[crazygringo]

Are you sure you don't rely on any third-party libraries that have been updated for security reasons? Are you sure there's no Android API being deprecated that you're still using?

I sympathize with the general idea that software that hasn't been updated in a long time is more likely to contain bugs and incompatibilities with newest OS versions. Whenever I've opened ancient apps on my iPhone or my Mac, they generally break either partially or entirely.

In your case I understand it might genuinely not need updates. But across the Play store as a whole, it seems like a largely beneficial policy. If there really aren't any dependencies that can/should be updated, surely you can make a tiny change to a text string somewhere, and get the added benefit of making sure your whole build chain still works? I get that it's annoying, but it really is valuable to weed out the truly unmaintained apps.

[Gamemaster1379]

No, Google is being aggressive likely due to liability.

I made an Android app that used React Native and it was the simplest thing ever. It had no auth, no telemetry, no persisted storage. Quite literally all it did was take text input and output it's braille equivalent and vice versa.

Had another one that made procedurally generated credits like you'd see at the end of a game. Same thing. No auth, no telemetry, etc.

I made a total of $3.97 for those apps. I did also receive a $350 settlement for some class action lawsuit Google lost about something they did to developers.

Closing my account removes me from potential future class action pools.

[pjmlp]

No, as someone that did Android development in the past, and still follows Android development due to its Java linage, and being a managed OS for the most part, that isn't the case.

Google has become very aggressive, you need to keep updating the apps, to specific SDK versions, even if there are zero changes to your own application in terms of what APIs got changed.

Otherwise it gets removed from PlayStore.