Building An Indie App Business #72

From Panic to Relief: Surviving an App Store Crisis

Welcome back to another issue of my weekly indie log. I have to admit, I missed last week's post. I had some private appointments and honestly, I just didn't have the motivation or discipline to sit down and write. Sometimes life gets in the way, and it's easy to lose track or feel a bit lazy. But I always try to stick to one simple rule: missing one week is okay, but missing two weeks in a row is not allowed. So here I am back again, ready to share what happened in my indie app journey this week.

Last week, something really bad happened to my app business. My most popular and highest-earning app, HabitKit, suddenly got removed from all the EU App Stores. Maybe you don't know this, but every country actually has its own version of the App Store. So, if you search for "Habit Tracker" in the US, you will see different results than someone searching in Germany or France. This setup lets developers use different keywords for each country and also makes it possible for Apple to follow the different laws in every region. Because of this, things can get complicated very quickly, and in my case, it led to a big problem for my app.

So, why did the app get removed? Well, some time ago there was a change in the EU App Stores because of the EU Digital Services Act. This law says that "traders" (which means anyone who offers their app in the App Store to make money) have to show their business address and phone number on the public app page. Here begins the trouble: I recently rented a new postal address for my business and wanted to change it in the App Store as soon as possible, so last week I tried to update the address.

24 hours later, I got an email from Apple saying that I needed to send more documents so they could check if my new address was real. Since the address was brand new, the only document I had was the rental contract, so I quickly sent that over to them. I honestly thought that would be enough and the problem was solved, so I just went on with my day and didn't worry about it anymore. I mean, what should happen? Would you expect something as bad as having your app removed from the App Store?

A few hours later, I got another email from Apple saying that the document I sent was not enough and that I needed to use a different address. I was a bit annoyed, but I thought, "Okay, I will just switch back to the old address for now and try again later when I have other (better?) documents." So I went into App Store Connect and changed the address back to the old one. After that, the status for the address verification changed to "In Review" again. Again, I really believed that this would fix the problem and that my app would just stay online in the App Store like before, so I didn't worry much about it anymore.

While I was sleeping, I got an email from a friendly person who wanted to download HabitKit and was wondering why the app wasn't available in Italy. He even joked about it, since I'm from the EU myself but my app wasn't showing up there. When I woke up and read his message, I first thought he must have made a mistake or maybe just missed the app while searching. But after thinking about it for a few minutes, I started to feel a bit unsure. Just to be safe, I decided to check the German App Store myself to see if HabitKit was still there or if something strange was really going on.

To my shock, I found out that HabitKit was actually gone from every EU App Store. Apple had just removed it because the address I used (which they already checked and approved a year ago) was still "In Review". When I realized this, I totally panicked. I started thinking about all the worst-case scenarios, like my business falling apart overnight. I was really scared that all my ratings and reviews might disappear, or that my app would lose its ranking for important keywords. It was a horrible feeling, and for a moment I just sat there, not knowing what to do next.

I started searching for a way to contact Apple as a developer, hoping to get help as fast as possible. Unfortunately, there was no phone support available at that time, so the only option was to use their ticket system and write an email. I spent some time writing a detailed message, explaining the whole situation and asking them to please review my address as quickly as they could. I was really stressed and just wanted the app to be back online. In the end, the address got reviewed and verified even before I got any reply to my support ticket.

After about six more hours of waiting, they finally finished checking my address and, thank god, HabitKit was back online in the EU App Store right away. I was so relieved to see that all the ratings, reviews, and rankings were still there, and nothing important was lost. In the end, I only lost some downloads and a bit of revenue during the time HabitKit was missing from the store. Still, it was a really stressful experience for me, because this was the first time in three years that my app was completely gone from the App Store, even if it was just for around 24 hours.

So, what can I learn from this? It was a really scary moment for me as a full-time indie developer to see my main source of income just disappear because of something like this. I really wish Apple would have given me a warning or at least a deadline to fix the address problem, instead of just removing the app without any notice. After this experience, I don't think I will ever try to change my address again unless I really have to, because it was just too stressful. The strange part is, I probably wouldn't have even noticed that my app was offline if that person hadn't emailed me, because I only check my revenue numbers every day and they looked pretty normal. Most of my income actually comes from the US, UK, and Canada, so the missing EU revenue didn't make a big difference in the daily numbers. Still, this whole thing showed me how quickly things can go wrong, even if you think everything is fine.