Notes from Google Play: making Play work for everyone

So let me share more about some of my favorite tools and programs that we recently launched with this goal in mind.

Apps and games by everyone

We’re also excited to continue investing in programs designed to help grow businesses both big and small. These include the Google Play Partner Program which launched in March and is designed to help larger games businesses reach their growth and performance goals. We also just opened submissions for the Indie Games Accelerator and Indie Games Festival programs. We were particularly inspired by the alumni of the 2021 edition, and you can hear directly from Jimjum Studios in Israel, who create games that encourage kindness, community building, and generosity, in the first episode of Google Play Coffee breaks:

Beyond the size of the company, apps and games are built and run by people. So we are continuously investing in programs to drive diversity in the ecosystem and empower the next generations of app and game makers. Programs like Change the Game and our investment in organizations driving positive change in the games industry are just a couple of the programs I’m particularly proud of.

In order to help with this, we’ve made some updates that make it easier for everyone to access apps and games at a price that is right for them, which in turn helps you better monetise your apps or games. For example, you asked for more flexibility and less complexity in how you sell your subscriptions, so we launched new subscription capabilities. You can now create multiple base plans and offers for each subscription, all while significantly reducing the cost and complexity of managing an ever-increasing number of SKUs. Whether your aim is to better connect with people that are new to your business, or to retain your loyal users, you have the ability to create offers for everyone.

We’ve also invested in new tools that help people pay for your apps and games using the methods that suit them best, helping to improve your monetisation. Google Play Commerce provides buyer support in over 170 countries, and we’ve further increased access by adding to our payment method library, which now includes over 300 local payment methods in 70 countries. We also made changes to help you better adapt to local purchasing power by adding the option to lower prices, starting at the equivalent of 5 US cents in any market.

Celebrating you

I started by highlighting OLIO as a business that was brought into existence by newcomers to the apps space, and yet managed to have a positive impact across the world. This is only one of so many inspiring examples out there. We’ve just launched #WeArePlay, a new campaign that celebrates you, the global community of people behind apps and games, and your unique stories. It represents teams of all sizes — some founded by longtime coders and others by tech newcomers, some based in big cities and others in smaller towns. These are short stories that tell personal journeys of making apps or games that are solving a problem or bringing joy to people everywhere.