Hello everyone,
Yesterday, tech news sites and vloggers came out with news about Google disabling Sideloading apps by next year. Sideloaded apps, in other words, app installation won't work without the dev being certified by Google. modded apps and apps outside the Google Play Store eco system will no longer work/install. Our games are self-certified and are not in the Google Play Store, so in the near future, our games may no longer install/work on commonly Google-certified Android phone brands (Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy phones, global versions of China branded phones like Huawei, Xiaomi, etc...). They're starting around March 2026 and rolling this out in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand by September 2026.
I will continue to make the self-cert builds as usual. This is just to give you guys as heads up on what's happening and what to expect. The Android build may or may not work on your phones in the near future because of the above.
Given the state of the world and its politics, and given what our stuff is like, I'm certainly not going to go through Google's hoops on this one. If you play the Android version, you will probably need one of the following to run our games:
- Android phone that's de-googled
- Android phone with a custom OS (Lineage, Graphene, etc...)
- Android phone that's not Google certified (certain China-brand Android phones models)
- Android emulators
- Web browsers like Firefox mobile or Chromium based ones to run the online versions (Itch and Newgrounds)
In case it really doesn't work on any kind of Android in the future, I may have to discontinue the Android builds and just focus on the Windows/Linux/MacOS builds. So I'll see how that pans out.
Again, thank you for reading and hope this is helpful to you in understanding the state of Android right now. And thank you for your continued support to our art and games!
xoxo,
Beerbrew.
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Google needs to be broken up due to it's Monopoly.
Further proof that Google is too powerful and needs to be broken up. Google should not have total control over Android.
Figures. Every one of the moralizing busbody fucks just had to choose this of all years to slither out of their burrows again. About time I replaced my phone again anyhow.
I know right? You can't consider a new phone model, too because of this! Our games does run on the browser at least, so there's that. But Itch has a file size limit that our game Ramen no Oujisama is hitting. Might need to play that particular title over at Newgrounds.
Glad I have the current version saved on my phone already, guess I'll just have to do the V3 routes on my desktop instead. Can't wait to see what Mana's route'll look like, her and the rest of the cast that still need to be completed.
Edit: Another potential solution may be hosting the files on GitHub or another similar service, with a link saved on the pages involved. This'd bypass the Google check requirement and Itch filesize limit entirely.
The current version 1.5.7 of the patreon build should have Mana's animated scenes finished, so all of the 10 main routes are done in that one! The secret route is still a WIP!
Btw, in case you need to play the version in Newgrounds, you can zoom in using the browser's built-in page zoom feature to make it bigger as a work around for not having a full screen button there like in Itch.
@Github - M$$$$ probably wouldn't like that though! Haha!