Seems that since few hours Apple is removing any custom "company name" used by "individual" accounts: https://devforums.apple.com/message/743546#743546. Currently the changes seems to happen on a by-App case, when some update is done via iTunes Connect. A little disaster for small indies having invested in a brand using sole proprietorship businesses & DBA: the brand is removed from the App Store; people looking for a game by X land on a game made by Y, like a scam.
This may hurt some of us. I'm about to submit an update... The root cause of this is probably that some individual developers picked company names close to well-known brands, and Apple does not really like if somebody tries to trick the system.
Andreas Illinger must be fuming... On a serious note, I just searched the AppStore for "Zenout" and this is what happened: "No results found. Did you mean BenoƮt" Another nail gets thudded in, thanks ptb.
yep happened to me too, because I set up Forest Moon Games under an individual account (it was a ridiculous pain in the ass to set up a company now, under the new terms) I'm hoping I can get it switched to a company name...
In another hand I think it's more fair. I wasn't allowed to change my company name in AppStore from JOY Entertainment, JSC to "JOY" or event "JOY Entertainment" while you could register 1 new account with whatever name you want (artist field). That was what Apple support guy told me.
That sucks. You would would think that Apple would work with the established individuals/companies out there. I remember Retro 64 (I think that was the name) said it was a bitch to switch and he lost some sales during the transitions.
I submitted 2 updates last week and they are still in Waiting for Review. My "company name" has been changed in iTunes Connect today. It would be nice if Apple could create indie section in AppStore. I don't really like this but it would be a logical step.
So the "Copyright section" has been removed? I can still see it - maybe just because I haven't submitted an update yet... Besides, is the "company info" being removed on a per-update basis, or once you update one of your apps, the information gets removed for all other apps?
Seems the change happens when you submit the new and mandatory "contact information" form in the App's details page of ITC. From what I read, seems a per-App change.
Why would they make a change like that? We have multiple accounts, but can only register 1 account pr. registered business. So we need to register multiple businesses for multiple accounts? No thats not possible either...
We have 100 apps half of them have iLifeTouch the other half have Raj Kumar Shaw our lead designers name. So the whole process is a lot more random than what you would think. Many apps that have had the name change haven't been updated. So the process has to be very random to say the least.
Hypothesis: They use the publisher name in their "search algorithm". So they want to avoid little guy gaming the system. Or they want little guy have less chance of being discover and pushing the big boys further.
Thanks for the Info about that topic. At least now I know why I didn`t found yesterday a few Appz on the Appstore. The Problem seem to be even worse because yesterday I was searching for a few Developer and didn`t found any Appz of them. The worse thing is that when I finally found their Appz on the Appstore the hole Title + Brand were still there but couldn`t be searched for. I don`t know why Apple did it in the longer long but let me tell you something from someone that buys a lot of Appz: This could really, really hurt a lot of smaller Developers because most don`t have the patience that I have and most of the time stop after they had searched for a Game with two or three different terms they will give up. And that will for sure hurt many, many Sales Stats in the upcoming Days till People finally realize that they have to use a different term then they were used to it so far if they were looking for Developer X.
Would it be posibble to change the name of the developer to the "Artist Name". Like my name is Name: Christian Lastname: Christensen to Name: We Got Lastname: Pixels Could that work or does the name have to be real?
I've wondered about that, but could that potentially affect billing information etc.? Or could they consider it an inappropriate name?
Yes I don't think it is possible... If you want to change your name you need to add documentation. It is not editable in the developer page. This sucks.. What happens if you have the same name as another developer? Are all the apps then mixed together?
This is bad for consumers as well as indie devs. There are several companies that churn out kinda snazzy looking garbage apps which I have learned to avoid. Now instead of the familiar company names I know to avoid, most just show some Asian name which I am unfamiliar with. Guess I'll have to start relearning who I need to avoid.