Unfortunately this is becoming more and more just part of being an android developer. We are an Australian Development house, that lost over 30 casion related games over the weeknd. The worst part is, we stopped all production to update our entire network of 500 apps to meet all google policies, mainly removing airpush from all our apps. Our casino games has tested Pingjam only for 1 month and bout 3 months ago, we removed all sdk and all traces of pingjam. But only apps that had pingjam on them have been removed. Been in contact with google head office in Sydney getting passed around from one manager to another, each one says send an email…an email! Over the last couple of years we have spent over $100,000 in inapp paid fees to google alone. And there is just no one to talk to. You could all and try and sue pingjam, but seeing as from the email i recieved this morning, they are shutting down their system anyway, so no revenue for them either, so you wont recieve anything. The really bs thing about this, is that google keeps designing their automated service so you need to custom build apps for google play. We used to use airpush on google play and a couple of other markets, when google play banned push notifications, ad companies followed, as if they only design their platforms for google play, so basically you will always lose, as google makes the rules and advertisers follow - thing is google is allowed to change the rules any moment it likes. I really understand and feel for all of your that lose your livelihood and your lives. Especially those that thought everything was going so great that they decided to go it full time. We are already updating and modifying all our packages for release, but this would be much harder for a small developer, especially one that was relying on that income.
A little note we left for any google employees on google+
"Anyone who works at +google read this and do something instead of sending automated emails and 0 way to contact anyone at Google, if you work at google and ignore this your not doing your job, which is unbelievable since google knows that google developers are losing there accounts right now over an automated code scanning tool which has malfunctioned, developers are stuck with no contact, no accounts which are there full time jobs which feed their kids, pay for schooling & pay rent.
No matter what you can’t talk to a live person, they send you automated emails, if you try to call there office they said send another email, requests, even the Sydney Google Office ignores your calls and tells you nothing can be done except sending another email and receiving another automated response. (even though this is against Australian Fair Trading policy which requires a contact person to respond to any dealings with Australian stakeholders regardless if that company is a multinational billion dollar company that thinks its above people and doesn’t have phone support.
Developers used to love developing for Google, if you talk to any google developers now there opinion of Google has dissipated to outright disgust since trying to request any support or help from google
The email from CEO Pingjam
"Since yesterday we’ve received several reports of apps which use Pingjam and other ad SDKs being removed from the Play Store, citing violation of the “System Interference” clause (Google Play).
I’m writing to explain what we are doing to deal with this situation.
First I’d like to assure you that the Pingjam SDK hasn’t behaved in any way that violates the policy. No changes have been made to the device without the user’s consent, and banned ad methods (icons, notifications etc) weren’t used by us in any case.
Our primary concern is that developers aren’t hurt, so although we are certain that our system is compliant, we’ve disabled the Caller ID service until further notice. As of yesterday none of our apps display caller ID or ads.
We are working tirelessly to reach out to Google developer relations to investigate the apps removal, but since this is the weekend our ability to create a meaningful conversation is limited. I assure you that if indeed we verify that Pingjam was the reason for this we will let you know. Our goal is to help fix the situation so that apps are restored with their install base and ratings.
In the meantime, as a precaution, I’d like to suggest to those of you that haven’t lost apps that you remove our SDK from your apps and republish.
Those of you that have lost apps - we are working very hard to try to understand and resolve this with you. Let’s share what we learn so that we can help the community get their apps back. Please share what you are doing in regards to communicating with Google. Hopefully we can identify a best practice that helps us all.
Link to Google’s appeal page - https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/contact/appappeals (MOST USELESS LINK)
I will keep you posted on our progress.
Elnor"
Oh and back in the old day if an account got terminated, you at the end of the month you would still recieve the revenue you made untill that day. NOT ANYMORE, all developers that lost accounts and were expecting payment on the 16th. Google now KEEPS ALL REVENUE STILL IN TERMINATED ACCOUNTS…
How is this LEGAL
You create the digital product, you place on their store for sale, you make sales and google keeps 30% of all your sales. EXCEPT in the case were your account can be terminated, without cause, and google then keeps ALL REVENUE from ALL YOUR SALES - 100% of your Revenue goes to google and you keep nothing. No the users dont get a refund on their app, no thier google play account is not credited, google just STEALS THE DEVELOPERS INCOME and locks them out with no customer support or contact
This MUST BE ILLEGAL
so be warned, until you ACTUALLY recieve revenue on the 15-16th of Each month, then you dont have anything, because you could lose your account on the 14th, and google will steal your revenue.
