Google Console closed testing requirements are awful

I wanted to publish it to the play store, get exposure and share what I have made. I paid the $25 fee, submitted my passport and bank statements for ID verification, and started the process to get my app published.

Well, what a terrible experience. It is not user friendly at all, and the requirement of 20 testers opting in to your closed testing for 14 days makes very little sense. I have spent the last few days messaging people, doing the test swaps, and generally wasting my time.

I have seen, from searching to find places that I can recruit testers, a number of 'services' where you can simply pay to have your app 'tested'. The whole thing has been really off-putting, what is the point..?

I wanted to make a flutter app next, something more detailed and complex.. but I am dreading having to go through this process of 'closed testing', after spending months making a project, essentially spamming forums and chat groups for testers. I paid for access to the store, I submitted my ID documents, this arbitrary barrier is so frustrating and again, really puts me off making a mobile app..

I know I am shouting into the void here, I suppose I just wanted to vent.

But yeah, both stores need to be forcefully opened. They're sitting on their laurels inside their moats.

It was like that famous bomber with bullet holes diagram, the part they were missing was the bugs were being reported, it was just only theirs were being taken seriously, and the rest were treated as annoyances*

Funnily enough, it actually made the culture exponentially worse because it layered on tons of process and paperwork, which gave more ammo to the actual problem, clique-y and unhealthy coddling of us vs. them behavior within the clique, which also drove a lot of people outside it to stop thinking they could help make things better, and if they did, it didn't/wouldn't matter anyway.

I always think of that whenever I shudder about this nonsense. Partly because the same leadership that was too nice & added testing + paperwork eyewash to fix a people problem, added testing + paperwork eyewash here.

When you have a hammer...