Google has increased the app moderation time in the Play Store to up to a week

The process of checking applications in Google Play has started taking more than seven days. Developers note a significant increase in waiting times, which creates difficulties for the prompt release of updates and fixes for critical errors in software.

The main reason for the delays was the sharp increase in the volume of content submitted for moderation. Streams of applications created using generative AI tools have overloaded Google's internal queues, leading to an increase in waiting time for all categories of software, including long-existing and verified projects.

The situation is forcing independent developers to call on the company to implement a prioritization system. It is proposed to allocate separate queues for applications with a long history of updates and a high reputation of the account, in order to avoid blocking legitimate releases due to a flood of low-quality automated content.

Prolonged moderation directly affects the development life cycle. At the current pace, fixing a critical vulnerability or bug can take two weeks, considering the time for preparation and subsequent verification, which reduces the flexibility of supporting Android products.

So far, there have been no official statements about changing the verification algorithms or introducing accelerated tracks for verified developers. The problem remains relevant to the community, as the automation of application generation continues to increase the load on the store infrastructure.