What Happened to Piano Tiles 2?

Ranking as the number one app in dozens of countries, Piano Tiles 2 was an incredibly popular piano game by Cheetah Mobile. Since its release in 2015 as the sequel of Piano Tiles, it has spread the joy of piano playing to millions of non-players. The game was most praised for its addictive yet fun nature. So, what happened to Piano Tiles 2 then? 

On February 20th, Google Security Blog published an announcement, stating that around 600 apps, including Piano Tiles 2, were removed from the Google Play Store for their violation of  “disruptive ads policy”. Google detected some harmful adware and malware files inside the app for displaying disruptive ads, therefore removed it from the store.

Along with Piano Tiles 2, 45 other Cheetah mobile apps also were banned from the platform, and most users have been wondering why Piano Tiles suddenly got removed from Play Store since then.

Although Piano Tiles 2 had a huge fan base across the world, this enforcement by Google seems to be for a good purpose. Prior to the removal of the game from the Google Play Store, several users had been complaining about the disturbing ads that were constantly showing up during the game. Some even stated that it had become almost impossible to finish even a single song because of the non-skippable ads between different moves in the app.

This not only results in poor user experience, Google states, but also the waste of the spends of advertisers. The unintentional clicks by users lead to misfunctioning of the ad system thus negatively affecting the reliability.

Cheetah Mobile, the developer of Piano Tiles 2, has been linked with malicious acts a few times before and repeatedly faced sanctions by Google. However, it somehow managed to return to the Play Store every time. This enforcement, on the other hand, seems to be officially marking the end of Piano Tiles 2 on the platform to never return again.

While the fans are currently in search of alternative channels to download the game from, it should be noted that unless the game is reached through a valid and official platform, there is a high risk of unprotected and dangerous malware that could cause harm to devices.

Although Piano Tiles 2 was removed from Google Play Store, Apple users will be happy to know that the game is still available at the App Store. However, as Cheetah Mobile built an unreliable reputation, the Apple users might want to think twice before playing the game next time, since their data security could be in danger.