Recently, I remembered a game that I haven’t played in a long time and I wanted to reinstall it on my phone. And I downloaded it as APK because I couldn’t download it from Google Play: The nightmare of software purchased online has emerged. What if the app you paid for is no longer available?

Since the number of games Google Play offers is now around 500,000, opting for any of the free games is as easy as ever: There’s plenty of quality in the store; Along with the disadvantage of ads and regular purchases are two disadvantages of free apps. Not only that: The offer of premium or paid games is also very good, I’m accumulating more than one treasure on my shopping list. Some are more secretive than others.

What happens when the app you paid for disappears?

Monsters ate my apartment as it appeared in 1912

It wouldn’t be the first time that an online game store has failed those who purchased its games and lost the option to replay them from one day to the next. Google Stadia is one of the latest examples, I’ve left multiple games there; Luckily, Google has decided to refund money to anyone who purchased books on the platform. Monetary return is unusualalso on Google Play.

The official Android store refunds money for purchases if various conditions are met and always shortly after purchase. After a few years there is no option to get the money backhowever, the purchased app or game remains available for re-download from the store even if the developer removes the software from sale. With one exception.

Most apps and games no longer available for download They remain in the account of all users who purchased them at that time, whether paid or not. For example, in my Google Play account I keep a download of the legendary Flappy Bird game, which the developer removed from the store after deciding that he did not want it in circulation so that no one could download it. Unfortunately, this does not happen with the game “Monsters ate my apartment”: the legendary Adult Slim title has completely disappeared from the Android store.

Luckily, I remembered the quote, “Monsters ate my apartment.” I remembered with great fondness that game that filled so many hours of my life. One day I stopped playing, installed it and forgot about it until today. I went looking for it, it wasn’t in the store, I couldn’t find it in my account and I was frustrated. I had paid for it and now I had no option to download what was mine.

The biggest problem with purchasing and streaming software online is not having a physical copy, When the servers storing our copy disappear, our money goes with them.. PC or console games often have the option to purchase a physical copy, the opposite of what happens on smartphones. Stores such as Google Play and the App Store often store purchases, but not always: this depends on whether the software has gone too long without being updated or the developer has decided to permanently withdraw its product. In these cases, the job is done. Or not.

We will always have APKs

It didn’t cost me much to download an APK copy of the game I paid for, which is one of the problems endemic to Android: It’s easy to get software without paying money. And while it seems wrong to me to do this with apps that are currently online, to have the option to recover an app or game that we paid for years ago and is not currently available. I think it’s a great solution to software abandonment. Whether it works on an existing mobile phone is another story.

Google has always maintained the freedom to install any application on Android. This does not seem to change in the future, the security issue has become more serious. And I think it’s the right decision because We all have the right to save old appsthe ones we remember fondly and which are no longer available for download through official channels. Not only that: all this software is part of history, it deserves to be recorded and remembered.

Replaying the song “Monsters ate my apartment” brought me back to those times when I would spend hours stacking apartment plants while monsters fought each other to the beat of music as crazy as animations or sound effects. And while it still works perfectly on today’s mobile phones, I think it’s a gem that deserves to be saved so it can make its way back into the app stores.

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