Developers of mobile applications with bank accounts in Russia will no longer be able to receive payments for their apps in Google Play starting December 26. This follows a notification from the company to vendors, a screenshot of which was published by the Habr portal.
“We will reject all attempts by users to purchase your paid apps, make in-app purchases (including new subscriptions), or renew subscriptions via Google Play Payments,” the letter reads. The decision will take effect at 00:00 on December 26 (Pacific Time; 22:00 on December 25 Moscow Time). The remaining balance will be paid out by January 15.
This is not the first restriction imposed by Google on Russian developers and users. In May 2022, the American corporation banned developers in Russia from uploading and updating paid apps in Google Play. As a result, paid apps cannot be placed in the store for Russian users, and developers are unable to monetize in the Russian segment.
Before that, Google disabled its Google AdSense contextual advertising service in Russia and stopped showing ads in search results. YouTube, owned by the corporation, also stopped showing ads in the Russian segment.
Later, YouTube suspended all monetization functions for users in Russia, including Premium subscriptions, Music Premium, sponsorships, super chat, super stickers, and merchandise. However, this measure did not affect audiences from other countries. Due to this, video bloggers mentioned that their monetization would be “half as much.”
In the summer of 2024, Google AdSense decided to fully cease operations in Russia and deactivated all accounts of Russian users. As a result, website owners and YouTube bloggers lost monetization and access to Google’s advertising services.
