While you generally hear about temporary exclusives coming to the Amazon App Store these days, this would be the first story of a developer pulling their game from the 3rd party app store. According to Bithack, there are several issues that make the App Store not a good choice for the indie developers.
While we can list a few of our own as to why the Amazon App Store can cause issues with indie developers looking to be successful, Bithack has their own reasons which they explain in a blog post. Even though the game was doing good, reaching #3 on the Amazon App Store, Bithack will be focusing on the Android Market instead from now on. Apparatus is already available there as well.
So what were the major reasons for this sudden change? One major concern was the lack of being able to directly contact customers or reply to their comments if they have a problem and need help. Another concern is the slow review process which iOS developers have been suffering through for awhile now. Other issues including refunding, or the lack of a proper way to do refunds, bad device filters and just overall lack of real set up for indie developers to be successful.
The Amazon App Store will improve over time but with developers starting to question the validity of the 3rd party app store, a change for the better is needed much sooner than later. Other issues that Amazon could improve on would be the ability to uninstall the Amazon App Store app and have games/apps still work and also worldwide support.
For those of you who bought Apparatus on the Amazon App Store, you will have to buy the game again on the Android Market to receive updates. Good news though is that Bithack has said it will refund you the purchase price from the Android Market so you won’t really be purchasing it twice.
Developer Website: Bithack
Website Referenced: Phandroid
