Yesterday we reported on Madfinger Games’ titles disappearing from the Google Play store. Both Samurai II: Vengeance and Shadowgun, along with all version of each game, had gone poof and vanished for some unknown reason. Well the good news is they are back on the Google Play store as of last night and here is what happened.
So where did the games go yesterday afternoon? Well actually they went nowhere. This little bit of information is important for developers to know and being an ex-developer myself, I had no idea this happens with the Google Play store. What happened was Madfinger Games changed some details in their account. When you change something in your account, it obviously affects everything you have submitted and live on the Google Play store since it is all tied to your account.
After you save whatever changes you have made, the Google Play store has to refresh all your listings which, in turn, makes the temporarily disappear from the Google Play store. It is sort of like when you submit a game or app for the first time, it has to propagate through the Google Play store which means some people can see it before others or it shows up as not supporting any of your Android devices at first.
So Samurai II: Vengeance and Shadowgun only temporarily vanished on the Google Play store while it refreshed everything. That is why lots of people couldn’t find either game, then some people could while others could and now everyone can see it. So developers take note, when you change information or settings in your Google Play account, your submissions could go poof for a little bit.
Thanks to Madfinger Games for the quick response.
Developer Website: Madfinger Games
