Yesterday I pushed a new alpha build on the Google Play store.
Its new feature: My server keeps track of each player’s (device’s) resource amounts and level progression. Today I’m seeing 23 new fields stored that apparently show 23 new users/devices starting the game, moving past the menu, and then stopping.
Does this sound like this is the work of the google play store review people/process?
*I ask, because there’s always the possibility that my code is flawed and I have bug fixing to do.
Thank you.
Yes, actually it does. That mirrors my experience.
If you look under the ReleaseManagement sub area, scroll down to the Pre-Launch report, you’ll see they fire up your software on a whole range of different devices running various flavors of Android, various screen sizes, etc. If they find a problem there is a video you can view and of course any crash logs you’ll see.
Also, just looking in there now in order to properly name those folders, I see a warning at the top of one of my games that says:
“Pre-launch reports are currently delayed.”
Google has gotten a lot slower since COVID-19 started, whereas Apple seems to have actually gotten faster. Weird.
In contrast Apple only seems to fire it up on one or two devices, usually phones… in fact it seems always phones, although it can be tough to judge because I have a lot of TestFlight people running the exact same build I’m submitting sometimes, and they use tablets.
If I recall Apple’s process is a little bit more convoluted and longer if you have a lot of purchase stuff or especially subscriptions.
1 Like
Your reply made my day.
It’s takes 2+ days for me to get approved, during the past 10 days, when I’ve been doing so. My app doesn’t do any subscriptions, payments and so on. So folks might have longer approval waits if they have such complexity. Just a guess.
The odd thing is 99% of the app launches happen within a few minutes of submitting the release.
For me I’m seeing 4 to 6 hrs until its live on google. I only release to Android once or twice a week. I do 99% of my testing on iOS since TestFlight is SO much faster now, like sometimes just a few minutes for new builds. I almost never use a USB cable anymore! It’s almost as fast to push the build and wait for the ding on the phone, rather than hassle with wires. I only hook up the USB if I have a debug-worthy bug, and those are almost always platform-specific failures.
1 Like