Approximately 30% of my game’s players’ comments and ratings are bound to a mysterious unknown version of the app on the google play store. (it’s written under their comments : “version : --” rather than “version : 127” and it’s written “unknown” on the stars table, under the version column).
And it looks like this percentage is slowly growing.
Here’s an example :
All my app’s uploads to google play have been numbered, so there should’nt have any of these “unknown versions”.
I’ve searched on the forum and can’t find anything about it.
I hope it’s just a small google play console’s bug or something on these users phone that prevents the app’s version number to be registered.
Do you know what is it really, and how to prevent that ?
A theory of mine is that they originate from people who installed our apps from other sources than Google Play, but they’re still capable of rating and reviewing the app because it has the same bundle indentifier as the app from the store. However, Google Play might not be able to 100% confirm that the numbering of the version installed outside the store has the same significance as the version number(s) from the store itself, hence why version is set to unknown.
So I made a test: I created a version in Unity with the same number as the one from the store and installed it on my mobile. Then I went to Google Play and left a one word test review. And guess what? In the Google Play console, my test review appeared with “version -”.
So, I think the explanation above might be the most likely one.