I wish you good luck because anything related to management of family-oriented polices at Google is like a walk through Hell. If your game does not specifically target kids (yet is labeled as 3+ or alike after filling Google’s own Age Ranking form), then do not include them in your age ranking at all. Parents will do their job on their own end of the responsibility chain. I wasted an insane (and precious) amount of time fighting against the whole system trying to come up with a set up that was in harmony with Google’s requirements, warnings and clues.
There should be not be any data collected in your case. You can use Fiddler or Charles Proxy to confirm.
We are having the same issue where the latest update of our app is being rejected by GooglePlay because it "transmits device identifier(s) from children or users of unknown age that do not comply with the Families Policy. These identifiers may include but are not limited to [Build Serial Number]"
We use unity IAP and unity analytics but we don’t use ads. We aren’t sure if unity is the problem as we use several plugins in our app and are still in the process of checking each one.
I’m wondering if someone could confirm that we can indeed use Unity IAP and Unity analytics but NOT unity ads and still be approved for Google’s Families Policy. And if so, what settings etc. we need to do/check to make sure.
We are currently using Unity 2020.3.27f1 and Unity IAP package 4.1.2.
Thank you for any feedback and support you can give us.
Please provide the Charles capture so we can find out for sure. https://support.unity.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002917683-Using-Charles-Proxy-with-Unity
That’s good to hear. Thank you. I just wish that this could have been written in an official document too.
So I removed everything about ad ID from my privacy policy, and uploaded the game to Google Play. And it worked. It was not rejected 
We don’t know what your app is sending, only you do! Any number of assets that you may have included can send data.
we have an app on Google Play Store in the child category. We have to update this app but there is a problem with the new Google policy. The application is rejected by the play console. Because of transmitting [Build Serial Number]. My app targets kids also using some AR functionality which never violates the policy. we detected that unity collects the build serial number(libunity.so file).an anyone help me to resolve the issue?
@JeffDUnity3D
it appears you know what are you doing. can you track where that data is sent? is a unity server or something else?
IDK where the data is sending
Is it specifically targeting kids or are kids just part of your overall audience?
In the latter case, increase your rating to PG13 and just assume the parents will do the proper parenting.
We had the same issue, but I was finally able to fix it!
Firebase Analytics was indeed the culprit for the rejection, because it adds an advertising mobule (AdMob) even though you might not be using it. This would flag the app for violating the Family Policy even if you’ve set “No, my app does not contain ads” in the App Content > Ads section in the Google Play Console Dashboard.
I fixed this by:
- Adding this to the AndroidManifest following the Firebase Analytics documentation https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/configure-data-collection?platform=android&authuser=0#disable_advertising_id_collection
<meta-data android:name="google_analytics_adid_collection_enabled" android:value="false" />
- Enabling “Custom Main Gradle Template” in the Project Settings, and excluded the modules by editing the mainTemplate.gradle file.
implementation('com.google.firebase:firebase-analytics') {
exclude module: "play-services-ads-identifier"
exclude module: "play-services-measurement"
exclude module: "play-services-measurement-sdk"
}
Make sure the .aar and .jar files are deleted in the Project’s Assets/Plugins/Android folder or it might create some conflicts with Gradle.
Google Play Console used to give a warning in the App Content > Ads section saying “We have found ad SDKs in your app”, but after making these changes the warning is gone 
You can analyze the Android build with Android Studio to make sure those modules are gone in your new build.
1 Like
Well I managed to update to children in the families program and pass Google’s reviewing process. But that took like 3 weeks to get through, 3 weeks. I suggest everybody to not try to get into the family program. It’s more of a pain in the ass than anything else. It just makes updating not just harder and increases your chances of getting rejected, the whole process takes far too long. I’ve got another app which I regularly update that gets always accepted within an hour.
Now I’m trying to get those games I have that are in the family program to get out of the family program, but the reviewing process for that has also been ongoing for a week already. I hope they let me out, because I really need to make a quick update to fix a major bug which lost me a bunch of users.
any tips of how did you do that? what settings you have used, how you have prepared unity?
I told you to forget about the families program. With 3 weeks I mean a single upload took so long to review. It’s a pain in the ass to wait for that long to update. Having your game in the families program won’t really increase your downloads.It has no upsides only downsides from what I can tell. I would only try to get in with paid apps where I don’t have any ads and analytics.
But if you really want to get in. What does your rejection email say?
Things they don’t allow are rewarded ads. Only use interstitial ads or banner ads. Of couse you’ll have to check "children under 13. And best check in your unity dashboard that ads are set to children under 13. It’s also important that you use at least Unity Ads 4.1 or above. I would suggest that you remove unity ads and install “Ads with mediation” instead, because Unity Ads causes bunch of ANRs and Ads with mediation seems to be more stable. In app purchases also seem to be a no go if you specifically target children.These are the only things you need to pay attention to inside unity.
The rest is what you declare on the playstore itself. Check your mail what points they have problems with.
answer the Google play data safety section according to this list.
https://docs.unity.com/ads/GoogleDataSafety.html
There is of course always the chance that some reviewer will decide that your game itself is not child appropriate.
No I don’t want to enter that program, i was just curios of your experience with how you have managed to pass the review test.
unfortunately this family program is just so google can say that they are protecting the children. in reality most children will play on their parents devices or if they have a device of their own is still in their parents name so it shows up as adults.
google could maybe use AI to detect if a child is playing and enforce some limitations but why they would do that?
Yes, don’t touch that “family program” unless you really need to, such as if you made a game titled Oinky Oinky the Little Pig that was specifically for toddlers. Otherwise you’re in for a huuuge world of hurt, wasting your time for weeks without even knowing what the hell is going on, and having to deal with Google’s automated answers that will for the most part pre-select copy-paste stuff from the not helpful documentation that may, at best, be validated by one person before pressing send.
By experience, and I mean solid experience, Google will send you messages relative to this family program even when you didn’t apply your app for it!
In other words, defer all responsibility to parents and put your game at 13+ or something equivalent.
Then, if kids get access to your game, it’s not your fault.
Just remember to keep your advertising units kid friendly. Avoid religion, politics, drugs, casino, adult stuff.
And don’t forget to curse Google too.
1 Like
Just wanted to thank you for this post, and confirm that this still appears to be Google Play’s policy.
In my case it was an old APK currently in production that caused my Open Testing APK to be rejected. Yes, you read that right. Google are not allowing me to test a new build that is compliant because the old version is not compliant. Remind me of the purpose of test tracks again?!!
The original rejection email didn’t mention this of course, but thanks to reading the above post, I appealed, asking for confirmation that the issue was with the new test APK and not the old production one. To their credit they replied, saying that the rejection stands, but confirming my suspicions that it was the old production APK that was non-compliant and causing the rejection of the new version. Crazy town.
2 Likes
I’m not even surprised.
The safest thing to do is that when you have a new APK, you will push it through all the tracks you created, with the “promote to” option for example. It’s terribly annoying and hopefully you haven’t opened too many tracks either.
Yes, it’s extremely dumb and yes, Google barely provides any useful information. That disrespect has been going on for many years already, they don’t care because you have to comply and put up with it. They could have made the process much more friendly and intuitive but won’t do it. They probably don’t have enough money for that.
Hello @ , my app got rejected due to missing neutral age,but even if I set the age target to 13+ it keeps stating that I need a neutral age screen
