Trusted updates were introduced to Market authors as a privilege for authors that meet certain criteria such as but not limited to high approval ratio. Trusted updates allow authors to skip the review process when updating previously approved items. While this can be beneficial, we need to ensure that trusted updates are not used to game our rules.
The following policy clearly outlines do’s and don’ts of trusted updates.
The basics
Trusted updates should never be used to make updates that otherwise would not be allowed. What this means is that if you are attempting to make a trusted update that you think would not be approved if it was going through a review queue, whether this is because of our guidelines or quality bar, you should not submit it as a trusted update. It’s your responsibility as an author to check our Content Requirements for the relevant category and ensure that any update you make is in line with the requirements.
Trusted updates are a privilege given to authors who are following our rules, and not a right. This means that any breaches of the below guidelines may result in temporary or permanent suspension of trusted updates.
Item titles, tags, descriptions & previews
What you can do:
- Correct item title, description or tags to remove a spelling or grammatical error.
- Update your title, description or tags to include information about the latest version of the item (for ThemeForest and CodeCanyon items).
- Edit the item description to include information about sales, promotional banners etc, as long as the sale itself meets our promotional guidelines.
- Update your item preview image to display the newest version of the item, updated branding or to include information about a promotion.
Whoa! This is not allowed:
- Title updates to include more than allowed number of keywords or to repeat keywords, also known as keyword stuffing.
- Edit the item description to add additional terms or promotions that are contrary to our promotional guidelines, refund rules or other terms. For example promises of free installation, money back guarantees etc cannot be added into item description, demo files or anywhere else within the item.
- For ThemeForest - update the title to remove the unique brand name, or move it to the end of the title.
Item download files
What you can do:
- Update your item in line with our Content Requirements for the relevant category.
- Update your item version to the latest software version.
- Update your item to fix bugs.
- Update your item to resolve vulnerability or security issues.
- Make updates to resolve copyright or intellectual property complaints (eg. if you are contacted by a complainant, you can change your item or its preview to resolve the complaint.)
Whoa! This is not allowed:
- You cannot use Trusted Updates to replace the item with a significantly different product. Updates of the product to make sure the version and security are up-to-date, minor improvements or adding a new feature are acceptable. But replacing many features, removing any functionality or significantly changing the item is not ok! The key here is that you cannot update the product in a way that it becomes a different item.
- You cannot use Trusted Updates to include alternative licensing of your item - for example you cannot replace the download files with more limited features and provide additional functionalities to the customers who purchased extended licenses only.
- You cannot use trusted updates to bundle items of different frameworks
- You cannot add additional terms or promotions that are contrary to our promotional guidelines, refund rules or other terms to the help files or zip. folders. This includes promises of free installation, money back guarantees, bonus files and other promotions that are prohibited by our promotional guidelines.