Out of nowhere, Google Play just killed Armchair Commander. In fact, they didn't just remove it from sale -- they suspended it, meaning I can't even see the metrics for the app. Everything just vanished. This is what they said: Hi developers at Zack Sima, Thank you for your patience. Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, we are currently experiencing longer than usual process times and we appreciate your understanding. Status of app Armchair Commander (com.fengyong.ArmchairCommander2) : Suspended from Google Play due to policy violation During review, we found that your app violates the Hate Speech policy.
For example, your app currently contains references of "Nazi". You can refer to the attached screenshot for additional information. Please note that suspensions count as strikes against the good standing of your Google Play Developer account. Egregious or multiple policy violations can result in suspension, as can repeated app rejections or removals. Basically, my WW2 game had swastikas on the German troops. The Nazi-ruled period of Germany was a terrible time, but their official flag was in fact the swastika, so I used that. I guess sometimes that can be interpreted a different way if a player chooses to play that country, so lesson learned there. The worst part was looking at how I could get my users to transfer data: Google killed the app so I can't make last-minute updates or anything. The best I could do was use the in-app message system I developed to tell everyone to go to the new address, and manually have people download an APK file that had a data transfer function. Most people probably didn't see that or didn't understand English, so they are forever stuck with a version of the game in mid-2021. Here's how the dashboard for the "killed" app looks: Yeah, game over basically. Appeal didn't work, so best I can do is be careful next time.
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