24 Jul 2025
Android Developers Blog
#WeArePlay: 10 million downloads and counting, meet app and game founders from across the U.S.
Posted by Robbie McLachlan, Developer Marketing 
They saw a problem and built the answer. Meet 20 #WeArePlay founders from across the U.S. who started their entrepreneurial journey with a question like: what if reading was no longer a barrier for anyone? What if an app could connect neighbors to fight local hunger? What if fitness or self-care could feel as engaging as playing a game?
These new stories showcase how innovation often starts with finding the answer to a personal problem. Here are just a few of our favorites:
Cliff's app Speechify makes the written word accessible to all
Growing up with dyslexia, Cliff always wished he could enjoy books but found reading them challenging. After moving to the U.S., the then college student turned that personal challenge into a solution for millions. His app, Speechify, empowers people by turning any text-from PDFs to web pages-into audio. By making the written word accessible to all, Cliff's innovation gives students, professionals, and auditory learners a new kind of independence.
Jenny's game Run Legends turns everyday fitness into a social adventure
As a teen, Jenny funded her computer science studies by teaching herself to code and publishing over 100 games. A passionate cross-country runner, she wanted to combine her love for gaming and fitness to make exercise feel more like an adventure. The result is Run Legends, a multiplayer RPG where players battle monsters by moving in real life. Jenny's on a mission to blend all types of exercise with playful storytelling, turning everyday fitness into a fun, social, and heroic quest.
Nino and Stephanie's app Finch makes self-care a rewarding daily habit
As engineers, Nino and Stephanie knew the power of technology but found the world of self-care apps overwhelming. Inspired by their own mental health journeys and a gamified app Stephanie built in college, they created Finch. The app introduces a fresh take on the virtual pet: by completing small, positive actions for yourself, like journaling or practicing breathing exercises, you care for your digital companion. With over 10 million downloads, Finch has helped people around the world build healthier habits. With seasonal events every month and growing personalization, the app continues to evolve to make self-care more fun and rewarding.
John's app The HungreeApp connects communities to fight hunger
John began coding as a nine-year-old in Nigeria, sometimes with just a pen and paper. After moving to the U.S., he was struck by how much food from events was wasted while people nearby went hungry. That spark led him to create The HungreeApp, a platform that connects communities with free, surplus food from businesses and restaurants. John's ingenuity turns waste into opportunity, creating a more connected and resourceful nation, one meal at a time.
Anthony's game studio Tech Tree Games turns a passion for idle games into cosmic adventures for aspiring tycoons
While working as a chemical engineer, Anthony dreamed of creating an idle game like the ones he loved to play, leading him to teach himself how to code from scratch. This passion project turned into his studio Tech Tree Games and the hit title Idle Planet Miner, where players grow a space mining empire filled with mystical planets and alluring gems. After releasing a 2.0 update with enhanced visuals for the game, Anthony is back in prototyping mode with new titles in the pipeline.
Discover more #WeArePlay stories from the US and stories from across the globe.
24 Jul 2025 4:00pm GMT
17 Jul 2025
Android Developers Blog
#WeArePlay: With over 3 billion downloads, meet the people behind Amanotes
Posted by Robbie McLachlan - Developer Marketing
In our latest #WeArePlay film, which celebrates the people behind apps and games on Google Play, we meet Bill and Silver - the duo behind Amanotes. Their game company has reached over 3 billion downloads with their mission 'everyone can music'. Their titles, including the global hit Magic Tiles 3, turn playing musical instruments into a fun, easy, and interactive experience, with no musical background needed. Discover how Amanotes blends creativity and technology to bring joy and connection to billions of players around the world.
What inspired you to create Amanotes?
Bill: It all began with a question I'd pursued for over 20 years - how can technology make music even more beautiful? I grew up in a musical family, surrounded by instruments, but I also loved building things with tech. Amanotes became the space where I could bring those two passions together.
Silver: Honestly, I wasn't planning to start a company. I had just finished studying entrepreneurship and was looking to join a startup, not launch one. I dropped a message in an online group saying I wanted to find a team to work with, and Bill reached out. We met for coffee, talked for about an hour, and by the end, we just said, why not give it a shot? That one meeting turned into ten years of building Amanotes.
Do you remember the first time you realized your game was more than just a game and that it could change someone's life?
Silver: There's one moment I'll never forget. A woman in the U.S. left a review saying she used to be a pianist, but after an accident, she lost use of some of her fingers and couldn't play anymore. Then she found Magic Tiles. She said the game gave her that feeling of playing again-even without full movement. That's when it hit me. We weren't just building a game. We were helping people reconnect with something they thought they'd lost.
How has Google Play helped your journey?
Silver: Google Play has been a huge part of our story. It was actually the first platform we ever published on. The audience was global from day one, which gave us the reach we needed to grow fast. We made great use of tools such as Firebase for A/B testing. We also relied on the Play Console for analytics and set custom pricing by country. Without Google Play, Amanotes wouldn't be where it is today.
What's next for Amanotes?
Silver: Music will always be the soul of what we do, but now we're building games with more depth. We want to go beyond just tapping to songs. We're adding stories, challenges, and richer gameplay on top of the music. We've got a whole lineup of new games in the works. Each one is a chance to push the boundaries of what music games can be.
Discover other inspiring app and game founders featured in #WeArePlay.
17 Jul 2025 4:00pm GMT
15 Jul 2025
Android Developers Blog
New tools to help drive success for one-time products
Posted by Laura Nechita - Product Manager, Google Play and Rejane França - Group Product Manager, Google Play 
Starting today, Google Play is revamping the way developers can manage one time products, providing greater flexibility and new ways to sell. Play has continually enhanced the ways developers can reach buyers by helping you to diversify the way you can sell products.
Starting in 2022, we created more flexibility for subscriptions and a new Console interface. And now, we are bringing the same flexibility to one-time products, aligning the taxonomy for our one-time products. Previously known as in-app products, one-time product purchases are a vital way for developers to monetize on Google Play. As this business model continues to evolve, we've heard from many of you that you need more flexibility and less complexity in how you offer these digital products.
To address these needs, we're launching new capabilities and a new way of thinking about your products that can help you grow your business. At its core, we've separated what the product is from how you sell it. For each one-time product, you can now configure multiple purchase options and offers. This allows you to sell the same product in multiple ways, reducing operational costs by removing the need to create and manage an ever-increasing number of catalog items.
You might have already noticed some changes as we introduce this new model, which provides a more structured way to define and manage your one-time product offerings.
Introducing the new model
We're introducing a new three-level hierarchy for defining and managing one-time products. This new structure builds upon concepts already familiar from our subscription model and aligns the taxonomy for all of your in-app product offerings on Play.
- One-time product: This object defines what the user is buying. Think of it as the core item in your catalog, such as a "Diamond sword", "Coins" or "No ads".
- Purchase option: This defines how the entitlement is granted to the user, its price, and where the product will be available. A single one-time product can have multiple purchase options representing different ways to acquire it, such as buying it or renting it for a set period of time. Purchase options now have two distinct types: buy and rent.
- Offer: Offers further modify a purchase option and can be used to model discounts or pre-orders. A single purchase option can have multiple offers associated with it.
This allows for a more organized and efficient way to manage your catalog. For instance, you can have one "Diamond sword" product and offer it with a "Buy" purchase option in the US for $10 and a "Rent" purchase option in the UK for £5. This new taxonomy will also allow Play to better understand what the catalogue means, helping developers to further amplify their impact in Play surfaces.
More flexibility to reach more users
The new model unlocks significant flexibility to help you reach a wider audience and cater to different user preferences.
- Sell in multiple ways: Once you've migrated to PBL 8, you can set up different ways of selling the same product. This reduces the complexity of managing numerous individual products for slightly different scenarios.
- Introducing rentals: We're introducing the ability to configure items that are sold as rentals. Users have access to the item for a set duration of time. You can define the rental period, which is the amount of time a user has the entitlement after completing the purchase, and an optional expiration period, which is the time after starting consumption before the entitlement is revoked.
- Pre-order capabilities: You can now set up one-time products to be bought before their release through pre-order offers. You can configure the start date, end date, and the release date for these offers, and even include a discount. Users who pre-order agree to pay on the release date unless they cancel beforehand.
- No default price: we will remove the concept of default price for a product. Now you can set and manage the prices in bulk or individually for each region.
- Regional pricing and availability: Price changes can now be applied to purchase options and offers, allowing you to set different prices in different regions. Furthermore, you can also configure the regional availability for both purchase options and offers. This functionality is available for paid apps in addition to one-time products.
- Offers for promotions: Leverage offers to create various promotions, such as discounts on your base purchase price or special conditions for early access through pre-orders.
To use these new features you first need to upgrade to PBL 8.0. Then, you'll need to utilize the new monetization.onetimeproducts service of the Play Developer API or use the Play Developer Console. You'll also need to integrate with the queryProductDetailsAsync API to take advantage of these new capabilities. And while querySkuDetailsAsync and inappproducts service are not supported with the new model, they will continue to be supported as long as PBL 7 is supported.
Important considerations
- With this change, we will offer a backwards compatible way to port your existing SKUs into this new model. The migration will happen differently depending on how you decide to interact with your catalogue the first time you change the metadata for one or more products.
- New products created through Play Console UI are normalized. And products created or managed with the existing inappproducts service won't support these new features. To access them, you'll need to convert existing ones in the Play Developer Console UI. Once converted, a product can only be managed through the new Play Developer API or Play Developer Console. Products created through the new monetization.onetimeproducts service or through the Play Developer Console are already converted.
- Buy purchase options marked as 'Backwards compatible' will be returned as response for calls through querySkuDetailsAsync API. At launch, all existing products have a backwards compatible purchase option.
- At the time of this post, the pre-orders capability is available through the Early Access Program (EAP) only. If you are interested, please sign-up.
- One-time products will be reflected in the earnings reports at launch (Base plan ID and Offer ID columns will be populated for newly configured one-time products). To minimise the potential for breaking changes, we will be updating these column names in the earnings reports later this year.
We encourage you to explore the new Play Developer API and the updated Play Console interface to see how this enhanced flexibility can help you better manage your catalog and grow your business.
We're excited to see how you leverage these new tools to connect with your users in innovative ways.
15 Jul 2025 4:00pm GMT