Accidentally sweeping the App Store on mobile devices removed more than 20 million ratings from the most famous apps, which include the ones from popular labels such as Starbucks, Nike, Google, Microsoft, and Hulu, among others. The technical glitch occurred on Oct. 23, Apple claimed. The removal of ratings was due to a bug.
A TechCrunch article indicates that the drop in massive ratings was discovered on Appfigures, a platform for mobile app insights. The online tech news site adds Apple found that "More than 300 apps from over 200 developers were affected by the sweep," that accidentally wiped out a total of 22 million App Store reviews. Averagely, the app discovered half or 50% drop in "the affected countries," and these include the U.S.
The U.S. Affected the Most by the Bug
Among all the affected countries, the App Store in the U.S. was affected the most as around 10 million apps got lost. However, the sweep was worldwide in nature, affecting a total of 155 countries supported by Apple. Some of these countries hit by the bug are Russia, China, U.K., and Australia. These nations reportedly felt a noticeable impact.
There are a number of apps that hit harder compared to the others. For instance, Hulu lost a vast 95% rating in the U.S. Chase and Dropbox, on the other hand, had an 85% loss. Several bug-affected countries opted not to comment but said the removals of ratings were done because they requested it. They added, though, "they were just as surprised as everyone else."
Other big apps on App store that discovered the disappearance of their ratings in the U.S. were Amazon, Chase, Skyscanner, Nike SNKRS, Venmo, Google Classroom, Old Navy, and My Disney Experience, among others. There was a speculation from the developers that Apple was possibly attempting to clean up its fake or false app ratings. However, this theory didn't appear like that, as Appfigures discovered that both the positive and negative ratings disappeared.
Missing Ratings Restored
The good news now is that, according to Appfigures and some of the affected companies, the missing ratings got restored already, late last week. The disappearance of hundreds of apps from the App Store may be an alarming issue, but apparently, Apple knew what to do as this is not the first time its app ratings got removed.
It was already previously reported that a similar incident occurred last year when an App Store bug resulted in thousands of apps on iOS lost half 50% of their ratings over one weekend. Apple was able to solve that, but never made any statement on what happened. Some news reports had it that Apple spoke to some developers directly and explained to them that the removals of ratings were done by mistake, and the company was working to have the situation fixed.
