Trader Status for Developer: Comply with the Digital Services Act of the European Union

Starting February 17, 2025, Apps without Trader Status will be removed from the App Store, and Google Play will delete your Developer Account on a predefined personal date until Trader Status is provided and verified to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) of the European Union.

There is a pretty simple question that you can answer to define your Trader Status for the marketplaces that are used to Sell Software:

• Google Play,
• App Store,
• FAB,
• Unity Asset Store.

Define the Developer Trader Status:

• Do you Earn Professionally from Apps, Games or Game Assets?
• In other words, is this activity your Main Source of Income?

If your answer is YES, congratulations — you are a TRADER, and you have to provide the next information to satisfy the rights of consumers in the European Union:

• Legal Entity document.
• Contacts (email, phone number).
• Legal Address.

As I see it, these changes will lead to a significant reduction in the number of developer accounts and, consequently, low-quality applications.

Now you need to spend more money to meet these requirements, because public business data should be different from your personal data, although you can neglect your privacy — the choice is yours.

Google Play

Finally, on November 12, 2024, I Have Verified my Developer Account on Google Play that I couldn’t verify since June 2024:

1. At first, I did not have the necessary documents to confirm the address: Sublease Agreement.
2. Then there were problems with confirming the phone number on the Google side for several months: this is fixed for now.

I don’t want to sell in the EU with Google Play Console

Google decided to Apply These Rules to All Developers who publish their apps regardless of the selected countries. Developers must provide their trader status to submit new apps or app updates for distribution in the European Union (EU).

Apple App Store

I Have Verified my Developer Account on App Store Connect on November 21, 2024. There was One More Action in comparison with verifying Dev Account in Google Play Console — Language Translation.

There are only a bunch of languages that Apple accepts for official documents that must verify your identity and address.

In Kazakhstan, where my legal entity is based, we have 2 official languages for Document Management: Kazakh and Russian. Apple doesn’t accept such languages, so I needed a translation.

My Landlord has agreed to sign the documents if I provide an English translation. So, this was my first experience of self-translation of a legal document into English from Russian, which is quite a time-consuming task, but it’s free.

FAB

I verified my Developer Account on FAB during the registration process, which can take an hour to fill all the needed information.

If you want to Publish Unity Assets on FAB, you Need to Have These Assets Published on the Unity Asset Store — this is an additional part of the verification process in comparison to Google Play and App Store.

Unity Asset Store

For now, Unity Asset Store doesn’t require verification of Trader Status, but I believe that DSA of the European Union will also affect every marketplace that sells software for EU users, so Asset Store Publishers must be ready to verify their business information later.