I have my own LLC and I’m getting ready to submit my first game to the App Store. Currently, I have an individual account, but I have read that you can email Apple to have your individual account converted into a company account.
However, I have seen many apps where the store listing on the phone has the company name in small bold letters at the top under the app name, but at the bottom in the Company section, it shows an individual’s name. I want only my company’s name to appear in the store, so I want to avoid whatever these people did “wrong”.
Do I just need to create a new developer account and waste the remaining part of my year’s dues in the original account? Or did these people miss a step in the submission process to replace their name with the company name?
Of course, I have been assuming these people started with individual accounts, but maybe they messed up from the beginning when creating their company accounts, so if that is possible, it would be nice to know how to avoid what they did.
I have seen various related questions about this on StackOverflow and other forums, but they are old and it seems that Apple’s policy in this area has evolved a lot over the past three years.
Anyone have any experience with this?
Hi Tenfour04,
I have done the process where I migrated my account to use my LLC from a personal account. As far as I can tell, my name is not listed in iTunes anywhere, just my company name. I did this about 1 year ago, so things might have changed. Also, the process took a few week, so if you’re getting ready to ship a game, you may want to get started as soon as you can. One studio i worked at the verification took months.
Thanks for the info. For you, was the slow part waiting for Dun and Bradstreet, Apple, or both?
The slow part had to do with figuring out what apple wanted. The first time (non-migration, just an llc) our company took 3 months because we simply couldn’t find the paperwork apple wanted, and they were very particular. The second time only took a couple weeks because when I submitted the incorrect paperwork, I then emailed my friend who gave me the exact paperwork that was needed, based upon our original experience.
Currently I am attempting to get paperwork together in Colorado, which requires the D&B. This has been interesting because Apple has told me that it takes 14 days for them to update the D&B info. So we’re currently waiting two weeks to try to re-enroll after the D&B info is updated with what we hope is the correct Legal Entity Name and Business Name. These two items we were told by apple developer support were most likely the culprit.
My best advice is not to bother with emailing apple. Pick up the phone, they will be much easier to work with, and it will get through the process much faster. This isn’t always the case, but its better than email.