So as you might already know that I am a developer and I make software and apps. It’s been years since I am in this business and so far have built some app while some are on its way. But something led me to put this journey to an end.
Aug 13, 2024 I received an email from Google Play “Your developer profile and all apps will be removed from Google Play if you do not complete account verifications by Sep 10, 2024 (in 28 days)“. Well, seems like nothing to worry about, just complete the account verification and move on.
Well, as easy as it might sound, I can not verify my address due to multiple reasons and it seems like this will be the end of my developer account. But this is not the first time I faced a problem like this.
Lets move back to 2020, when I developed Flick | Search movies and series. It gained 15k+ downloads and I was making some quid from the google adSense. Couple months later, I received an email from google to verify my payment address, so I requested a verification pin that for some apparent reason is mailed like a traditional letter through physical mail box. So I waited for some time and as the status changed in adSense account, I visited the General Post Office in Dilibazar, Kathmandu with lots of hope and excitement. But to my surprise, the mail either never made it to the Post office or it was lost in the post office itself. The service was really poor as I had to go through all these pile of email to find my letter. I had a friend as a companion with me and we did search for mail for about an hour, but with disappointment we had to leave the place. I wasn’t fazed the first time as I thought maybe something happened which would not happen if I were to re-request another pin.
Same story, went there but could never find my mail. I tried multiple times but I finally had to give up as the pin never arrived. Later my adSense account got suspended due to failure in verifying my address.
Still, I continued developing apps, I developed xenmusic. I did not launch the app in google play store, as my adSense was suspended and making new one would make no sense as it would eventually get suspended for failing to verify my payment address. Yet, I continued developing the app and successfully launched in windows store.
xenmusic is going pretty well, but I wanted to integrate stripe payment gateway to allow user purchase the premium version of the app. Sadly, it required a bank account and bank from Nepal is not accepted.
Likewise, making payment to other international services like AWS, vercel is also a big pain as the 🚮 “Dollar card” has limit on how much one can spend a year and most of these international services do not even accept these types of card for some reason.
We’re living in 2024, in the era of AI, where things happens in matter of seconds and yet Nepal is far behind from even making a simple international transaction just shows why it is never a good idea to become a developer here in Nepal. I know there are people who have made some great apps even in Nepal with all these restriction which is really amazing. But I am really frustrated with all these restriction that I have to face just to develop an app and finally decided to put an end to it. It’s really sad to quit doing thing you love 💔.