Launching the Gensokyo Radio Web App (PWA)

News

This week, we continued to work on our in-house video project, but we also spent some time investigating a change coming to the Google Play store for developers. For more details, read on.

Some time ago, the Google Play store began requiring new developers to meet additional verification requirements by applying for a DUNS number. Recently, we learned that these requirements will apply retroactively to existing developers with a grace period that lasts until near the end of 2024. For many, developer accounts represent existing businesses, and these businesses will already have the supporting documents needed to meet Google’s new requirements.

In the case of individual developers and small organizations like ours (LunarSpotlight Media / Gensokyo Radio), the required documents likely don’t exist. Furthermore, we also learned that Apple has already had these requirements in place for some time.

This means a couple things for our listeners. First, although our Android app is delisted from the store, it technically still exists in the Google Play ecosystem. When the grace period expires, installed apps may persist, but we will no longer be able to make updates to the app listing. In the case of the App Store for iOS, this news means we will likely not be able to publish an app unless we can produce the appropriate documentation.

This result is primarily related to the non-commercial nature of our service. We will continue to investigate options for app publishing in the future, but for now, we will instead be pivoting to an all-PWA focus. The PWA has been effectively soft-launched through the beta link on Discord, but in the near future, we’ll be pushing this via our website and social channels as the primary first-party option for mobile users.

That’s all for this week, do check the Discord thread for progress and other updates related to the web app, and thanks for listening!

[Knowledge #160]

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