Even though Google Play Games isn't one of the company's more popular apps, Google keeps bringing new features to the app to keep it at par with all of its other offerings. Google Play Games was one of the earliest apps from the company to get a dark theme and it even received a major design overhaul last year. Now, it seems like Google is testing a new feature for the app which will notify users of the company's Game of the Week selection to promote discovery.
An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.
A teardown of the latest version of Google Play Games (v.2020.01.15707) revealed strings of code that talk about the upcoming feature. Once released, the Games of the Week notification feature will be available in the app settings and will allow users to tap on a toggle to receive notifications for Google's top pick each week. Tapping on the setting for the first time will bring up a dialog that states, "We'll highlight a different instant game every week and notify you when it's ready. No installation needed." The dialog will include a 'Done' button to enable the feature.
<string name="games__gotw__game_of_the_week_notifications_disabled_label"><u>Enable Game of the week notifications in settings</u></string>
<string name="games__gotw__notification_channel_name">Game of the week</string>
<string name="games__gotw__opt_in_dialog_body">"We'll highlight a different instant game every week and notify you when it's ready. No installation needed."</string>
<string name="games__gotw__opt_in_dialog_button">Done</string>
<string name="games__gotw__opt_in_dialog_label">Get game of the week notifications</string>
<string name="games__gotw__opt_in_dialog_title">Want updates on the game of the week?</string>
For the unaware, Instant Games is a separate category within Google Play Games which consists of titles that you can play instantly without installing them on your device. These include titles like Microtrip, Mazes & More, and Sea Battle, that can be played just by tapping on the Instant play button next to the listing. As of now, Google has revealed no information on when the feature will roll out to the stable version of the app. But since the code has already made it to the app, we expect the company to reveal more information soon.
Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.