheneOS despite it being a custom build which doesn't pass SafetyNet, although the bootloader is locked and it's not rooted, but still it fails SafetyNet and Netflix runs fine without any tricks.
Android Pay is easy to get working on a rooted phone you just need to slightly modify one single SQLite database. There are scripts to automate this on xda for certain, I used one before on my old Pixel.
Snapchat though is a lot more tricky yeah, they do their own checks outside of SafetyNet and it's a game of cat and mouse where whenever someone gets around one Snapchat adds five more. But then how many people still use Snapchat these days? Everyone I know just uses IG which works fine on a rooted phone.
My Samsung phone came preinstalled with an unremovable third party app store. No root necessary. Maybe device manufacturers aren't considered third party?
The problem is not quite Google's behavior. It's legal for the same reason it's legal for you to not allow someone inside your house for bad reasons or no reasons at all.
The problem is that we've allowed digital marketplaces to achieve the kind of market power that would make a robber baron blush -- and we're not talking enough about how breaking up FAANG companies into multiple competing companies helps prevent the kinds of harms discussed in the blog above (as well as others).
I purchase software from no less than 5 different digital marketplaces on my computer, but I am all but prevented from downloading software on my phone that does not originate from the Play store. Monopolies are not good for markets.
I have F-Droid installed on all my Android phones. Admittedly it's something you must go out of your way to do, but you can put third party app stores on Android phones very easily, or just sideload apps individually if they have an official APK link (many do).
iPhones on the other hand, yeah very different story.
When I was a freelancer, I was warned by my legal help that taking a businesses site offline in response to non-payment was legally risky. There was a chance of being sued for disrupting their business.
I wonder if there are grounds for a (reasonable) legal suit here. Anyone in the know that can fill us in?
You're talking about self-help that isn't in a contract, right? The OP is talking about self-help developer account suspension that presumably is a right listed in the applicable TOS.
Most people even when they think they're in the right won't take legal action. Even when they think they'll get a payout they won't take legal action. If they get threatened with legal action they'll automatically backdown.
I'm sure there are a multiude of reasons behind why this is. But I think part of it is on some level fight or flight. I am sure for a lot it's just not worth the hassle.
I'm hoping for the day someone does take them to court especially in the EU where they're less likely to put up with the corporate nonsense that the American courts seem to put up with.
It is legal because of the contract between the developer and Google. In this case Google decided that the developer violated the contract's terms and terminated the account.
Also, there might have been a human review, and it was decided that termination is going to proceed, hence no basis for human to intervene.
This happens so many times and some people posted it on HN before. The most common reply is that you should not put all your eggs in someone else’s basket. I’m amused no one has posted that comment yet.
By the way, Google will most probably not restore the account, but I’d be interested to know whether it does because our startup is also similar to yours, and half of our eggs are in Google’s basket too. Please keep us (the community) updated.
It s probaly because it has become impossible not to put your eggs in the same 2 baskets. How else are people going to make an app / how are they going to launch a startup without an app? (I know it s possible to go web only, but they 'll probably not be taken seriously by investors)
Very handwavy most of these stories seem to revolve around Google tying ad accounts and play store accounts, and having a VERY EXTREMELY heavy hand on ad accounts, which results in the banhammer smashing distantly related play store accounts.
The safest way to handle this is probably to not use both google play store and google ads. Going to be pretty hard to make an app without Play Store so I guess that means no using Google Ads. Too dangerous and Google will not support.
If you used, say, Facebook "audience network" ads, then no matter how angry Facebook gets, regardless if they're correct or not, at least your app would remain up.
Also if you're launching a startup you're probably not making much from ads and as using google ads is a HUGE existential risk for any app developer, you'd best not use ads. Its not like any end user ever used a startup's app because they like how well they implemented the ads.
The September intrusions detected sound pretty suspicious. I am sure there are plenty of bad actors trying to take over existing Google Developer accounts to use for spam/fraud, and it sounds like there was at least one compromised account and compromised device which could easily lead to other compromised accounts or persistent malware.
A way to think about this is to see Google (or Apple) as a De-Facto State which governs a very important "ecosystem" in which customers and other businesses rely almost exclusively on. Its very existence depends on businesses and people relaying for important aspects of their existence on them. This is how they stay big and relevant.
In this environment they must make decisions for the sake of their their own interests and sometimes to protect other users.
The problem is that like any non-democratic state there's no balance in power between the executive power (the company and its algorithms) and their stakeholders, so I would expect this to get worst and more damaging over time.
Is it possible that they put their actions under the inspection of another entity? Can we expect that every government and legislation put their own rules to govern Google and protect its users from them?
My guess, assuming the company is innocent and that this wasn't just a thinly veiled attempt by Google to purge the developers' gambling apps:
Google bans accounts by association. One of their accounts was logged into during a hack. They blocked the device, but the notification usually comes only after the login has already succeeded.
Assuming this wasn't the criminal's first hack, their device probably got flagged before by Google. If Google applied their logic to that device, they flagged this company's account (and probably all of these people's own Google accounts by association).
Google won't comment on this so I suppose we'll never know for sure. However, when the next company that the people behind this startup joins also gets banned, I'd consider the viral properties of Google bans proven and these developers could be considered "tainted" by our tech overlords.
Little bit confused as I thought being open Android App Store instead of closed iOS App Store was supposed to mean this is totally not a problem?
That’s the gist in the anti-Apple anti-walled-garden threads common during the Epic tussle; though some less popular comments have sounded skeptical, referencing stories like this.
From this thread, sounds like Android gets you 15% of the consumer wallet share for app spend compared to iOS 85% wallet share of app spend, but still has enough distribution curation woes to “destroy our startup”?
What’s the attraction then? Or is this melodramatic?
15% of the consumers is, I'm guessing, based on US marketshare?
The company in the OP here is not American, and outside of the US, Android has the majority of the smartphone marketshare in most of the world.
Despite what Americans often think this is not only true for "poor countries" either. In the UK it is pretty much 50/50 between iOS and Android. Most people have either an iPhone or Samsung. Usually the flagship models.
So there's very good reasons to target Android and it is very possible OP's company is simply in a country where Android smartphones dominate the market, not iPhones.
But yes regarding the Epic thing, you can indeed submit your apps to third party app stores including ones that come preinstalled on the major brands. Samsung Galaxy Store for example.
Note that share of handsets carried by consumers is very different from total and share of wallet spent on platform in U.K. too.
Put another way, when iOS was carried by 20% of consumers, it accounted for 80% of mobile app spend. As a paid app dev, the second number is important. As an ad-ware app dev, the first number matters more. For advertising conversions… it depends.
Google owes me money too. They screwed me back in the early years of this century by billing me for ad "hits" that were clearly bogus and I've never used their services since.
I still use their search engine but I always use duckduckgo first and I won't click on any of the advertised links the offer. Never.
If anyone hasn't figured out by now that Google is a predator who'll screw them out of everything they can, including their startup ideas, they will sooner or later.
This is par for the course with Google. Many Adsense accounts have been terminated for similarly vague policy violations. I am sure they catch a lot of bad actors, but they also catch a lot of folks who have no clue what they have done wrong, in many cases losing a large part of their income. Google does send warning emails, but they are so vague as to be useless in figuring out the violation.
For their Android apps they can launch on third party app stores besides F-Droid, for example Amazon Appstore, Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei App Gallery, and I'm sure there's plenty of others... most users are likely to be on Samsung phones or one of the Chinese brands so getting your app on those stores should cover a lot of the customer base already.
For customers using other phones just tell them download Amazon Appstore and provide an APK download on the site for the lazy ones (but put a note saying using an app store is best to get updates etc.)
While it does damage business to not be in the Play Store, thankfully Android is flexible enough it's not a total killer if you get into other app stores customers are likely to trust, and they are likely to trust the app stores that are preinstalled on their phones.
It's also smart to not only be on one platform. Of course if their dev account got canned by Apple they really wouldn't have any alternatives, but it'd be very bad luck for them to genuinely have done nothing wrong but still have both Google and Apple ban them.
I haven’t read all of the comments, but I would like to add this note of caution to all startup founders: if your startup innovation, technology or business model is largely based on someone else’s capability and that capability alone, then you have designed a single point of failure into your business and a high degree of risk to your future business viability. Using capabilities like Google or Amazon have to offer is a great way to prototype your solution and to get initial customer feedback. But you can’t depend upon these services always being available. For example, just look at the number of products and interfaces that Google has changed or canceled in the past 15 years. So if you do decide to take this approach, just go into it knowing the risk you are taking.
I've talked to too many people who staunchly state that "it's a private company" when it comes to not caring about censorship in one sentence, but decry actions like this in the next, to really think there is an adequately beneficial solution to these types of problems.
As a mobile apps developer, this is extremely concerning to me. Google has a big crisis of trust. I no longer feel safe to even have personal apps connected to my real Google account - what if the Developer Account gets banned and my main email, Google Drive and all my life along with it? There were instances of people's entire Google accounts gone. That is catastrophic.
I now believe it is my duty to detract anyone from using Google Play-serviced Android devices. With the way Google treats their developers they should pay the price of shrinking market share.
I hope a change comes and Google starts being a more customer focused company. But they are notorious for providing bad customer support, and I just can't count on it.
It must be said that, to the extent Google destroyed their startup, it also created it by launching an app store. This developer built their apps on top of Google's ecosystem, in a world where these kinds of executions have happened before, many times, to many frustrated developers.
It is true that developers cannot make their own operating system and marketplace to compete with Google's, but it's also true that they do not need to get into the business of selling games on Google's Play Store in the first place. Equally true is the fact that Google is known to be an unfair, capricious, uncommunicative, and disinterested landlord.
Based on the author withholding some key details, my take is they know more than they say on why the account was terminated. The whole post was written assuming (correctly) that Google is too big to respond publicly and tell their side of the story, which would undoubtedly garner some support.
It's this type of behavior that caused me to drop google for everything except search long ago. You are not the customer, you are the product or in many cases a vessel for the product which is ads and nothing more.
After reading all these stories it feels like Google has a policy of "sunsetting" a certain amount of projects per year. When the company is out of them, it's gonna be yours
Huge kudos to Google for stopping a shady studio that can hardly secure its own network from releasing possibly security compromised apps to Android users!
They could but Google's AI would likely pick it up instantly and they actually would have broken the ban evasion rule at that point so they wouldn't have a leg to stand on when accusing Google of being unfair.
I have a feeling these things are caused by jealous Google engineers. Once they see an app or company being successful they will find ways to mess up the business. Either through their store account or their Google rankings. We’ve seen these stories too many times.
Disclaimer: I work for Google, not involved with app moderation.
I am pretty sure most engineers don't have access to do such things. And certain that doing something like that is an effective way to terminate ones career.
I'm also pretty sure no lawyers at Google want anyone to get manually involved with search rankings. If anyone did that it would open a massive can of worms, one the smart lawyers knows should never be opened.
Obviously, I cannot say for certain if what you’re saying is correct or incorrect. However, if you’ve read HN for any length of time, you would have seen that Google clearly manipulates search results to control competition or to punish certain companies.
Furthermore, no company would be asinine enough to allow bots, AI, or ML make decisions without a way to undo those changes. This tells me that Google employees are doing these things or your contractors are.
First of all sorry for my bad English. It is not my first language so. Thanks for the open discussion and your support!
It's my bad i should have mentioned more stuff to our medium post so that it won't leave readers with any confusions. Please pardon me as this was my first post. I've never had written anything before.
You might got some questions like
Q: Who are we?
A: We are simply a india based gaming startup. We had 8-10 games published on our plays store account.
Q:Why do we mentions address of UK on our tweeter handle?
A:. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our uk address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other stuffs like GDPR and different other policies. For ex. You can send a latter to the given address to get in touch with us!Please note that google asks for communication address not the business registered address to show it publicly. Our business registration address already submitted to them but it's not just public.
Q: Where can i find your games incase i want to see them?
A: You can find it on apk pure. You can search "tonk" you'be able to see our account "6Ace Games", also we had added the link in our medium post in bottom. Please check!
Q:How me monetized our games?
A: Through admob and in-app products. Nothing shady!
Q: Does the games targeting children?
A: No not at all, all our games are rated 18+ adult category
Q:Our games was providing gambling?
A: No, It's just simulations. You can't win money or bet money, Not at all!
Q: what about your domain 6acegames.com?
A: Yes, our domain 6acegames.com is new. The reason behind it is very silly you may find it funny but still let me tell you!, at first we have bought domain sixacegames.com(you can check reg. details) thinking it will help in seo and all because we didn't want to include a number "6" in our domain. But later after our games got popular user started searching for 6Acegames that's why we bought this domain as well in may 2021 just to build the presence on google search.
Q:Why no presence on LinkedIn?
A: Try searching "Whyphy Infotech". 6Acegames is just business name we use!
Q: What about social media?
A:we are not very active in social media. As you can see in our tweeter handle we have 0 followers. The reason is simple we never promoted it to our users. Although we have some followers on our Instagram handle, but they follow us because we provide free perks occasionally to our audience.
This is one reason why I was hoping web apps would be more popular then jail-apps... I'm still hoping for an open future but I'm not holding my breath... why even block linux native apps on android?
Normally I would have blame Google for it. But the whole post doesn't rhyme with me for some reason. The tone, the lack of information about themselves. I had to google it and found 6AceGames [1], all of their games are gambling games. Email address, Facebook and Twitter registered in May 2021. Lots of other small things.
[1] http://www.6acegames.com/#contact-section
Looks pretty sketchy indeed.
The post says 15 developers, their website 65+. The reviews are written in the same broken English as their website.
Their flagship game, “Tonk”, is nowhere to be found in the Apple App Store, but there are two other games with a very similar logo, published by other India-based companies. The same on Play store, where a bunch of identical looking games, with different publisher names, share similar logos [1].
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tonk.board.car...
If that’s the case it really seems like some scammers got their just deserts. Ironically, an example of Google’s policies working well.
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Hi there,
First of all, You may find my english broken but it is not my first language. We're india based startup.
Thanks reading our story. Let me answer some of your doubts. the numbers are not right on website. We've team of only 15 devs.
Our games are not on app store because it is developed for android only in java.
You may find identical games with similar logos because of copy cats. Once they know that your games are doing good they'll start copying.
Tonk is a traditional card game popular in united states , we just made it more fun bringing it in mobile phones. So other devs also can make tonk games. It is not our pattern or anything like that.
this will arise a new question in you mind:
>>Why do we mentions address of UK on our tweeter handle? 1. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our uk address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other stuffs like GDPR and different other policies. For ex. You can send a later to the given address to get in touch with us!
>> Where can i find your games incase i want to see them? You can find it on apk pure. let me provide you links - https://m.apkpure.com/developer/6Ace%20Games
Isn’t this those copycats that they mention in their article? They talk about copying ad ids, but maybe it’s just the whole game?
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I had the same feeling reading the post. Looking at their website and social media makes me even more sceptical.
They say they are a team of developers working on this for 3 years and having millions of users.
And then they have exactly two Twitter followers?
No address or company type in their contact section? An Alexa rank of over 3 million? A website that is not in the wayback machine?
OP is being opaque and probably exaggerating, And yet I still suspect that the underlying claim is true - Google likely did kill the project by killing their dev account.
This is still a fundamental problem with having only two global centralized app stores.
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Hello there,
First of all sorry for my bad english. It is not my first language so.
It's my bad i should have mentioned more stuff to our medium post so that it won't leave users with any confusions. Please pardon me as this was my first post. I've never had written anything before.
You might got some questions like
Q: Who are we? A: We are simply a india based gaming startup. We had 8-10 games published on our playstore account.
Q:Why do we mentions address of UK on our tweeter handle? A:. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our uk address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other stuffs like GDPR and different other policies. For ex. You can send a latter to the given address to get in touch with us!
Q: Where can i find your games incase i want to see them? A: You can find it on apk pure. let me provide you links - https://m.apkpure.com/developer/6Ace%20Games
Q: what about your domain 6acegames.com? A: Yes, our domain 6acegames.com is new. The reason behind it is very silly you may find it funny but still let me tell you!, at first we have bought domain sixacegames.com(you can check reg. details) thinking it will help in seo and all because we didn't want to include a number "6" in our domain. But later after our games got popular user started searching for 6Acegames that's why we bought this domain as well in may 2021 just to build the presence on google search.
Q: What about social media? A:we are not very active in social media. As you can see in our tweeter handle we have 0 followers. The reason is simple we never promoted it to our users. Although we have some followers on our Instagram handle, but they follow us because we provide free perks occasionally to our audience.
Even if the company is sketchy, shouldn't they be told very clearly exactly why they were banned, so they can appeal it if it's wrong? Imagine how ridiculous it would be if you could lose a court case without having been allowed to see the evidence.
Not apologizing for Google but if you give out too many details of why you banned someone you give people a) leverage in a lawsuit, b) information on what you are what suspect triggers they are looking for, making it easier for people to avoid automated detectoin.
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You only give people details if they're a good-faith actor. If a spam bot leaves garbage on my blog, I don't configure my spam filter to send them the exact words and phrases that get them detected.
I don't know anything about this company, but the other comments are giving the vibe that this company is similar in social status to a spam bot and Google's customer support is correct to cut them off with no explanation.
Mobile stores are different. If Google explains details, they will understand how google found out so they will develop better tactics to not be banned next time.
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OP: tells a sad story of how their infrastructure has been hacked
Also OP: has no https on the web site
Anyway, the story gives strange vibes.
The manager of the company (we can guess likely the CEO since it's a small startup) was infected by a trojan that stole passwords from his computer, but they're certain it didn't infect the network because they "wiped the hard drive." And it couldn't have got to user data because that's hosted in the cloud. Of course the fact the login details are likely on infected computers makes no difference at all...
Yeah usually I am the first to grab my pitchforks against tech giants like Google but the devs are only telling a one sided story here and their business looks far from legit, and that team of amazing devs doesn't seem very competent either if they keep installing trojans.
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Note that I am the "OP" as in I posted the link to HN but I am not the author or the developer whose story this is about.
Regarding https, looks like the parent comment linked to the "www" version of their site. Their non-www version does have https:
https://6acegames.com
Not defending the author's cleanliness or shadiness, just pointing out the facts.
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> Email address, Facebook and Twitter registered in May 2021
Their Youtube is from August 2018, 2.5 years ago just like they claim in the post. Maybe they just got a new marketing person in May instead of it being a "smoking gun" of some conspiracy
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWD2aHKFeC_rxDv3d49GOKA/abo...
Yes, I have the same feeling, something smells here, I'd expect them to be more humble once they got twitter account attention but replies look like incoherent blind swings.
Looking at their App Brain page, they are 3 year old company as claimed. You can look at their games here: https://www.appbrain.com/dev/6Ace+Games/
They do seem to exaggerate on their website about total downloads (1M Vs 10M), Employee size etc.
OP talks at length about being hacked. This, of course, would ring some alarm bells as far as protecting their user base.
Then, you post this contact form, which is not protected by https.
So, google is not dev-friendly. We know that. We have seen legitimate horror stories.
However, at what point should google step in and protect their customer base from folks who do not care about their safety?
Their actual website is https protected. The www one isn’t redirecting to it which I have seen at other places too, not exclusive to this developer. Dev is a game dev, not web or server dev so it’s understandable.
Hi there, Thanks for reading our story. You may find my English broken because it is not my first language. We're an India based gaming company. First of all, I'm sorry if you found my tont arrogant or malicious but I don't have a very strong hold on english so.
This will arise a new question in you mind:
>>Why do we mention the address of the UK on our twitter handle? 1. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our UK address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other issues like GDPR and different other policies.
>>All our games are gambling games?
- No. This is not true. In our games you can't bet any type of real money or anything like that. It's just a simulation like other games. Yes you can buy various perks through in app purchases but it is not the gambling. If we've provided any type of gambling related stuff in our games then google wouldn't have let you survive for 3 years either!
>>Email and Social media registered in May 2021 Yes, our domain 6acegames.com is new. The reason behind it is silly. You may find it funny but still let me tell you!At first we bought domain sixacegames.com(you can check reg. details) thinking it will help in seo and all because we didn't want to include a number "6" in our domain. But later after our games got popular users started searching for 6Acegames that's why we bought this domain as well in may just to build the presence on google search.
>>And about social media, we are not very active in social media. As you can see in our twitter handle we have 0 followers. The reason is simple: we never promoted it to our users. Although we have some followers on our instagram handle, they follow us because we provide free perks occasionally to our audience.
>>Lack of information. I'm very unfamiliar with stuff like blogging and all, This is the first post I've ever written. If i forget mentioning something please let me know i'll include all the information to the post it self
A million downloads for a company founded in May is pretty good, right? Is that be typical?
Maybe, but a gambling app with localized listings for the top markets (India, US, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico[0]) can get you to 1 million with very little effort.
0: https://apptweak-blog.imgix.net/images/2019/08/18/total%20do... (from https://www.apptweak.com/en/aso-blog/infographic-countries-w... )
I thought this too. Looks like hacker news is being used for social engineering attacks on systems as we know it.
This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of the mobile app distribution cartel.
Consider contacting your state's Attorney General office, and the US Attorney General office. Many states' AG offices have antitrust divisions[1].
The US Dept. of Justice also has an Antitrust Division[2], along with a page that details how and why[3] to get in touch with them:
> Information from the public is vital to the work of the Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an investigation.
The FTC has the Bureau of Competition[4], as well.
[1] https://www.naag.org/issues/antitrust/
[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr
[3] https://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations
[4] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi...
It should be noted, as discussed by other HN people below, that there is a good chance that author (edit: not OP) is quite sketchy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28730865
At the very least, they are not telling their story with an attitude of transparency.
> It should be noted, as discussed by other HN people below, that there is a good chance that author (edit: not OP) is quite sketchy.
It should also be noted that this is just an opinion. I don't find it to be sketchy.
Note that I am the "OP" as in I posted the link to HN but I am not the author or the developer whose story this is about.
Awesome links! Google deserves the entire book thrown at them. This is so fucking unacceptable, we have built their fucking product lines for years with their bullshit every shifting APIs.
> This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of the mobile app distribution cartel.
No, it's an example of how small businesses are foolishly making their business model dependent on a company that is known to be unreliable. What should be happening is that mobile app distributors should not be depending on Google at all; alternate mobile app stores should be out-competing them by providing better service to developers. If there is a "cartel" that is making that difficult, it's not the mobile app store gatekeepers, it's the mobile phone companies that are tilting the playing field sharply in favor of the Android phones they distribute, which are tied to Google Play Store, instead of allowing free and open competition in phone operating systems.
What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do? Ask customers to sideload? Tell people to use f-droid? If they do that they're restricting themselves to a tiny fraction of the possible audience and thereby removing any chance they have of being profitable.
18 replies →
Phone OSes are hard. Tizen was a big play for it and that ended up being a dud. Windows Phone was also another well-funded competitor that fell on its face.
Really, the problem is that phone manufacturers want to be where the apps are, and app developers barely keep it together making native apps for the two dominant OSes. Another competitor would need to make it really, really easy to make apps performant when ported over with minimal work, because the ugly truth is that no one is going to hire a full third team to develop for another OS that's just starting out.
9 replies →
The manufacturers' hands are tied. People aren't going to buy a phone that they can't run Snapchat and Netflix on.
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maybe if there was any other option. It's not like everyone on Android has a million distribution options. It's the most popular OS in the world and there is essentially one company that makes its own rules controlling what gets onto phones.
Might be similar to the last time this came up (i'm looking for it now, edit: found it[0]) where the developer worked with a sizable development-for-hire firm that were themselves associated with many other dev accounts, some of which ended up being suspended for ToS violations (possibly by this firm, possibly by the customer without the firm's knowledge). The anti-ban-evasion technology Google runs then effectively poisoned this firm's Play developer profile so that anyone working with them would be suspended for the potential ban evasion, eventually.
Note that, for this specific case, it might not be a firm but one of the developers themselves that has a poisoned account thanks to past dealings that violated ToS. I imagine the system only banning by associate if the $25 developer account itself ever uploads an app so that it doesn't ban associated Google accounts for non-play-developer purposes.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124463 )
Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that.
It’s trivial to make a new developer account and release similar products, so as an App Store you can do things like looking for similarities between new apps and banned apps to root out simple “change of ownership” schemes like this.
Google can’t afford to take this lightly, games with fraudulent ad clicks can generate (i.e. steal) millions of dollars in ad spend from businesses who think they are getting legitimate impressions.
"It's not much more complicated than that" is the language of the oppressor. It's the view of the indifferent technocrat who would flatten the world into software, and is willing to steamroll over any human bits that stick out. Google's algorithmic reinterpretation of justice is a perversion of justice. The simplicity of its approach signs its abdication of its moral and legal responsibilities.
OP's story isn't remotely okay. Fraud is a complicated issue. Here's what's uncomplicated: OP are not frauds. Here's what uncomplicated: Google reneged on a (very one-sided) contract, and destroyed a business. Here's a really simple one: Google is an abusive monopoly.
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> Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that.
You think it's reasonable to ban an entire company because one of their employees committed ad fraud at a previous job?
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Ad fraud = ban from everything a huge company offers? Seems a tad much when the company literally reaches into your pocket by owning your smartphone and/or livelihood.
Bans should be limited in time and scale.
This really must be regulated, Google and co should not be able to lock you out of your digital identity.
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So, Google is judge, jury, and executioner. How can such an approach justified in this day and age?
Oh no, the attention robbers and psychological manipulators are getting a few million our of their literal billions taken away :(
"Guilt by association" is a bad way to run companies - especially when you don't even know who and how someone is guilty. They also do not apply rules fairly. Bigger companies like Facebook, Uber etc get to have more of a "human" connection to sort out issues while the small developer doesn't even get told what exactly they did wrong.
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One has to wonder how far this guilt by association goes. If my personal Google account is banned for one reason or another today, does that mean all the companies I have worked for in the past are also at risk of being banned? Could an app that I haven't had anything to do with for years get removed?
For any of the startup sized companies, this is totally a risk. I presume they wouldn't ban e.g. Twilio's account because one of their former or current employees got themselves personally banned, but there's certainly been accounts of it happening on HN to smaller companies where they hire a banned dev, and then the company's own accounts get banned (and on at least one occasion, their devs personal accounts too).
1) As you know this is super common and there is no recourse. Abandon Google, read something by Kafka, have some whisky.. life isn't over.
2) Take your IP and rearchitect your games for web or other platforms. Despite losing your user reviews and published applications, you clearly have something of value that was trending up. DO NOT let Google smite your startup by simply banning you. Android phones are not the only place where your IP can continue to thrive.
3) If you don't want to rearchitect, Consider selling your IP to another mobile developer. IP with a track record of positive reviews/downloads/cash flow is pure gold. There are websites where you can list your business and IP such as EmpireFlippers and Flippa.
4) Lastly.. having a team who is competent, you enjoy working together, and has success under your belt is also gold. What else can you do with this team to take the world by storm? I envy your position; I have not a team nor 1M+ users anywhere. Good luck friend.
Mostly great suggestions but number 3 is hilarious. "We are banning your account as it appears to be associated with a previously banned account".
What can I say... Oh yeah, that Google owes me a lot of money after terminating my adsense account for false reasons and added insult to injury by sending me a 50€ adword voucher to my _physical address_ like it solved anything?...
It was like 10/15 years ago, now everytime I have an opportunity to suggest businesses I work with not to use any of Google services, including GCP, I do exactly that.
I'd say, unless you signed an actual contract with Google, which agreeing to a bunch of random TOS really isn't, do not ever rely on Google services or SAAS, and certainly do not build your startup on any Google stack.
> now everytime I have an opportunity to suggest businesses I work with not to use any of Google services, including GCP, I do exactly that
What would you recommend as a good alternative to google (and Facebook) ads?
Reddit is like the #4 site in the USA. Can get pretty targeted too.
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Why do you say "(and Facebook)"? Even if Facebook were this ban-happy, a lifetime ban from them is way, way less disruptive to most people's lives than a lifetime ban from Google is.
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not using ads.... /runs
in all seriousness, I think in app purchases is probably a better model all round, As a user and a developer these ad platforms are all just nasty.
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Google are horrendous (business partner), but at least you can publish and install .apk files without a store. Whether that's a sustainable business model is another thing entirely, but at least you can do it. Not even going to talk about Apple since that's just a more extreme example of the same problem.
From my POV, if you have a business and you rely entirely (or for the majority) of your income from these platforms, then your business is not sustainable and is not competitive. You're playing at a rigged game and you will most likely lose.
I stopped using 3rd party game engines for the same reason. I want to control my source and the potential income I get (if any). A lot of people won't agree with that. That's fine. Google and Apple's duopoly and their respective ecosystems are not good for the future of software. People have to take a stand at some point. These companies want to control every part of the tech stack (and our lives to extent), you should fight against that. We should all fight against that.
> You're playing at a rigged game and you will most likely lose.
Then the whole smartphone market is rigged. This is why I as a consumer will not buy a new smartphone anymore.
I went for a year or so without a smartphone at all. What I missed the most was maps, but you'd be surprised to learn how better off you are without social media pinging you 24/7.
I now use a second-hand smartphone without a Google account, and I use OsmAnd for maps.
> Then the whole smartphone market is rigged.
Yes, it is rigged. I've had Android, WP (which I liked the most because of the tiles) and now I'm on iOS. I don't have social media on my phone. I use it for banking and maps mostly, but I also communicate with family through WhatsApp :/ I wish I could just get rid of it, but it's not possible for me to just use e-mail... At least not yet.
It genuinely does wonders for mental health to disable notifications for social media apps. Definitely agree there.
Sharecropping in these rentseeking App Stores is a model which caps your maximum amount of success and increases your odds of failure.
> As far as policy is concerned they have contacted us previously and we solved all of the issues to their satisfaction.
He admits they were in violation of policy previously and fixed it, but then repeatedly states they’ve never violated any policies. Curious what the original violations were for. While I know Google is notorious for things like this, it feels like they’re not telling the whole story.
Actually no, they didn't seem to admit any violations.
I've been in this game awhile, dealing with Google is a continuous stream of "we have a new policy and you now have 30 days to provide the URL of your official formal legal privacy policy." or whatever new policy they invent.
Usually its not terribly exciting or controversial. For example by next month ALL updated apps must target Android 11 aka API level 30 (AFAIK unless they've recently altered the date, etc). I'm not having a significant problem with that, but historically its been a pain occasionally.
AFAIK all in-app subscriptions have to support account hold and restore as of next month, as a policy example, I'm not in that game, but as I understand, its perfectly OK to not support that today; just make sure its all good by Nov 1st.
I see there's a new "data safety section" on the play app content page as of next April. I would casually interpret that as being similar but different from the privacy policy requirement in that the priv pol seems to cover all activities of a company whereas the app data safety section will lay out exactly what OS calls your app is making. Which begs the question of why the play store or the OS don't simply automate the whole thing seeing as they have a pretty good idea what the binaries are calling...
Anyway the play store list of requirements is in continuous flux and has been for years and probably will continue to change until it closes someday.
Just because they haven't announced the official deadline date probably sometime next year when you'll have to upload only Android 12 / API 31 as a minimum doesn't mean that just like clockwork "everyone" knows its coming in a year or two.
The legal contract says they only have to give 30 days warning; honestly they're almost always far more generous.
On one hand its continuous lifetime work for me until some random bot accidentally inevitably wipes me out; on the other hand its also not productive work and most of the changes Google demands don't really help anyone, not even GOOG. They're so random sometimes.
Not looking to defend Google, but the API 30 target has been there for almost two years and they've asked for people to migrate ASAP.
Mostly because their new file handling APIs are honestly the biggest load of dogshit I'v ever seen.
> Also, one of our manager’s PCs was compromised so we have wiped entire hard drives to be sure that there is no virus in the network!
Yeah this part and the other comments about multiple malware infections makes me think this is an issue they caused with poor security practices.
Google support should still be better at this rather than banning with AI and never being flexible, but the developer is not exactly sounding blameless here.
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That is like saying.. we got our email blocked because we were sending spam, but we decided to stop sending spam and they still blocked our email.
The same thing can happen with Google Ads Accounts. I've seen a several ad agencies get totally destroyed when a client does something that violates the TOS and then you get the 'guilt by association' ban. Then this propagated out to all of their other client accounts because, well, guilt by association.
Rather than Google taking the time and effort to identify the single issue, it's FAR easier for them to just ban anything that touched those accounts. It is hands down my single biggest worry when working with Google. And why I immediately revoke access for anyone (including me) that does not need direct, active, access to any account. There is simply no way to talk to a real human and say, look, I've been working with you since you launched and this one account way over here that's 'new' did something you don't like and now I'm banned for life?
Would you consider password sharing the same account instead of inviting other people via email as a workaround? I'm thinking if it's only one account, the blast radius of 'guilt by association' is 0.
Or does Google associates even if you're logged in into multiple accounts in the same browser?
> Or does Google associates even if you're logged in into multiple accounts in the same browser?
Of course they do. Fingerprinting browsers is extremely easy.
On the other hand,if all ad agencies were totally destroyed that would eliminate the incentive to collect our personal data and profile our browsing/purchasing information.
About 5 years ago I made a little app as a side project when I was learning to program. My play developer account was terminated without warning for breaking intellectual copyright rules.
I appealed and received an (automated?) response that my account would not be reinstated because I violated the publisher rules. The rule they said I broke? I integrated Spotify's API, which has a login page with the Spotify logo in it, and you're not allowed to use another company's logo inside your app.
Ridiculous, yes but it was more of a bummer than anything. This wasn't a startup, I didn't have investors or a lot at stake. I lost about $50 and a few hours time (and a Google Play Developer account).
The silliest thing was that if I could just get on the phone with a real human at a Google for five minutes they would have seen how ridiculous my ban was and the issue would have been resolved, no big deal. But alas, no human to be had, only an algorithm with too much power. I did some research on dev forums and found that several people had successfully sued Google and got their account back over wrongful terminations, (Didn't sound too expensive or difficult, most of the time Google didn't even show up in court) but according to the ToS you agree to, you have sue them in Mountain View if you bring legal action over anything.
I get why app stores ban publishers, I get why they don't just let everyone publish whatever they want. I bet for every false positive ban like mine, they ban 1000 Russian bot accounts spamming malware. We don't see the mountains of avoided malware, just the auto-banhammer going rogue from time to time. But if Apple and Google just had the slightest bit of customer support this would be much less of an issue.
Why is this legal? Why is it legal for Google to completely demolish a business with no human review, no due process and no excuse at all?
Why do we keep hearing this without a single developer going forward and suing the hell out of Google? Or Apple by the way.
To be clear, the root problem here is that Google gives their own app store an unfair advantage. Third-party app stores can't auto-update their apps, among other things, without the phone being rooted, which carries serious consequences for functionality (e.g., can't use the camera anymore on the Galaxy Z Fold 3, can't use Snapchat, Netflix, or Android Pay anymore on any phone, and on some phones you just can't root at all, period). If third-party app stores could fairly compete with the Play Store, then there'd be no issue at all with it having draconian and arbitrarily-enforced policies.
If you use Magisk you can just sideload Netflix from APK Mirror or Aurora Store and you're fine. Samsung stock ROMs specifically have extra Netflix DRM checks built in iirc, but if you're rooted disabling them should be easy, I'm sure there's open source scripts on xda that will do all this. Netflix is even fully functional on GrapheneOS despite it being a custom build which doesn't pass SafetyNet, although the bootloader is locked and it's not rooted, but still it fails SafetyNet and Netflix runs fine without any tricks.
Android Pay is easy to get working on a rooted phone you just need to slightly modify one single SQLite database. There are scripts to automate this on xda for certain, I used one before on my old Pixel.
Snapchat though is a lot more tricky yeah, they do their own checks outside of SafetyNet and it's a game of cat and mouse where whenever someone gets around one Snapchat adds five more. But then how many people still use Snapchat these days? Everyone I know just uses IG which works fine on a rooted phone.
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My Samsung phone came preinstalled with an unremovable third party app store. No root necessary. Maybe device manufacturers aren't considered third party?
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Samsung Galaxy phone, Huawei phones and other phones have 3rd party stores that update apps in background just fine.
No need to spread FUD, come on.
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The problem is not quite Google's behavior. It's legal for the same reason it's legal for you to not allow someone inside your house for bad reasons or no reasons at all.
The problem is that we've allowed digital marketplaces to achieve the kind of market power that would make a robber baron blush -- and we're not talking enough about how breaking up FAANG companies into multiple competing companies helps prevent the kinds of harms discussed in the blog above (as well as others).
I purchase software from no less than 5 different digital marketplaces on my computer, but I am all but prevented from downloading software on my phone that does not originate from the Play store. Monopolies are not good for markets.
I have F-Droid installed on all my Android phones. Admittedly it's something you must go out of your way to do, but you can put third party app stores on Android phones very easily, or just sideload apps individually if they have an official APK link (many do).
iPhones on the other hand, yeah very different story.
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When I was a freelancer, I was warned by my legal help that taking a businesses site offline in response to non-payment was legally risky. There was a chance of being sued for disrupting their business.
I wonder if there are grounds for a (reasonable) legal suit here. Anyone in the know that can fill us in?
You're talking about self-help that isn't in a contract, right? The OP is talking about self-help developer account suspension that presumably is a right listed in the applicable TOS.
> I wonder if there are grounds for a (reasonable) legal suit here. Anyone in the know that can fill us in?
If this was this company's only revenue stream, chances are they can't survive until such a lawsuit has dragged out to the end.
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Most people even when they think they're in the right won't take legal action. Even when they think they'll get a payout they won't take legal action. If they get threatened with legal action they'll automatically backdown.
I'm sure there are a multiude of reasons behind why this is. But I think part of it is on some level fight or flight. I am sure for a lot it's just not worth the hassle.
I'm hoping for the day someone does take them to court especially in the EU where they're less likely to put up with the corporate nonsense that the American courts seem to put up with.
It's because the cost to bring them to court is far to expensive. I don't know anyone who can afford to do that here in the U.S.
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It is legal because of the contract between the developer and Google. In this case Google decided that the developer violated the contract's terms and terminated the account.
Also, there might have been a human review, and it was decided that termination is going to proceed, hence no basis for human to intervene.
Because law enforcement is for the rich, that's why.
snarky and oversimplified, but basically true.
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This happens so many times and some people posted it on HN before. The most common reply is that you should not put all your eggs in someone else’s basket. I’m amused no one has posted that comment yet.
By the way, Google will most probably not restore the account, but I’d be interested to know whether it does because our startup is also similar to yours, and half of our eggs are in Google’s basket too. Please keep us (the community) updated.
So if you want to write a mobile app, what are you supposed to do? Aren't your only choices to put all of your eggs in Google/Apple's baskets?
The answer is simple don't make a mobile game. Write a web app or desktop application.
It is the same as console games or anywhere someone else controls the platform.
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To what extend could one use a website instead of an app?
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> So if you want to write a mobile app, what are you supposed to do?
Not hire someone who had been banned before due to ad fraud.
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Don't
> I’m amused no one has posted that comment yet.
It s probaly because it has become impossible not to put your eggs in the same 2 baskets. How else are people going to make an app / how are they going to launch a startup without an app? (I know it s possible to go web only, but they 'll probably not be taken seriously by investors)
Very handwavy most of these stories seem to revolve around Google tying ad accounts and play store accounts, and having a VERY EXTREMELY heavy hand on ad accounts, which results in the banhammer smashing distantly related play store accounts.
The safest way to handle this is probably to not use both google play store and google ads. Going to be pretty hard to make an app without Play Store so I guess that means no using Google Ads. Too dangerous and Google will not support.
If you used, say, Facebook "audience network" ads, then no matter how angry Facebook gets, regardless if they're correct or not, at least your app would remain up.
Also if you're launching a startup you're probably not making much from ads and as using google ads is a HUGE existential risk for any app developer, you'd best not use ads. Its not like any end user ever used a startup's app because they like how well they implemented the ads.
I am not the author of the article, I just posted it. The article is about game development so webdev isn't a serious option for the author either.
"You should not put all your eggs in someone else’s basket."
The September intrusions detected sound pretty suspicious. I am sure there are plenty of bad actors trying to take over existing Google Developer accounts to use for spam/fraud, and it sounds like there was at least one compromised account and compromised device which could easily lead to other compromised accounts or persistent malware.
A way to think about this is to see Google (or Apple) as a De-Facto State which governs a very important "ecosystem" in which customers and other businesses rely almost exclusively on. Its very existence depends on businesses and people relaying for important aspects of their existence on them. This is how they stay big and relevant.
In this environment they must make decisions for the sake of their their own interests and sometimes to protect other users.
The problem is that like any non-democratic state there's no balance in power between the executive power (the company and its algorithms) and their stakeholders, so I would expect this to get worst and more damaging over time.
Is it possible that they put their actions under the inspection of another entity? Can we expect that every government and legislation put their own rules to govern Google and protect its users from them?
For them it was the end of it all. For google, it was a Tuesday.
Googles process here is fundamentally broken, and so easily improved.
I have had issues with them before and there should be:
- a portal to see your status (it's often impossible to know if they even got your comment)
- all comments and next steps clearly listed
- send warnings before bans in all cases unless there is some kind of extreme safety thing
- let developers respond to accusations before banning them
These would be minimal technical effort on googles part, negligible safety impact, but dramatically improve the developer perspective of them.
"Competitors using our ad ids and publisher codes inside their policy incompliant apps and violates policy knowingly to trigger associate accounts!"
Scary. So it sounds like they were attacked by a competitor and Google is not willing to support.
Your quote is a wild guess by them. The malware explanation after that sounds much more likely
My guess, assuming the company is innocent and that this wasn't just a thinly veiled attempt by Google to purge the developers' gambling apps:
Google bans accounts by association. One of their accounts was logged into during a hack. They blocked the device, but the notification usually comes only after the login has already succeeded.
Assuming this wasn't the criminal's first hack, their device probably got flagged before by Google. If Google applied their logic to that device, they flagged this company's account (and probably all of these people's own Google accounts by association).
Google won't comment on this so I suppose we'll never know for sure. However, when the next company that the people behind this startup joins also gets banned, I'd consider the viral properties of Google bans proven and these developers could be considered "tainted" by our tech overlords.
Little bit confused as I thought being open Android App Store instead of closed iOS App Store was supposed to mean this is totally not a problem?
That’s the gist in the anti-Apple anti-walled-garden threads common during the Epic tussle; though some less popular comments have sounded skeptical, referencing stories like this.
From this thread, sounds like Android gets you 15% of the consumer wallet share for app spend compared to iOS 85% wallet share of app spend, but still has enough distribution curation woes to “destroy our startup”?
What’s the attraction then? Or is this melodramatic?
15% of the consumers is, I'm guessing, based on US marketshare?
The company in the OP here is not American, and outside of the US, Android has the majority of the smartphone marketshare in most of the world.
Despite what Americans often think this is not only true for "poor countries" either. In the UK it is pretty much 50/50 between iOS and Android. Most people have either an iPhone or Samsung. Usually the flagship models.
So there's very good reasons to target Android and it is very possible OP's company is simply in a country where Android smartphones dominate the market, not iPhones.
But yes regarding the Epic thing, you can indeed submit your apps to third party app stores including ones that come preinstalled on the major brands. Samsung Galaxy Store for example.
Thanks.
Note that share of handsets carried by consumers is very different from total and share of wallet spent on platform in U.K. too.
Put another way, when iOS was carried by 20% of consumers, it accounted for 80% of mobile app spend. As a paid app dev, the second number is important. As an ad-ware app dev, the first number matters more. For advertising conversions… it depends.
Google owes me money too. They screwed me back in the early years of this century by billing me for ad "hits" that were clearly bogus and I've never used their services since.
I still use their search engine but I always use duckduckgo first and I won't click on any of the advertised links the offer. Never.
If anyone hasn't figured out by now that Google is a predator who'll screw them out of everything they can, including their startup ideas, they will sooner or later.
This is par for the course with Google. Many Adsense accounts have been terminated for similarly vague policy violations. I am sure they catch a lot of bad actors, but they also catch a lot of folks who have no clue what they have done wrong, in many cases losing a large part of their income. Google does send warning emails, but they are so vague as to be useless in figuring out the violation.
Maybe the issue here is making one's business solely dependant on a third party which is well known for that kind of behavior...
What alternatives would you suggest? F-droid is the only one that comes to mind for me, and I'm not sure that this would be suitable for this company
For their Android apps they can launch on third party app stores besides F-Droid, for example Amazon Appstore, Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei App Gallery, and I'm sure there's plenty of others... most users are likely to be on Samsung phones or one of the Chinese brands so getting your app on those stores should cover a lot of the customer base already.
For customers using other phones just tell them download Amazon Appstore and provide an APK download on the site for the lazy ones (but put a note saying using an app store is best to get updates etc.)
While it does damage business to not be in the Play Store, thankfully Android is flexible enough it's not a total killer if you get into other app stores customers are likely to trust, and they are likely to trust the app stores that are preinstalled on their phones.
It's also smart to not only be on one platform. Of course if their dev account got canned by Apple they really wouldn't have any alternatives, but it'd be very bad luck for them to genuinely have done nothing wrong but still have both Google and Apple ban them.
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I would suggest pivoting to a different non-mobile ecosystem.
I haven’t read all of the comments, but I would like to add this note of caution to all startup founders: if your startup innovation, technology or business model is largely based on someone else’s capability and that capability alone, then you have designed a single point of failure into your business and a high degree of risk to your future business viability. Using capabilities like Google or Amazon have to offer is a great way to prototype your solution and to get initial customer feedback. But you can’t depend upon these services always being available. For example, just look at the number of products and interfaces that Google has changed or canceled in the past 15 years. So if you do decide to take this approach, just go into it knowing the risk you are taking.
I've talked to too many people who staunchly state that "it's a private company" when it comes to not caring about censorship in one sentence, but decry actions like this in the next, to really think there is an adequately beneficial solution to these types of problems.
As a mobile apps developer, this is extremely concerning to me. Google has a big crisis of trust. I no longer feel safe to even have personal apps connected to my real Google account - what if the Developer Account gets banned and my main email, Google Drive and all my life along with it? There were instances of people's entire Google accounts gone. That is catastrophic.
I now believe it is my duty to detract anyone from using Google Play-serviced Android devices. With the way Google treats their developers they should pay the price of shrinking market share.
I hope a change comes and Google starts being a more customer focused company. But they are notorious for providing bad customer support, and I just can't count on it.
Yet another similar story.
Will your next startup also rely on Google?
It must be said that, to the extent Google destroyed their startup, it also created it by launching an app store. This developer built their apps on top of Google's ecosystem, in a world where these kinds of executions have happened before, many times, to many frustrated developers.
It is true that developers cannot make their own operating system and marketplace to compete with Google's, but it's also true that they do not need to get into the business of selling games on Google's Play Store in the first place. Equally true is the fact that Google is known to be an unfair, capricious, uncommunicative, and disinterested landlord.
This never ends.
People never learn.
Someone bets success of their business solely on grace of someone else's private platform and then disaster strikes.
You been booted for whatever reason they felt like.
What were you thinking?
Generocity and grace of FAANG's will never end?
Just submit it to the Amazon Appstore. According to Google they are a major competitor, right? Same same?
Yes, I’m being sarcastic
Best non-sarcastic option is to submit to the OEM app stores like Samsung Galaxy Store and Huawei App Gallery.
Based on the author withholding some key details, my take is they know more than they say on why the account was terminated. The whole post was written assuming (correctly) that Google is too big to respond publicly and tell their side of the story, which would undoubtedly garner some support.
This somehow inspired me to type "google destroyed" into HN search.
Didn't disappoint.
It's this type of behavior that caused me to drop google for everything except search long ago. You are not the customer, you are the product or in many cases a vessel for the product which is ads and nothing more.
After reading all these stories it feels like Google has a policy of "sunsetting" a certain amount of projects per year. When the company is out of them, it's gonna be yours
Huge kudos to Google for stopping a shady studio that can hardly secure its own network from releasing possibly security compromised apps to Android users!
No real due diligence often leads to “disasters” like this.
Just out of curiosity can they not just upload all the games again with a new account?
They could but Google's AI would likely pick it up instantly and they actually would have broken the ban evasion rule at that point so they wouldn't have a leg to stand on when accusing Google of being unfair.
Just build your own phone/App Store/Bank/social media platform/hosting company
It’s not hard
/s
I have a feeling these things are caused by jealous Google engineers. Once they see an app or company being successful they will find ways to mess up the business. Either through their store account or their Google rankings. We’ve seen these stories too many times.
Disclaimer: I work for Google, not involved with app moderation.
I am pretty sure most engineers don't have access to do such things. And certain that doing something like that is an effective way to terminate ones career.
I'm also pretty sure no lawyers at Google want anyone to get manually involved with search rankings. If anyone did that it would open a massive can of worms, one the smart lawyers knows should never be opened.
Obviously, I cannot say for certain if what you’re saying is correct or incorrect. However, if you’ve read HN for any length of time, you would have seen that Google clearly manipulates search results to control competition or to punish certain companies.
Furthermore, no company would be asinine enough to allow bots, AI, or ML make decisions without a way to undo those changes. This tells me that Google employees are doing these things or your contractors are.
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Hello there, I'm the OP here!
First of all sorry for my bad English. It is not my first language so. Thanks for the open discussion and your support!
It's my bad i should have mentioned more stuff to our medium post so that it won't leave readers with any confusions. Please pardon me as this was my first post. I've never had written anything before.
You might got some questions like
Q: Who are we? A: We are simply a india based gaming startup. We had 8-10 games published on our plays store account.
Q:Why do we mentions address of UK on our tweeter handle? A:. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.
Reason providing our uk address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other stuffs like GDPR and different other policies. For ex. You can send a latter to the given address to get in touch with us!Please note that google asks for communication address not the business registered address to show it publicly. Our business registration address already submitted to them but it's not just public.
Q: Where can i find your games incase i want to see them? A: You can find it on apk pure. You can search "tonk" you'be able to see our account "6Ace Games", also we had added the link in our medium post in bottom. Please check!
Q:How me monetized our games? A: Through admob and in-app products. Nothing shady!
Q: Does the games targeting children? A: No not at all, all our games are rated 18+ adult category
Q:Our games was providing gambling? A: No, It's just simulations. You can't win money or bet money, Not at all!
Q: what about your domain 6acegames.com? A: Yes, our domain 6acegames.com is new. The reason behind it is very silly you may find it funny but still let me tell you!, at first we have bought domain sixacegames.com(you can check reg. details) thinking it will help in seo and all because we didn't want to include a number "6" in our domain. But later after our games got popular user started searching for 6Acegames that's why we bought this domain as well in may 2021 just to build the presence on google search.
Q:Why no presence on LinkedIn? A: Try searching "Whyphy Infotech". 6Acegames is just business name we use!
Q: What about social media? A:we are not very active in social media. As you can see in our tweeter handle we have 0 followers. The reason is simple we never promoted it to our users. Although we have some followers on our Instagram handle, but they follow us because we provide free perks occasionally to our audience.
Please read to my updated post on medium!
10 games in 3 years...yeah, that's not sketchy at all
I’ve noticed a lot mobile games that are also on steam.
This is one reason why I was hoping web apps would be more popular then jail-apps... I'm still hoping for an open future but I'm not holding my breath... why even block linux native apps on android?