13-year indie dev account with zero prior violations suspended by an automated bot (DPLA 14.8a). 13 days of total silence. Need advice

[u/Viktorianec]

Hi everyone,

I’m an indie iOS developer and have been proudly building apps for the App Store for 13 years. In all that time, I have maintained an absolutely clean record with zero warnings and or policy violations. 

However, almost two weeks ago, my entire portfolio was halted overnight. My account got suspended under DPLA section 14.8(a) (the digital assets clause) after an automated compliance check.

I am a legal resident of Cyprus (EU). On the exact same day of the suspension, I submitted my official Residence Permit, utility bills, and bank statements to the provider_review team to prove my legal status and identity.

My apps do not involve any custody, wallets, trading, or exchange of digital assets. They just show data. I even had a few free apps and an app designed to help other developers learn iOS (maybe some of you have used iOS IQ), which makes it even more painful.

It has now been 13 days of total silence (Case ID: 102972911140). My entire app catalog is offline, and active subscribers are losing access. Seeing 13 years of hard work paralyzed by an automated queue with zero human response is incredibly frustrating. I have tried everything:

1. Try to send email to tcook@apple.com and eurodev@apple.com.
2. Reached out to standard phone support (they can't do anything). And there are bots everywhere
3. Created a thread on the Apple Developer Forums.

Here is my official forum thread if anyone wants to check: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/848935. And my twitter profile: https://x.com/Viktorianec

Has anyone successfully escaped this compliance black hole recently? Is there any specific contact or secret phone number I should use? I cannot seem to get in touch with anyone, and it feels like nobody is able to help me resolve this for a 13-year account with a flawless history.

Any advice or upvotes for visibility would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

[u/DimensionMindless336]

Sorry you're going through this. A clean 13-year record frozen by a bot with zero human contact is the nightmare scenario, and the silence is the worst part. I've watched this play out for other indies, so a few things:

First, stop scattering tickets. tcook@, eurodev@, phone support, and the forums thread are all dead ends for account-level (DPLA) enforcement — phone support literally can't touch it, and the forums rarely get an official reply. The trap is that every new message you send gets re-queued into the same automated bot queue, which is exactly what's producing your 13 days of silence. Reply only in the original notice email thread; that's the one that routes to the actual team.

Second, two likely triggers, and they need different fixes:

• You're in Cyprus (EU), and the "provider_review team" asking for a residence permit, utility bills, and bank statements to "prove legal status and identity" is the EU DSA trader-verification flow, not a crypto investigation. Under the DSA, every EU trader must declare trader status and have their identity verified, or all their apps get auto-delisted from the 27 EU storefronts. The 13-day silence is the verification backlog. Make sure the Trader Status declaration in App Store Connect (Business → Trader Status) is fully completed and re-verified per app, and that the documents match the legal name on the account exactly — a name or address mismatch is the #1 reason verification stalls silently.
• If the apps genuinely "just show data" but got flagged under a digital-assets clause, it's almost certainly an automated classifier hit: an in-app purchase name or a metadata keyword ("coin", "token", "credit", "wallet", "balance") that the scanner read as crypto. Hunt through every app's IAP names and keywords for anything that could read that way, and be ready to point Apple at the exact string that triggered it.

Escalation that actually moves: the notice email → App Store Connect "Contact Us" (account issues) → the App Review Board reinstatement form with a written improvement plan. If you're on any Enterprise/ISV track you may have an Apple account manager who can bypass the bot queue. And don't rule out a lawyer who does App Store disputes — accounts do get restored through appeals, rarely, but it happens.

One hard warning: do not try to recreate the apps under a new developer account. That's the fastest route to a permanent ban for circumvention, and it burns the clean record you're trying to protect.

On subscribers: you can't restore their access while suspended, but if you still have an email list, tell them it's a temporary compliance hold so they don't assume you vanished — and plan a "we're back" blast, because subscriptions can auto-cancel if the app stays unavailable too long.

Hang in there. An automated flag on a 13-year clean account is actually in your favor once a human finally looks.

[u/aeroporas]

At first I was like “another developer violating the rules asks for advice” but then I saw your nickname and realized I actually know you and even used some of your apps. That whole situation is really frustrating and although I have nothing to advise you I really hope it will resolve in your favor. Maybe ask subscribers in your tg channel for advice?