Google today is announcing strengthened protections for Android developers publishing apps to its Google Play store. The changes are a part of Google’s broader efforts at keeping low-quality and unsafe apps out of its app store and off consumers’ devices, which also recently included the launch of a new real-time app scanning feature to combat malicious apps. Today, the company says it will now require new Android developers with personal accounts to test their app with a minimum of 20 people for at least 2 weeks prior to publication. It additionally plans to increase its investment in the app review processes, warning of potential slowdowns in approvals for a small number of apps as these changes roll out.
At first glance, this sounds like a good idea – more testing leads to better applications, is the reasoning – but it’s going to be a massive burden for many small indie developers to even find 20 testers. In my experience, it’s usually the small indie teams or individual developers that make the best applications on Android, while the large, well-known brands release steady streams of garbage. In other words, this is going to disproportionately affect the wrong people.
On the bright side, this can help reduce the amount of junk on the app store.
Like 80 versions of “Flashlight 2023″…
What’s the point now? They build a system that completely encouraged the highest number of apps available in the app store. They encouraged clones on clones on clones, how many pdf apps are available for pc? How many flappy bird apps are available for pc? How many photo editing apps are available for pc? How many runner, survival, horde, tap apps?. …Now compared to android. Its a problem they created and continue to push forward. Its so bad that even the new outlook from Microsoft took an Android approach of being just a web app wtf that is.
Maybe they can take a YouTube like approach for ad revenue, but YouTube is stil horrible.
More silly hoops for developers to jump through.
I suspect this will lead to an overall average reduction in not just the quantity but also the quality of the apps in the store. Developers just wanting to provide good free software to their users are not going to want to pay a fee to Google and then also put up with all this nonsense, the only ones who will bother are likely those trying to make money from Android users.
Looks like my next game will NOT be on stores.
Play Store is becoming a burden, each week they change some policy, require changes in your app often, it is just becoming a real burden for indie devs like me, to keep up. You know, we have daily jobs, so we use uour precious free time to publish the games; but if it starts to require hours and hours to do so, it is just not worth loosing your personal life with family.
protomank,
I’d be right there with you if I developed mobile apps. However I believe google and apple are just too dominant to really care in the slightest about what we think. Still, hopefully there’s a rainbow at the end and alternative stores start to become viable by welcoming those who are frustrated by the hoops that apple and google are imposing.
I think many developers welcome competing stores, but they’ve been more driven by FOSS & freeware. The big question mark may be whether any competing stores can be profitable for developers who need to make a living. I just look at this market from afar, what are your thoughts as an app developer?
I think this is basically Google waving the white flag and saying that their app review process doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t user reviews of apps are too unreliable for users to make any sense of which of the hundreds of apps are good