Terms of Service

Last updated 2 September 2026.

Developer Pact is a mutual obligation. These terms describe what you are agreeing to hold up, what happens when it is not held up, and the things the platform does not promise.

1. Who this is between

These terms are between you and the operator of Developer Pact, reachable at multi.app.software@gmail.com. "The platform" means developerpact.com, the service behind it, and the Developer Pact SDK. By creating an account or joining a pact, you accept these terms.

You need an account with an app store publishing identity to use the platform as a developer, and you must be old enough to enter a binding agreement where you live — at least 16 in any case.

2. What a pact is

A pact is a mutual testing commitment between members. Fifteen members is a cohort: twelve to meet the Google Play closed-test threshold and three as cover. Two members is a bilateral contract. Within a pact, each member holds one obligation toward each other member's app. A cohort starts when it fills, not on a fixed date.

3. What joining commits you to

When you join a cohort you are committing, for the length of the window, to:

• Install every member's app — every one of them, through the link the platform gives you, so that the install can be matched to you.
• Opt in and stay opted in to the closed test track for the full window. Leaving the track resets a counter that belongs to someone else.
• Keep the apps installed for the whole window. Uninstalling early is the event this entire platform exists to notice.
• Stay non-quiet. Supply evidence at the rung the obligation asks for — a check-in, a proof prompt, a heartbeat from simply opening the app — on the days it is asked for.
• Register only apps you actually control. Registering someone else's app, or an app already live in production, is not permitted; competing ownership claims go to a dispute queue rather than being granted automatically.
• Be a real, single person. One account per person. No second account to test your own app, no automated or emulated presence, no tampering with the SDK, the tokens or the evidence you submit.

You keep the obligations you have already accepted even if you later decide you would rather not — the other fourteen members arranged their release around them.

4. Quiet days, lapsing and breaking

A day without evidence is a lost signal, not an accusation, and the platform treats it that way:

• Two quiet days are free. Nothing happens.
• On the third quiet day the obligation lapses. Its state changes and the member on the other side is told.
• On the fifth it breaks. The obligation is recorded as broken and your slot passes to one of the cohort's spare members.
• The way back is open at any point before the break, by supplying evidence again.

The consequence of breaking an obligation is mostly structural rather than punitive: you leave the pact, the testers holding obligations toward your app leave with you, and your own fourteen-day count starts over. It is also recorded against your standing, and a repeated break carries a waiting period before you can join another pact. If a cohort falls below twelve surviving members it goes into salvage, and the remaining members are offered the choice between filling from the spares and resetting the count, extending the window, or dissolving it.

5. Credit

Credit exists to separate giving from getting in time. It is not currency and it is not a payment instrument. It is earned only from verified evidence — a self-reported check-in earns none — it cannot be transferred, gifted, traded, bought or sold, it expires ninety days after it is earned, and spending it costs more than earning it. It has no cash value and confers no refund right. Credit does not substitute for evidence: it buys queue priority and access, never tester-days that nobody actually served.

6. What is not allowed

• Exchanging, soliciting or offering reviews, ratings or upvotes. Incentivised reviews are prohibited by the app stores' policies, and this platform will not host that trade in any form.
• Faking presence: emulators standing in for real devices, scripted heartbeats, replayed tokens, doctored screenshots, or coordinating with another member to cover for each other's absence.
• Multiple accounts, or accounts operated on behalf of someone else.
• Registering apps you do not own, or apps already published to production.
• Attempting to extract other members' personal data from the platform, or contacting them for anything other than the pact you share.
• Interfering with the service — probing, scraping, overloading, or circumventing its limits.
• Distributing, through a registered app, anything unlawful, malicious or in breach of the store's own policies.

7. Your app, your responsibility

You remain solely responsible for the app you register: its content, its legality, its own privacy policy, its store listing and its compliance with Google Play's policies. Other members are installing it on their real devices on your word that it is safe to do so. You grant the platform and your cohort members only what is needed to run the pact — the right to display your app's name and listing to your cohort, and for those members to install and use it for testing during the window.

8. What the platform does and does not promise

The platform measures presence. It records whether members appear to be still installed and still opted in, at the evidence rung an obligation supports, and it makes that record visible to the people who need it.

It does not guarantee any Play Console outcome. Whether Google counts a tester, when the fourteen-day requirement is judged satisfied, whether an app is approved for production, and how long any of it takes are Google's decisions and are outside this platform's control. A cohort completed here is not a promise of a passed review.

It does not guarantee that other people behave. The platform observes and reports; it cannot force a member to keep an app installed. Evidence below the attested rungs can be gamed, and the ladder exists precisely because lower rungs prove less.

It is not affiliated with Google. Developer Pact is independent and is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to Google LLC. Google Play, Play Console and Play Integrity are Google's services and trademarks, named here only to describe what this platform does.

9. Availability, changes and ending it

The platform is under development and is provided free of charge. Features may change, and the service may be interrupted, without notice. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and we will say why.

You may close your account at any time by writing to the address below. Obligations you are currently holding end when the account does, and your cohort is told the slot is empty — which is the same as breaking them, because for the members relying on you it is.

If these terms change materially, the date at the top changes and members are told by email. Continuing to use the platform after that is acceptance.

10. No warranty, and limits on liability

The platform is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy or non-infringement.

To the fullest extent the law allows, the operator is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, nor for lost revenue, lost release windows, delayed or refused store approval, lost data, or the acts or omissions of other members. Since the service is provided free of charge, any aggregate liability that cannot be excluded is limited to the amount you have paid to use it.

Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

11. Privacy

What the platform collects, why, where it is stored and how to have it deleted is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

12. Contact

Questions about these terms, disputes over app ownership, account closure and data deletion requests all go to multi.app.software@gmail.com.