The pitfalls of the App Store that you don’t know about!

Generally, game developers and game publishers will go through a series of tasks including review, cooperation, and communication with the App Store when launching games in China. Today I will write an article specifically to tell you some of the stories in between, hoping to help developers who are still on the road.

In fact, I have come into contact with most of the distributors and developers who have gone online in mainland China on the App Store. As an old publisher, I have some strange stories to share with you here, and also summarize my experience of "working against the enemy" over the years.

Generally speaking, after you submit your APP, the App Store will first look at your store pictures, icons, texts and other contents excluding the package body. At this time, they will assist in the review based on the game rating you submitted previously. This is sometimes embarrassing, as many developers and publishers will submit a relatively low rating so that they can gain more users when buying traffic from affiliate networks , Facebook, and Google .

But the problem is that the App Store is manually reviewed, and since it is a human job, it is inevitable that some personal feelings will be involved. The reviewer's education, religion, temperament, and even whether or not you have your period today may play a factor in whether you pass or fail.

Let me give you some extreme examples.

I had a game A before. This game has been released in many countries and regions and achieved some success. This game once submitted three versions for Korea, Taiwan, Europe and the United States. The only difference between the three versions was the language packs, and the rest of the content from a technical perspective was the same. However, during the review, South Korea passed, while Taiwan, Europe and the United States were rejected due to the same safety issue. If we really want to be picky, the Korean version should have been rejected as well, but because of the preference of the App Store reviewer (or maybe he was in a good mood that day), our Korean version was spared.

Another time, we used the same store picture in many areas. There was a character in this picture with "half of his ball" exposed. When this picture was launched in many other areas, it was not rejected, but it was rejected when it was launched in some areas. Later, when we were making store illustrations, we were asked to avoid the appearance of this female character. Now that we've come to this, let me share another lesson: If you have a three-party collaboration on a cooperative game, namely distribution, R&D, and joint operation, you will deeply experience how disappointing Apple is in this matter.

When you are in the position of the issuing company above, this situation becomes embarrassing.

Apple will constantly question whether you have used the joint operation company's login method legally, and your only way to explain is to submit various certificates, authorization letters, etc. And if your game has an IP licensor at this time, things will become like an endless table of mahjong. You can't win even if you want to, and you have to keep playing cards carefully, because if you make a mistake, the guy called Apple will win and you're finished.

Maybe you think what I encountered is already tragic, well, here comes something even more tragic~

What if my account is a personal developer? I believe that many people who read this article are individual developers who use this tool just to save money and trouble, right?

Obviously, the joint operation company and IP licensing company authorize not you, the individual developer, but the company. Then how can you insert another person to play on this already busy mahjong table?

I can also ask many more likely but difficult to solve questions, such as whether the name of your personal developer, Mr. Zhang San, has resigned, or whether this person has never existed in this world? What if your IP licensor authorized a subsidiary of your group that has no employees at all for convenience and tax avoidance? Is it possible that the company that you signed the contract with the intermodal transport company is another shell company?

If your game is about to be launched and you still have the above problems, please read this article and then call your legal affairs or financial department. There will be a long-term communication task waiting for you.

To be honest, if your developer account manager does not have good English context and understanding ability... I strongly recommend that you give him special training on this matter, or find someone else to handle developer account matters.

Most of the time when your review is rejected, the letters you receive are extremely vague quotes from developer regulations. The letter is divided into three parts: 1. Which rule you violated; 2. What the problem is; 3. How you should solve it.

But here comes the problem. These 3 rules will not tell you where you have violated them in your game. At most, they will sometimes provide a few screenshots without any captions. Many times, it is entirely up to the account administrator, platform technology, and developer technology to decide what to modify. I have encountered many times that when I submitted, I still didn’t know whether my changes were correct. I could only try to submit it and see if I could get it right by chance.

For example:

When we submitted our report for review some time ago, we received questions about IPV6. After we resolved the first rejection, we submitted again, but we were still rejected. The letter sent back to us was exactly the same as the previous one, with no difference. Later, our technical staff used their long-term "enemy experience" to analyze and concluded that our hot update was not adapted to IPV6! We submitted it again with a try-it attitude, and it was approved.

Looking back, if it weren’t for the cleverness of our technical staff, I think we would have gone through the review again, or been stuck on this vague reply for a long time, delaying the launch.

When you search for iTunes Connect feedback phone number on Baidu, you can find a 400 phone number in mainland China. As we understand, this kind of telephone feedback can definitely solve all your problems related to iTunes Connect, right? Then I can only say that you are too naive! ! ! ! ! !

The scope of this phone call is very limited. It generally only provides consultation and responses around your developer membership and iTunes Connect platform issues. No one responded to your questions about the review and the APP itself.

Still, here's a sad example:

Anyone who has used the iTunes Connect platform knows that not all of its content is in Chinese. I believe that many people, like me, are stuck at the two more famous hurdles of banking and taxation, right? And this kind of platform update content will not be told to you. They have an external blog, and you have to check it every day to see if they have made any strange changes! Otherwise, if they change the content without your knowledge, you will suffer a great loss! !

A while ago, they revised the tax-related regulations. If you do not fill out the new version of the tax regulations, you will not receive any settlement from Apple, which means you will have no income.

Well, what would you do if you were faced with a lengthy English application form written entirely in English and filled with professional vocabulary? Is your first reaction to call and ask?

If this kind of platform-level change happened in China, you could definitely get strategies through business, operations , or contact persons, but at Apple, you have to rely on yourself, and the person on the phone will say, "I am not responsible for this matter."

How did I solve it? I used a method that Westerners are very good at: looking for a forum to discuss, and sure enough, I found a solution in a developer forum in mainland China.

Having said so much negative energy, let’s talk about something positive: Testflight.

During the testing phase, many games will choose some small channels for experimental distribution. In fact, if you can make use of Apple’s own Testflight to conduct targeted external promotion, it is actually a good choice. We have a game that is constantly uploaded during the development phase (note that it is uploaded, not submitted for review), and then we quickly use Testflight for internal and external testing. We often attract users on the Facebook fan page, and also often pull other publishing businesses into Testflight.

When his app is updated through Testflight, all participating users will receive a push notification informing them that a new version of the game is available. This can not only save a lot of operational and business energy, but also deepen the relationship with users and partners.

I believe that many developers and publishers have their own data analysis platforms, but in terms of platform-level strategy, no matter how much our platform develops, it cannot catch up with the grand strategic development of Apple and Google . This is something we cannot catch up with in terms of technology, manpower, experience and investment.

The data analysis that comes with iTunes Connect is very powerful. It contains a lot of data that our own platform can never capture, such as the number of downloads, displays, the number of people entering the store page, etc. These data are very important for regular analysis of the market and operations.

Although the data we obtain will be a few days late due to the platform and time zone, I personally still strongly recommend checking this platform frequently.

Well, the above are some of my experiences. I hope that friends who read this article can get some inspiration and avoid some pitfalls.