Samsung Galaxy Store doing away with paid content in select countries from January 26

Samsung is now officially doing away with all kinds of paid content on the Galaxy Store in a select few countries.

This is evident from recent notices put up on the Samsung Galaxy Store’s seller portal.

As of January 26, 2021 (Korea Standard Time), Galaxy Store & Themes will no longer offer paid contents and in-app purchase items…As a result, you no longer can distribute paid contents/applications or in-app purchase items in these countries.

We will automatically exclude aforementioned countries from the list of countries where you distribute paid applications or in-app purchase contents. Please note that you can continue to distribute free applications in these countries.

The proprietary app store that comes pre-installed on every Samsung smartphone will now only offer free apps. This is also applicable on in-app purchase items as well as the entirety of Galaxy Themes.

The changes will come into effect immediately from January 26, 2021 (Korea Standard Time) in the following list of countries:

1. Albania
2. Azerbaijan
3. Bahamas
4. Bangladesh
5. Iceland
6. Moldova
7. Pakistan
8. Uruguay

Keep in mind though, that this change does not mean that apps and other content purchased by users will be rendered inaccessible, as they can still be re-downloaded from the “My Apps” menu in the Galaxy Store.

For now, it is unclear as to why Samsung decided to make this move as the company hasn’t really specified a reason.

While this does sound like good news for users, it is more likely that developers will simply choose to take down the paid apps offered by them and instead put them up on Google Play Store, rather than simply making them free.

There’s something to the wordings of the message that reads like they will boot out all the paid apps unless the devs make it free. If they were making all paid apps free, the messaging would’ve been a bit more positive I reckon. Let’s see.
Source

Nonetheless, users are still hopeful that this truly means that they can now avail content like themes and fonts free of cost.

So… Will this mean that all the fonts will be finally free?
Source

And it could be possible that Samsung will actually at least make apps and other paid content offered by them totally free on Galaxy Store, fingers crossed.

But again, it is too early to comment on the matter. Only time will tell the kind of response this move gets from developers and users alike.

With that being said, we will continue to update the article as and when new developments emerge.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, MacRumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.