exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

:thanksyellow: Still need several more people to help me out..

Well, I had exactly one go, it got to over 3000 and needed to be upgraded :lol:

PhilC wrote: 01 May 2026 10:01 Well, I had exactly one go, it got to over 3000 and needed to be upgraded :lol:

You do the "1 tap buy" testers get it for free. Its a "fake card simulation" while in testing.

Thanks for testing. I've given up on more people wanting to help me out and went and purchased a testing service to get the job done, so I can move onto other things.

exxos wrote: 01 May 2026 10:17

PhilC wrote: 01 May 2026 10:01 Well, I had exactly one go, it got to over 3000 and needed to be upgraded :lol:

You do the "1 tap buy" testers get it for free. Its a "fake card simulation" while in testing.

Thanks for testing. I've given up on more people wanting to help me out and went and purchased a testing service to get the job done, so I can move onto other things.

No worries, I'll try that now then.

PhilC wrote: 01 May 2026 10:31

exxos wrote: 01 May 2026 10:17

You do the "1 tap buy" testers get it for free. Its a "fake card simulation" while in testing.

Thanks for testing. I've given up on more people wanting to help me out and went and purchased a testing service to get the job done, so I can move onto other things.

No worries, I'll try that now then.

I'll try it later too...

Yes, that has given me the full version :D

So jumping though all the hoops on play store.. Was.. Well... :pullhair: :headbang: took like 50x longer to go though all the BS than it took to do the game in the first place.. I was literally loosing the will to live about 30% into it all. Total madness!

I had a second game about 80% done and even started another. But going by how much effort the whole thing took.. Just not worth it. I'd have to sell 200+ copies to even come close to breaking even. So it's highly unlikely I'll be doing any more games for the play store, or at all in fact.

But anyway...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... onfireball

ohhh google play survey..


Well that was disappointing. I wanted rant on how long winded and complicated the whole thing was and how it took longer to go through all the google BS than it took to write the game in the first place. I was losing the will to live about 25% signing up with it all.. and it dragged on for a LOT longer than that. I had AI telling me what to put every step as well and took forever. If I was doing this all by myself, I would have simply given up. So much stuff you have to setup, so many questions and boxes to fill and tick. Who the hell knows what to put for it all.

As expected, sales were near zero. Actually sold 1 copy. So only made about £300 loss, nevermind the time involved. The copy sold was probably some hacking group buying it to "give it away" on some pirate site anyway. It's usually how things go.

I did have another game about 90% done and another WIP. But its clear its a waste of effort. I knew it would likely end that way. But just wanted to do something different for a change.

From what AI claims, developers just churn out lots of games and hope one sticks eventually. Brute force approach really. No thanks.

Just had another one of those "update or vanish" emails from Google Play. Every August they raise the minimum Android API level apps have to target, and if you don't rebuild against the new one your app gets hidden from the store. My game code hasn't changed. The Android APIs it uses haven't changed. But every year I get told to rebuild or disappear.

The "safety and security" line they use is mostly cover. Real security patches ship through Play Services and monthly system updates, not through target SDK bumps. What target SDK actually gates is behaviour changes Google wants to enforce on their timetable rather than when it makes sense for the app.

The bigger issue is what this does to older hardware. A tablet that runs perfectly well doesn't physically stop working. Google just decides its OS is too old, the OEM stopped shipping updates two years in, Play Store starts hiding apps from it, and eventually the device is "obsolete" despite the silicon being fine for another decade. Meanwhile the landfill fills up with hardware that would happily keep running for years.

Junking working hardware through software policy should be a crime. The amount of e-waste it creates is ridiculous. France has some right-to-repair laws pushing back, the EU has a 5-year update mandate for new phones from 2025, but none of it touches the app-side treadmill. UK has nothing meaningful. Older Androids just quietly die.

Bad enough that Android updates junk older hardware. Now they're junking perfectly good apps as well.

Current copies sold : 2 - At this rate the game may pay for itself in the next 500 years.