r/googleplay

I legally moved from Russia to Türkiye 4 years ago. Google Play has rejected every payment method I have ever since — card, carrier billing, even a gift card I already paid for. I'm out of ideas.

Long-time Android user here (phone, tablet, even a Chromebook), same Google account for ~10 years. In 2022 I left Russia because I oppose the war against Ukraine and legally relocated to Türkiye. I'm as "resident" as a non-citizen can be: two residence permits, an apartment I own, utility bills in my name, Turkish bank accounts including a credit card, a Turkish phone number I've had for 4+ years.

Ever since, every single Google Play purchase fails with a country-mismatch error ("your payment profile country doesn't match your location" or similar). Here's everything I've tried:

* Changed my Google account country and payments profile to Türkiye — done years ago, error persists

* Turkish credit card — rejected (the same card works fine on Adobe, Spotify, Booking, Airbnb, YouTube Premium, and even Google Gemini)

* Carrier billing via Turkcell (my operator for 4+ years, topped up 1,500 TL specifically for this) — rejected

* A 1,000 TL Google Play gift card bought as a last resort — can't be redeemed, money effectively burned

* Tried on my Android phone, Android tablet, Chromebook, and PC — same error everywhere

* Google support — multiple contacts, no resolution, they just loop through the same script

Buying through the apps' websites instead isn't a real option: they show EUR prices 10–100x higher than local Turkish pricing.

At this point I'm seriously considering buying an iPhone just to pay for subscriptions through Apple and then logging into the same apps on Android, which is absurd.

Has anyone actually escaped this state? Did anything work — a manual review, a specific support escalation path, recreating the payments profile? I'd rather keep my 10-year-old account than start a fresh one. Screenshots of the errors in comments.

reddit.com
u/serovka — 8 hours ago
▲ 4 r/googleplay+4 crossposts

Lessons from building a deal-aggregator app: expiring content is a harder cache problem than I expected

Native Android, Kotlin. The app aggregates time-limited free-game offers from a bunch of storefronts. Sounds like a simple list screen. The expiry semantics are what made it interesting.

A few things I got wrong first time:

Stale data is worse than no data here. A normal feed can be five minutes behind and nobody dies. In this app, a five-minute-stale card means someone taps through to an offer that just closed and concludes the app is broken. I ended up [describe your approach — server-side refresh cadence, TTL, invalidation on open].

Countdowns and lifecycle. Every card renders a live countdown. Naively that's one ticker per visible row and the list stutters. I moved to [single ticker driving state / whatever you did] and made sure it stops on onStop so it isn't burning cycles in the background.

Device clock lies. People's clocks are wrong, sometimes by hours, and timezones make "2 days left" ambiguous. Everything is stored as UTC instants and I [compute offsets against a server timestamp / etc.] rather than trusting local time.

Sorting by expiry means the list reorders under the user's thumb. Genuinely annoying if you don't handle it. I [describe: stable keys, no resort while scrolling, etc.].

Offline. The list has to render from cache the moment it opens, then reconcile. Room + [your setup].

Happy to go deeper on any of it. The app is GamesBolt if you want to see the result: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.auragames.gamesbolt

If anyone's solved the "list that reorders itself while you're reading it" problem more elegantly, I'd like to hear it.

u/Arslanchaudhry — 1 day ago
▲ 4 r/googleplay+2 crossposts

🎉 After more than a month of waiting… my first app is finally LIVE!

🎉 After more than a month of waiting… my first app is finally LIVE!

I honestly can’t describe how happy I am right now. This is the first app I’ve ever published, and seeing it actually live after all the work, testing, fixes, and waiting feels amazing. 🚀

I’d really appreciate it if you could check it out and give it a try!

👉 Download here: App Link

Since this is my first release, your feedback would mean a lot to me. I’d especially love to hear:

• What was your first impression of the app?
• Was anything confusing or difficult to use?
• What features would you like to see next?
• Did you notice any bugs or things that could be improved?

Even if you only have a few minutes to download it and try it out, I’d genuinely appreciate it.

I’m already thinking about future updates, so suggestions from real users will help me decide what to improve and build next.

And for the other developers here — I’d love to hear about your first app launch too. How did it feel when you finally saw your first app go live? 😄

Thanks everyone! ❤️ Looking forward to your feedback (good or bad — both are useful!).

App: Countdown Pro App
Download: Play Store Link

u/CoolMemory9779 — 1 day ago

Google play keeps closing

Hello, wondering if anyone has any idea why my playstore app keeps closing, I've asked Google AI and each suggestion has only been a temporary fix. It seems whenever I try search for an app it closes and the "playstore keeps stopping" window keeps popping up even if I try on chrome it says "playstore is updating try again later" and it seems I can do everything else on the playstore but as soon as I type two or more letters in the search bar it closes 🙃

reddit.com
u/Funny_Snow_4959 — 2 days ago

(Reposting coz of no response) Google Play Games on laptop showing severe graphical glitches in multiple games (Intel (R) Graphics)

Any fixes?

u/dawgoon — 1 day ago
▲ 2 r/googleplay+2 crossposts

I built a reflex arcade game where keeping your momentum alive is the only way to survive. Is this the most satisfying screen-wrap mechanic?

u/Bitwise_Games — 2 days ago

Is google plays app on pc safe.

Soo i recently downloaded it and its taking up 15gb for some reason even tho i only have one small game on it.... is this normal or some typa bug? I also heard stories about the pc app stopping u from using 512gb on ur pc because it makes ur computer think thats how much its acually taking up instead of that js being the max size it can expand to. If anyone else uses it on pc and can answer my questions id really apreciate ittt.

reddit.com
u/ThisIsNotMe12312 — 1 day ago
▲ 9 r/googleplay+1 crossposts

Why do people do this?

I have a specialized Camera application which i have been developing for quite sometime and i have spent countless night making this app. Now for free users i offer all the features for 5 with recording capped at 5 sec, there's also a free 7 day trail for user to test full app. But still people leave this kind of reviews. It feels pointless to invest this much time, money and energy and get this kind of review in the end.

I have already reported the review, hope it gets removed. But if it doesn't what to do then?

How do you guys handles such people.

Edit: lot of people misunderstanding that its only 5 sec one time recording but its not, user can record unlimited 5 sec clip, beside that there's also 7 day free trial on subscription ( user can cancel anytime without incurring any cost ), so there are ways to test the entire app before making a purchase decision.

Also some user suggested why not allow 10/15 or even X minutes of recording, i previously allowed 15s and even 30s before that but it was abused by most people so i had to reduce the limit. so i did give users a lot of opportunity to try and test the app before they make the decision to purchase, i'm not forcing them to purchase my app, they choose to uninstall it, if they don't like it.

Even if you put all this aside this kind of review is not a feedback but mostly insult directed towards individual. I'm open to listen to product criticism (and i will give this limit a second thought) and i have already improved it based on previous review . But it doesn't mean when if you dont get free stuff you lash out and invalidate the hard work of developers who put out many months and vear's of work. i absolutely understand that no app is perfect but this kind of review just demotivates you because people who find the app useful hardly ever rate it let alone review and provide feedback. but type of user don't want to try, support or ever intend to use the app, but still left this kind of review, which hurts the app reputation.

Also google rejected the appeal to remove this review, i read the policy and its clearly comes under offensive content. so there is no support from google as well.

I'm a solo developer, i don't have thousands of dollars of budget to spend on working on just one app, i'm just trying to make a living, nothing wrong with that, if you don't find the value in the product simply don't use it, there are alternatives. but atleast don't ruin someones hardwork just because you don't like it. there are lots of other user who have found it useful, have purchased it and using it on daily basis, so its not that product is not working.

little bit of background on myself, i have been developing for android since 2019, i was laid off about 2.5 years ago, after that i was doing freelancing but that ended as well ( client left without paying ), i have applied to so many jobs that i have lost count, have completed interviews and selected only to be ghosted at last minute (happened few times), did take home test and what not. day by day i'm just losing it. i really love what i do. but i can't keep up with this shit anymore.

Edit : this is the app if anybody wants to try: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hsn.trueraw

u/Adventurous_Zombie61 — 3 days ago

google play payment not received

Does anyone have any idea what to do? I have a few subscriptions on google, so I wanted to add some credit to my google play account yesterday. The money has been debited, but I never received anything. When I checked the payment history, it says that I never paid anything?

u/Best_Lengthiness9873 — 2 days ago
▲ 3 r/googleplay+1 crossposts

Refunds from the Google Play store

The worst mistake I made was purchasing the YNAB app from the Google Play store. Not because of the app -the app was great and has helped me so much. But because of play store rules. First, they only bill annually, so I was dinged for the full year when I had been expecting to pay monthly.

And now that I've cancelled YNAB (moved to a competitor), I can't figure out how to get a partial refund. I understood I needed to contact the developer so I reached out to YNAB. They replied that I should contact Google.

I tried to follow Google's instructions for getting a refund on a subscription, but the steps they say to take don't exist (selecting Report problem on the subscription in my account, but that option doesn't exist).

Has anyone done this successfully? How do I get a partial refund for the unused part of my annual YNAB subscription?

Thanks!

reddit.com
u/Kooky-Potential-6895 — 2 days ago

Is there any way to downgrade a game without searching for it on the internet?

I felt nostalgic today and wanted to download a old version of a ripoff Minecraft game called "craftsman" so i looked it up and downloaded it from the internet archive but the game looks like older version of Minecraft PE, how can i be sure that i have the real thing?

u/anbernicuser6441 — 3 days ago
▲ 2 r/googleplay+2 crossposts

Ciao ragazzi, sarei interessato all'acquisto del nuovo pixel 11 pro. Vorrei chiedere se ci fosse qualcuno che ha ricevuto il codice da 150 euro, e che magari non lo utilizza. Ve ne sarei molto grato🥲

reddit.com
u/scammele — 3 days ago

New Crunchyroll Play Points Rewards!

There are these new cool rewards you can purchase with Google Play Points in the Google Play Pass! So many different options I'm stuck on what to choose!

u/Fast_Entertainer6701 — 3 days ago

Streaks simply don't work

Tried everything, it doesn't register no matter how much time and what which game I play

On the screenshot it's Genshin Impact, doesn't work, tried with many other games and it's the same thing.

And if anyone asks, I also tried getting in contact with the Customer Service and they couldn't do anything either, can someone help me?

u/Kernel_Core — 2 days ago

What is happening????

I got 3 coupons worth of 8$ (the Google Play Credit coupons worth 5$, 2$ and 1$) because i wanted to get a special bundle in a game called World conqueror 4 that is 8$ but when i went to the balance it said that i had 0 credits. I went to look at the balance at my Google play account and i have the 8$. Before anyone asks, yes i have the same account in the game therefore it cant be that and i have closed the game and reopened it in case it was a bug or something.

reddit.com
u/Medical-Bullfrog1439 — 3 days ago

Gaming Streaks

My streak right now is 50 days.

During this streak, I was getting 5 Play Points every 10 days, not every 7 days.

What that means is that I'm getting fewer Play Points because according to their rules, I should be getting 5 Play Points every 7 days.

So, should I break my streak to see if it will work again, or should I just keep getting 5 points every 10 days? There was a time when I was getting 5 points every 7 days, but somehow it stopped working. After I broke my streak, it didn't give me anything even after reaching a 10-day streak, so I broke it again, and it started working. However, it wasn't every 7 days anymore it changed to every 10 days.

That's why I'm hesitant to break my streak again. I'm worried that it won't work again. Should I just give it a shot and see what happens?

u/Resident-Wait-7000 — 4 days ago

Google Play’s compatibility restrictions are actively forcing users to download APKs from sketchy sites

Disclaimer: I'm new to Reddit, and I don't know where it would be best to post this, but I would like this text to reach Google, because I'm sure a lot of people are facing this problem.

Google Play’s app visibility system makes no sense. I tried installing Cut the Rope 2 on my Xiaomi 13T. It doesn't even appear in search! I had to go to ZeptoLab's page just to see a "device not compatible" error. This isn't some dead legacy game; it’s updated and its architecture matches my modern phone perfectly. This isn't an isolated case—it happens with thousands of games. If I grab the APK from a random third-party site, it installs and runs flawlessly. Google constantly pushes Play Protect for "security," but their artificial restrictions literally force users to download apps from dubious sources, exposing them to actual danger. Why not just let us try installing the app officially? If it’s actually incompatible, the Android OS will naturally fail to install or run it. Instead, Google hides valid games and blocks official installations, leaving users with no choice but to take risks on sketchy sites just to play a game that works perfectly fine.

reddit.com
u/Kind_Prior_890 — 3 days ago