What to do now after Google Play Removes your Game/App.
Hello everyone as of most of you I am an Indie Game Developer who's main focus is working on apps/games for Mobile Devices. I Am here to share my experience with the Google Play Store when my game was suspended from the Play Store.
In august I had released a new game to the Google Play Store that I like all of you put a lot of work into. The game is called "Smashy Food" and I was very optimistic. As most of you already know it is very difficult to get your game/app any exposure for the google play store unless your a big cooperation or have a large budget for a campaign, which I have none of. I have been struggling for 4 years now to get any of my Games to the top of the ranks, until I released 'Smashy Food". Out of nowhere It started gaining a huge amount of momentum.
During the month of october I went on my Developer console and started noticing a huge spike in the number of installs everyday and they were increasing day by day. Towards the end of "Smashy Food" life I was getting 2k Downloads a day! It was my first game ever to reach 10,000 downloads. I was beyond happy. Revenue was very consistent. For the first time my game was moving up in ranks and trending across the globe.
Just when i thought everything was going great and I could possibly quit my dead end job to be a full time developer of my own company, something horrible happened. I woke up checked my emails and saw something that crushed my dream in a matter of seconds... A message from Google Dev Team stating "You have violated the rating and review policy. Your app has been suspended. Feel free to request an appeal" WOW! My heart dropped and I knew it was going to be all over from their due to reading a lot about this before it even happened to me.
So My app was removed from the Play store they took away all my statistics, downloads, Everything! I of course wrote a email and requested an Appeal. As you know most of the decisions are automated Bot messages and even the decision to suspend your account is run by Bots which they even get wrong most of the time. So after 3 days I finally got an email back from Google stating that of course they DENIED my appeal and the decision is final. I live two hours away from Google HQ so I lived chat with a support member from Google asked what I can Do who i can talk to and if i can go down there in person and get this fixed. They stated they offer no such support and the decision is final. unlike Apple where they warn you if something is being violated and to fix it, Google just removed your app forever and doesn't give an exact reason why and they never will. This is another bad thing because they state you can re-upload your game/app after the denial brand new with 0 downloads etc. But if you have no idea what could have been the issue for suspension then why re-upload and get it removed again?
I did a lot of research and looked through all the policies and in my case I did violate a policy. I offered incentives which Google Play doesn't allow. I stated in my Game description that I would offer free coins if they were to rate or share my game. I didn't read through the policy well enough and now this happened to me. It does suck and my game "Smashy Food" right now is only getting 10-20 installs after re-uploading it. It is a horrible experience and I would recommend all developers especially those who are starting off to pay great detail to the policy.
I just wish Google would have the decency to say hey you did this wrong either fix it in this amount of time or it will be removed from the store. I hope this helps any of you for the future of your new apps or games. It is a long process when your work is suspended from the Play Store and 90% of time they will deny your appeal. So stay on top of things guys. Thanks for reading!