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Developer Verification is unreasonable and intrusive

eau_de_vie
3 months ago

Starting in February 2024, developers submitting apps for the first time who want to have their apps visible in the European Economic Area will need to verify their identity with Garmin.

And just like that all my excitement for making (free) watch faces for Garmin went down the drain. Cue the sound of a toilet gurgling.

If the app requires an Internet access and can exfiltrate whatever data it collects - that I can understand, it's reasonable.

But requiring full personal info and an ID scan for publishing a watch face that draws 2 hands on a cute background, this is a completely unreasonable ask.

This is how you kill grassroots support for your app ecosystem.

Garmin, do consider fine-tuning your developer verification requirements. What you have now is a disaster.

PS. I am in Europe myself.

  • 3 months ago in reply to flocsy🤠
    flocsy🤠 said:
    Maybe this is the first step before they'll activate some kind of VIP flag where some apps they prefer will be listed before others? 

    I don't think that hiding the exact number of downloads is a prereq to doing that kind of thing. Garmin already openly curates apps for the Connect IQ on-device store app. Furthermore, obviously Spotify is a preferred app, and the Strava Live Relative Effort data field is preinstalled on some devices

  • 3 months ago in reply to FlowState

    I don't see why would they do that and on what "legal" base. The only thing they could enforce is that your listing, dev name, etc shouldn't use trademarks.

    Also one of the long known advantages of Garmin vs Fitbit is that you only paid for the device and the rest was free. I hope the new greedy manager won't start to remove free features and make them paid subscription ...

  • 3 months ago in reply to flocsy🤠
    FlowState said:
    Yeah I think the obvious next step is they will crack down on 3rd party devs who make Garmin watchface clones. Maybe existing clones will stay on the store (for now), but who knows if new ones will be approved
    flocsy🤠 said:
    I don't see why would they do that

    Bc they are now trying to sell their own Garmin "clone" watchfaces on the store, like the Forerunner 965 watchface?

    Common sense dictates that if Garmin is trying to make money off of something, they wouldn't want to host their own direct competitors who are doing the same thing in their own app store.

    If a 3rd party dev could make a better FR965 watchface for free (as you said), why would users pay $5 for the Garmin version?

    flocsy🤠 said:
    and on what "legal" base. The only thing they could enforce is that your listing, dev name, etc shouldn't use trademarks.

    You said it yourself. It so happens that 3rd party devs have been naming their clone watchfaces using registered Garmin trademarks like "Forerunner", "epix", etc for years.

    I am not a lawyer, but it seems that Garmin should never have allowed that, since not only are they failing to defend their trademarks in these cases, but they are actively hosting the 3rd party apps which use those trademarks.

    I also imagine that Garmin's app store marketshare is not nearly big enough for various legal jurisdictions to compel them to accept any and all apps, in the interests of fairness (i.e. anti-monopoly laws.) I figure Garmin would probably be able to get away with rejecting whatever apps they want to reject.

    But hopefully I'm wrong.

  • 3 months ago

    I can provide some insight here:

    • Developer verification is in response to the EU Digital Services Act and is not related to our first-party monetization solution.
    • Developers are considered "traders", as pointed out in this thread, according to our interpretation of DSA/DMA. The process we're following is under the direction of Garmin's legal counsel.
    • This will probably sound backhanded, but registration is not required to publish apps. It is only required to allow your apps to be distributed in the European Economic Area. If a developer does not register, their apps will still be available to the rest of the world outside the EEA.
    • The postal code being exposed in the mobile app is a bug that I have already reported and have escalated to have addressed as soon as possible. I expect it to be addressed in an upcoming mobile app release.