How to launch your game on Android (Google Play)

Launching a game on Android is the most open path among the major stores: there is no concept approval before you start, sign-up is immediate and the fee is paid once. In exchange, Google asks for things that do not exist on console: its own package format, a testing period before release, and content and privacy forms that have to match what the game actually does. This guide covers each part.

The Google Play Console account

Everything happens in the Google Play Console, and the developer account costs a one-time fee of US$ 25, with no monthly charge. When you open it, you choose between a personal account and an organization account, and that choice changes what comes next: an organization needs a D-U-N-S number to prove the company exists, and a personal account goes through identity verification.

Google also requires the developer's name and address to appear on the app's store listing. If you publish as a studio, that is one more reason to open the account as an organization rather than in an individual's name.

The closed test before release

This is the point that surprises PC developers the most. Personal accounts created from late 2023 onwards cannot publish straight to production: first you have to run a closed test with at least 12 testers for 14 days in a row, and only then apply for production access. The testers have to stay opted in for the whole period, so losing people along the way restarts the count in practice.

Organization accounts are exempt from that requirement, but they still use the same testing tracks, which are worth it on their own: internal testing (fast, for the team), closed testing (a chosen group) and open testing (anyone with the link). The tracks are where you fix a crash on a specific device before the store rating starts counting.

The package: Android App Bundle

New games are no longer uploaded as an APK. The required format is the Android App Bundle (.aab): you send one package with everything, and Google generates a tailored APK for each device, carrying only the architecture, screen density and language that player needs. In practice the download comes out much smaller than a universal APK.

Two technical rules come with the format:

• 64-bit is mandatory. Every native library needs an arm64 build. An up-to-date game engine handles this on its own, but an old third-party plugin is usually where the problem shows up;
• a recent API level. Google requires the game to be built targeting a recent Android version, and it raises that bar every year. A game left untouched for a few years stops accepting updates and, later, disappears from search on newer devices.

For large games there is Play Asset Delivery, which delivers part of the content on demand or after installation, instead of everything in the initial package.

Age rating and the content forms

The rating comes from an IARC questionnaire, filled in inside the Console itself. It is free and returns ratings for several countries at once, including the Brazilian one. Answering optimistically to chase a lower age bracket is the fastest route to a suspension later, because Google looks at the rating again whenever someone reports the game.

Beyond that, two forms tend to hold up the first submission from anyone who has never published:

• Data safety: what the game collects, what it is used for, whether it is shared and whether deletion can be requested. It has to match what the SDKs actually do, ads and analytics included;
• a privacy policy: a public, reachable address, required for practically every game today.

Monetization

In-game purchases go through Google Play Billing. The standard commission is 30%, dropping to 15% on each developer's first tier of annual revenue and on subscriptions. In some countries, regulatory decisions have opened up alternative billing options, always with their own rules declared in the store.

Paid games, free with ads and free with in-game purchases all coexist on Android, and the choice changes what you have to declare: a game with ads has to state that on the listing and answer for it in the data form.

What porting to Android demands from the game

The technical part is rarely the build. It is what comes after it:

• touch controls, which are not a console controller with buttons drawn on the screen. Large touch areas, no dead corners and a gamepad option for players who have one;
• screen variety, from the narrow phone to the tablet, with a camera cutout and a navigation bar in the way;
• performance and battery, because the device slows down when it heats up. A game that runs at 60 frames for the first two minutes and drops to 30 after that is rejected by the player, not by the store;
• memory, the hardest limit on entry-level devices, which are exactly the most common ones in Brazil and India;
• resuming, because calls, notifications and app switching happen all the time. The game has to pause and come back without losing progress.

How Nuntius Games handles your Android launch

Android is part of the same porting and publishing fronts as the consoles. Nuntius handles registration in the Google Play Console, adapting the build to the required format, the touch controls, QA on real devices across different tiers, the age rating and data forms, the testing tracks and the release itself.

The studio keeps making the decisions about the game. The store paperwork and the engineering of the mobile version stay with Nuntius.

FAQ