Unity Android Free Game develop – Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID issue

This is my small part of experiences. I released my Free game RoboQuads: War Robots on Google Play. Game is based on Unity engine, it’s free version. And after 9 days on Google Play – it was deleted with message:

Issue: Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID policy and section 4.8 of the Developer Distribution Agreement

Let’s get it sorted.

First of all – my game is totally free, without any Advertising and collection of any user data. I just wanted to make a game for players – that’s all. And I used Free version of Unity engine. And if you will check your device Android monitor (with disabled internet connection at least and your game should be running) – you can note some errors from Unity there – like this:

This is Unity send statistics on their server. Here is some discussion with explanation. As I see – in Pro version of Unity you will be able to disable those statistics, but in free – no.

So basically – as Google said – I need to add some button to my game – so users can disable this. I added such using Unity Data Privacy Plug-in. After playing with design settings it look like this:

And then – in my application dashboard – I need to add Privacy Policy URL. First of all – I need to create it – like this. Then add this URL to your application settings and create new version release. Wait for several hours (it took almost whole day for my case) – and app will be restored.

Actually – it will be good when Unity will tell you (at least first time when you make a build) – “You are using Free version – and we will collect user stats in background – use Privacy Policy”. But we are developers – so all
responsibility fall on our shoulders 😉

If this is helpful for you – share this article on social media, and try my games. Have a nice day 🙂