I'm just working on my first app (thanks to AI...) and if you have a new dev account created sometime after 2023 they are making you do a 12 person, 14 day beta run before anything else occurs, apparently.
It gets worse! If Google decides the people in your test don't engage enough and/or you didn't respond to their feedback, they may not give you production access. I've got a game that's available on iOS, I released there first and did lots of testing to deal with the low-hanging bugs. After doing the 14 day test Google emailed me:
Possible reasons why your production access could not be granted include:
- Testers were not engaged with your app during your closed test
- You didn't follow testing best practices, which may include gathering and acting on user feedback through updates to your app
It gets worse! If Google decides the people in your test don't engage enough and/or you didn't respond to their feedback, they may not give you production access. I've got a game that's available on iOS, I released there first and did lots of testing to deal with the low-hanging bugs. After doing the 14 day test Google emailed me:
Possible reasons why your production access could not be granted include: