So I just had my game removed and my developer account terminated permanently from the play store by google.
The emails they send are machine driven cold hearted and not very helpful in bringing light to exactly how you offended some or other policy, they simply list sections in their legal documents that make very general statements.
It started three days ago when out of the blue I received an app suspension , stating my app violated some or other dangerous content policy related to an advert service. The biggest joke is I have no advert in my game. I did however try out an advert service right in the start when I first uploaded my game two years ago but I removed it after two months or so. So its been a bona fide free game for most of its existence.
I appealed this suspension and told them everything mentioned above, they accepted the appeal the next day and said my game will be made active again I will just have to log into the console and publish it again. Great all sorted glad its over all statistics for game downloads and ratings all intact.
Until yesterday when I received two emails from them stating my game has been deleted ( not suspended ) and my developer account TERMINATED!
Again these emails were NOT HELPFUL AT ALL in pointing out exactly how you supposedly violated one or other policy listed in all their legal terms. Again there was an appeal option which I obviously began engaging, just to find out you can only enter a very limited amount of characters into the textbox provided. So I tried to be as concise as possible in explaining Im just a single developer with one game on the store which is absolutely free and does not have any violating advert services as initially reported to me by them.
It was not very long and I received another template generated email stating the appeal was denied.
What im struggling to understand is the permanent termination of the developer account. Permanent in that you may NEVER EVER FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE register another developer account on the play store. This brings me to the title of this post. What if someone made a mistake or is struggling to understand what is happening?
The last sentence in their email :
“We are unable to provide further details and will not respond to additional inquiries. We recommend that you utilize an alternative method for distributing your apps in the future.”
So that is it? This is unbelievable. They attach some English name at the bottom of these template generated emails yet In this whole process I have not once had the feeling any real human being was actually speaking directly to me or read my appeal statements.
What a terrible experience and yes, it seems there is no real googliness in Google. I’ve just been trampled on by a machine.
(ps my game served me in part as a portfolio when securing freelance contracts doing development using Unity)
