Opinions and surveys regarding changes to Google Play publishing rules
Published: 2024-03-20 14:10:54

## Introduction
Hello, I registered as an Android Developer at the end of last December.

I hope your interest will also check my previous article.
[The easiest way to get 20 testers for free](https://dev.to/zmsoft/easiest-way-to-get-20-testers-for-free-12bd)

This time, based on my actual experience with the new rules.
* Why the rule change was made
* The impact of the 20-person rule on individual developers
* The effect and impact on the app market
* Google's aims
* How the rule will be changed in the future

I would like to think about the above.

## Target Audience
Individual developers who have registered or plan to register as a Developer after November 2023
Android developers who have published their apps on PlayStore

## Purpose of the 20-person rule
First, let me explain the purpose of this rule. The purpose of this rule is to ensure quality as follows.
[Official page](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/14151465?hl=en)

>To help all developers to deliver high-quality apps, we're introducing new testing requirements.

## Impact on individual developers
Now I would like to consider how this rule will affect individual developers in practice. In this regard, I will first describe what I myself did to complete the closed testing and my actual experience.

### Actual experience: What I did
For the test, I did the following.

* Requested family members to help me
* Research on how to recruit testers
* Introduced social networking service
  - Discord
  - Reddit
* Contact via GoogleGroups

First, we asked family members to be the testers on hand. Of course, we didn't have enough testers, so we searched around and found a lot of services that require money to install and run on 20 devices, but there was very little information on how to gather testers. I found out about Discord on Youtube, and I started using it. From there, we started testing with other developers, but it wasn't enough because we were developing multiple apps. Therefore, I registered on Reddit and joined other testers' groups and approached other group members to exchange tests.

### Real-life experience
What I gained was aggressiveness in reaching out to other developers and what I lost was time.

My expectation of testing is to improve quality, but honestly, I felt that testing does not contribute much to quality. When I think about testing other developers' apps, I realize that I am more likely to test apps that I am not interested in, and even if I were interested in, I would not spend the time to test them in earnest. Of course, some developers will point out things to me, and I will point out things I notice, but since I don't have a lot of time to spend on testing, most of the things I point out are shallow and are things I already knew were going to be fixed. If I had had the time to find a tester, I could have fixed the problem from the beginning. (There were some exceptions, such as basic functions not working on certain devices, but I got the impression that the failures on specific devices were more likely to be found in the automatic test performed at the time of PlayConsole registration.)

In this sense, there was not much to be gained in terms of software quality.

## Impact on the app market
So, what if we look at the app market, and to consider Google's goal of improving the overall quality of the market, we need to consider how the following two factors work together.

* Screening out low quality apps (developers)
* Loss of time for each app developer

Google seems to expect quality improvement by not mentioning the latter and focusing entirely on the former, but is this really the case? I believe that the latter will have a greater impact on the quality of the market as a whole. This is because what we see in the PlayStore is only a small fraction of what has been released, or to put it bluntly, "the top of the line". Even if the number of new, unused apps decreases, the quality from the user's point of view will not change. If you are a developer who has actually released an app, you know how difficult it is to find your app in the store. On the other hand, the loss of time for each app developer will affect all individual developers and the market quality.

## Google's real goal?
Is Google, a group of geniuses, not thinking about what I have described so far? Of course not. One thing that comes to mind is the cost of screening. The more apps that are registered, the more people will be involved in the review process. Now that there are enough apps available, the cost is "not worth it" for Google, so they want to reduce it. If it is just "not worth it," then raising the developer registration fee would be an option. The reason why they did not raise the price is because they did not want to make a statement that would make people realize that the cost is "not worth it," and they also did not want to damage the company's image by raising the price. In my opinion, they decided to change the rules in order to make the surplus of individual developers pay for it under the guise of "quality". I am not sure if there are other reasons for this, but it seems to me that it is still a tough one for individual developers.

## How will the rules be changed in the future?
The rules will further reduce the cost of review by broadening the scope of the rules. For Google, which may have already determined that enough apps (or corporate developers) are already available, it is not enough to reduce the review of "new developers' apps," as they would want to lower the cost of reviewing "existing developers' apps who continue to create new apps. If that happens, this issue is no stranger to existing developers.

## Finally
Thank you for taking the time to read this long article, and please take a moment to respond to our survey regarding the 20-person rule policy.
Please take a moment to fill out the survey at [Questionnaire](https://zmsoft.org/blog/2024/03/04/2194/)
In principle, if you answer in a choice format, you can see the breakdown, so please use it as a reference to see what other developers think about the issue.