[butz]

Very sad state of affairs on Play Store. Independent app developers are clearly not welcome there. I already pulled all my hobby apps from Play Store, just to sleep soundly at night without thinking how to pass yet another app review after update, when policies keep getting more ridiculous each time. To the point where one update finally was pushed to the store, and another got the same issue again. The biggest question is, how does one closes their Google Play Developer Account? There is no button in admin for that.

[esperent]

This sucks for developers, but it's also really bad for open source. The only way to get notifications working without arbitrary limits for several open source messaging apps is to run your own notifications server and then you'll need to build your own copy of the Android app for whatever service you're running.

Examples:

1. Rocketchat, which uses this as a sales funnel (I strongly recommend against using it for this reason)

2. Mattermost allows you to use their free notifications server but without any uptime guarantees unless you pay. I haven't used it enough to know if this is a problem in practice.

3. Nextcloud is pretty great, no limitations on using their notification server, but it would be problematic if you require a high degree of privacy and need a fully private setup

4. Dishonorable mention: Odoo who don't even provide source code or a license to build their mobile app yourself

Setting up a notifications server takes some technical work, but nothing too crazy.

But then, you need to get your private app published in the Play Store. Impossible. Brick wall for most people.

[saghm]

Based on another comment on this thread, it sounds like maybe the easiest way would have been to leave all those apps up without updating them, and then hopefully get a 60-day warning that you can ignore.

[reddalo]

I did ignore it and I got my developer account banned. They didn't even refund my 15 $.

[saghm]

That's incredibly frustrating, and I wish I were more surprised that it's somehow easier for someone to get banned when they don't want to than it is for someone else to intentionally close their own account