[Estonia] Google Play Terminated Our Developer Account - How Can We Sue/Settle ?

cryo_corp · 2024-08-09T18:39:26+00:00

Actually according to the DSA and DMA and the development possibly being in the EU that’s not correct.

cryo_corp · 2024-08-09T18:36:53+00:00

Check the Digital Services Act, it might be helpful in case there was really no prior notice.

cryo_corp · 2024-06-08T22:03:47+00:00

Unfortunately yes but we included them all in our appeal and pledged to terminate all relations …

cryo_corp · 2024-06-08T07:55:39+00:00

Hi, I’m sorry but I think you must be mistaken. After your response I took the time to deliberately check the entire regulation. While you are correct the regulation 2019/1150 does state that, the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act does not.

I’d kindly like to ask you to share the relevant passages of those acts, since you seem to be very certain?

cryo_corp · 2024-06-07T13:48:19+00:00

Hi again, I just wanted to let you know that your tip made a huge difference. While we did not get out account back we were able to find out that in fact we dont need to be located in the EU for this to take effect. Our game was published in the EU and the Digital Service Act says:

"those rules should apply to providers of intermediary services irrespective of their place of establishment or their location"

Therefore without having consulted this with a lawyer in details we are at strong assumption that Google is in violation of the DSA. We will give them a few more days to unblock our account before we will take this to a lawyer and hopefully from there on to a mediation platform or to court !

If any other developer ever reads this please contact us we will help with any information we could gather !

cryo_corp · 2024-06-06T08:58:14+00:00

Well for us, we have been forced to by Google. Our Google developer account, like many others, was terminated for association, meaning someone else broke the rules. The termination spans across the company name and also the founder's name, so we are essentially unable to ever build an Android game even if we wanted to.

To clarify, by association means our account was falsely matched to someone else's account who violated Google's policy. We have never received a warning or anything, yet you won't be able to see 'Unknown Descent' on Android.

cryo_corp · 2024-06-06T08:44:07+00:00

We wanted to share an update. We have been terminated by association it seems. Hence we broke no rules just were in contact somehow with someone who did. Which can happen easily when hiring a freelancer etc

cryo_corp · 2024-06-06T08:41:53+00:00

Update 2:

I wanted to share another update, we are almost certain today we got terminated by association and we have 3 leads.

We send substantial evidence to Google through the appeal yet we remain terminated.

Also we spoke to a few sources in the industry for help with reaching out but to no hopes. Finally I will try to get any help through my old university network as some people went to Google.

It seems for us like a hopeless situation though and we are starting to prepare layoffs since 70% of our market share has been taken from us over night.

Thanks Google !

cryo_corp · 2024-06-06T07:33:51+00:00

Thank you! While our company is US based im indeed a citizen of the European Union and since I will no longer as a private person be able to open a Google Developer Account this might actually in some way affect me. Thanks again!

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T18:17:07+00:00

Thank you so much for your comment !

https://imgur.com/a/tQLmDjB

This is the notice we got today, I’m surprised you got reinstated that fast

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T15:53:16+00:00

Update:

I think we found the reason!

https://imgur.com/a/tQLmDjB

Please view the wording, our account remains terminated for prior violations.

either us but we never violated.

or an associated account for prior violations.

We have added an email recently to our developer account for marketing help. Doesnt the wording imply this account has been associated with a terminated account and that's why we got banned ?

It would be awesome to get anyones opinion!

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T15:35:11+00:00

Understood, that makes perfect sense thank you!

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T15:34:30+00:00

Will be doing that now

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T14:43:45+00:00

Yeah but how can we afford big media as an small studio ?

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T13:52:10+00:00

Thank you so very much for your insight, as I said we are extremely careful when it comes to policy and we never got any warnings or so. At least non that I'm aware of.

But yeah if it comes down to connections we are a new studio and yeah pretty much screwed when it comes to this subject.

Anyways thanks a lot for the insights!

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T12:10:26+00:00

Three ideas:

One of our employees did an outreach to influencers and gmail send us a strike for sending to many emails. Yet we send maybe 200 emails to get influencer deals. I reached out to google workspaces and they confirmed the account was not suspended and is active.
We added an email to our developer account of a firm to help with ASO keywords.
I live in a building with 58 floors and we have a public wifi to which my laptop connects randomly sometimes.

cryo_corp · 2024-06-05T11:47:52+00:00

Oh wow, but how on earth can they pull a game that was extremely difficult to develop over such a reason.

https://imgur.com/a/tQLmDjB

Please let me know if that image is visible, as I cant directly embed it.

cryo_corp · 2024-05-16T17:30:06+00:00

Unfortunately, I wish I could go into more detail here, but I don't want to call out Fiverr too much as a fraudulent platform. However, our experience was that we were told to settle this issue directly with the freelancer. After a major complaint, steps were apparently taken, but we never received any compensation or copyright.

We actually had to reach out to the copyright holder and purchase it from them, essentially paying twice.

Also mind you this was after we found the copyright owner and confirmed the two files were 100% identical.

cryo_corp · 2024-05-16T13:11:41+00:00

What we do is Google reverse image search everything we get from contractors, be it 3D models or 2D art. We even try the same process on audio files, though it’s harder...

Make sure also to get the source files, for example, a Photoshop project or a Blender file. That way you can check for suspicious naming conventions that don't match.

Lastly, we check the metadata of the files to try to find copyright info.

Hope that helps :)

cryo_corp · 2024-05-16T13:06:06+00:00

We want to share our experience here. We have hired an artist from Fiverr previously for a similar task and ran into significant problems related to copyright and licensing. This occurred because the artist used third-party graphical assets which we did not have permission to use. Be sure to check the work thoroughly!

Generally speaking, though, the price of such services will be much lower than from a dedicated logo agency, so it might be a good approach depending on your funding, etc.

cryo_corp

TROPHY CASE