[2022] Tweets by Orteil42 on 25 Aug

hey so Google's appstore console is malware-levels of hostile to developers. it turns out our app's ad serving has been zero'd out for a week due to a ghost violation we can't see and therefore cannot fix. their own help button returns a 404 page. absolute shambles of a service

we also had a random AdSense violation on our website earlier this year because their system decided our new language selection screen meant we were serving "low-quality content". we asked a human to double-check. the human agreed with the system and made us change it -

am i going to get blacklisted for publicly criticizing them? i do not care. gonna play it safe and not post screenshots but with the revenue we're sharing with Google we've got to be paying for multiple of their kids' college funds by this point and i am Angry

we've been helping these people make *a lot* of money for 9 years now yet are at the complete mercy of their buggy, stubborn automated systems and their weird little whims, with limited ways to counteract it or even know what's going on. horrid way to run a company (them and us)

at the time this reduced our ad revenue to a fraction of what we had; months later we're still not back up to our previous figures as, i'm assuming, we need to "build up rep" again after our "violation" before we can show up on more adslot bidders' radars

sharing revenue with service providers is fair. for the most part having our game on Steam has been a chill time. Google however does not, in our experience, work for its money. Google does not make the slightest effort to make you feel welcome. Google treats you like a parasite.

the other developer consoles i've dealt with are often rough, occasionally buggy, just a general "behind-the-scenes" lack of polish. Google's services on the other hand look for excuses to stab you while counting the money you're giving them

i'm not even touching on the random app policy changes they introduce every few months that just break your app or de-list you if you're not keeping up. i just want to make games man

my advice to the younger generations. never make an app. you're better than this. you know in your heart this isn't you

i'm gonna try to fix the issue google has with the cookie clicker app ("no resizing the ad frame", it turns out) but it's gonna involve rethinking the layout fix i previously implemented which, i thought, was already leaving the ad slot alone

we thankfully do not have all our eggs in one basket but i'm thinking about all the devs who do rely mostly on one app for revenue and how badly these cryptic policy violations can mess up their income

won't even know if my tweaks are compliant until google complains again. worst-case scenario i'll have to roll back the fix and have the layout broken for a number of players like before, which i would very much like to avoid! in the meantime enjoy ad-less cookie clicker i guess

sorry for talking about big unfun money things rharghgrhh for the record we're totally cool with adblockers i'm just trying to get this mess working correctly i want to update the mobile app with the newer versions' features so bad! but this is like the 3rd roadblock this year

? http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fa4bHEhWQAA0pec.png

@NekomusuMae yea