I had looked at the Samsung app store a long time ago, but didn’t bother trying to get listed there, because they had some pretty strict requirements, and weird image sizes. But recently, some people on the libGDX forum have been reporting good download numbers from the Samsung store. In some cases, 3-4x the downloads from the Google Play store. This kinda makes sense – Samsung sells low-end devices everywhere, I’ve seen several in India. And I suspect many of these devices don’t come with access to Google Play. So getting listed on their store could get an app exposed to markets that it can’t reach through Google Play.

So I signed up, submitted the game, and waited. They rejected the game on 31 counts. 30 of those boiled down to 2 bugs that they reproduced across multiple devices. I’ve fixed those bugs. But the final issue was the most interesting one:

Due to the local moral values or laws, content containing partially clothed, bikini or lingerie is not allowed in following countries: Algeria, Bahrain, China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Nordic countries (Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden), Philippines

At first I thought they were complaining about ads, and I figured I’d need to adjust the filters on AdMob. It took me a day to realize that they were complaining about the art of Neil Rajah himself! Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do about that, so I guess Neil Rajah won’t be coming to a Samsung app store near you anytime soon. I’ll probably try Bus Jumper one of these days.