14 DAY TRIAL // A few hours ago, we told you that Microsoft removed approximately 100,000 apps from the Windows Store because they had no age ratings, but it turns out that the number is actually bigger than that.
According to a report that was published in German media, Microsoft actually pulled half of the Windows Store apps, at least from the German Store, as part of the same cleaning process.
It appears that the number of apps available for download experienced a dramatic drop from 328,639 to 164,436, which means that no less than 174,203 apps were removed because of the age rating rule.
What’s very important to note this time, however, is that the removal of the apps impacted less known titles, so although quite a lot of them disappeared from the Store, there’s a big chance that only a few people actually noticed.
Only small and less known apps affected
In most of the cases, Microsoft’s requirement for developers to add age ratings to their apps is not impacting famous software makers, as the majority of them have already updated apps to come in line with Redmond’s policy.
But on the other hand, losing so many apps is clearly a big hit that Windows 10 receives, as some of the titles that were pulled from the Store might actually come in handy to a number of users who installed them on their devices.
On the good side, these apps aren’t completely gone, but only unlisted from the Store, so the only thing that developers have to do in order to make their apps available for download once again is to access the Dev Center and fill in the age ratings for each of their titles. This is a little effort that developers need to make for a very simple update, so there’s really no excuse if their titles do not show up in the Store once again.