Eleven days ago this forum announced “Strengthening trust in App Store reviews.” Since then, genuine, hard-won 5-star reviews have been unpublished from our listing (Event Ticketing, Built for Shopify), while every one of our critical reviews remains in place. The stated goal was to make the reviews that remain carry more weight. For us the opposite has happened, and I can prove it.
What we did
The Partner API does not expose reviews, so the only complete record of the reviews we have ever received is Shopify’s own Partner notification emails. We reconstructed every review from those emails and compared them against our current live listing. Then we cross-referenced each unpublished review against our own records and against Shopify’s own usage billing.
What we found
Multiple 5-star reviews unpublished. Zero negative reviews removed. Every unpublished review we could identify came from a real, active, paying merchant, several of whom sold tickets through Shopify today.
Two cases, redacted. Both are genuine reviews from real, paying merchants. Both are gone.
Case 1 (screenshots below), the timeline:
- Shopify’s Partner notification that this merchant left a detailed 5-star review in May 2026.
- The public Wayback Machine snapshot of our listing from June 10, 2026, which still shows that review live.
- Our listing today: it is gone (verified across all pages on 2026-07-17).
- Shopify’s own Partner billing, showing this merchant billing per-ticket usage charges, with tickets sold today.
A 5-star review, on the public record as recently as 26 days ago, from a merchant Shopify’s own systems show is active and selling right now, unpublished with no notice.
Case 2 (screenshot below), the stakes:
A merchant who has used our app for six years. Shopify’s own Partner dashboard shows this single store has generated $36,034.40 in app earnings. They are still installed, on a Grow plan, and sold tickets through Shopify this morning. Their 5-star review is gone.
I have redacted both merchants and will hand staff the unredacted specifics for these and every other case.
For context: the public web archive shows our listing at 38 reviews on June 10. Through June we earned four more genuine reviews, all in our Partner notification emails, which put us around 42 by early July. Today we are at 34. The listing was not stalling. It was growing on real reviews, and then it was cut by about eight, including one of those four June reviews.
On the two stated mechanisms
On incentivization: we have never offered, unlocked, or withheld any app feature in exchange for a review, by the definition in the announcement. If an automated classifier flagged us, it is wrong, and we have no way to know or contest it, because there was no notification.
On untrusted-review detection: the announcement says “some genuine apps may see reviews unpublished too” and that “this isn’t a reflection of wrongdoing on your part.” That describes exactly what is happening to us, and it concedes that these reviews are genuine. So genuine reviews from real merchants are being destroyed, by Shopify’s own admission, with no notification, no appeal, and no way to get them back.
Why this destroys trust instead of strengthening it
We are not alone. The thread announcing these changes is full of the same story: developers reporting 30 legitimate five-star reviews gone in an hour, reviews from merchants who used their app for five years, reviews lost in the middle of a Built for Shopify review. There is still no staff response, no appeal path, and no notification.
The announcement said the goal is for the reviews that remain to carry more weight. Look at what is actually surviving. Across the store, five-star reviews from merchants who used an app for two or three minutes, with no real content, are sticking, while detailed reviews from merchants of five and six years who are still actively selling are the ones being removed. Shopify’s own guidance says it prioritizes reviews from established merchants with meaningful detail. This is doing the opposite.
For us specifically, the reviews that survived are disproportionately the negative ones. A listing that keeps the criticism and the two-minute “looks good” reviews, and deletes the verified, detailed praise from long-term merchants, is not more trustworthy. It is less accurate.
This morning a Shopify staffer posted on X that we can appeal by sending support a list of the reviews we want restored. I appreciate the response. But it has the gap everyone is already pointing at: you are asking us to submit a list of the reviews you removed, without ever telling us which reviews you removed. I only know mine because I spent today reconstructing them from your own notification emai
ls and a public web archive. Most developers cannot do that. An appeal that depends on the developer already knowing what was taken is a puzzle, not a process.
What we are asking for
- Notification. Tell each developer exactly which reviews were removed, and under which mechanism. The appeal announced on X is hollow without it. You cannot appeal a list you were never given.
- A durable, official process with real replies, not a tweet. Developers in these threads report appeals that fell on deaf ears with no response.
- Reinstatement of genuine reviews from merchants who are verifiably real and active. My list is ready, with the shop domains, dates, and your own billing records to verify every one.
Every one of these reviews was earned one merchant at a time. So the real question isn’t just for Shopify, it’s for the rest of us: is this the game we accept?
Jeff
Event Ticketing (Built for Shopify)
“All in the game” - Omar
