App Rejected from play store "designed for families" [closed]

Question

This is the first game I have written and I am trying to publish it to Google Play store in the Designed For Families section. The app keeps getting rejected with the following feedback:

Apps in Designed for Families must include metadata text and images that accurately reflect the app experience.

I have read all the guidelines and policies and I cant work out where I am going wrong! I have revised the short and full description and I feel they fully reflect the app. The images are all screen shots from game play so they should accurately reflect the experience.

I have changed the "family category" to be "Brain Games" as this is the best fit for the app. I m happy to include the full description and short description and the images that i have used for the release but I didnt want to bombard the thread with to much information...

Have I totally missed understood the feedback??? is it actually referring to the metadata in the androidManifest?

I know there are lots of thread about getting rejected from the play store but none of those address this particular issue.
Thanks for reading I hope someone can help as I am really stuck!

Eisenach

I have received the same feedback, but no further explanations. Did you found any solution? – Bumpy

Yes. The problem was due to not having a icon for when the games was installed. So I my case the game kauncher icon just showed as the unity logo once the game was installed. I had to set this using Android studio. Hope this helps 😊 – Eisenach

The icon is displayed correctly (on my device and in the emulator)... :-( – Bumpy

To find the answer to in my scenario, I had to contact android developer console support. They were very supportive and told me exactly what the problem was. I definitely recommend contacting them. – Eisenach

I did, but they only referred to the docs. Well... I'll try it again.. Thanks so far! – Bumpy

There is also a real time chat for android developer console that I have used for other release issues I also found that very helpful. – Eisenach

When I contacted them I made a point of saying that I have been through all the docs repeatedly, been on forums and tried to get help from lots ofof sources. Maybe if you ham it up a bit they might be more helpful. Could be worth a try. – Eisenach

I’m voting to close this question because it's off-topic; such questions should be directed at the relevant app store support channels; they're not about programming as defined by the help center. – Overcurious

Answer 1

We experienced this problem with 2 apps:

• First App: I received a message saying that my update was rejected because of the violation on the Family program alleging that it was crashing or giving an error (pretty generic message without any detail at all), I enter in contact on the support form and they send an email asking for me to read the terms and to update my APK number and submit again, I read the terms, I already had complied with everything so I replied saying that, we already comply with everyhting and we tested the APK and OBB installation and game play, all good, please send more details, they replied copying and pasting the same message, I once more insisted and asked for them to explain the problem, they replied asking for update my APK version and submit again, I said this will solve no crashes, please explain what is the problem and the support called Sara highlighted in the message asking to update the APK version, kind of talking with a machine that do not responded what I asked, but I updated my APK version, submitted again and... Worked. Why? For some reason they will not explain, my guess is they just marked my APK as dirty as an attempt to remove apps that the developers don't update, there's no other logical thing I can think off.

• Second App: This one I didn't had a happy end as the previous one, I tried the technique of updating the APK version 6 times, none worked, I asked help on the form (many times), they just copy and paste the message about read the Terms, I started to insist for some details, provided them with many proves that my APK+OBB files sent to Google Play are working fine, and asked for any clue about this "problem", like a device model and Android Version that they experienced it (isn't the minimum they suppose to provide us?) but after requesting this many times, for the first time the support guy called Arthur didn't copied and pasted and finally wrote an email, his answer was:

Hi Developer,

Thanks again for contacting the Google Play Team.

As much as I'd like to help, due to policy, I’m not able to provide any more information or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me.

If you have a different question about Google Play policies, please let me know.

Regards, Arthur The Google Play Team

It means, he has no information at all about what is the problem, I've trying to solve this for 2 months, our flagship game is threatened of been removed from the store and they can't even explain why, the support team can just copy and paste a generic message without any understanding of our problem and we have no other channel to ask for help.

I'm really disappointed with Google for such poor support for developers.

Well maybe you are missing something, may you are not, and even what Ricky Levi wrote about his case could be just a matter of sending again and none of his changes made any difference. All this process is a mess and there's no channel we can ask for help. (Well technically we can ask for help, the problem is the person that will reply has no idea of your problem and can only copy and paste a non sense message)

Vitriolic

Answer 2

In my case it was:

• API level was really really low ( 22 vs latest 26+ )
• Adding more images to the Play store
• Adding privacy policy to the store listing ( at the bottom of the page )

Shelf

Do you need to do all the TV and watch screenshots as well? they're not particularly clear about what the violations are... – Thirdrate

no, just more pictures to the Phone - and Tablet if you support it. totally agree if with not being clear ... yeah, very problematic – Shelf