The search giant is adopting Apple’s practice. Google Play also has a preliminary review of new applications. That’s just it doesn’t work well yet.
The publisher of Choice of Games was the first to draw attention to the situation. As the co-founder and producer of the company Dan Fabulich said, when trying to release the interactive novel Psy High 2: High Summer, a warning window popped up on Google Play. It said the following: “To better protect our users, we will spend more time reviewing your app.”
After that, the staff of Choice of Games contacted Google support. In the chat, the latter confirmed the changes in the situation with sending programs to the release.
The main conclusions that the publisher made after the conversation:
- All new applications are submitted for review during the submission.Google says that the review should take less than three days, but recommends setting this period for the procedure.
The new rules came into force a few weeks ago.
- There is no way to schedule a release on a specific date.The application appears in the store after the submission at the time of approval.
This can happen at any time during the entire review period — a few hours after the submission, a day or two later.
This means that the developer himself does not know until the release when exactly his game will be released. Even if the game has passed the closed alpha testing stage within Google Play, this does not exclude the fact that it will not spend three days in the review. So for now, advertising campaigns will have to be launched after the fact.
- Google does not inform developers in advance about the new rules.It is still impossible to find any specific information about this.
Plus, the company does not give any opportunity to speed up the review process.
The Android Developer Relations director Jacob Lehrbaum quickly responded to the post. He agreed with part of Dan’s claims. However, he said that the reviews are very fast, and it is still possible to schedule the release of a new application (there is no such problem with updates) on a specific date. To do this, you should:
- Create a release in a closed alpha track and click the “Start rollout to alpha” button after saving and reviewing the release.
- Wait for the approval of the alpha release.
- As soon as the alpha version is available to players, click on “Store presence”, then on “Store listing”. After that, you will have to scroll down to check the box next to “Timed publishing”.
- After that, you need to go back to “App releases”, create a product release by clicking on “Save”, “Review” and “Start rollout to production”.
- After that, you need to wait for the apruva of the product release.
- After the apruv, you should click “Go live”.
As you can see, it’s not so simple and intuitive.
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