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

Trader Status is required when publishing Apps and Games in Apple App Store and Google Play. This Status is provided and verified to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) of the European Union.

Follow this tutorial to understand why you need it and how to define and verify it.

What is a Trader Status in EU?

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.

Developer Trader Status is determined by answering a simple question: Do you Earn Income 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.

As a trader, you must provide the following information to meet consumer rights requirements in the European Union:

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

As I see it, these changes 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, I verified my Developer Account on Google Play that I couldn’t verify for 5 months:

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 for publishing. Developers must provide their trader status to submit new apps or app updates for distribution in the European Union (EU).

Apple App Store

I got the next message from Apple: “Trader Status is required for distribution on the App Store in the European Union” — trader status not provided. And then verified the Apple Trader Status of the Developer Account on App Store Connect.

There are only a bunch of languages that Apple accepts for official documents that must verify your identity and address. If the language of your documents is not on this list, it will need to be translated.

You can also ask your Landlord to provide an English version of the document.

FAB

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

Documents for Address Verification

• Utility Bills.
• Bank or Credit Card Statement (Revolut statements are not accepted).
• Official government tax documentation.

Documents that are NOT accepted

• Invoices.
• Leases.
• ID Documents/passports.
• Self-published Memos.
• IRS tax forms filled out by the user or business without government certification such as W2, W8, W9, 1099, etc.

Unity Assets on FAB

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, the Unity Asset Store doesn’t require verification of Trader Status, but I believe that the 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.

However, I received an official answer from the Unity Asset Store:

The Unity Asset Store operates as a B2B (Business to Business) marketplace, so the specific requirements of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) for B2C (Business to Consumer) platforms may not directly apply. That said, we are closely monitoring the situation to ensure compliance with any relevant regulations.

At this time, no additional verification steps are required for Unity Asset Store publishers. If this changes, we will provide clear guidance and notify publishers well in advance to ensure a smooth process.

We encourage you to prepare any necessary business documentation in the meantime, and stay tuned for updates through official Unity channels.