this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Sync for Lemmy
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I didn't find anything against having both a paid app and a free app in the Google's Policy Center.
While you can't have two apps called the same thing, e.g., both apps called 'your app name', you can have one app called 'your app name' and another app called 'your app name pro'.
I found advice going back years saying one just needs to create a separate project like this. And here is the most recent source I found saying the same thing and it goes further and lists apps that are on the store with both paid and free versions. I also did my own search and found this example: My Lightning Tracker & Alerts is free and My Lightning Tracker Pro is a paid app.
And regardless the dev saying they won't use the data from paid users -- that doesn't matter to me when legally by using the app I signed away permission for that data to be collected.
https://lemmy.world/comment/2000775
Linking a message saying that someone was temporarily suspended doesn't sway me especially when I see apps on the store that have both paid and free versions of their apps like the app I linked earlier. If they and others can do it, why can't the dev for Sync?
Now if someone could share a link to a policy document by Google saying "You cannot have both a paid version and an unpaid version of an app on the play store" then I would be very happy to be corrected here and I will happily adapt my stance to support that. (Seriously, I don't mind being corrected -- I'd just prefer something official from Google.)
And so it's a deal breaker for me. And while I never used Sync for Reddit, I am thankful to all the app creators for helping the community often out of pocket and/or while being severely underpaid for years. And I hope this dev will do well financially with other users who have loyalty or different priorities than I concerning privacy and transparency.
The "someone" is the developer of Sync though.
You're asking me why Google has inconsistent or opaque policies? God knows, it's just one of those things I expect from big tech companies at this point. I'm just pointing out why the dev isn't doing it, because he got suspended for it previously.
Yeah I agree re opaque policies as if someone can get suspended for this, it would be nice if it was easy to find a policy regarding it. Thanks for your response.
This goes way back to when Google first introduced IAP. They were pushing to remove dupes from the store because it caused separate reviews and ratings. It could be that they just temporarily enforced it and now it's not a concern for them anymore.
I remember when this happened to Sync for Reddit. Unfortunately Google Play Store, like most of these app stores, can enforce almost anything they want even if it's outside of their policy because some stuff is so vague. And it's usually hard to get clear information from anyone when your app gets pulled or whatever.