Look what I received: Weird Notification

Hello all
As some of you know, I tend to be very careful with google policies and all my apps are high quality apps. However, I received the following warning today. ANYONE has an idea what this is or faced this before?

Notification of Administrative Action from Google Play
This is a notification that we have removed the availability of the application, xxxx, with package ID xxxx.xxx.xxx for Google Play users in the following countries: KR

REASON FOR REMOVAL: Applications that simulate gambling, or games of chance or skill that are conducive to gambling are prohibited in the above locale(s).

No further action is required on your behalf at this time, and, unless further notified, this action does not affect the availability of your application in other countries.

If the remainder of your application catalog contains similar applications which simulate gambling or games of chance, we ask you to unpublish them from the above country in order to avoid multiple notifications. Please be advised that repeat notifications may result in a permanent restriction of your ability to publish applications to the above country.

We have also administratively set the minimum content rating level of the above application to “Medium Maturity (3)” to be compliant with the Google Play content rating policy. We ask you to please take the time now to review the remainder of your published catalog for compliance with the above guidelines.

My app is not gambling app. It is simply a cards game app that is similar to the game SPADES.
1)How the hell I am supposed to know that KR (Iguess Korea?) don’t allow cards game?
2)How do I even know what maturity it is. Cards games are played by my 13 year old brother!

Ideas?Comments?Does this count as my first out of 3 notifications?

I can’t answer your questions, but for me it just sounds like an information.
I think for Google it doesn’t matter if you are a big developer like Rovio or a single person. It’s your job to know what is allowed for which countries. That’s why our business it not as simple as it looks like. I’m sure there are consultants who can tell you the answer to your questions, but that’s not for free.

There are a lot of pitfalls. For example my app is a music player. It looks like some of my competitors are not aware that formats like mp3 are patented and that licenses are extremely expensive. These guys can be sued any time and they probably don’t even know that.

I suggest you do some research about restrictions of such games in different countries. It’s blue-eyed to believe that the rules in your country apply to all other countries. I think it will be difficult to get that information for all countries, but that’s not an excuse because you can restrict your app to countries where you know the details. Basically that’s what Google did for you this time, but I’m not sure if they will ban you some time.

Is there some page where we can look up this kind of information, I wanted to make Solitare or something quick and fun with cards just for the hell of it, I guess I need to exclude Korea then…

And it seems that Google is starting to work with developers now, a year ago they would just ban your account for this.

Thanks for your feedback. I agree with you but in case I am publishing an that is in a grey area, say dating app. However this app is just a cards game, why would I even think for a moment that it could be questionable in any country? That’s my concern.

Well, even a card game falls under the category ‘gambling’. The some countries do have very strict rules for that.
Even within the European union there are huge differences.

For example in Germany the following machines are very common and even small children are allowed to play when the parents are with them:
Medal game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When you go to Spain, you are not allowed to even enter the area where such machines are located. No matter how old the kids are and even if the parents want to play.

As developers we are responsible to investigate any kind of legal issues in all countries where we publish our apps. That’s part of our job.