Anyone who has been testing apps for a long time has come across all kinds of before and after app subscription abuse. The most common is fleece, subscriptions disguised as trial periodsWhile there are more, going through subscriptions to do relatively nothing. Google wants to change this.
Google has updated the app publishing policy for Google Play to clarify what is allowed and what is not in terms of subscriptions. The changes will take effect on January 17th and it is clearly stated that a subscription must provide recurring profit and not for single use, among other changes.
The scam will stop
A fairly common resource in the worst apps available on Google Play is that they are trying to get you to subscribe with all kinds of tricks. The most used is to integrate the subscription into the home assistant itself, waiting for the user to press the button without thinking too much, impatient to close the assistant. That, and the use of confusing terminology, hiding the real costs, or camouflaging the subscription under the idea of a free trial.
So far, Google Play’s subscription policy has been quite short, just two paragraphs. It was stated that developers should not try to fool users, be transparent with what is offered and what is not, costs and fees, correctly describe what will happen at the end of the period test and nothing else. Google has enriched its policy with two new paragraphs and other examples of abuse:
Subscriptions must provide users with constant and recurring value throughout their life, and cannot be used to provide users with benefits that are in practice one-time use (for example, SKUs that offer a one-time payment of the balance. or money in the app, or one-off power-ups for the game). Your subscription may offer incentive or promotional bonuses, but these must be in addition to the constant or recurring value provided for the duration of the subscription. Products that do not deliver consistent, recurring value should be in-app purchase products rather than subscription products.
You should not distort or inaccurately describe One-Time Benefits to trick users into believing they are subscriptions. This includes modifying a subscription to make it a unique offer (for example, canceling, deactivating, or minimizing recurring value) after the user has purchased the subscription.
It is now explicitly stated that subscriptions must provide the user with a recurring value for its duration, rather than a one-time benefit, such as a bonus for a game. For these cases, you should not use subscriptions, but rather a purchase product with in-app payments.
The changes further clarify the importance of not to distort or disguise one-off benefits so that users think they are subscriptions, as well as to modify the benefits of the subscription after its purchase by the user. New examples added by Google put these changes in perspective.
Google doesn’t want the app to trick the user into pressing the subscribe button by mistake
The first new example incorporates the subscription purchase on the home screen, prompting the user to press the subscription button to try to close the wizard. Google doesn’t want apps encourage the user to subscribe by mistake.
The second example that Google has added to the documentation is probably familiar: an application in which information with the price that the subscription costs is almost impossible to read. According to Google, in this example “the amount that will be charged to the user at the end of the trial period is difficult to read, so the user will believe it is free”.
Changes They come into force on January 17, 2022. Hopefully we will see a decline in this type of practice in the applications published on Google Play thereafter.
