Associating to unrelated developers, My Google play suspension story
An open letter to Google play team especially Purnima Kochikar, director of Google Play, Apps & Games at Google.
My Google play developer account (Capsula) was suspended due to violations by associated accounts, but I only have 1 app in the Play Store
My journey
My name is Mujtaba Fadhil, I used to be an IOS developer till started my journey in android world 3 years ago.
I developed 2 apps which was well received, but decided to remove them from Play Store to focus on my future startup. Capsula
I launched Capsula in 2019 as an app to help pharmacists in Iraq, it started small, but kept growing rapidly with continuous updates, registered as a local company, and it became very essential and vital in the life of most pharmacists in Iraq. It was a real success story, but not anymore.
The suspension
On June 5 2021, I received an email from Google Play mentions this:
This is a notification that your Google Play Publisher account has been terminated.
I left speechless …
literally speechless
REASON FOR TERMINATION: Prior violations by associated accounts.
All I have in Google play is this app. So what associated accounts are they talking about ?
I believe that associated accounts are another colleague accounts. I worked with him under the same company Swiftdeer during my IOS development journey. He had 20+ apps in the Play Store.
But if he had issues, why would I be suspended for lifetime ?! why letting my startup collapses ?!
It’s really unfair to suspend a developer for false association with another developer accounts.
I sent an appeal to the google play explaining all the details. but it was rejected.
Your Google Play Developer account has been terminated due to multiple violations of the Developer Program Policies by an associated Google Play developer account.
Google Play Developer account terminations are associated with developers and may span multiple account registrations and related Google services.
I sent another appeal with my info and passport, but no benefit.
As much as I’d like to help, I’m not able to provide any more detail or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me.
I’m left powerless
As a result I was suspended from the google play for lifetime, and my startup collapsed. I have no power to do anything.
Dear Google play team, Associating accounts to unrelated developers is really unfair. It makes the all developers unsafe, their career could be done in just a second without any prior notification or later support.
This letter is my last and only hope, I wish that someone reads my letter and point me to anything I can do to Reinstate my account, and get my startup to life again. Please feel free to share this open letter in order to get more exposure.