The deprecation timeline began with the temporary disabling of new paid items because of resource constraints due to Covid-19. We have since decided to make this change permanent, and over the coming months payments for existing items will be phased out.
- March 27, 2020 Publishing of paid items temporarily disabled.
- September 21, 2020 You can no longer create new paid extensions or in-app items. This change, in effect since March 2020, is now permanent.
- December 1, 2020 Free trials are disabled. The "Try Now" button in CWS will no longer be visible, and in-app free trials requests will result in an error.
- Feb 1, 2021 Your existing items and in-app purchases can no longer charge money with Chrome Web Store payments. You can still query license information for previously paid purchases and subscriptions. (The licensing API will accurately reflect the status of active subscriptions, but these subscriptions won’t auto-renew.)
- At some future time The licensing API will no longer allow you to determine license status for your users.
After payments is disabled, you can still use the Licensing API to determine if users are currently licensed. However, this is also deprecated and will be shut down at some point, so you should begin migrating your license tracking to a different implementation.
