Roku Developer Program

[rossoneri]

I have a very successful screensaver app.  500k users, 4 stars and it has always been at the top of the channel store.  Recently I noticed a steep decline in my installations and realized that my channel is no longer in the app store at all.  I reached out to Roku Partner Success and they simply told me that "there's an algorithm that decides what's displayed, and there's currently no reported issues with the algorithm".  

Maybe I'm biased but I think removing a screensaver with 500k users & 4 stars, while leaving 1.5 star screensavers and a bunch of softcore porn screensavers remain.  It really just seems like a lose-lose.  Roku loses one of their few good screensaver (I swear I'm actually humble) and I lose a project I've worked on for years.  

Sorry for the little rant.  Has anybody experienced anything similar, where their channel was removed for no reason?  If so, were you able to get it back?  Any advice or suggestions to try would be greatly appreciated.  

[g-se]

I am in the exact same boat as you.

I have (had) 2 very successful screensaver channels that have now completely vanished and my installs have dropped like a rock.

The change seems to have started around end of May/early June when Roku pushed out their new screensaver channels (which are junk - just a new way to serve ads). In this update, they also removed the "Screensavers" category from the on-device streaming channels list, and changed the ranking algorithm for the list of screensavers in "Settings".

Roku partner success gave me the same excuse. They claim the new algorithm is based on the number of active devices "currently using" the screensaver, instead of installs/ratings like before. It obviously is glitched, despite what they're saying. At the time I reported the issue, my internal server tracking showed 8k unique devices showing my screensaver at least once in the past 24 hours. There is no way some $1.99/1 star/1 review has more than that many active users.

Roku needs to fix this asap, but they seem to not care and are happy with the "all's well" line. Like you, I have invested a lot of time/money into developing the channels and acquiring content, and now my revenue has been cut by 60% and will continue to drop the longer it goes.

Additionally - the roku.com "channel store" continued to use the old ranking algorithm for a while, but it seems now that it has been also changed to the jacked up one.

[g-se]

OH - 1 more thought too.

I don't think the channels are "removed", because you should be able to still search for it by name.

I think the problem is that they are limiting the screensaver "Browse" list to the first 1,000 results. Our channels have just INCORRECTLY been ranked so low that they are not in the top 1,000 so not shown.

[rossoneri]

It's nice to hear I'm not alone (but frustrating that others are being impacted by the same nonsense).  Thanks for confirming my suspicions that their algorithm is the likely cause of this issue.  Hopefully we can bring this to their attention.