I hear you. You're not alone. I developed games on the Apple App store for about half a decade or 5 years with 0 recognition from Apple. We developed a lot of games over the wasted years. Our company was forced to quit because we don't have any more money to invest on the App Store. We couldn't get even 1 of our games featured by the headquarters of Apple. We localized 22 languages for most of our games, used their latest features, latest technologies, unique, Gamepad enabled etc..... We pretty much did everything you need to do to get featured in accordance with their criteria listed and of course after we filled out the feature form so over and over and over and over even after updating the version with no reply from Apple for featuring any of them.
It was a waste of time and investment for us. If I knew how impossible it was to get featured by Apple, I would have never pursued this as a full-time career. We lost more money than gained anything. We probably made approximately only $12-$14 dollars in 5 years (PEANUT SHELLS, not even the peanuts). We basically went broke, and we owed more money than we made. We were getting very close to getting reprocessed. I could have worked at McDonalds and flipped burgers for 5 years then waste more money on the App Store as a developer.
Apple doesn't seem to care about their developers in my opinion. They only care about the big publishing companies. I believe that they sometimes feature simple games in order to target new developers. So basically, this might be their marketing strategy to target new developers so they can make more money $$$$. They make billions of dollars on developers who pay those $100 yearly developers' fee. I believe they may only help developers they know or met, so I suspect they are playing favoritism with their developers. I've seen new developers with no experience get promoted immediately by the App store promotion team. Some even got promoted with no ratings, no reviews, on their launch period etc... That was very suspicious for me to see as if they are taking bribes under the table. Some games are very dull and boring, 2 color, poor design and controls. It felt as if 3rd grader developed them, and they get featured right away by Apple, and of course our hard work with a bigger game app, better controls etc. goes down the drain.
When we decided to quit the App Store because it was pointless to fill out the feature form at this point after 5 years of nothing. So, we left our account untouched meaning we weren't going to give them the $100 renewal fee, they all of a sudden started to send out emails that our account is expiring, so we ignored them like they ignored us for the past 5 years (treat people the way they treat you). They gave us an extra month so that we will think about out. We ignored them again, why should we give a Trillion-dollar company $100 to get rich off of us and they give us no recognition!! They made the decision not to help keep us as developers, so why should we renew our license with them. I won't even give them $1 dollar if they Offred us to renew our license. They basically seem to only care about developers when they want money from them. So, they ended up losing not only a developer, but they also lost a customer as well (loyal developer and customer). That's shameful on Apple's part and they seem to be shameless because they don't seem care anyway. We can't afford to buy their products we invested it all on the App Store for half a decade.
I will never develop for Apple ever again!! I learned my lesson not to fall into their traps they use to lure you into being a developer. The odds of them helping you as a developer is nil. You can even read articles online about odds of getting featured by Apple (my opinion 0% chance or even -% chance: meaning never). Some of the games they feature on the App Store, I personally delete them after playing them for a few seconds. BORING just like Apple is. I suspect in my opinion that they only feature developers they know like I mentioned earlier in this blog. Who knows they could be bribes under the table even though Apple would deny it. I lost all my integrity with Apple and being a developer on the App Store. Other developers should be aware and careful. They should be cautioned if they are thinking of being a developer on the App Store. They are likely more than not to fail as developers. Apple wants you to believe you will be the next hit game developer, so they can target new developers and cash in on them when they pay the yearly fee. In my opinion I believe being app game developer seems to be more like a sweepstakes scam. They seem to choose whoever they want whenever they want. There is no way you can earn a spot to get featured or promoted by the App Store.
