Last month, Google sent an email to Argentinian developers, saying that they are removing the ability to sell apps or apps with in-app purchases from Argentina, with a recommendation to try to create and sell apps from a different country that have no restrictions on foreign currencies.
I just want to clarify this: I’m from Argentina and yes, we have the worst policy in the planet in that regard, it’s not Google’s fault.
Argentina has made it extremely difficult for its citizens to earn money in any currency other than Argentine Pesos and developers have been paid in US dollars when selling apps and games in the Google Play Store. They have been doing this to every citizen that spend money abroad as well, for every expense made in other currency, there is a 20% tax applied to it. This is just speculation, but Argentina probably asked Google to pay some sort of tax for bringing US Dollar into the country and Google just didn’t want to play along.
The good news is that Google is now saying that they will continue to allow developers to sell their apps for the time being and that they are looking into different payment methods. That wording is pretty unique, meaning that the story is not over and the restriction could come in effect at any time but, at least we know that Google is making an effort to keep developers happy and working.
Here’s the official announcement from the developers page:
Last month, we announced that we planned to discontinue support for the sales of paid apps from developers registered in Argentina as of June 27th.
For the time being, we have decided to continue allowing developers registered in Argentina to offer paid apps and collect payments on Google Play as we explore more permanent solutions.
We are sorry for the inconvenience and we will publish updates when we have more to report.
Google had the idea of a final payment on July 22nd but that won’t happen as things will continue as normal for now. We have no more details on this, but as Google says, they will publish more updates when they have them.
None of this will affect consumers in the country, who will still be able to access all of Google Play apps and games as usual.
Hopefully, everything will be settled and developers in Argentina will continue to be able to sell their apps without issues or strange alternative routes.