I Just Opened a Google Play Class Action Check ToddMitchell, August 7, 2024September 14, 2024 Follow your dreams, developers. If you’d been part of the Google Play class action suit, they could have been worth like, $250. It’s been more than seven years since I released my mobile indie educational game, Letter Taps. Society has moved on, as it does, and it’s no longer financially sensible to continue updates to comply with the ever-changing app store rules. The game has had a bit of an odd legacy in my life. It was far from a hit, though people close to me were beautifully supportive. Thanks to some pleasant interactions during my early journalism days, famed kids TV creator Mitchell Kriegman (Clarissa Explains It All, Bear in the Big Blue House) even helped promote it. Most importantly, it helped my kid learn his alphabet and numbers way ahead of schedule. That’s all the success I needed—though peripheral financial success would have been welcome. But the experience opened some unexpected doors. Several teachers invited me to speak to their students through Code.org after the release. Kids are still obsessed with games the same way I used to be, and educators appreciated that I could connect the dots between working hard in school and huge advantages at making games. I accepted every invitation, and I loved talking to kids about following nerdy dreams. Nerdy dreams saved my life. The way I made the game also turned heads. I’m one of a relatively small number of devs who’s released a commercial project made with the Love2D framework. I’m part of an even smaller group that managed to port one to mobile. The most famous Love2D developer these days is known as LocalThunk. He made a small card game called Balatro. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. That’s a joke, of course, but back when I had not heard of Balatro, a producer from a publisher called PlayStack saw my Love2D experience on LinkedIn and asked if I was interested in working on a port of a Love game from PC to consoles. I enthusiastically replied less than sixty seconds later and several more times in the coming weeks, but no one at PlayStack ever spoke to me again. This hurt, and watching the game go on to set the world ablaze hurt worse. PlayStack doesn’t know anything about me, obviously, and they didn’t set out to make me miserable. But they reopened an old wound I’ve been trying to shut for 20 years starting with the first time I applied to a game studio at age 17. I’ve never been hired, and I’ve rarely even scored an interview. But here we are, Balatro has been out for six months without a mobile release while knock-offs soak up its potential revenue. My Love2D game was mobile multiplatform-ready on Day 1. I find it difficult to believe that I wouldn’t have been valuable to that team, and I would have done it for literally any form of compensation whatsoever, considering the opportunity is all I have ever professionally wanted. It’s a little unfair to me, but it’s very unfair to their developer. Finally releasing my own commercial game was personally satisfying. It let me send the industry a small message of my own: I don’t need your help to succeed, either. I earned my developer badge the hard way, and I’ll keep working at it long after the point that the PlayStacks of the world see what I’ve created and wish they’d treated me like a human being—not that you should have to earn basic respect and professionalism for anything other than simply being a human being. Still, it was a bummer that Letter Taps never quite earned back the fees to join both mobile platforms as a publisher. Luckily, that changed today–more than seven years later, while the game isn’t even available for sale. This was thanks to developers who initiated a Google Play class action lawsuit over what they classified as unnecessary fees and restrictions. This back-and-forth with Google apparently led to a settlement of $26 million to the attorneys and a whopping $90 million to “Android software developers.” While that’s clearly not going to hurt Google, it also can’t feel great following other big Play store judgments favoring Fortnite and “states and consumers.” I received several notices about the Google Play class action situation, presumably after Google turned over records that included my release in 2017. I didn’t think anything of it. Everyone’s probably excited the first time they’re part of a class action settlement. That adrenaline dries up the first time you jump through hoops and receive a check for 34 cents over a data breach or a coupon for more ham that recently contained scraps of metal. I almost didn’t bother to open the envelope I received today mentioning the Google Play class action suit, figuring it was another invitation to fill out a form for a chance to be awarded a fraction of a percent on the twenty-odd dollars I earned there in the first place. Instead, it was a check for $250, the minimum payment established for members of the class. If developers took no action and didn’t opt out before the deadline, an administrator attempted to mail them a check. Mine showed up yesterday. So follow your dreams, kids. Even if your project flops, you never know what damages you’ll accidentally sustain in the process. Jokes aside, I’m not too bent out of shape to see Google held accountable every once in a while. While this fee issue isn’t single-handedly responsible for Letter Taps underperforming, Google has cost me untold amounts of money by banning me personally from the AdSense program the first time I’d earned a payout because someone else clicked too many ads I was managing for a friend. This has also kept me from pursuing momentum at YouTube since it uses the same program. As I told one reporter for The National, Google won’t speak to me about the ban, but they’ll let me use Gmail, YouTube, and place orders in their store. Do they believe I’m the bad guy or not? I suppose it’s paid for now either way. I’ve been blessed with hilariously satisfying resolutions to many professional grudges in my career. I believe that’s what refusing to quit can do for you. Share this:FacebookXLike this:Like Loading... Culture Game Development Humor Google Playindie devindie game developmentmobile games
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