My hit game, removed from the AppStore. Devestated! Warning to iOS devs...
Quote:Today started out great! My game had a mini-review in a national newspaper (The Sun) and was racing back up the charts. Then, suddenly, things started to go down hill, in a big way.
As of now, Retro Racing is no longer available on the AppStore…
Retro Racing had around 44,000 downloads in one month. I never knew that kind of success before, and can’t begin to tell you how pleased I was. Making good money, doing something I totally love.
Q: So what went wrong?
Also, a warning to other iOS devlopers. Full story here:
http://www.mrqwak.com/2012/03/ooops/
Blog - http://bit.ly/mrqwak
Games - http://bit.ly/mrqwakgames
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/mrqwak
Ouch!
Yeah, way over 24 hours, and still not re-instated.

Blog - http://bit.ly/mrqwak
Games - http://bit.ly/mrqwakgames
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/mrqwak
Damn dude, that sucks. Do you mind explaining what happened with the migration? I'm looking to migrate myself in the next few weeks.
Justin Ficarrotta
http://www.justinfic.com
"It is better to be The Man than to work for The Man." - Alexander Seropian
(Mar 24, 2012 06:16 PM)JustinFic Wrote: Damn dude, that sucks. Do you mind explaining what happened with the migration? I'm looking to migrate myself in the next few weeks.
If you have anything selling on the AppStore, I'm not sure I'd bother. You should certainly ask them if there will be a risk of this happening to you to, I wasn't given any warning or indication that this could be an issue.
Alternatively, you might want to look at opening a fresh account, and seeing if it's possible to move your existing apps across? Dunno if that would work out better for you.
Good luck!
Blog - http://bit.ly/mrqwak
Games - http://bit.ly/mrqwakgames
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/mrqwak
Oh no! That's really rough Jamie, I hope your account gets migrated and it gets back on there ASAP.
It's one of those things that in retrospect you think, "Why did I do this now?" but beforehand you just don't think of anything going wrong like this.
Have you emailed Apple dev support?
It's one of those things that in retrospect you think, "Why did I do this now?" but beforehand you just don't think of anything going wrong like this.
Have you emailed Apple dev support?
(Mar 25, 2012 05:56 PM)monteboyd Wrote: Oh no! That's really rough Jamie, I hope your account gets migrated and it gets back on there ASAP.
It's one of those things that in retrospect you think, "Why did I do this now?" but beforehand you just don't think of anything going wrong like this.
Have you emailed Apple dev support?
Yeah, I certainly didn't see this one coming! You're right of course, in retrospect, it was pretty stupid of me to mess around with something that's wasn't broke, even more so, as my game had good chart position (in UK and Europe, was still not-so-good in the US).
Anyhow, I called Apple developer support first thing this morning, they were pretty helpful, and the chap there escalated my case and passed it on to their internal team. Hope it doesn't take too long now.
Blog - http://bit.ly/mrqwak
Games - http://bit.ly/mrqwakgames
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/mrqwak
The only other thing I can suggest is that once it is back up you email all the sites that have done reviews and let them know the story. They may just post (or tweet) about it.
Yup, just about to do a press release thanks monteboyd. 
Anyhow, all good now! Just to wrap this up, here's a little more nitty-gritty for you...
Basically, when my iOS developer account was in individual mode, I had an incomplete iAds contract attached to my account (started it, but had not finished filling in tax info). This was the 'spanner in the works' when I migrated to a business account. All the time, I thought it was to do with the banking info too, it wasn't, it was just the iAds contract that got me. In the end, all I had to do was remove it (after Apple figured it out, and told me to), and everything quickly resolved itself. Job done!
Apple did say there were going to discuss this internally, and possibly put something in place to prevent it happening again (or at least warn people I guess).
Anyhow, hope that's helpful to anyone considering migrating.
If you can spare a tweet, please check out the following blog post, and click the 'tweet this article' link, half way down..
http://www.mrqwak.com/2012/03/save-retro-racing-day/
Cheers,
Jamie (the evil spambot)

Anyhow, all good now! Just to wrap this up, here's a little more nitty-gritty for you...
Basically, when my iOS developer account was in individual mode, I had an incomplete iAds contract attached to my account (started it, but had not finished filling in tax info). This was the 'spanner in the works' when I migrated to a business account. All the time, I thought it was to do with the banking info too, it wasn't, it was just the iAds contract that got me. In the end, all I had to do was remove it (after Apple figured it out, and told me to), and everything quickly resolved itself. Job done!
Apple did say there were going to discuss this internally, and possibly put something in place to prevent it happening again (or at least warn people I guess).
Anyhow, hope that's helpful to anyone considering migrating.
If you can spare a tweet, please check out the following blog post, and click the 'tweet this article' link, half way down..
http://www.mrqwak.com/2012/03/save-retro-racing-day/
Cheers,
Jamie (the evil spambot)
Blog - http://bit.ly/mrqwak
Games - http://bit.ly/mrqwakgames
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/mrqwak
Wow, that seriously sucks bad. Thanks for sharing your experience with it though. Definitely appreciated
I hope your sales get back soon!

Yeah, it's sucky if they don't make any kind of good-will gesture. 
Will post sales results after a few weeks, so will be able to see before and after, impact of all this.

Will post sales results after a few weeks, so will be able to see before and after, impact of all this.
Blog - http://bit.ly/mrqwak
Games - http://bit.ly/mrqwakgames
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/mrqwak
Will they somehow factor it back higher up on the charts? If not, wow... that's really crappy

KB Productions, Car Care for iPhone/iPod Touch
@karlbecker_com
All too often, art is simply the loss of practicality.
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