Android Market content ratings now live for developers

By on Nov 30, 2010 at 1:31 PM
mobile November 30, 2010

Google announced earlier this week that it would soon implement a content rating system in the Android Market. The new ratings will designate appropriate age ranges for each new and existing app in the Market. According to a developer advocate at Google, the new rating system has now gone live within Google’s Android developer tools. Starting immediately, developers will have to select one of four ratings β€” All, Pre-Teen, Teen or Mature β€” before they can submit apps to the Market. Developers will also have to go through their current catalogs and assign ratings to each app therein. Ratings are not yet visible to end users while they browse the Android Market, though the system should go live in the next few weeks. Any apps that have not been rated by developers by the time Google’s new ratings become visible for end users will be designated as mature.

[Via Droid Gamers]

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9 Comments

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  • Bringit

    Rated R.

  • Donny

    Android really needs to fix its rating system in the market. Everything has 5 stars no matter how terrible or pointless an “app” is on there. Many of the 5 star ratings are just spam advertisemens for links to places to steal apps. Where is the quality control? Where is the organization?

    • Anonymous

      that’s not true at all. I see a lot of three or two star apps and I don’t even bother with them.

      • Donny

        You must search for some pretty obscure stuff because its pretty hard to find anything under 4 stars in Paid or free apps in any given category. I just looked scanned well into entertainment apps and found that “lil Wayne ringtones” was a 4 and a half star rated app. Are you kidding me? Sorry the truth hurts man.

      • Anonymous

        “in any given category” those are all the top of the apps.

        a lot of people with android phones like lil wayne, me included…

        do you have a verizon phone. if you go into the verizon category you’ll see a diverse selection of ratings. when beautiful widgets did a crappy update and it messed up the widgets and wasn’t fixed for a couple days, people changed they’re rating. within a day an a half it went from 5 stars to 3 1/2. it doesn’t need fixing.

        the accuweather app / widget has 3 stars. bloons (popular on iOS) has 3 stars.

  • Anonymous

    I think the problem with Android’s rating system is that they don’t allow for the fact that most people rate something 5-star or 1-star. Few people are willing to rate 2, 3, or 4-star and then explain what’s wrong in the comments.

    Weight the maximum and the minimum less, and you’ll probably start to see more accurate ratings of all your programs. If you were just going by star power, you’d think that Android programs were all beacons of hope in the technological wilderness.

  • Anonymous

    I kinda worry then that someone like ATT will restrict its phones to what content they can find, all in the name of family-orientedness. Hm.

  • Anonymous

    Congratulation Zach! An article that simply presents the facts with none of your Apple loving spin applied. If this starts to happen more often we may finally be seeing signs of your maturing into a decent blogger.

  • SuperChunk

    This is good and a prelude to parental controls.

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