
Google crackdown catches innocent devs in the crossfire - crm114
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/03/indie-dev-google-crackdown
======
andybak
Once again there is no way to contact a human being.

Once again we hope that getting publicity on blogs will catch the attention of
someone at Google who can do something about it.

This time, I'd like someone to tell me why it was impossible for the dev to
remedy this through the normal channels and tell us what Google are going to
do to stop this happening again.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
I agree with the poor support channels.

But remember the people generating publicity on blogs, because their Google+
account was deleted? Then it turned out they used a company name as their
profile name, posted underage nudity, or otherwise violated the rules.

The blog assumes the developers are innocent and abiding by the developer
rules. But can we take this assumption for a fact?

For all we know the developers might have been offering incentives to write
reviews. The developers might have send account activation emails from a
spammy host.

The email they received from Google isn't published, only described as vague.
A tweet mentions "repetitive content".

    
    
      Spam and placement in store
      Do not post repetitive content
    

If you currently search for "RPG" (
[https://play.google.com/store/search?q=rpg&c=apps](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=rpg&c=apps)
) 4 games from the top 9 are by 'Cory Trese'. All have near duplicate
descriptions. They have 4 versions of a single game "Star Traders RPG".

I wouldn't look at update frequency or an algo fluke as the culprit, but look
how I could remedy this apparent repetition, both in game versions and game
descriptions.

~~~
corytrese
Star Traders International is the third version. It contains a community
translation to six languages done by volunteers. We didn't feel right selling
donated work.

Star Traders Mini is a super stripped down low resolution version that is 1/7
the size of RPG. Tiny downloads are appreciated by some users, but can't be
combined with full size editions.

The other two are basic freemium Paid/Free.

~~~
testing12341234
Having actually played these games (particularly Cyber Knights which is an
absolutely brilliant CyberPunk/ShadowRun tribute), I support these developers.
I was highly skeptical when I first played the Star Traders game because the
website wasn't the greatest, but after having played the games, I went and
downloaded all their other stuff as well. I can see how it would be easy to
dismiss them, but the algorithm is just wrong in this case.

------
jbuzbee
My app
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.houseblend...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.houseblend.instaecho))
got kicked out of the app store a while back with the reason being:

"Violation of the intellectual property and impersonation or deceptive
behavior"

Pretty vague so I didn't really know what the issue was. I thought my
description fo the app was accurate and it was all my own work. I followed the
appeal process listed in the email and waited. After a couple of weeks with no
response, I emailed again. After another week, I followed up again. Finally
after a total of three weeks off the market, it was re-instated. I still don't
know what the problem was, but being off the market hurt. I went from nearly
4000 downloads a day when it was suspended to just a few hundred now.

~~~
tedsuo
I have similar anecdote, but with facebook: We had an web application get a
huge bump in traffic as we approached the date of a massive live event that
was being managed by the app. Suddenly, facebook shut off our access. Luckily,
we had written the app in such a way that we could quickly disable the
facebook features, and still have a functional app. If it had been critical to
have facebook, the event would have been ruined, and our clients would have
fired us. We contacted facebook, and our conversation went something like
this:

FB auto message: our very amazing and awesome malware detector, which uses all
this cool machine learning and is amazing, has detected that your site is
malware and we are disabling it.

Us: Our site is not malware, it's just suddenly very popular. Please turn it
back on.

 _1 week later_

FB rep: You site appears to be on, please refer to the documentation for how
to connect to our services, do not violate the terms of use agreement.

Us: Ok, it does appear to be back on now. Why was it shut off?

FB rep: You violated the terms of use agreement.

Us: How did we do that? Could you explain what term we violated, so we can
modify our code appropriately?

FB rep: Do not violate the terms of use agreement.

Us: Ok, but which term? Are you sure your automated system didn't just shut
the site down because it went viral?

FB rep: _no response, ever again_

We never changed the code, site continued to work fine. As a result, I live in
fear that something like this could happen again, in a situation where
facebook was a critical component. Did the ability to contact a human help in
this situation? Unclear. They definitely did a good job of making us feel
worthless and unimportant.

~~~
kamjam
With more companies going more and more to a purely online presence, I've
found customer service to be rapidly degrading. They provide no phone numbers
to contact them and they take an age to reply by email with a standard copy
and paste response to everything.

It's annoying as hell, and a lot of people's response if "well it's free, so
don't expect customer support". Except it is the customers that make Facebook
worth $100bn, for example.

More companies need to learn from Amazon, their customer support is first
rate. I can see a lot of people turning their back on Facebook/Google due
support issues.

------
dpcan
I hope he figures this out. I received the same "spam" letter from Google
regarding my apps saying I had 7 days to figure it out or possibly have my
apps or account shut down.

It turned out I had used the word "dice" too many times in a description of my
simple "dice" game because I described all the rules in the description. I had
to mutilate my description and remove about 80% of the times I used the word
"dice".

I emailed Google telling them what I had done, and that I fixed that problem,
and that I really hoped that WAS the problem, and I begged them not to remove
my apps because I was diligently trying to figure out what I had done wrong,
and that I WOULD fix it - I'm a reputable developer, and I play by the rules.

I did receive 2 real-human emails back from Google in the process saying
"thank you" and now months later my apps are all still online, so it appears I
found the right problem.

I can certainly understand the frustration however. If there is literally
nothing throwing up a red flag and you don't know what you have done wrong,
and Google doesn't appear to give specifics, it can be scary.

The way I approached the problem was that Google probably didn't have a live
human poking through my apps to find a violation, and it was most likely a
"robot" that found the problem. This means it most likely had to come from a
textual description or there was a potential IP situation. The email mentioned
"spam", so I looked for the former first and found the over-use of the word
"dice". Sure enough, that was it. Or at least I assume that was it, because my
apps are still online now - months later.

~~~
vitriolix
how is overusing the word "dice" being spammy?

~~~
jsight
Personally, I would be suprised if it was. He probably tripped over some other
heuristic (or was flagged as spam by a user for some reason), and they simply
didn't reject him after a review. His email may have helped his case here.

Either that or their algorithm really doesn't like you using the same word
over and over again (this seems unlikely).

Spam apps are a real problem, and I personally won't be bothered by this as
long as the devs that complain (and presumably trigger a human review in the
process) don't have their apps inappropriately removed. So far, I haven't
really seen any evidence of a widespread problem with inappropriate removals,
just inappropriate warnings.

------
vacri
Looking at the game link for Templar Assault, it's a pretty clear violation of
Games Workshop's IP. The art looks exactly like Space Marine Terminators; the
character names are evocative of the same as well, along with a passel of
other very close imitation.

I don't have a horse in this race either way, but as a pretty flagrant
violation of IP, perhaps this is why they've drawn fire from Google? Games
Workshop is usually pretty assiduous in protecting their IP.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tresebroth...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tresebrothers.games.templars&hl=en)

~~~
ta12121
The gameplay screens look a lot like Space Hulk.

Though I'm not sure I agree with banning such clones, after all game mechanics
can be neither copyrighted nor patented.

~~~
cube13
It's not the gameplay mechanics that raise a flag for me.

It's the art. Compare the screenshots of the various units to this:

[http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ultramarine_terminat...](http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ultramarine_terminator.jpg)

~~~
debacle
Have you heard of Starcraft?

~~~
arkem
I'm not sure what you're getting at exactly but it is well known that
Blizzard's titles were directly inspired by the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k
universes[1].

While the visual similarities haven't causes Games Workshop to complain about
infringement from Blizzard (as far as I know) it doesn't mean that Games
Workshop isn't complaining about infringement in this or other cases.

[1] <http://kotaku.com/5929157/the-making-of-warcraft-part-1>

------
crag
And that is Google's achilles' heel; support and customer service. It's across
their entire line of software and services. Try getting a-hold of someone if
you a Google Apps member. You damn lucky if you get anything other then a
automated response.

And isn't Google about to release a tablet soon? Good luck.

~~~
antidoh
It's not a bug, it's a feature. As long as they make more by not being human
than they lose by pissing people off, they're good.

It's on purpose.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Amazon makes money, has cheap prices, and runs many of the web's popular
sites, yet still manages to have good customer service.

~~~
antidoh
Ah, but now you're talking about the relationship between Amazon and their
paying customers. You take care of your paying customers.

An occupant of a blog is, as the saying goes, a product, not a customer.

EDIT: I re-read the article. I thought they were losing their Blogger account.
Never mind.

------
kevinalexbrown
What strikes me as interesting regarding Google's automated approach to
community regulation is the effect of focusing on action rather than intent.
Making a perfect intent-detector is difficult: much easier to make an action-
detector and penalize actions consistent with malicious behavior. This works
as long as those actions are a) necessary for malicious behavior and b) are
easy to avoid while making good apps.

The experiment is now: how much developers will adjust their behavior to
_signal_ clean behavior versus Google perfecting its algorithm to perfectly
judge intent. Once Google has a reasonable policy in place, they can sit and
wait for developers to conform, and presumably those that can't conform cannot
do so precisely because the behavior they would have to change is the behavior
that makes their software malicious or undesirable.

Humans already do this every day in conversation - I adjust my language and
tone to signal non-malicious intent when making a statement I fear might be
perceived as threatening or rude. But these are relatively easy fixes that do
not affect my communication horribly; I suppose it's still an open question as
to whether Google's criteria unreasonably hinder the development process.

~~~
cbs
_What strikes me as interesting regarding Google's automated approach to
community regulation is the effect of focusing on action rather than intent_

What's interesting about that? We're all guilty of putting action over intent.
Look at A-B testing, the metrics we use have nothing to do with our user's
intents. Fuck their intents, I'm optimizing to get as many as possible to give
me money.

Its the same exact thing, just wearing a different color jacket. This time you
just happen to be the subject rather than the administrator.

------
jjguy

        Software isn't a fire and forget transaction anymore
    

There's a lot of insight in that soundbite. I wish more of the "enterprise!"
crowd (and in this case, Daddy Google) realized that.

~~~
rmccue
What's ironic (IMO) is that Google has pushed hard for this with Chrome's
background updating, yet here is against it. I'm sure it's an inadvertent
consequence, but it still seems strange.

~~~
jarito
Getting flagged because they update too much is a guess. Since they can't get
a hold of Google, they can't verify that. I wouldn't make assumptions about
what Google likes / doesn't like on updating until we know why they were
flagged. Unfortunately, Google has once again made this difficult and
reinforced the notion that they are bad at support, right when they want
people to buy into Google Fiber. Sigh.

------
corytrese
We have tried very hard to abid by the rules and produce and support fun
Android games. Dealing with tha automated Google juggernaut is difficult but I
am the first to admit that they are the reason we are able to make, distribute
and support our games.

------
tedsuo
Getting a access to human support is important in general, but absolutely
necessary if you are going to mess with people via an automated system. I'm
always frustrated when I read articles about a journalist who gets his gmail
account hacked or otherwise messed with, and solves it via some back-
channel/personal connection.

------
jack-r-abbit
> _The notion that update frequency is the trigger for ending up on Google's
> hit list is just speculation._

... and so they really don't know anything... o_0

~~~
lnanek2
That's par for the course when Google bans someone. They intentionally don't
tell people what they did wrong because they feel it helps people learn to
cheat the system.

------
briandear
Every time I've had an issue or problem, I've been Apple to correspond with an
Apple App Store rep. One tune it was because I needed to expedite and update
and another time it was because I was in a copyright dispute with another app.
Both times, my emails were answered. My friends who've had App Store
rejections have been able to get exact reasons and email actual people at
Apple for details.

I have zero experience with the Play store, but I have expected developers to
be able to get more information by email, at least. Also, I though the Google
store was supposed to be 'open' and all that. I feel bad for those devs whose
apps are going to be arbitrarily removed without explanation. Perhaps they'll
want to join us on the Apple developer side of the fence for awhile! I'd love
to see their games on iPhone!

~~~
Tichy
And yet there seem to be countless stories on the web of devs struggling with
the Apple App Store and not getting proper information. Your account is merely
an anecdote.

~~~
nmcfarl
As are all the other stories. I've yet to see an sort of comprehensive
statistics on app store rejections. (Which would be kind of awesome.)

For the time being it's all anecdotes, and we choose to believe based on our
personal histories (with apple, the media, the reliabilty of messageboards,
etc)

~~~
csense
Those statistics are probably regarded as proprietary information by Apple.
Good luck convincing them it's in their best interest to release them.

------
jiggy2011
Is this just not a risk inherent with developing for "app stores"?

To you, your application may be something you sunk months of your life and
perhaps something you are relying on to pay your mortgage.

To the app store owner , your app is simply 1 of hundreds of thousands of
apps. Google/Apple etc must receive hundreds of fraudulent or otherwise
"dodgy" submissions every day, so it makes sense from their point of view to
optimise the process of deleting these.

If they end up accidentally burning a few legit indie devs in process because
of false positives then it is simply viewed as collateral damage.

I can only see this becoming more arbitrary over time as the app store owners
begin to sink under the crushing weight of application submissions.

~~~
megablast
The good thing about android is there are lots of stores!

~~~
jiggy2011
Doesn't the "play store" cover about 90% of it though?

To be honest , I'm not even sure how I'd set my phone up to use a different
store nevermind the average android user.

------
ekianjo
Templar Assaults seems like a massive rip-off of Space Hulk. Even though there
is no mention on it on their store page.

------
DigitalSea
Sounds like typical Google to me. If you've ever had to wrangle with getting
your Adsense account unsuspended you'll know it's near impossible, well in-
fact impossible to get a sensible or reasonable person on the phone let alone
by email.

------
csense
This is why it's important to be able to switch vendors. If Google isn't
responsive, these guys can switch to offering their product on the Amazon app
store [1], for example.

Avoiding vendor lock-in is an extremely important part of the business side of
technology.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/mobile-
apps/b/ref=topnav_storetab_mas?...](http://www.amazon.com/mobile-
apps/b/ref=topnav_storetab_mas?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011)

Why <http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/> 404's is incomprehensible.

------
notatoad
So maybe google is being a little obtuse here, but I think their point is a
good one: android developers, please stop updating your apps once a week. It
is annoying to open up my app list and have 25 of the 30 apps I've got
installed needing to be updated. Roll all your little bug fixes into larger
updates and push those out infrequently. Unless you have a real show-stopping
security or functionality bug, I don't need the update immediately.

~~~
ansgri
Why open the app list at all? Let them auto-update.

------
oscillot
I play Cyberknights RPG by the Trese brothers as I fall asleep each night.
Just left a comment of support on the game's play store page (while it's still
there). We need to escalate this is a way that Google will see it. HN is nice,
I will link to this from G+ and see if I can find it to upvote on Reddit as
well.

Here is the link: <http://goo.gl/1MNYv>

------
neurotech1
A developer could side-step the difficult to contact issue by being a
shareholder and contacting Investor Relations. The SEC may get involved if
companies ignore IR communications. The IR person would be able to give you a
direct contact.

Also, pay attention at conferences when you meet Googlers and stay in contact.
They may also be able to help you with direct support.

------
cpunks
Honestly, this is why I would never, ever consider using something like Google
App Engine for anything other than a toy. Google is not a support
organization. Except for ads, you can't count on them for anything B2B.

------
mcguire
" _Google didn't respond to a request for comment from me._ "

And there is Google's major problem in a nutshell.

------
chris_wot
Can they take their game and host it somewhere else?

~~~
Tichy
Of course, but then they don't get the exposure of the play store. And only
people who explicitly allow "other markets" will be able to install from other
sources. I for one have not yet dared to tick that checkbox on my phone.

Actually I think that option in Android should be more fine grained. There are
certain markets I would allow, but I don't want to allow ALL markets. At the
moment the choice is only "play only" or "all sources".

I wish it would be more like debian, for example, were I could add to a list
of enabled sources.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
It is not like checking that box allows other markets to just push stuff onto
your device. It just gives you the ability to get things from other sources.
You still have full control of not getting stuff from sources you are worried
about.

~~~
Tichy
See my other reply - I still think it significantly lowers the barrier to
installing malware.

