Changing locations in app affects Google Play?
 

I am a paying subscriber/user of a few apps, one I purchased and paid through Google Play.
I wanted to change location on this app, and change my real Belgian location for a random location in the UK (to get in touch with British users, which the app doesn't allow me when using my Belgian real address). The helpdesk of the app themselves recommended to change my location to whatever country I want, but warned that it may have consequences for my Google Play account and the usage thereof. When I asked them which consequences they talked about, they couldn't answer and refered me to Google Play (we all know reaching Google and getting an answer from them is extremely hard).

Does anyone know in what negative way changing my location on app purchased via Google Play, could impact my overall use of Google Play?

I'll take a crack at it.

Think about Amazon.com. If you're in Belgium for example, you have access to the Belgium store, everything that you're allowed to buy, etc. If you change to the UK, you will no longer have access to the Belgium store.

I think this is the same for this. I'm in the US. I cannot buy some items in Canada or the UK at the online stores - I cannot get their sales or deals, nor can they get ours.

In the Play Store, our country blocks the listing of items from certain countries. If I would change to another country, I'd no longer have those protections. Additionally, it may break some agreement with Google (you'd have to dig) and you could be blocked altogether for trying to work the system. I'm not sure about that but that would be my guess. My best guess is that it messes up location and your system expects you to be in Belgium and it cannot serve up appropriate content if you force-change it to the UK.

That could very well make sense. Although I'm not sure if changing the location in the app has any influence on your location in the Google Play store. I mean, the Google Play store may not know at all that you've changed the location in the app you downloaded from them. But I guess it's not worth taking the risk.

Thanks for your response :)

Can you change the location in the app or are they telling you to change it on Google?

The former would not affect Google. Instead of the latter, just create another Google account and set the country. Not ideal if it's a paid app.

There is a way to avoid all those restrictions: get a VPN service, change your VPN Server location to the country you need, and voila... it works!

The location should be changed in the app. However, the support team of the app stated that it could mess up settings in Google Play Store. When I asked them how this could possibly affect Google settings, they could not respond.