How I tried to make money on Pokemon Go

Sites and publics, news publications, large PR actions, game guides, branded clothing and mobile apps. Much of this was created in order to earn and push up on the wave of HYIP around Pokemon Go. Some have succeeded. The rest is not very.

The story of the development of applications, intellectual property and "evil uncles" from Google under the cut.

Introduction

In late July, having already played enough in Pokemon Go, I decided to develop an application that allows the user to have quick access to the list of Pokemon and their characteristics. There are a lot of similar applications in the section “Books and Reference Books” on Google Play, but most of them are frank trash. The only application that in my opinion deserves attention is PokeInfo. However, it does not meet the requirements of the Pokemon Go player due to the discrepancy of the data part.

To have the functionality of quick access to the characteristics of Pokemon is quite important during the battles for the gym. An experienced player probably knows that every Pokemon and its abilities are of a certain type. For example, in the battle with the fire pokemon, effectively use the skills of the water type. Applying this knowledge and choosing the right pokemon, the player has the advantage and high chances to win over a much stronger pokemon.
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Motivated by the fact that the application has a chance to be useful to many players, I immediately began to develop.

Development

By virtue of my knowledge, I used Unity as the development environment. Yes, not the most suitable option to use the game engine for such purposes. But not about that.

First of all, I went through the Internet and collected all the significant characteristics of Pokemon in one table :


By exporting the table to JSON format and writing a small parser, it exported all data to Unity:


And wrapped it all up in a fairly tolerable friendly interface with quick navigation, search, sorting and filters:


All is ready. The only important problem that remained indiscriminately - the application is very intensively sits the battery. By the way, Pokemon Go was also developed on Unity and has the same symptoms. The question of monetization has been postponed until the statistics on the downloads of the application dials at least a couple of thousand.

Publication

First strike

Having prepared a short description, screenshots, icon and advertising image, I sent it for review before publishing the first alpha version on Google Play. The state of joy from the completed work a few hours later was replaced by chagrin. The application has been removed, and an email came from Google Play Support with the following content:


Which means that I have violated one of the rules for publishing on Google Play "Giving myself up for another person and infringing intellectual property rights." No comments about what part of the description of my application violates this rule, I was not provided. It is right - Google is not obliged to understand and provide information on points about what exactly you need to fix.

Second strike

Without thinking, I came to the conclusion that the problem is in the mention of another application (Pokemon Go) in my description and name of the application. Having a little corrected this data, I sent the application with a new working name for checking. And again strike!

After reading about such cases on the Internet, I learned that a developer account can be permanently blocked in the case of 2-3 similar strikes. And then I seriously thought that you should not be thoughtless about the publication. I contacted one of the developers who had a Pokemon Go guide on their list of applications and found out that the problem lies in the official Pokemon artwork on my screenshots. Art was really official. According to the terms of use on the official website pokemon.com, I violated the law on intellectual property.

By the way, on a fairly large portal wikia.com you can find a section dedicated to Pokémon. In this section, as the picture above, the official art hangs over the description of each Pokemon. On each page of the pokemon in the basement of the site hangs the inscription "Pokémon Wiki is a Fandom Games Community. Content is available under CC-BY-SA ". According to their license CC-BY-SA, all content on the site page can be used for commercial purposes. But this particular license encouraged me when I downloaded images into my application. And look at dozens of other similar applications on Google Play! Some of the screenshots show off the very official art.

After searching for an unofficial Pokémon art for use in my application, I came to the conclusion that it would be possible to use either low-grade pictures “by hand in 5 minutes” or a set of images painted in a completely different style. This situation did not suit me, and I decided to take a serious step - to draw all 151 Pokemons myself! A lot of time and effort was spent on this, but the result more than pleased me.


Hoping that the problem was precisely the use of official art, for the third time I sent my application with updated screenshots for review. Only this time right away in the beta release.

Third strike

And ... bingo! The application was published and even downloaded a couple of times at the link to the beta test. Due to a rather long delay, I decided not to pull and immediately sent a beta release to the working version for publication on Google Play. And again a strike with a letter of the same content!

But why in the beta release, my application was accepted and deleted in the worker? In addition to the “make working version” button, I did not press anything and the data for Google Play remained unchanged. In addition, I could have been in a beta release for several months, collecting crash statistics and ratings. It's a shame probably this way to permanently lose the application, which was not even lit up in the market.

I decided to send an appeal. This is the only way to get in touch with a live person from the support team. I was answered with the following content:


From the letter it is clear that the name and description of my application can be misleading users. And, ostensibly, it is not clear whether my application is connected with Pokemon Go. But, forgive, to what part of my description do these statements relate? Rather, where else should I indicate my innocence to Pokemon Go?

Fourth strike

After taking a short break, I sent a new application to check for the fourth time, changing the data for Google Play so that Pokemon Go is not mentioned in one line. The same applies to advertising images and icons - they have become completely unique! Moreover, I removed from the screenshots any images of Pokemon. This time, my application was not deleted, but I received a letter with the following content:

Fifth strike

I am recommended to use the preposition for. Since the application was not removed, I simply changed the name to "DEX + for Pokemon GO". And again strike without explanation. Well, one thing pleases - the developer account remained intact.

Conclusion

And now look at the names of the list of applications that appear in Google Play to this day. I very much doubt that Niantic (the developers of Pokemon Go) and Nintendo give each such application exclusive rights to use the name of its game. Moreover, many applications from this list do not have a disclaimer in the description, saying that all rights belong to Nintendo and blah blah blah ...

As a result, I have an Android application on my hands, which took more than 50 hours to develop from the beginning to the current moment. Where to put it? What is the difference between the name and description of my application from other similar moderators? These questions remain a mystery to me, but now I know one thing for sure: It’s worth thinking five times before you start creating your product that is somehow connected with a well-known brand or brand.