Some developer (let's call them Greg) had intentionally put a "kill switch" into the app for alpha testing purposes. You see, Greg was worried that some testers might keep a buggy alpha version on their phones, or even leak the build. Greg's idea was that exactly 30 days after the build date, the alpha will stop working and tell the user to download an official release. Greg submitted this code about a year ago and never dreamed it would stay in for the public release.
On January 30th, the kill switch activated for every Smart Launcher 6 user. The app stopped working and told users to download an update from the Play Store. But this was not a coordinated thing. There was no update.
I should explain what this app is. It's a launcher app, meaning it replaces the entire home screen and app menu on the phone. When the kill switch activated around 4 PM, people suddenly couldn't get to their home screen or launch any apps. Their phone just kept sending them to the Play Store and was practically unusable. The one thing they could do was uninstall the app, and of course they did.
By the end, the app had been bombed by thousands of 1 star reviews and lost most of its users. Many users who had paid for additional features were demanding refunds. I doubt I can even imagine how frustrating it must have been. How stupidly they sabotaged themselves, and how there was nothing they could do for their users even though the code was fixed in 5 minutes.
