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19 points appsDev | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

Hey everyone! I need some advice..

I am a student and solo app dev, and I recently made a game on iOS that reached the top of the front page on Hacker News. I want to bring the game to Android, but am struggling with Google Play's policies for solo devs.

The one that is bothering me most is having to display my physical, home address on the play store for paid apps. I personally think this would be a pretty big security and privacy hazard, but there isn't any way around it that I have seen. There are also other things like requiring solo devs to test any new app with 20 testers for 2 weeks.

My Point Is: If I launch the app instead on the Epic Game Store / Amazon App Store, or even both, do you think the app can still be successful? Is it really possible to get good reach without the Play store, or will users just ignore the app if it's not on Google Play?

I am on iOS and don't know too much about the Android stores / user behavior, so any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

Link to app for reference: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6720712299

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dlachausse ◴[] No.41876053[source]
I’ve personally decided to just ignore Android all together for my app. As a solo developer that is all in on the Apple ecosystem, supporting Android just doesn’t appeal to me.

Would it be possible to port your app to WASM and support Android via a browser?

replies(2): >>41882242 #>>41906651 #
1. appsDev ◴[] No.41882242[source]
Thats what I had been doing so far, but got some requests for android this time which is why wanted to make it there too. The app relies on haptics so I don't think a browser would work...
replies(1): >>41883257 #
2. dlachausse ◴[] No.41883257[source]
There’s this…

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Vibration_A...

I’m not sure it would work for what you need.

replies(1): >>41883671 #
3. appsDev ◴[] No.41883671[source]
Oh that is interesting, I did not know something like that existed! Will take a look for sure :)

Thx