Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?

They’re not purchases, they’re leases.

Edit: it’s actually that you purchase access to their license of the media.

Because you signed (digitally) an agreement that lets them do that.

Pirate everything.

This is rage inducing.

Imagine if your car dealer was allowed to confiscate your car on a dubious claim such as "it doesn't meet the latest emissions standards," but not even telling you that.

Google needs to be fined twice the value of the apps that it stole from it's paying customers.

Because they have more money than you and, according to the US legal system, that's all that matters.

It's purchasing ≠ owning, then piracy ≠ stealing

Honestly, as somebody who really loved the early era of Android gaming, I'm really disappointed how ephemeral it all was between the Play Store delistings and the absolutely atrocious approach to backwards compatibility in the Android OS.

You mean buying isn't owning?

Well then...Piracy isn't st...I mean Piracy is wrong an immoral!

Not only that. If you buy an app, you are at the mercy of its creator. If they decide they want to fill it with ads and tracking, or switch to a subscription model, there's nothing you can do. You can't rollback updates, you can't install an older version from the play store. If they decide to remove it from the store, you won't be able to install it any more.

A "purchase" or "buy" option, especially when you get an invoice, should ALWAYS mean ownership of the product.

A "borrow" or "rent" option is one that you expect to have to return the product.

Google can't have it both ways. They either sold people software or they rented it out. Since it was never advertised or marketed as the Google Play Rental Library, they should be forced to give people the products they paid for.

Because our government representatives are idiots and don't care about us.

Very shortsighted article calling repeatedly the GDPR a "crazy" law.

Good to see more people are understanding how anti-consumer our digital distribution laws are. Sucks they had to find out this way, but people have been warning of this for years.

They have to promote piracy somehow

And these companies think piracy is unjustified. No, it's just holding out an umbrella in the rain.

They all do this. I've had games or dlc vanish off my PlayStation account. When I called to complain, since they lost the records of my purchases, they won't return them. I lost the receipts so long ago. I still have save files that require the DLCs

So Google has no "app store" it's a "rental lot" filled with a ton of malicious bullshit anyway.

Is there an easy and effective way out of their evil environment?

And on another note, why is it not backwards compatible with older apps?

I've got games and a bathroom speaker I can't access because I got a new phone. Are we just expecting devs to sit there updating their apps forever to meet new stupid requirements?

Fuck the whole Android ecosystem. It's completely broken from top to bottom.

It's their accounts, you just have access to them. They can close the whole thing tomorrow.

I don't even want to know what will happen when the valve guy retires. A publicly owned (edit: meant to write privately owned) company that could just shut down tomorrow. Many gaming publishers are aware, having their own launchers. Are you?

I'm telling you, root server, self-hosted everything and FOSS. If you can't do your things with that, it ain't worth doing anyway.

google claimed that they would start charging money for the gmail with your domain thing. when that happened I tried moving my account to a normal @gmail.com, but was not possible. So I created a new one and after manually copying all emails, files etc I contacted them to transfer my purchased apps.

Apparently it was impossible.

haven't buy anything since then

As a hobbist App developer I can tell its probably at least to some extent due to the ongoing "cost" to keep the Apps hosted and working.

Every year when a new Android beta comes out you have to go through your App, check if everything still works only to then discover something broke and now you gotta figure out how to fix it.

With a small App I hosted starting at Android 10 every major update so far caused me some trouble. Now with Android 14 this is the last version I'll support for the simple fact that I don't have the time to keep up with it.

And mind you this was a rather simple small App, I can't imagine what a headache it is to maintain a game.

Digital purchases are not you buying the product. It's you buying limited and reversible access to the license to download the file. When you agree to the TOS, you agree to this arrangement.

If you want to actually own something, you should be buying a physical copy of it.

This is why I stick to open source software for anything truly important.

Gaming's a mix of open source, physical retro games and the least abusive free to play games.

Harebrained Schemes' critically acclaimed Shadowrun games disappeared from the Play store years ago -- I played them back in the day on my Shield K1. The apps supported modding, and changes to the Google Play TOS meant they would require significant updates to make them compliant with new policies.

Harebrained worked on it halfheartedly for a year or two, but eventually decided not to bother updating them, so they were gone forever.

Because you rented it and you we're happy!

You'll own nothing and you'll be happy

Because when your legislators write laws (read, have them handed to them by the party with a direct interest) they do it for campaign donations because everything is money. Capitalism's end stage is corporatocracy and oligarchy. Surprise, we're there! Legislation in a healthy democracy/republic is written for the benefit of the citizens, but we stopped being a democratic republic long ago. In capitalism, legislation is written to maximize profit at all expense, including the health, welfare, and best interests of the citizens.

This isn't new, study the history of the East India Trading Company. The difference is lack a monarch to dissolve the company (and it's not just one company anymore). The founders remembered the lesson of East India Trading Company and corporate charters in the US used to be temporary, and you had to show a benefit to the citizens. It's one reason conservatives, republicans, and capitalists don't want strong education and history lessons. Corporations in the past were NOT people, and they better benefit society or they could swiftly have their charter revoked and dissolved.

This is a repeat, but even more successful than in the past. But when your populous has no education it seems brand new!

EDIT: Low effort/research further reading

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/cbo-american-wealth-inequality/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-with-unlimited-political-bribery-63262/

It's because we are buying access to product not the product itself. Many websites are doing that, I lost a few purchased albums on Bandcamp for whatever reason they see fit. With one band it was done so bad that I still see their albums in my wishlist even though they just one day went and deleted their whole band account apparently without stating reason or answering email.

Because god is dead and the devil thinks its funny.

I’m gonna guess that it involves something in the Terms and Agreement that no one actually reads.

Because you trusted them.

Because it's in the EULA?

Fuckingcapitalists

Usually distribution rights or breach of contract

Get a custom OS on Android and install free standing apks. Actually, many apks are hacked anyway. So find and just install them. No need to change OS. But rooting+custom OS might offer ways to make it way easier.

So, what actually happened with Wayward Souls? Why was it removed?

Apple probably does the same thing. You pay 20 bucks for an app that gets taken down from the store: does the next phone get it still?

epic games tells us we can pull out of any purchase

Coz you bought their NFT dumb dumb...