As of this writing, I’ve submitted two apps to the Windows 8 Store. The first one is Particle Art. This one took four tries to get approved. The second is a port of Falling Balls, which I just submitted for the third time and I’m pretty sure it will pass this time.
There are a few things I’ve learned in the process that I’m sure will make things go much smoother for my future submissions. And hopefully they will help anyone else going through the process.
First off…
Privacy Policy!!!!
In the current app submission flow, I feel this is not given nearly the emphasis that it should be. The wording makes it sound very conditional and almost optional. My apps do not use, store, or transmit any information from any user whatsoever, so I didn’t think I’d need this. But the truth is that it is almost certain that any app you create will need a privacy policy. This is a very good article on the subject:
http://gyorgybalassy.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/your-app-needs-a-privacy-policy-in-the-windows-store/
When I first got rejected for Particle Art, it was for lack of a privacy policy. in the online app submission process, there is a field where you enter a link to your privacy policy. I created a policy, put it on line, entered the link, and resubmitted. A few days later, rejected again. So you actually need to be able to display your privacy policy IN the app as well. There is a mechanism for this, which I discovered after a bit of digging around. Rather than go into it, I’ll link to Jesse Freeman’s article where he describes the steps:
http://jessefreeman.com/articles/windows-store-privacy-statement/
Submitted again. Rejected again. This time because the app was freezing. On the rejection report was a zipped file containing a screenshot and steps to reproduce the hang. It turns out that somehow one of the project files had somehow gotten removed from the project. It was still on the hard drive, but not referenced in the project, thus was causing a crash when it was referenced. This was another file in the settings panel and I think I had done a save-as to create the privacy policy settings, which resulted in only the new saved file being in the project, not both the original and new. Anyway, that was a simple fix – just add the file back to the project. Resubmit again, and now the app is in the store.
Lessons learned:
Next was Falling Balls. I was still not a true believer in the privacy policy and was absolutely convinced that it did not need one. Rejected. Privacy policy added in app and online. Resubmitted again. Rejected again. Reason: crash. What??? I’ve played the thing repeatedly and done just about everything you can do with it and it never once crashed. Despair set in. Combed through code. Profiled app and found some huge inefficiencies there, which I cleaned up. But there was nothing definitive. Perhaps if the app was running on a low powered ARM device… ? Who knows??? I sadly considered resubmitting and crossing my fingers hoping that solved it. Decided to take another look at the rejection. OH… there’s a details report attached as a zip file. Missed that. What do you know… a screenshot with steps on how to reproduce the issue. Duh.
Turns out that I’d left a reference to my FPS counter in one particular spot in the app. I’d removed the FPS counter just before submission though. But if you did this one function, it would try to access it and crash. Solved and fixed within 2 minutes of seeing the detail report.
Lessons learned:
Summary
See “Lessons Learned”.