Unfortunately, a surprise million-dollar App Store windfall for some developers is a bug

Some developers had an exciting morning, as a bug in App Store Connect misreported millions in earnings from apps in the App Store for a while.

App Store Connect provides developers with analytics and figures relating to apps submitted to the App Store. While the system is fairly robust, there are occasional minor issues that can cause a misreporting of data to its users.

In posts to Mastodon on Thursday, developers are reporting that the Sales and Proceeds data is showing wildly incorrect information. When placed in the 24-hour view, developers can see large spikes over the course of several hours.

The result is that App Store Connect told the developers they earned far more than normal, to the tune of millions of dollars. In screenshots seen by AppleInsider, the Proceeds showed revenue from about $2 million to beyond $10 million in the case of Jeff Johnson, with the trend being over 999% better than normal.

An App Store Connect misreporting issue and notice [Mastodon/James Thomson]

Another screenshot from James Thomson, who recorded $3.88 million in "revenue," shows Apple is aware of a problem. A message at the top of the page states "An issue exists with Sales and Proceeds data in the 24 hours view from April 10, 2024 10p.m. UTC. We are working on resolving this."

While the reporting glitch kickstarted some hearts this morning, it could cause serious problems in some cases.

For example, as @DrChris@mastodon.ie proposes, a business that automated their App Store ad spend based on their proceeds per hour may discover their system temporarily increased their ad expenditure. With reporting in the millions of dollars, this could potentially be an extremely expensive mistake to make.

Our advice today is to check your App Store Connect account, and talk to Apple Support about it if you need to.