Still Not Visible! Some Indie Games Being Dropped
NOTE III: I've started a reddit thread in indiedev if anyone wants to add or comment on it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/1g8yzc4/warning_the_meta_quest_store_may_not_be_indie/
NOTE II: Meta Quest Store has no intention of helping indie developers if there is something wrong. Please see the ticket thread I have had with the team and then the response I recieved today, at or near the bottom of the comments.
NOTE: If any other developers are having this issue, reply in here, it seems there are more of us than I thought. Let's try to get one big item going.
Hey Meta Quest Team,
Yes, I did a post last week about how our game has been approved and is not visible in the store and I'm doing another one.
I appreciate that you responded, we sent an email to the support email you gave us, but it just went to the same team that we have had an open ticket with for the past two weeks.
Two weeks!!! Our game is only visible if people type in its name exactly. It never appeared in new releases. It doesn't show up in any categories or search terms we gave it. Two weeks of the same response from the team with the ticket, "we have escalated it". How in the world does it take two weeks to determine what the issue is and fix it.
Thousands of dollars went into our release strategy that we vetted at GDC with the meta employees working the space there. Thousands!! We are a small studio, everything we do we vet and determine the best course of action.
I asked if there was any way they could act like it was new so we could get on the front page under new release like we planned to be and were told that we could always delist the game and then go through the submission process again. How in the world is that an answer!
Do you know how many people can see and download your game if it isn't visible or at the very least semi-searchable. No one. The only reason a few people have seen our game is because streamers have had to say you need to type in the name of the game directly, or people click on a sidequest link. Freaking sidequest can see it and categorize it from your store but you can't seem to do it.
Everything was geared towards this release. We did not expect it to be big, we were hopeing for luke-warm at best, we are realists. But this is insane! We have already had to tell everyone to find another place to go work because as far as we can tell, Meta is incapable of doing simple tasks like listing a game where they say they will and the last of the funds was used on a now-useless release campaign.
Another great response we got was a list of articles on how to submit and publish a game on Meta. Thanks! We read those a long time ago and then again when you started merging the stores, we talked to you, we did everything that was asked and it didn't matter.
Long winded way of asking a simple question. Why can't meta fix what is happening to our game? Can we get the email or a phone number of someone who can actually make something happen? We have asked the developer support and we just get the same response.
In the email where they said to delist the game and resubmit they said they did not recommend it. So, what, are we just supposed be like ohh well, meta said your screwed so were screwed. At this point it seems like the only viable option because I'm starting to think you don't have control of your own system.
Just in case anyone thinks I'm making something up i'm going to post the support thread in the comments