Posted by Raghavendra Hareesh Pottamsetty – Google Play Developer and Monetization Lead
At Google Play, we're dedicated to helping people discover experiences they'll love, while empowering developers like you to bring your ideas to life and build successful businesses. This year, Google I/O was packed with exciting announcements designed to do just that. For a comprehensive overview of everything we shared, be sure to check out our blog post recapping What's new in Google Play.
Today, we'll dive specifically into the latest updates designed to help you streamline your subscriptions offerings and maximize your revenue on Play. Get a quick overview of these updates in our video below, or read on for more details.
#1: Subscriptions with add-ons: Streamlining subscriptions for you and your users
We're excited to announce multi-product checkout for subscriptions, a new feature designed to streamline your purchase flow and offer a more unified experience for both you and your users. This enhancement allows you to sell subscription add-ons right alongside your base subscriptions, all while maintaining a single, aligned payment schedule.
The result? A simplified user experience with just one price and one transaction, giving you more control over how your subscribers upgrade, downgrade, or manage their add-ons. Learn more about how to create add-ons.
You can now sell base subscriptions and add-ons together in a single, streamlined transaction
#2: Showcasing benefits in more places across Play: Increasing visibility and value
We're also making it easier for you to retain more of your subscribers by showcasing subscription benefits in more key areas across Play. This includes the Subscriptions Center, within reminder emails, and even during the purchase and cancellation processes. This increased visibility has already proved effective, reducing voluntary churn by 2%. To take advantage of this powerful new capability, be sure to enter your subscription benefits details in Play Console.
To help reduce voluntary churn, we’re showcasing your subscriptions benefits across Play
#3: New grace period and account hold duration: Decreasing involuntary churn
Another way we’re helping you maximize your revenue is by extending grace periods and account hold durations to tackle unintended subscription losses, which often occur when payment methods unexpectedly decline.
Now, you can customize both the grace period (when users retain access while renewal is attempted) and the account hold period (when access is suspended). You can set a grace period of up to 30 days and an account hold period of up to 60 days. However, the total combined recovery period (grace period + account hold) cannot exceed 60 days.
This means instead of an immediate cancellation, your users have a longer window to update their payment information. Developers who've already extended their decline recovery period—from 30 to 60 days—have seen impressive results, with an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn for renewals. Ready to see these results for yourself? Adjust your grace period and account hold durations in Play Console today.
Developers who extend their decline recovery period see an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn
But that’s not all. We’re constantly investing in ways to help you optimize conversion throughout the entire buyer lifecycle. This includes boosting purchase-readiness by prompting users to set up payment methods and verification right from device setup, and we've integrated these prompts into highly visible areas like the Play and Google account menus. Beyond that, we're continuously enabling payments in more markets and expanding payment options. Our AI models are even working to optimize in-app transactions by suggesting the right payment method at the right time, and we're bringing buyers back with effective cart abandonment reminders.
That’s it for our top announcements from Google I/O 2025, but there’s so many more updates to discover from this year’s event. Check out What's new in Google Play to learn more, and to dive deeper into the session details, view the Google Play I/O playlist for all the announcements.
Posted by Raghavendra Hareesh Pottamsetty – Google Play Developer and Monetization Lead
At Google Play, we're dedicated to helping people discover experiences they'll love, while empowering developers like you to bring your ideas to life and build successful businesses. This year, Google I/O was packed with exciting announcements designed to do just that. For a comprehensive overview of everything we shared, be sure to check out our blog post recapping What's new in Google Play.
Today, we'll dive specifically into the latest updates designed to help you streamline your subscriptions offerings and maximize your revenue on Play. Get a quick overview of these updates in our video below, or read on for more details.
#1: Subscriptions with add-ons: Streamlining subscriptions for you and your users
We're excited to announce multi-product checkout for subscriptions, a new feature designed to streamline your purchase flow and offer a more unified experience for both you and your users. This enhancement allows you to sell subscription add-ons right alongside your base subscriptions, all while maintaining a single, aligned payment schedule.
The result? A simplified user experience with just one price and one transaction, giving you more control over how your subscribers upgrade, downgrade, or manage their add-ons. Learn more about how to create add-ons.
You can now sell base subscriptions and add-ons together in a single, streamlined transaction
#2: Showcasing benefits in more places across Play: Increasing visibility and value
We're also making it easier for you to retain more of your subscribers by showcasing subscription benefits in more key areas across Play. This includes the Subscriptions Center, within reminder emails, and even during the purchase and cancellation processes. This increased visibility has already proved effective, reducing voluntary churn by 2%. To take advantage of this powerful new capability, be sure to enter your subscription benefits details in Play Console.
To help reduce voluntary churn, we’re showcasing your subscriptions benefits across Play
#3: New grace period and account hold duration: Decreasing involuntary churn
Another way we’re helping you maximize your revenue is by extending grace periods and account hold durations to tackle unintended subscription losses, which often occur when payment methods unexpectedly decline.
Now, you can customize both the grace period (when users retain access while renewal is attempted) and the account hold period (when access is suspended). You can set a grace period of up to 30 days and an account hold period of up to 60 days. However, the total combined recovery period (grace period + account hold) cannot exceed 60 days.
This means instead of an immediate cancellation, your users have a longer window to update their payment information. Developers who've already extended their decline recovery period—from 30 to 60 days—have seen impressive results, with an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn for renewals. Ready to see these results for yourself? Adjust your grace period and account hold durations in Play Console today.
Developers who extend their decline recovery period see an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn
But that’s not all. We’re constantly investing in ways to help you optimize conversion throughout the entire buyer lifecycle. This includes boosting purchase-readiness by prompting users to set up payment methods and verification right from device setup, and we've integrated these prompts into highly visible areas like the Play and Google account menus. Beyond that, we're continuously enabling payments in more markets and expanding payment options. Our AI models are even working to optimize in-app transactions by suggesting the right payment method at the right time, and we're bringing buyers back with effective cart abandonment reminders.
That’s it for our top announcements from Google I/O 2025, but there’s so many more updates to discover from this year’s event. Check out What's new in Google Play to learn more, and to dive deeper into the session details, view the Google Play I/O playlist for all the announcements.
Posted by Chris Wilk – Group Product Manager, Games on Google Play
To captivate players and grow your game, you need tools that enhance discovery and retention. Play Games Services (PGS) is your key to unlocking a suite of services that connect you with over 2 billion monthly active players. PGS empowers you to drive engagement through features like achievements and increase retention with promotions tailored to each gameplay progress. These tools are designed to help you deliver relevant and compelling content that keeps players coming back.
We are continuously evolving gaming on Play, and this year, we're introducing more PGS-powered experiences to give you deeper player insights and greater visibility in the Play Store. To access these latest advancements and ensure continued functionality, you must migrate from PGS v1 to PGS v2 by May 2026. Let’s take a closer look at what’s new:
Drive discovery and engagement by rewarding gameplay progress
We’re fundamentally transforming how achievements work in the Play Store, making them a key driver for a great gaming experience. Now deeply embedded across the store, achievements are easily discoverable via search filters and game detail pages, and further drive engagement when offered with Play Points.
At a minimum, you should have at least 15 achievements spread across the lifetime of the game, in the format of incremental achievements to show progress. Games that enable players to earn at least 5 achievements in the first 2 hours of gameplay are most successful in driving deeper engagement*.
The most engaging titles offer 40 or more achievements with diverse types of goals including leveling up characters, game progression, hidden surprises, or even failed attempts. To help you get the most out of achievements, we’ve made it easier to create achievements with bulk configuration in Play Console.
For eligible titles*, Play activates quests to reward players for completing achievements - for example with Play Points. Supercell activated quests for Hay Day, leading to an average 177% uplift in installs*. You can tailor your quests to achieve specific campaign objectives, whether it's attracting high-value players or driving spend through repeated engagement, all while making it easy to jump back into your game.
Hay Day boosted new installs with achievement-based quests
Increase retention with tailored promotions
Promotional content is a vital tool for you to highlight new events, major content updates, and exciting offers within your game. It turns Play into a direct marketing channel to re-engage with your players. We've enhanced audience targeting capabilities so you can tailor your content to reach and convert the most relevant players.
By integrating PGS, you can use the Play Grouping API to create custom segments based on gameplay context*. Using this feature, Kabam launched promotional content to custom audiences for Marvel Contest of Champions, resulting in a 4x increase in lapsed user engagement*.
Marvel Contest of Champions increased retention with targeted promotional content
Start implementing PGS features today
PGS is designed to make the sign-in experience more seamless for players, automatically syncing their progress and identity across Android devices. With a single tap, they can pick up where they left off or start a new game from any screen. Whether you use your own sign-in solution, services from third parties, or a combination of both, we've made it easier to integrate Play Games Services with the Recall API.
To ensure a consistent sign-in experience for all players, we’re phasing out PGS v1.
All games currently using PGS v1 must migrate to PGS v2 by May 2026. After this date, you will no longer be able to publish or update games that use the v1 SDK.
Below you'll find the timeline to plan your migration:
As announced at I/O, new apps using PGS v1 can no longer be published. While existing apps can release updates with v1 and the APIs are still functional, you’ll need to migrate by May 2026, and APIs will be fully shut down in 2028.
May 2026
APIs are still functional for users, but are no longer included in the SDK. New app versions compiled with the most recent SDK would fail in the build process if your code still uses the removed APIs. If your app still relies on any of these APIs, you should migrate to PGS v2 as soon as possible.
Q3 2028
APIs are no longer functional and will fail when a request is sent by an app.
Looking ahead, more opportunities powered by PGS
Coming soon, players will be able to generate unique, AI-powered avatars within their profiles – creating fun, diverse representations of their gaming selves. With PGS integration, developers can allow players to carry over their avatar within the game. This enables players to showcase their gaming identity across the entire gameplay experience, creating an even stronger motivation to re-engage with your game.
Gen AI avatar profiles create more player-centric experiences
PGS is the foundational tool for maximizing your business growth on Play, enabling you to tailor your content for each player and access the latest gameplay innovations on the platform. Stay tuned for more PGS features coming this year to provide an even richer player experience.
* To be eligible, the title must participate in Play Points, integrate Play Games Services v2, and have achievements configured in Play Console.
* Data source from partner. Average incremental installs over a 14-day period.
* Data source from partner.
* The Play Grouping API provides strong measures to protect privacy for end users, including user-visible notification when the API is first used, and opt-out options through My Activity.
Posted by Kosuke Suzuki – Director, Games on Google Play
On July 1, Amazing Seasun Games is set to unveil its highly anticipated action shooting game - Mecha BREAK, with a multiplatform launch across PC and Console. A key to their PC growth strategy is Google Play Games on PC, enabling the team to build excitement with a pre-registration campaign, maximize revenue with PC earnback, and ensure a secure, top-tier experience on PC.
Building momentum with pre-registration
With a legacy of creating high-quality games since 1995, Amazing Seasun Games has already seen Mecha BREAK attract over 3.5 million players during the last beta test. To build on this momentum, the studio is bringing their game to Google Play Games on PC to open pre-registration and connect with its massive player audience.
"We were excited to launch on Google Play Games on PC. We want to make sure all players can enjoy the Mecha BREAK experience worldwide."
- Kris Kwok, Executive Producer of Mecha BREAK and CEO of Amazing Seasun Games
Mecha BREAK pre-registration on Google Play Games on PC homepage
Accelerating growth with the Native PC program
Mecha BREAK's launch strategy includes leveraging the native PC earnback, a program that gives native PC developers the opportunity to unlock up to 15% in additional earnback.
Beyond earnback, the program offers comprehensive support for PC game development, distribution, and growth. Developers can manage PC builds in Play Console, simplifying the process of packaging PC versions, configuring releases, and managing store listings. Now, you can also view PC-specific sales reports, providing a more precise analysis of your game's financial performance.
Delivering a secure and high quality PC experience
Mecha BREAK is designed to deliver an intense and high-fidelity experience on PC. Built on a cutting-edge, proprietary 3D engine, the game offers players three unique modes of fast-paced combat on land and in the air.
Diverse combat styles: Engage in six-on-six hero battles, three-on-three matches, or the unique PvPvE extraction mode "Mashmak".
Free customization options: Create personalized characters with a vast array of colors, patterns and gameplay styles, from close-quarters brawlers to long-range tactical units.
Mecha BREAK offers a high-fidelity experience on PC
The decision to integrate with Google Play Games on PC was driven by the platform's robust security infrastructure, including tools such as Play Integrity API, supporting large-scale global games like Mecha BREAK.
"Mecha BREAK’s multiplayer setting made Google Play Games a strong choice, as we expect exceptional operational stability and performance. The platform also offers advanced malware protection and anti-cheat capabilities."
- Kris Kwok, Executive Producer of Mecha BREAK and CEO of Amazing Seasun Games
Bring your game to Google Play Games on PC
This year, the native PC program is open to all PC games, including PC-only titles. If you're ready to expand your game's reach and accelerate its growth, learn more about the eligibility requirements and how to join the program today.
Making it easier for you to build safer apps from the start
We understand you want clear Play policy guidance early in your development, so you can focus on building amazing experiences and prevent unexpected delays from disrupting launch plans. That’s why we’re making it easier to have smoother app publishing experiences, from the moment you start coding.
With Play Policy Insights beta in Android Studio, you’ll get richer, in-context guidance on policies that may impact your app through lint warnings. You’ll see policy summaries, dos and don'ts to avoid common pitfalls, and direct links to details.
We hope you caught an early demo at I/O. And now, you can check out Play Policy Insights beta in the Android Studio Narwhal Feature Drop Canary release.
Play Policy Insights beta in Android Studio shows rich, in-context guidance
How to use Play Policy Insights beta in Android Studio
Lint warnings will pop up as you code, like when you add a permission. For example, if you add an Android API that uses Photos and requires READ_MEDIA_IMAGES permission, then the Photos & Video Insights lint warning will appear under the respective API call line item in Android Studio.
You can also get these insights by going to Code > Inspect for Play Policy Insights and selecting the project scope to analyze. The scope can be set to the whole project, the current module or file, or a custom scope.
Get Play Policy Insights beta for the whole project, the current module or file, or a custom scope and see the results along with details for each insights in the Problems tool window.
In addition to seeing these insights in Android Studio, you can also generate them as part of your Continuous Integration process by adding the following dependency to your project.
We’re actively working on this feature and want your feedback to refine it before releasing it in the Stable channel of Android Studio later this year. Try it out, report issues, and stop by the Google Play Developer Help Community to share your questions and thoughts directly with our team.
Join us on June 16 when we answer your questions. We’d love to hear about:
How will this change your current Android app development and Google Play Store submission workflow?
Which was more helpful in addressing issues: lint warnings in the IDE or lint warnings from CI build?
What was most helpful in the policy guidance, and what could be improved?
Developers have told us they like:
Catching potential Google Play policy issues early, right in their code, so they can build more efficiently.
Seeing potential Google Play policy issues and guidance all in one-place, reducing the need to dig through policy announcements and issue emails.
Easily discussing potential issues with their team, now that everyone has shared information.
Continuously checking for potential policy issues as they add new features, gaining confidence in a smoother launch.
The Google Play Books team released a curated list of the books they read and loved so far this year. From thrilling fantasy epics to thought-provoking nonfiction to bon…
Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android Developer
Today at Google I/O, we announced the many ways we’re helping you build excellent, adaptive experiences, and helping you stay more productive through updates to our tooling that put AI at your fingertips and throughout your development lifecycle. Here’s a recap of 16 of our favorite announcements for Android developers; you can also see what was announced last week in The Android Show: I/O Edition. And stay tuned over the next two days as we dive into all of the topics in more detail!
Building AI into your Apps
1: Building intelligent apps with Generative AI
Generative AI enhances apps' experience by making them intelligent, personalized and agentic. This year, we announced new ML Kit GenAI APIs using Gemini Nano for common on-device tasks like summarization, proofreading, rewrite, and image description. We also provided capabilities for developers to harness more powerful models such as Gemini Pro, Gemini Flash, and Imagen via Firebase AI Logic for more complex use cases like image generation and processing extensive data across modalities, including bringing AI to life in Android XR, and a new AI sample app, Androidify, that showcases how these APIs can transform your selfies into unique Android robots! To start building intelligent experiences by leveraging these new capabilities, explore the developer documentation, sample apps, and watch the overview session to choose the right solution for your app.
New experiences across devices
2: One app, every screen: think adaptive and unlock 500 million screens
Mobile Android apps form the foundation across phones, foldables, tablets and ChromeOS, and this year we’re helping you bring them to cars and XR and expanding usages with desktop windowing and connected displays. This expansion means tapping into an ecosystem of 500 million devices – a significant opportunity to engage more users when you think adaptive, building a single mobile app that works across form factors. Resources, including Compose Layouts library and Jetpack Navigation updates, help make building these dynamic experiences easier than before. You can see how Peacock, NBCUniveral’s streaming service (available in the US) is building adaptively to meet users where they are.
Disclaimer: Peacock is available in the US only. This video will only be viewable to US viewers.
3: Material 3 Expressive: design for intuition and emotion
The new Material 3 Expressive update provides tools to enhance your product's appeal by harnessing emotional UX, making it more engaging, intuitive, and desirable for users. Check out the I/O talk to learn more about expressive design and how it inspires emotion, clearly guides users toward their goals, and offers a flexible and personalized experience.
4: Smarter widgets, engaging live updates
Measure the return on investment of your widgets (available soon) and easily create personalized widget previews with Glance 1.2. Promoted Live Updates notify users of important ongoing notifications and come with a new Progress Style standardized template.
5: Enhanced Camera & Media: low light boost and battery savings
This year's I/O introduces several camera and media enhancements. These include a software low light boost for improved photography in dim lighting and native PCM offload, allowing the DSP to handle more audio playback processing, thus conserving user battery. Explore our detailed sessions on built-in effects within CameraX and Media3 for further information.
6: Build next-gen app experiences for Cars
We're launching expanded opportunities for developers to build in-car experiences, including new Gemini integrations, support for more app categories like Games and Video, and enhanced capabilities for media and communication apps via the Car App Library and new APIs. Alongside updated car app quality tiers and simplified distribution, we'll soon be providing improved testing tools like Android Automotive OS on Pixel Tablet and Firebase Test Lab access to help you bring your innovative apps to cars. Learn more from our technical session and blog post on new in-car app experiences.
7: Build for Android XR's expanding ecosystem with Developer Preview 2 of the SDK
8: Express yourself on Wear OS: meet Material Expressive on Wear OS 6
This year we are launching Wear OS 6: the most powerful and expressive version of Wear OS. Wear OS 6 features Material 3 Expressive, a new UI design with personalized visuals and motion for user creativity, coming to Wear, Android, and Google apps later this year. Developers gain access to Material 3 Expressive on Wear OS by utilizing new Jetpack libraries: Wear Compose Material 3, which provides components for apps and Wear ProtoLayout Material 3 which provides components and layouts for tiles. Get started with Material 3 libraries and other updates on Wear.
Some examples of Material 3 Expressive on Wear OS experiences
9: Engage users on Google TV with excellent TV apps
You can leverage more resources within Compose's core and Material libraries with the stable release of Compose for TV, empowering you to build excellent adaptive UIs across your apps. We're also thrilled to share exciting platform updates and developer tools designed to boost app engagement, including bringing Gemini capabilities to TV in the fall, opening enrollment for our Video Discovery API, and more.
Developer productivity
10: Build beautiful apps faster with Jetpack Compose
Compose is our big bet for UI development. The latest stable BOM release provides the features, performance, stability, and libraries that you need to build beautiful adaptive apps faster, so you can focus on what makes your app valuable to users.
Compose Adaptive Layouts Updates in the Google Play app
11: Kotlin Multiplatform: new Shared Template lets you build across platforms, easily
12: Gemini in Android Studio: AI Agents to help you work
Gemini in Android Studio is the AI-powered coding companion that makes Android developers more productive at every stage of the dev lifecycle. In March, we introduced Image to Code to bridge the gap between UX teams and software engineers by intelligently converting design mockups into working Compose UI code. And today, we previewed new agentic AI experiences, Journeys for Android Studio and Version Upgrade Agent. These innovations make it easier to build and test code. You can read more about these updates in What’s new in Android development tools.
Get ready for exciting updates from Play designed to boost your discovery, engagement and revenue! Learn how we’re continuing to become a content-rich destination with enhanced personalization and fresh ways to showcase your apps and content. Plus, explore powerful new subscription features designed to streamline checkout and reduce churn. Read I/O 2025: What's new in Google Play to learn more.
15: Start migrating to Play Games Services v2 today
Play Games Services (PGS) connects over 2 billion gamer profiles on Play, powering cross-device gameplay, personalized gaming content and rewards for your players throughout the gaming journey. We are moving PGS v1 features to v2 with more advanced features and an easier integration path. Learn more about the migration timeline and new features.
16: And of course, Android 16
We unpacked some of the latest features coming to users in Android 16, which we’ve been previewing with you for the last few months. If you haven’t already, make sure to test your apps with the latest Beta of Android 16. Android 16 includes Live Updates, professional media and camera features, desktop windowing and connected displays, major accessibility enhancements and much more.
Check out all of the Android and Play content at Google I/O
This was just a preview of some of the cool updates for Android developers at Google I/O, but stay tuned to Google I/O over the next two days as we dive into a range of Android developer topics in more detail. You can check out the What’s New in Android and the full Android track of sessions, and whether you’re joining in person or around the world, we can’t wait to engage with you!
Explore this announcement and all Google I/O 2025 updates on io.google starting May 22.
Posted by Raghavendra Hareesh Pottamsetty – Google Play Developer and Monetization Lead
Posted by Chris Wilk – Group Product Manager, Games on Google Play
Posted by Kosuke Suzuki – Director, Games on Google Play
Posted by Naheed Vora – Senior Product Manager, Android App Safety
The Google Play Books team released a curated list of the books they read and loved so far this year. From thrilling fantasy epics to thought-provoking nonfiction to bon…
Google Play Points members can explore our Roblox experience and redeem their points for new merch.
Discover ways to participate in Pride Month
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