Hey guys, my name is Ying and I am an iOS/macOS developer. Today, I'd like to share something happened to me recently.
I became an iOS developer in 2013, since then, I developed many iOS/macOS apps. Some of them are products of the company that I work for, others were developed by myself.
I am not trying to show off, but in the past few years, I have built a good reputation in the industry, at least in my country. Here are some achievements that I wanted to show you:
- Best of App Store 2016 (China, the third place, and the only one indie developer among all winners)
- Featured by app store for many times (I don't remember the accurate number, but at least it's about 30+ times)
- Featured by the "Today" stories
- Achieved 1M users (It's not easy as an indie project, just by myself)
I have been working on my apps so hard to make them better, but things changed today.
This morning, I received an email from Apple, I was told that my developer membership has been terminated, this is a huge blow to me, apparently.
The letter says that I have fraudulent conduct, but I believe that's not true.
I discussed this incident with some of my friends, and they told me if Apple wants to terminate any account, they will send a warning message to the developer, and there will be like 15 days for adjusting/arguing.
Sometimes, Apple will remove an app from the App Store if the developer violated the agreement, but none of those happened to me.
Apple just sent an email to me, and removed all my apps at the same time.
I am disappointed, of course. But a more important issue is that I don't know what went wrong, and how to fix it.
Apple is super confident about their judgment, they applied the most serious punishment to me, without mentioning any details.
Yeah, from 2013 to 2019, it wasn't too long, also not too short. I am already kind of tired, and Apple says: hey, get out! I think it's not a bad idea for both of us.
However, could you please tell me the specific reason? I don't want to leave like a bad person! I have to figure out what's wrong.
Even I want to move forward for something else, I want the last piece on my mind the entire journey is pleasant, not something like this.
If you have any resources that could help, I appreciate if you contact me with: 0x00eeee@gmail.com Thank you!
I don't feel so sorry about this, since I have done many interesting things in the past few years, it's pretty much enough for me. But I still want to share my story, as an "old" indie developer.
The things happened to me, it will happen again to another indie hacker, who knows?
Believe or not, the era of indie developers has passed.