Paid apps were no longer being supported by BlackBerry World

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Starting today paid apps were no longer being supported by BlackBerry World

BlackBerry moving to shut down BlackBerry World on December 31st, 2019, the BlackBerry World storefront team has already initiated some moves to make that process easier. Unfortunately, that means quite a few changes for developers who have apps on BlackBerry World and end users still making use of BlackBerry apps.

A new email has started going out highlighting those changes:

Dear BlackBerry World Vendor,

We wish to make you aware of some changes to the BlackBerry World storefront that may affect you over the coming months.

Beginning April 1, 2018 BlackBerry World will move to a free-only storefront. The result of this change means that BlackBerry World will no longer host paid content and all purchasing mechanisms will be disabled.

If you would like to continue distribution on BlackBerry World at no cost, please change your content to "free" by logging into the Vendor Portal. Any paid content not switched to 'free' will be removed from the BlackBerry World storefront on March 31, 2018. A few other things to note:

For Vendors with only free content, there is no action required for the above-described changes. We will continue to host and distribute your free content as we do today.
You can change your paid content to 'free' and re-list the application at any time.

If you choose to remain on BlackBerry World, you will be able to continue monetizing your application(s), however, the payment mechanism will need to live within your application itself. This means any support for payments, refunds, etc. will be supported by you.

There will be no required revenue split for Vendors who choose to monetize application(s) on their own. Refunds for paid content in BlackBerry World will be supported until April 30, 2018. Customers will still be able to access content they paid for prior to the above-noted changes.

We appreciate you being a valued BlackBerry World vendor and ask that you contact us with any questions.

Thank you, BlackBerry Storefront Team

Probably goes without saying, but that's going to cause some issues for any developers who are still supporting the platform as they'll need to change up their apps in order to continue making money off of them from BlackBerry World and really, it pretty much removes whatever remaining amount of incentive developers had for creating apps for BlackBerry 10. 

Even apps that are in BlackBerry World that are paid and still work will likely be removed because there will soon be no way to charge for them. It's the beginning of the slow shutdown.