Install badges on the play canvas
16 October 2026 · protocol · 3 min read
Before the star average, each Play header on 16 October 2026 carried a small set of badges next to the developer name. This note is only about those badges: ads, purchases, and the cases where the header is quiet.
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Step 1. Treat a missing badge as silence
Mindustry’s header, developer Anuken, prints neither Contains ads nor In-app purchases. The age line we copied says Fantasy Violence and does not, in the visible sentence, add a purchase badge. Silence is filed as silence. It is not upgraded to “confirmed free of ads” or “no purchases exist in every build”. The card can be narrower than the game.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon prints In-app purchases and does not print Contains ads. Its age line also says In-Game Purchases, next to Fantasy Violence and Mild Blood. The badge and the age line agree that purchases are declared. Ads remain undeclared on that header.
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Step 2. Copy the longer purchase parenthetical when it is there
Brawl Stars prints In-app purchases on the developer row and, on the age line, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items), plus Users Interact. Subway Surfers prints both Contains ads and In-app purchases, and the age line again says In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items). The parenthetical is part of the label, so it stays inside the facts line. This easel does not rename “random items” or sort the apps by that phrase.
Subway Surfers is the only card in the set whose header shows the ads badge. The other three are not described as ad-free. They are described as cards that did not show that badge on the day of the check.
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Step 3. Keep price, band, and badge in different columns
All four cards use a free install. A free install plus an in-app purchases badge is a normal Play pattern and it is not a contradiction to resolve. Download bands (5M+, 5M+, 500M+, 1B+) say nothing about whether the badge is present. Editors' Choice sits on Brawl Stars and Subway Surfers and is not an install badge; it stays in their own checks so it is not mistaken for a price mark.
The store button on each rank card is the place the badges can be re-read. This page will not update itself if a developer adds or removes Contains ads tomorrow. The date on the sentence is the whole claim. Free install, purchase badge, and ads badge are three separate marks, and only the marks that were printed are repeated below.
The homepage facts lines are the short form of this note. If they ever drop “Contains ads” from Subway Surfers or add it to Mindustry, they have drifted from the headers filed on 16 October 2026. The long form on this page is the place to check them against.
What to expect in the facts line of each rank card is the badge text from that header: silence for Mindustry, purchases for Shattered Pixel Dungeon, purchases and random items for Brawl Stars, and both ads and purchases for Subway Surfers.