DISCLAIMER: Although related to the existence of an iOS app, this exhaustive post is NOT meant to be promotional (and would be most terrible at being one).
Although I must provide a clear case of what is going on, you are not meant to download the app outside of, perhaps, your own curiosity.
I only need to know if the major issue I encountered, which has the form of a critical glitch, is reproductible by other people, and if this can be quickly solved.
Hello.
I'm the owner of a small independent company that has published a casual game for smartphones called MOTICO (link).
Link will be removed if moderators wish so.
It's a freemium app, a simple arcade game published on iOS, June 12th 2021 (Saturday).
It's currently available in 11 countries only:
- North America: Canada
- Europe: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden
- Africa, Middle East, India: South Africa
- Pacific Asia: New Zealand, Philippines
The game's is short and simple, using six high-case letters.
Since it's my company's first release on iOS and has little to no real experience in this, I first decided to collect empirical data about the App Store behavior by opting for a very focused launch with no promotion at all and obtain some first impressions and data from there.
Now, the core of this message:
I experience a critical issue on Apple's App Store that makes my app invisible when using the Search tool.
If you're on a computer and living in one of the countries listed above (I ran tests with a valid foreign account), clicking on the app's link will open the game's page in the App Store application on your Macintosh. But directly querying for "MOTICO" in the Search field will return:
The problem is the same with small case letters.
It's marginally behaving better on an iPhone when looking for the game in the App Store native app.
I used an iPhone (a recent device running iOS 14.3), went into the App Store app using a valid account too, the I again looked for both "motico" and "MOTICO" but couldn't find my app on the results page.
That however was clearly problematic. The app has a unique name and to me there was absolutely no reason why it wouldn't show up at all. This was not normal.
A few other apps appeared, somehow related to mine only because of distant similarities with the name, and that was it.
Worst, here's what was displayed at the top of the results, above the sponsored first app:
My app's name was truncated (and still is to this day). The last "o" is still missing. It goes from six letters to five.
We're told many times that Search remains to this day the major way into app discovery. It goes without saying that if an issue happens at this stage of the app's life, its chances of even being downloaded are rather slim to none outside of any external and significant form of promotion.
For some reason I decided to add some spaces in the app's name and entered queries such as "motic o", "moti co" and other permutations.
Back in June and July, doing this would slightly mitigate the app's chances at appearing on the results page. Sometimes it would show up, but always at the bottom of the results' list.
On Friday of the first long week after the release, I filled a form for my app on the Promote page, sending a request to the in-house Curating Team to know if they'd be willing to give my app a look.
They are in no obligation to satisfy such a demand. But even if they dismiss an app's case, I'd expect at least a notification about it. No reply was ever received, which is not very polite even if it's just to say "no, sorry.""
I also speculated that it could be related to the glitch and my app not being visible. Why would Apple even cast some light on my app if it couldn't be found at all?
Following my email pointing out the existence of this annoying critical glitch, I was then put into contact with a higher ranking support manager and after multiple exchanges, providing a detailed description of the issue, with an appropriate supplement of pictures and a recorded video taken on the iPhone, I got an acknowledgement that something wrong was certainly going on.
I was later on told the technical team would be looking into this and was politely asked to wait until they'd come back with a solution.
But none came and it's already been more than two months now and my patience is running low.
Besides, ten days after the release, I also verified the bundle link and got this information:
It's still the same result I get today. That's bad news since as I understand it, it's supposed to mean the app is not available. Yet it's "Ready for Sale".
Following this discovery, I wrote to the manager again, who's been very nice and was sorry for the ongoing trouble. After a few short exchanges I was also told this problem was "widespread". He told me nothing more could be done, I had to wait (again) for the technical team to correct this.
And that's about it because I never got any other reply since then and I think I won't get any.
I have since uploaded a build to change the keywords and include motic as a temporary measure and this has barely made my app's case any better and I presume it's the multiple build uploads that have actually made the app more visible.
I'd rather think I made a mistake somewhere but I don't know what it could be since I was never offered any potential solution.
A typical promotion campaign can become expensive very quickly, therefore it would be unwise to waste the meagre resources at my disposal when the primary and most urgent issue hasn't been resolved yet.
I fear that said resources would be used to attenuate the glitch, like sprinkling some water on a barrel that has a gaping hole at its bottom, instead of being used at their full potential to serve the game's success. Taking into account the up front costs such as the development fee, the computer and testing device, plus all the loops we have to jump through and all the ToS and agreements we have to acknowledge and provide, and assuming everything is OK on my side, then it would be easy to be a bit disapointed, if perhaps by the lack of reciprocity in dedication to quality and reliability on Apple's part and I feel like I have explored all the options I could think of. But then again I'd rather think I made a mistake somewhere.
But where?
This is why I turn towards other kind developers and publishers who might share a few suggestions on how to circumvent this very annoying obstacle and maybe tell me if they can observe this problem on their computer or iOS device too.
For the time being, I'm postponing the promotion campaign and the full international release.
Although I must provide a clear case of what is going on, you are not meant to download the app outside of, perhaps, your own curiosity.
I only need to know if the major issue I encountered, which has the form of a critical glitch, is reproductible by other people, and if this can be quickly solved.
Hello.
I'm the owner of a small independent company that has published a casual game for smartphones called MOTICO (link).
Link will be removed if moderators wish so.
It's a freemium app, a simple arcade game published on iOS, June 12th 2021 (Saturday).
It's currently available in 11 countries only:
- North America: Canada
- Europe: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden
- Africa, Middle East, India: South Africa
- Pacific Asia: New Zealand, Philippines
The game's is short and simple, using six high-case letters.
Since it's my company's first release on iOS and has little to no real experience in this, I first decided to collect empirical data about the App Store behavior by opting for a very focused launch with no promotion at all and obtain some first impressions and data from there.
Now, the core of this message:
I experience a critical issue on Apple's App Store that makes my app invisible when using the Search tool.
If you're on a computer and living in one of the countries listed above (I ran tests with a valid foreign account), clicking on the app's link will open the game's page in the App Store application on your Macintosh. But directly querying for "MOTICO" in the Search field will return:
The problem is the same with small case letters.
It's marginally behaving better on an iPhone when looking for the game in the App Store native app.
I used an iPhone (a recent device running iOS 14.3), went into the App Store app using a valid account too, the I again looked for both "motico" and "MOTICO" but couldn't find my app on the results page.
That however was clearly problematic. The app has a unique name and to me there was absolutely no reason why it wouldn't show up at all. This was not normal.
A few other apps appeared, somehow related to mine only because of distant similarities with the name, and that was it.
Worst, here's what was displayed at the top of the results, above the sponsored first app:
My app's name was truncated (and still is to this day). The last "o" is still missing. It goes from six letters to five.
We're told many times that Search remains to this day the major way into app discovery. It goes without saying that if an issue happens at this stage of the app's life, its chances of even being downloaded are rather slim to none outside of any external and significant form of promotion.
For some reason I decided to add some spaces in the app's name and entered queries such as "motic o", "moti co" and other permutations.
Back in June and July, doing this would slightly mitigate the app's chances at appearing on the results page. Sometimes it would show up, but always at the bottom of the results' list.
On Friday of the first long week after the release, I filled a form for my app on the Promote page, sending a request to the in-house Curating Team to know if they'd be willing to give my app a look.
They are in no obligation to satisfy such a demand. But even if they dismiss an app's case, I'd expect at least a notification about it. No reply was ever received, which is not very polite even if it's just to say "no, sorry.""
I also speculated that it could be related to the glitch and my app not being visible. Why would Apple even cast some light on my app if it couldn't be found at all?
Following my email pointing out the existence of this annoying critical glitch, I was then put into contact with a higher ranking support manager and after multiple exchanges, providing a detailed description of the issue, with an appropriate supplement of pictures and a recorded video taken on the iPhone, I got an acknowledgement that something wrong was certainly going on.
I was later on told the technical team would be looking into this and was politely asked to wait until they'd come back with a solution.
But none came and it's already been more than two months now and my patience is running low.
Besides, ten days after the release, I also verified the bundle link and got this information:
It's still the same result I get today. That's bad news since as I understand it, it's supposed to mean the app is not available. Yet it's "Ready for Sale".
Following this discovery, I wrote to the manager again, who's been very nice and was sorry for the ongoing trouble. After a few short exchanges I was also told this problem was "widespread". He told me nothing more could be done, I had to wait (again) for the technical team to correct this.
And that's about it because I never got any other reply since then and I think I won't get any.
I have since uploaded a build to change the keywords and include motic as a temporary measure and this has barely made my app's case any better and I presume it's the multiple build uploads that have actually made the app more visible.
I'd rather think I made a mistake somewhere but I don't know what it could be since I was never offered any potential solution.
A typical promotion campaign can become expensive very quickly, therefore it would be unwise to waste the meagre resources at my disposal when the primary and most urgent issue hasn't been resolved yet.
I fear that said resources would be used to attenuate the glitch, like sprinkling some water on a barrel that has a gaping hole at its bottom, instead of being used at their full potential to serve the game's success. Taking into account the up front costs such as the development fee, the computer and testing device, plus all the loops we have to jump through and all the ToS and agreements we have to acknowledge and provide, and assuming everything is OK on my side, then it would be easy to be a bit disapointed, if perhaps by the lack of reciprocity in dedication to quality and reliability on Apple's part and I feel like I have explored all the options I could think of. But then again I'd rather think I made a mistake somewhere.
But where?
This is why I turn towards other kind developers and publishers who might share a few suggestions on how to circumvent this very annoying obstacle and maybe tell me if they can observe this problem on their computer or iOS device too.
For the time being, I'm postponing the promotion campaign and the full international release.
