Google destroyed our startup by terminating our Play Developer Account

Normally I would have blame Google for it. But the whole post doesn't rhyme with me for some reason. The tone, the lack of information about themselves. I had to google it and found 6AceGames [1], all of their games are gambling games. Email address, Facebook and Twitter registered in May 2021. Lots of other small things.

[1] http://www.6acegames.com/#contact-section

This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of the mobile app distribution cartel.

Consider contacting your state's Attorney General office, and the US Attorney General office. Many states' AG offices have antitrust divisions[1].

The US Dept. of Justice also has an Antitrust Division[2], along with a page that details how and why[3] to get in touch with them:

> Information from the public is vital to the work of the Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an investigation.

The FTC has the Bureau of Competition[4], as well.

[1] https://www.naag.org/issues/antitrust/

[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr

[3] https://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations

[4] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi...

Might be similar to the last time this came up (i'm looking for it now, edit: found it[0]) where the developer worked with a sizable development-for-hire firm that were themselves associated with many other dev accounts, some of which ended up being suspended for ToS violations (possibly by this firm, possibly by the customer without the firm's knowledge). The anti-ban-evasion technology Google runs then effectively poisoned this firm's Play developer profile so that anyone working with them would be suspended for the potential ban evasion, eventually.

Note that, for this specific case, it might not be a firm but one of the developers themselves that has a poisoned account thanks to past dealings that violated ToS. I imagine the system only banning by associate if the $25 developer account itself ever uploads an app so that it doesn't ban associated Google accounts for non-play-developer purposes.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324 (comment explaining https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124463 )

1) As you know this is super common and there is no recourse. Abandon Google, read something by Kafka, have some whisky.. life isn't over.

2) Take your IP and rearchitect your games for web or other platforms. Despite losing your user reviews and published applications, you clearly have something of value that was trending up. DO NOT let Google smite your startup by simply banning you. Android phones are not the only place where your IP can continue to thrive.

3) If you don't want to rearchitect, Consider selling your IP to another mobile developer. IP with a track record of positive reviews/downloads/cash flow is pure gold. There are websites where you can list your business and IP such as EmpireFlippers and Flippa.

4) Lastly.. having a team who is competent, you enjoy working together, and has success under your belt is also gold. What else can you do with this team to take the world by storm? I envy your position; I have not a team nor 1M+ users anywhere. Good luck friend.

What can I say... Oh yeah, that Google owes me a lot of money after terminating my adsense account for false reasons and added insult to injury by sending me a 50€ adword voucher to my _physical address_ like it solved anything?...

It was like 10/15 years ago, now everytime I have an opportunity to suggest businesses I work with not to use any of Google services, including GCP, I do exactly that.

I'd say, unless you signed an actual contract with Google, which agreeing to a bunch of random TOS really isn't, do not ever rely on Google services or SAAS, and certainly do not build your startup on any Google stack.

Google are horrendous (business partner), but at least you can publish and install .apk files without a store. Whether that's a sustainable business model is another thing entirely, but at least you can do it. Not even going to talk about Apple since that's just a more extreme example of the same problem.

From my POV, if you have a business and you rely entirely (or for the majority) of your income from these platforms, then your business is not sustainable and is not competitive. You're playing at a rigged game and you will most likely lose.

I stopped using 3rd party game engines for the same reason. I want to control my source and the potential income I get (if any). A lot of people won't agree with that. That's fine. Google and Apple's duopoly and their respective ecosystems are not good for the future of software. People have to take a stand at some point. These companies want to control every part of the tech stack (and our lives to extent), you should fight against that. We should all fight against that.

> As far as policy is concerned they have contacted us previously and we solved all of the issues to their satisfaction.

He admits they were in violation of policy previously and fixed it, but then repeatedly states they’ve never violated any policies. Curious what the original violations were for. While I know Google is notorious for things like this, it feels like they’re not telling the whole story.

The same thing can happen with Google Ads Accounts. I've seen a several ad agencies get totally destroyed when a client does something that violates the TOS and then you get the 'guilt by association' ban. Then this propagated out to all of their other client accounts because, well, guilt by association.

Rather than Google taking the time and effort to identify the single issue, it's FAR easier for them to just ban anything that touched those accounts. It is hands down my single biggest worry when working with Google. And why I immediately revoke access for anyone (including me) that does not need direct, active, access to any account. There is simply no way to talk to a real human and say, look, I've been working with you since you launched and this one account way over here that's 'new' did something you don't like and now I'm banned for life?

About 5 years ago I made a little app as a side project when I was learning to program. My play developer account was terminated without warning for breaking intellectual copyright rules.

I appealed and received an (automated?) response that my account would not be reinstated because I violated the publisher rules. The rule they said I broke? I integrated Spotify's API, which has a login page with the Spotify logo in it, and you're not allowed to use another company's logo inside your app.

Ridiculous, yes but it was more of a bummer than anything. This wasn't a startup, I didn't have investors or a lot at stake. I lost about $50 and a few hours time (and a Google Play Developer account).

The silliest thing was that if I could just get on the phone with a real human at a Google for five minutes they would have seen how ridiculous my ban was and the issue would have been resolved, no big deal. But alas, no human to be had, only an algorithm with too much power. I did some research on dev forums and found that several people had successfully sued Google and got their account back over wrongful terminations, (Didn't sound too expensive or difficult, most of the time Google didn't even show up in court) but according to the ToS you agree to, you have sue them in Mountain View if you bring legal action over anything.

I get why app stores ban publishers, I get why they don't just let everyone publish whatever they want. I bet for every false positive ban like mine, they ban 1000 Russian bot accounts spamming malware. We don't see the mountains of avoided malware, just the auto-banhammer going rogue from time to time. But if Apple and Google just had the slightest bit of customer support this would be much less of an issue.

Why is this legal? Why is it legal for Google to completely demolish a business with no human review, no due process and no excuse at all?

Why do we keep hearing this without a single developer going forward and suing the hell out of Google? Or Apple by the way.

This happens so many times and some people posted it on HN before. The most common reply is that you should not put all your eggs in someone else’s basket. I’m amused no one has posted that comment yet.

By the way, Google will most probably not restore the account, but I’d be interested to know whether it does because our startup is also similar to yours, and half of our eggs are in Google’s basket too. Please keep us (the community) updated.

The September intrusions detected sound pretty suspicious. I am sure there are plenty of bad actors trying to take over existing Google Developer accounts to use for spam/fraud, and it sounds like there was at least one compromised account and compromised device which could easily lead to other compromised accounts or persistent malware.

A way to think about this is to see Google (or Apple) as a De-Facto State which governs a very important "ecosystem" in which customers and other businesses rely almost exclusively on. Its very existence depends on businesses and people relaying for important aspects of their existence on them. This is how they stay big and relevant.

In this environment they must make decisions for the sake of their their own interests and sometimes to protect other users.

The problem is that like any non-democratic state there's no balance in power between the executive power (the company and its algorithms) and their stakeholders, so I would expect this to get worst and more damaging over time.

Is it possible that they put their actions under the inspection of another entity? Can we expect that every government and legislation put their own rules to govern Google and protect its users from them?

For them it was the end of it all. For google, it was a Tuesday.

Googles process here is fundamentally broken, and so easily improved.

I have had issues with them before and there should be:

- a portal to see your status (it's often impossible to know if they even got your comment)

- all comments and next steps clearly listed

- send warnings before bans in all cases unless there is some kind of extreme safety thing

- let developers respond to accusations before banning them

These would be minimal technical effort on googles part, negligible safety impact, but dramatically improve the developer perspective of them.

"Competitors using our ad ids and publisher codes inside their policy incompliant apps and violates policy knowingly to trigger associate accounts!"

Scary. So it sounds like they were attacked by a competitor and Google is not willing to support.

My guess, assuming the company is innocent and that this wasn't just a thinly veiled attempt by Google to purge the developers' gambling apps:

Google bans accounts by association. One of their accounts was logged into during a hack. They blocked the device, but the notification usually comes only after the login has already succeeded.

Assuming this wasn't the criminal's first hack, their device probably got flagged before by Google. If Google applied their logic to that device, they flagged this company's account (and probably all of these people's own Google accounts by association).

Google won't comment on this so I suppose we'll never know for sure. However, when the next company that the people behind this startup joins also gets banned, I'd consider the viral properties of Google bans proven and these developers could be considered "tainted" by our tech overlords.

Little bit confused as I thought being open Android App Store instead of closed iOS App Store was supposed to mean this is totally not a problem?

That’s the gist in the anti-Apple anti-walled-garden threads common during the Epic tussle; though some less popular comments have sounded skeptical, referencing stories like this.

From this thread, sounds like Android gets you 15% of the consumer wallet share for app spend compared to iOS 85% wallet share of app spend, but still has enough distribution curation woes to “destroy our startup”?

What’s the attraction then? Or is this melodramatic?

Google owes me money too. They screwed me back in the early years of this century by billing me for ad "hits" that were clearly bogus and I've never used their services since.

I still use their search engine but I always use duckduckgo first and I won't click on any of the advertised links the offer. Never.

If anyone hasn't figured out by now that Google is a predator who'll screw them out of everything they can, including their startup ideas, they will sooner or later.

This is par for the course with Google. Many Adsense accounts have been terminated for similarly vague policy violations. I am sure they catch a lot of bad actors, but they also catch a lot of folks who have no clue what they have done wrong, in many cases losing a large part of their income. Google does send warning emails, but they are so vague as to be useless in figuring out the violation.

Maybe the issue here is making one's business solely dependant on a third party which is well known for that kind of behavior...

I haven’t read all of the comments, but I would like to add this note of caution to all startup founders: if your startup innovation, technology or business model is largely based on someone else’s capability and that capability alone, then you have designed a single point of failure into your business and a high degree of risk to your future business viability. Using capabilities like Google or Amazon have to offer is a great way to prototype your solution and to get initial customer feedback. But you can’t depend upon these services always being available. For example, just look at the number of products and interfaces that Google has changed or canceled in the past 15 years. So if you do decide to take this approach, just go into it knowing the risk you are taking.

I've talked to too many people who staunchly state that "it's a private company" when it comes to not caring about censorship in one sentence, but decry actions like this in the next, to really think there is an adequately beneficial solution to these types of problems.

As a mobile apps developer, this is extremely concerning to me. Google has a big crisis of trust. I no longer feel safe to even have personal apps connected to my real Google account - what if the Developer Account gets banned and my main email, Google Drive and all my life along with it? There were instances of people's entire Google accounts gone. That is catastrophic.

I now believe it is my duty to detract anyone from using Google Play-serviced Android devices. With the way Google treats their developers they should pay the price of shrinking market share.

I hope a change comes and Google starts being a more customer focused company. But they are notorious for providing bad customer support, and I just can't count on it.

Yet another similar story.

Will your next startup also rely on Google?

It must be said that, to the extent Google destroyed their startup, it also created it by launching an app store. This developer built their apps on top of Google's ecosystem, in a world where these kinds of executions have happened before, many times, to many frustrated developers.

It is true that developers cannot make their own operating system and marketplace to compete with Google's, but it's also true that they do not need to get into the business of selling games on Google's Play Store in the first place. Equally true is the fact that Google is known to be an unfair, capricious, uncommunicative, and disinterested landlord.

This never ends.

People never learn.

Someone bets success of their business solely on grace of someone else's private platform and then disaster strikes.

You been booted for whatever reason they felt like.

What were you thinking?

Generocity and grace of FAANG's will never end?

Just submit it to the Amazon Appstore. According to Google they are a major competitor, right? Same same?

Yes, I’m being sarcastic

Based on the author withholding some key details, my take is they know more than they say on why the account was terminated. The whole post was written assuming (correctly) that Google is too big to respond publicly and tell their side of the story, which would undoubtedly garner some support.

This somehow inspired me to type "google destroyed" into HN search.

Didn't disappoint.

It's this type of behavior that caused me to drop google for everything except search long ago. You are not the customer, you are the product or in many cases a vessel for the product which is ads and nothing more.

After reading all these stories it feels like Google has a policy of "sunsetting" a certain amount of projects per year. When the company is out of them, it's gonna be yours

Huge kudos to Google for stopping a shady studio that can hardly secure its own network from releasing possibly security compromised apps to Android users!

No real due diligence often leads to “disasters” like this.

Just out of curiosity can they not just upload all the games again with a new account?

Just build your own phone/App Store/Bank/social media platform/hosting company

It’s not hard

/s

I have a feeling these things are caused by jealous Google engineers. Once they see an app or company being successful they will find ways to mess up the business. Either through their store account or their Google rankings. We’ve seen these stories too many times.

Hello there, I'm the OP here!

First of all sorry for my bad English. It is not my first language so. Thanks for the open discussion and your support!

It's my bad i should have mentioned more stuff to our medium post so that it won't leave readers with any confusions. Please pardon me as this was my first post. I've never had written anything before.

You might got some questions like

Q: Who are we? A: We are simply a india based gaming startup. We had 8-10 games published on our plays store account.

Q:Why do we mentions address of UK on our tweeter handle? A:. According to google policy we have to provide a physical address if we want to use in-app-purchases. This physical address is visible publicly on our games pages.

Reason providing our uk address is we have a representative living there who can reply to any type of physical communications such as letters on behalf of us. He also can reply to various other stuffs like GDPR and different other policies. For ex. You can send a latter to the given address to get in touch with us!Please note that google asks for communication address not the business registered address to show it publicly. Our business registration address already submitted to them but it's not just public.

Q: Where can i find your games incase i want to see them? A: You can find it on apk pure. You can search "tonk" you'be able to see our account "6Ace Games", also we had added the link in our medium post in bottom. Please check!

Q:How me monetized our games? A: Through admob and in-app products. Nothing shady!

Q: Does the games targeting children? A: No not at all, all our games are rated 18+ adult category

Q:Our games was providing gambling? A: No, It's just simulations. You can't win money or bet money, Not at all!

Q: what about your domain 6acegames.com? A: Yes, our domain 6acegames.com is new. The reason behind it is very silly you may find it funny but still let me tell you!, at first we have bought domain sixacegames.com(you can check reg. details) thinking it will help in seo and all because we didn't want to include a number "6" in our domain. But later after our games got popular user started searching for 6Acegames that's why we bought this domain as well in may 2021 just to build the presence on google search.

Q:Why no presence on LinkedIn? A: Try searching "Whyphy Infotech". 6Acegames is just business name we use!

Q: What about social media? A:we are not very active in social media. As you can see in our tweeter handle we have 0 followers. The reason is simple we never promoted it to our users. Although we have some followers on our Instagram handle, but they follow us because we provide free perks occasionally to our audience.

Please read to my updated post on medium!

I’ve noticed a lot mobile games that are also on steam.

This is one reason why I was hoping web apps would be more popular then jail-apps... I'm still hoping for an open future but I'm not holding my breath... why even block linux native apps on android?