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Official Google Play Policy Stability Metrics Update (Nov 2022)

Discussion in 'Android' started by pixelsprite_unity, Dec 13, 2022.

  1. pixelsprite_unity

    pixelsprite_unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Sep 22, 2022
    Posts:
    17
    Hi folks,

    We would like to draw your attention to a recent Google Play policy update related to crashes & Application Not Responding (ANR) core stability metrics. We’ve highlighted the official Google changes below as well as relevant resources. We've also added tips further down on things you can do to instrument and optimize your game, and how new features in Unity 2022.2 Tech Stream and beyond can help even further.

    For some time now, Google Play policy has been to enforce an overall bad behavior threshold on crashes & ANRs. If an application exceeds the threshold, it is likely to be less discoverable on Google Play. The overall bad behavior threshold will continue and a new, per-device, threshold was introduced from November 30 2022.

    The per-device threshold affects core stability metrics reporting and discoverability in two areas:
    • Introduces user-perceived crash and ANR reporting per device model. If a title exceeds the new device bad behavior thresholds, then Google Play may also reduce the visibility of this title for users on that specific device

    • Introduces a warning in some cases on the download page of a potential user’s device if that game has been crashing a lot on similar devices
    Definitions of what counts as a user-perceived crash or ANR can be found here. Full details of the Policy changes can be found on Google’s official blog post.

    While per-device crash & ANR introductory thresholds are generous (8% December 2022), it is extremely likely that these will reduce in the future. For your audience’s benefit, and your product’s technical excellence, you should aim for a threshold less than 2%. We’ve collected some tips below to help you dig into this a bit more.

    What you can do

    Take full advantage of Android Vitals

    The Vitals dashboard has been updated to help developers with these changes and you can find more information here. This will help you get information on ANRs and crashes and any audience impact, for example a device’s popularity. You can use the device catalog to explore if issues are shared between similar device hardware. You can also subscribe to notifications from the Play Console to get alerted when a specific threshold is reached.

    Ensure you upload symbol files for each production build
    Crashes & ANRs produce a stack trace that can help you identify where the issue happened. To make sense of this you need to upload symbols for each release build to your favorite crash reporting service (not only limited to Google Play). Here is how you can export symbol files and how to upload them to Google Play.

    Optimize your game
    Follow optimisation best practices from our Unity Accelerate team.

    Integrate a Crash Reporting SDK
    While not a requirement, especially if you are working across platforms and Android stores, using a multi-platform/store Crash SDK may help you aggregate crash and ANR information across different sources. For example, Unity’s Cloud Diagnostics & Cloud Diagnostics Advanced (powered by Backtrace) provide an additional layer of diagnostics, support, and integrations.

    What is Unity doing to assist developers?
    One of our goals is to give you more visibility to understand what’s happening in your product during runtime and optimize accordingly. In Unity 2022.2 and 2023.1 we’re bringing a number of Android improvements that can help you, such as:
    • In addition to regular symbol upload, you now have the ability to add custom symbol files for more coverage in crash symbolication (Available in 2022.2)
    • Improvements to Memory API by taking advantage of Google’s Memory Advice Library behind the scenes, so that you can get better insights on the amount of memory available. (Available in 2023.1)
    • Improve Unity’s internal crash handling: In previous Unity versions, Unity’s own crashes were wrapped as Java exceptions. Now they will be reported as native. This will boost the amount of information available to you in cases where native crashes happen in the Unity engine itself, and enhance working with 3rd party crash SDKs. (Available in 2023.1)
    • Expose reportFullyDrawn API for more accurate Time to Initial Display (TTID). You can take advantage of it automatically, or call it manually to suit your product’s needs. This will help you identify slower sessions. (Available in 2023.1)
    Lastly, we welcome your feedback for more areas that you’d like visibility on. You can send us feedback, workflow pains, and suggestions for features on the Android roadmap here . Follow Platform->Mobile and New Android Features (You need to be logged in with your Unity account).

    Thank you,

    The Android Platform team
     
    konsnos likes this.