Luck be a Landlord Might Be Banned from Google Play
Happy New Year everyone! Just three hours into 2025, I received an email from Google Play Support with the following subject line: Action Required: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies (Luck be a Landlord) Nothing has changed with Luck be a Landlord in the past few months,
Fuck it, let's just ban any and every app that involves or simulates currency and uses chance as a mechanic that interacts with that currency.
Tokens that can be redeemed for a chance of a cosmetic reward? Gambling.
Credits used to pay for upkeep of an LLM that may or may not generate an expected output? Also gambling.
Subscription for a service that promises XYZ and delivers less than 100% during its service period? Believe it or not, gambling.
No no, we just ban casino themed roguelites, that'll do.
But you know, actual gatcha and lootboxes? Totally fine.
It's only gambling when you play with fake money and don't actually earn or lose anything.
what is luck be a landlord?
It's a video game where you use a slot machine to pay your landlord rent. So all the "gambling" is using fake in-game currency. What makes it more of a game is that you can choose upgrades/modifiers for the slot machine to adjust the odds for certain outcomes.
Best solution I could see to this type of censorship of apps would be to sell an APK of it on someplace like itch(dot)io or a different store of their choice if they already aren't. Just give up and start pointing towards those types of places. Though, I would make a final update to those who bought the game on the play store to at least tell them what's going on and direct them to wherever the app would be available. Even if they're not updating the game, probably still something to at least consider.
Edit:
Looked up the itch page for it and top comment right now is pretty much saying they should either put the APK for sale either on itch or humble bumble, steam as a DLC if possible to do so, or am•zon's app store. I personally think itch is the safest bet myself, but I'm also an idiot who doesn't know what sites are better for that type of stuff.
its the non casino themed gambling that should be banned. casinos are too boring for modern kids but all the real money transactions in games clearly are super appealing. I had casino video games as a kid and I don't have a casino gambling problem at least. I gamble with whether to stay at my job or find a new one, or rent vs buy this or that regularly though. Or gambling over whether to work or spend money on school for a low chance of a higher paying job that didn't cover the increased debt in 4 years and didn't land me a new job of even approximately the same pay grade1. Actually I have won in casinos before but I've only ever lost non casino gambles.
"You kissed you." -Vegas Stakes ending sequence as played by a group of dumb kids in the 90s, SNES
Looks like the LLM enshitification is coming to the Google Play store now
I don't really know what you think LLMs has to do with this case, but just for reference - Google have been notorious in automated moderation on the Play Store since long before LLMs were a thing in general use, and they are also really bad when it comes to managing these processes once an automated moderation action has been made. Lots of devs get screwed this way.
Also the automated moderation on YT is also terrible.
Basically, Google never invested enough in their moderation systems. All we get is automated checks and appeals until one overworked uninterested Google employee will just refuse the final appeal.
And if that dev/creator has a community large enough they can appeal on X or some bullshit so that it's reverted.
So? What does it contain that Google might call gambling?
the game is a slot machine. It's a purely aesthetic slot machine (zero ads, zero MTX, zero premium currency, zero paid DLC), but it turns out "does it look like casino gambling" is the concern, not "is it actually something that you can ruin your life over because it preys on gambling addiction"
It looks like the dev is just gonna sigh and accept the garbage "age rating" system, and let LBAL stay on the store as a "mature 18+ audiences only" app.
![[Android] Luck be a Landlord Might Be Banned from Google Play](https://blog.trampolinetales.com/content/images/2025/01/Screenshot-from-2025-01-01-10-11-37-3.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
