Android Question How reliable is Google Play Licensing?

[jtare]

Like the title says, how reliable is the license check that Google Play offers?
I have an app launched a few days ago and I think my users are having issues with it. On one hand, when filtering the firebase analytics it show me that there are some users that fired up the event "nolicense", and in the other hand in the developer console there is no register of those users at all(there are a few and in different countries so it is easy to track).
As far as I know it does matter if the user open the app or the license check turns out to be negative, developer console should register that a user x downloaded the app.

Someone know what could be going on? Maybe the license check is not reliable, or maybe it is and it just working how it should. If this last was the case, which I highly doubt since no one else have the apk and for get the apk someone had to first download it from the store and this get me back to the beginig (the console didn't register anything).
And because I have a landing site for my app, the analytics from my site matches the countries on firebase analytics, this makes me thing that they are legitiment users.

Sorry for this long text but I had to set the perspective so you can get the idea, this really worry me because users can't access the app when the license check is negative, the app close.

Hope someone can help, thanks!

 

[Erel]

It is probably worth allowing the user to send you an email if there is licensing issues. It will help you with understanding why it failed. Might be related to rooted devices.

 

[jtare]

Thanks for the suggestion. Since the licenses check triggers an error message(dialog) which the user must click on "ok" to proceed, I will also add a help button to take the user to a troubleshooting guide, email contact or something like that.
I found that this is really an uninstall reason to the majority of users facing this problem, just a few will proceed with the help, but at least is a good starting point.

 

[eps]

How have you implemented the license check?

I haven't had any issues with Users who use an App I have which has license checking in it, but then again I've only got a few hundred Users for that App.

 

[jtare]

How have you implemented the license check?

I used the license library, I don't think the issue is here, I handle the positive, negative and errors responses from the license check. If there is any error I give the user a time window so the license can be check in the future, this means that the user will be able to access the app.

I can not replicate the issue, I've tried with a few real devices downloading direct from the play store and the developer console does register them and the license check is positive too.

 

[Erel]

If there is no internet connection on the first run then it will probably fail.

 

[jtare]

Yes, that's correct. I remind the user before the app closes to check their internet connection and a few possible solutions.
Apparently this was a particular case, new users downloaded my app and they are just fine.