Google Play subscription changes (Account hold, restore)

Google recently announced that Account Hold and Restore become mandatory on 1 Nov 2020. As I do not know what UnityIAP does internally (depending on your internal implementation, changes might or might not be required), I just want to check if these soon mandatory features result in any changes (including semantic changes) in your Subscription Info class.

 

It should work. "During account hold, the subscription is not returned by BillingClient.queryPurchases()." so it appears we don't need to do anything. We would need to test and confirm however.

 

Any Update on this? Do we need to handle anything?

 

Please share the results of your testing. We have no updates at this end.

 

"Account hold is a subscription state that begins when a user's form of payment fails and any associated grace period has ended without payment resolution. When a subscription enters into account hold, you should block access to your content or service. The account hold period lasts for up to 30 days"

this is difficult to test right, since theres no cancellation option in test mode so wanted to confirm,

 

If that is the case, and you are concerned, I would suggest that you try with an actual .99 cent product purchase. Be sure to capture the device logs for troubleshooting https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-to-capturing-device-logs-on-android.528680/

 

Google guides users through appropriate messages when subscription status is Account Hold.

Google document indicates that the subscription status appears below when it is in Account Hold (On Hold).
- expiryTimeMillis: Past
- paymentState: 0 (Payment Pending)
- autoRenewing: True

Because currently Unity IAP's SubscriptionInfo has no paymentState information, it is not known whether the subscription status is Account Hold.

I wonder if there is a way to know if the subscription status is Account Hold?

Of course, there is no problem with processing subscriptionExpireDate values in SubscriptionInfo, even if they are in Account Hold status.

However, I'm afraid it's a violation of Google policy when there's no processing when the subscription status is Account Hold.

- Handling the subscription lifecycle: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/subs#lifecycle
- Account hold: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/subs#account-hold

 

Sorry I don't quite follow this statement "However, I'm afraid it's a violation of Google policy when there's no processing when the subscription status is Account Hold.". So doing no processing (nothing?) is a violation? But to your point, it sounds like a possible receipt change that we would indeed need to account for. We will look into this.

 

I'm sorry for my poor English.

I don't know if it is a violation of Google policy or not.
So, in order to avoid this issue even further, I'm trying to follow Google's guidance.

I find another article and post a link.
- New features to acquire and retain subscribers: https://android-developers.googlebl...atures-to-acquire-and-retain-subscribers.html

Thank you for looking to this issue!
The best result is that we don't have to do anything.

 

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/01/faster-renewals-for-test-subscriptions.html
At the end of this it had tips on how we can test the account hold in test mode,
I checked this and backend wise it worked fine, meaning i got gmail that renewal purchase has failed and it will cancelled if not reactivated, and then before 10 min ended i activated the card again in the play store and again i got saying subscription is renewed succesfully.

According the account hold information in below link
https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/subs#account-hold

1.
When a subscription enters into account hold, you should block access to your content or service. The account hold period lasts for up to 30 days.

2. "When a user enters into account hold, you should leverage Real-time developer notifications to inform your user why access to the subscription was suspended. Within your app, you should provide a message with instructions on how to fix their payment method and regain access to the subscription. Your message should include a link to the Google Play subscription settings so that they can fix their payment method. As an example, you might use a message similar to the following:"

I wanted to know
1. if the above 2 are a must to handle by the google play rules?
2. If so how we can handle it

 

As mentioned previously, we will look into this and will likely be considered a feature request if we are able to support it. It will be several weeks to months before we can likely address feature requests, we currently have a backlog of task items.

 

Hi Jeff,

I do understand you need to prioritize certain features over others and I can imagine your list is quite long.
However, Google states we need to implement the account hold feature by November 1st.

I couldn't find any information on whether these changes could break our current IAP system in the Android Developers Blog. Does that mean every purchase made after that date could potentially fail because Unity's current IAP plugin isn't compatible with the changes Google made ?

Thank you.

 

Interesting, I'll check with the IAP team.

 

We don't have immediate plans to support this feature. We don't believe it will affect purchasing.

 

@JeffDUnity3D This is popping up as a message in my Google Play console since this morning.

Changes to subscription settings
You must have account hold and restore implemented in your app by November 1, 2020. Subscription pause and resubscribe will also be enabled by default, unless you explicitly opt out.

Am I safe to assume from the previous posts that Unity IAP is compliant with this requirement without my taking any further action?

 

Hmmm, that is concerning. I will pass this along.

 

Also interested.

Google does not specify what will happen if we don't support Account Hold and Restore.

 

After having 1 user buy iap in my game.I received a notifcations as this below.How can I fixed this and update new version to google play.thank you so much!

 

Got the same warning, I've emailed the google team but I don't have my hopes high.

To the Unity Team. If our app does not use subscription services, would we need to make the account hold and restore changes as well?

 

So I want to ask if we don't fixed warning and then google have suspend our Apps?

 

so, has any progress ? i'm faced the same problem..

 

I also have the same question. Our game uses the Unity IAP plugin but we are not selling any subscriptions, we only have non-consumable iAPs.
I saw this warning now for "Changes to subscription settings" on the google play console so wondering if anything needs to be done or if Unity iAP plugin will continue to work for non-subscription iAPs?

 

Please see my previous post https://forum.unity.com/threads/goo...ges-account-hold-restore.931914/#post-6402793

 

hello is there a docs for Subscription pause and resubscribe in unity?

 

Hello there, I am using In App Purchasing Version 2.0.3, I am receiving the same message from google, do I need to update the plugin, or should I keep this one that is working in production for years?

Thank you very much.

 

Please review previous messages. When we have information to share, we will post here https://forum.unity.com/threads/goo...ges-account-hold-restore.931914/#post-6409140

 

Thanks for your help with this so far.
At the risk of being signposted to a previous post and after reading the thread some more clarity would be really helpful.

• Will Unity support this
• When will we know if Unity will support this

Any more information on what this means would be really helpful so we can plan and respond to keep our Android subs in live.

 

Thank you all for your messages. I'd like to clarify some things about Google's message.

I want to reassure you all, this message is sent to all Google clients. Even we have the message on our internal test apps. This is a welcome change from Google but does not require anything to be done on the app side.

The changes only affect devs using a backend to validate and retrieve information from the Google Rest API. If you have a backend calling the Google Rest API, you must act as soon as possible and update your backend with the new changes. That being said, I feel like I must reiterate, nothing needs to be done for Unity IAP.

Unity IAP uses the AIDL version of Google.
https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/api

Don't be alarmed we know that the AIDL version will be sunsetting soon. We are hard at work getting a new version of IAP with Google Billing v3 enabled, but for now the current version of IAP will work fine after the 1st of November. More news and information will be given when the time comes.

If you need more information about Goggle's Rest API and how to use it to validate your subscriptions and use their new features please visit https://developers.google.com/android-publisher#subscriptions

 

Thx for this post.

 

Thank you for the clarification. wanted bit more details on it.

"When a subscription enters into account hold, you should block access to your content or service. The account hold period lasts for up to 30 days"
"Your message should include a link to the Google Play subscription settings so that they can fix their payment method. As an example, you might use a message similar to the following:
"There is a problem with your subscription. Click here to go to the
Google Play subscription settings to fix your payment method."

https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/subs#account-hold - this link talks about how we should handle in client side once player goes into account hold state as sent above.
Currently even though account hold itself may work but users will not get any notification of it inside the game.

Is that fine as per google play? no changes are still required on our end?

 

Thanks for the info.

Let me guess how it works: If an account goes into the dreaded "hold" state, SubscriptionInfo.isSubscribed() will return "FALSE" (or maybe "UNSUPPORTED"). Right? Also, is that enough?

And, What about the Restore part? is the current UnityIAP compliant with it?

 

Hey @unitylicense19,

Indeed nothing needs to be done on your side.

I don't want to bore you with how we implement Google Billing in Unity IAP but basically we call `queryPurchases` and send those purchases back and when the account is on hold it is not returned

During account hold, the subscription is not returned by BillingClient.queryPurchases().

from https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/subs#account-hold

So everything is handled already.

 

Sorry for repeating myself, but again even though backend wise it will work and we don't need to any changes but the player will not get any notification from the game itself right, that is notifying player that your account is on hold and you have to fix your card

If this notification is required, obviously script side we have to do changes right?

 

Not that we are aware of.

 

Is there ANY way to reliably access the information through Unity IAP which would tell the app that the subscription status is 'on hold'?

 

Have you tested with an account that is On Hold? It's our understanding that no receipt will be returned.

 

Hi everyone
I think this might be useful https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/unity

 

My question would fall under the mandatory features, namely account hold and resubscribe. As it is, I cannot enable "Resubscribe" under the following message on the console: "Resubscribe is not currently available for your users because your app does not use Billing Library 2.0 in all active APKs."

This feature is supposed to be mandatory, although as usual, Google does an exceptionally horrible job at explaining details and their support is worse than useless. So, since this feature is mandatory, and my apks can't enable it because Unity uses AIDL, wouldn't that imply I'd have to change something? Implement Google Billing v3 manually?

 

No, that is not our understanding. It's only mandatory if you (the developer) are already and separately using their back end REST API to query subscription status.

 

I see. I was quite concerned because my main app relies solely on subscriptions, and since Google doesn't really state what happens after the new features come into place, I'm quite nervous. I do not use their REST API.

I did prepare an apk with Google Billing Library v3, but I did find it odd that on Google docs themselves, it says that billing library v3 does not support Unity's SubscriptionManager class, which would make the whole ordeal impossible for Unity devs. It's good to get confirmation from you about this, I had a few dev friends losing their minds with this as well. Thank you.

 

@Archieonic Could I encourage you to start a new thread with regard to SubscriptionManager? That's a separate (and likely high priority) issue from Account Hold being discussed here, thanks. It will get better attention that way.

 

Oh no, I assume Unity folks are already aware as they work on integrating Billing Library 3 into Unity's IAP (based on another thread. This only relates to users manually adding Billing Library 3.0). I only mentioned it since it confirms what you are saying that we Unity users don't have to make any changes, since Google's docs themselves mention it. I tried contacting Google support but they didn't know the answer.

Not gonna lie, still a bit nervous about November 1st when this change kicks in since my main app relies only on subscriptions. Will check back in after the date.

 

Yes, SubscriptionManager is a separate topic but I will reply once here. We have updated the SubscriptionManager to work with the new billing library when we release that version.

 

Env :
Unity 2018.4.17f
Unity IAP 2.0.3

I emailed Google for asking that is it essential to migrate from AIDL.
They said migrating to Google Billing Lib is essential.

Via this link (https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/unity#subscription-manager)
I don't even know how to use SubscriptionManager.
We've used SubscriptionManager.
@JeffDUnity3D You mentioned SubscriptionManager with the new billing library, How could I use it?
which version of Unity IAP ???

Even though It's Nov 9th, There's no problem on my App, I'm just watching... Is it Ok?

 

I would suggest a Google search for "unity iap subscription manager" If that doesn't help, then please open a new thread, this thread is discussing Account Hold. If you open a new thread, please clarify the following because they mean the opposite:

I don't even know how to use SubscriptionManager.
We've used SubscriptionManager.

 

Hello @swlee_unity,

Yesterday we officially released IAP 2.2.0 on the Asset Store which includes Google Billing Library v3.0.1 and the migration / deprecation to Google AIDL.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...0-is-now-available.415517/page-2#post-6506532

If you update today you will not have to worry about the headache of updating your apps before the deadline which will happen in 2021, when Google officially deprecates their Google AIDL services.

About the topic of SubscriptionManager, please refer to the post here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/google-play-billing-v3-and-subscriptionmanager.981699/#post-6508748

 

Hi,

When I follow the Google play Doc: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/unity

When all is done, I have that build error who is returned :

Like you say, you have included Google Billing Library v3.0.1.
The problem that I have, if I don't import Google Billing Library v3.0.1 package, I have missing package error

in the editor for Google.Play.Billing.GooglePlayStoreModule.

How can I fix it ? For the moment, I have removing implementation(name: 'billing-3.0.1', ext:'aar') from gradle to compile.
I'm not sure that's a good idea...

Regards

 

Please do not follow the Google documentation.

 

Ok, I suppose I must keep this line like it was before :

And I guess this module has implemented google billing , it is correct ?

In any case you have to do something with google to have a common doc.
It's a waste of time, two weeks in my case, because of their document... But mostly because of their new billing rules.
And with google, you can't afford not to do what they say (very fast to put your game offline + slow to react with the client = minimum 1 week offline).

Regards

 

We don't have any control over what Google publishes. And yes, Unity IAP already uses the Google Billing Library on Android, and Apple StoreKit on iOS.