App Rejected Due To On Demand Resources Error. Unable to Replicate

Has this only happened recently? I am seeing the same issue and my current guess is that the remote working setup the review team are using is somehow blocking ODR. We can see a VPN and teather connection on a screenshot of the issue we recieve via the resolution centre.

Same exact thing happening to me. All my testing works fine but the resources are throwing the same error when App Review tries. My update only had very minor UI changes. I also have several resources with "Initial Install Tags" (so should be installed when the app is very installed) and it's obvious from the screenshots that these are also not loading for App Review.

I submitted an issue to Developer Technical Support on April 1, got a response on April 7 asking me to submit a bug report via Feeback Assistant, I did that immediately and haven't heard back since. I followed up 3 days ago (April 14) and have not gotten a response.

Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555

Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668

I agree with jonathan239 that it must be a change in the way App Review is connecting to the back-end. I also see VPN status in their screenshots.

Currently, I'm at a loss for how to proceed. Please respond if you figure anything out.

Mark

Hello! Please tell me, did you manage to solve the problem with On Demand Resources?

No! I have a call scheduled with App Review and will try to get to the bottom of it. Please let me know if you learn anything.

I managed to talk to a representative from App Review on the phone today. He said he believed there was no issue with the backend but was going to follow-up with my Technical Support Incident (732675555) and try to get an answer from the engineers. He said he or technical support would get back to me soon. Fingers crossed...

Do you have some update about this situation?

I talked to a representative from App Review last Friday and they seemed to have gotten Developer Tech Support to look at my filed incident, as I got an email on Monday: "I’m still working with our ODR engineering and App Review teams to help figure out the cause of this issue. I will let you know ASAP when I have new information for you." I'll post again if I hear anything more from them.

Maybe, do you have some update about this situation?

No update. I asked for an update on my Technical Support Incident on May 1, and received this reply today: "I do not have an update for you at this time. As soon as I have new information for you from our APP Review and Engineering teams, I will reach back asap and update you."

This situation is very frustrating.

I finally got my app update through App Review without any changes to the update.

TLDR: After months of communicating with my app reviewer as well as with a sympathetic tech support representative, they eventually approved my update without any apparent fixes to the ODR backend.

After receiving only non-responses from tech support (see posts on this thread), I asked again for an update on May 20, explaining that nothing had progressed in 2 months. It was serendipitous timing: the tech support representative I was communicating with was out of town and another rep, Rich, answered my email saying he had reproduced the error and showed me console logs to try to diagnose the issue. We had a few relatively quick exchanges while we tried to debug -- it was so refreshing to work with someone behaving like a human! Importantly, Rich provided a console log for me to attach to my Feedback Assistant bug report and said he "managed to get the ODR engineer set up with the App Review Network administrator to provide the info needed to investigate this issue." He then suggested that I "resubmit the app after each rejection so that the app is reviewed daily" since he had no way to know when the issue was resolved. On Monday June 1, I submitted the same build for review again, and it was rejected the same day. I replied to App Review via the "Resolution Center" that I intended to follow the instructions from tech support and to submit the build everyday until the issue with their backend was resolved. I then received a completely infuriating response: "We appreciate your efforts to comply with the App Store Review Guidelines, and we look forward to reviewing your resubmitted app." I replied, expressing my frustration with the seemingly canned, robotic responses and pointing out that this issue had nothing to my "complying with the App Store Review Guidelines." They responded by setting up another phone call "within 3 to 5 business days." The reviewer (same that I had spoken to in late April) called me on Friday June 5 and explained that he had no visibility into Rich's progress on the issue and promised to track down engineering and follow up on my bug report and tech support incident. On Monday June 8, I received the first response to my Feedback Assistant bug report: another completely infuriating, inhuman instruction "Once the issue has been reproduced please trigger a sysdiagnose after the problem occurs and attach the log file to Feedback Assistant." I replied to that message, as well as to my app reviewer via "Resolution Center" and the tech support incident email thread, that there was no way for me to reproduce the error -- in fact, this was at the heart of the entire issue! A few hours later I got a call from the same app reviewer: he said this was extremely unusual but they were going to approve my app update without a fix! He offered an apology for my trouble but didn't explain what the underlying issue was. My update indeed went through and is now live with the ODR requests working as expected.

My only suggestion is to be persistent with complaints to App Review and to Developer Technical Support until they either fix their backend problems or approve your app update as is. It may be helpful to reference my reports:

Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555

Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668

Same issue here, still not fixed. Everything is working great everywhere but not on the app review network.
Is the app review team part of apple or a third party?
Clearly no communication.
I am submitting a fix for a serious crash... they don't care. The reviewer doesn't even reply in resolution center.
I understand it can take time and hard work to fix the backend but at least let the reviewers know.
Any updates?

Would love to see this issue fixed. We haven't been successful in getting App Store Reviewers to approve new builds in months because of this exact issue. This issue arose shortly after 13.1.0 came out.

We are seeing the same behaviour. We hide the status bar so it's interesting to see people mentioning VPN and remote working being a possible problem.

We have been developing for over a year using ODR and have had no problems via TestFlight we went to remote external QA and distributed builds to lots of people with no issues.

Now we get error 4994 on the first ODR tag which should be also included in the initial install.

Would love to see some positive responses and fixes for this, so far just had dead pan, robotic response from reviewer, wouldn't send logs or engage in discussion.

We have submitted report via Feedback Assistant: FB8888989

The reviewer also responded after I cited this forum post and said the app review will now take longer because of the new information provided and they will either pass the app or respond with further issues, so it sounds like it is possibly something they know about.

Awaiting further response now. Will update if we hear anything more.

We eventually had our game accepted which was failing in review due to ODR. The whole thing took about 5 weeks from the first time we submitted to get accepted, in that time 3 weeks I believe was the App Reviewer waiting for a fix which ended up not working.

After we got contact with a developer via a TSI they knew of a problem with how apps were loaded onto devices for review which was preventing ODR from working, they said they had fixed this issue with the internal tools and to re-submit the app.

We resubmitted and it failed again getting stuck on a loading screen waiting for ODR with the 4994 error.

Went back to the TSI who then later responded saying the issue was fixed again with another change and to resubmit the app.

The same thing happened again and our app could not fetch ODR, the TSI person and app review person were in communication and we had phone calls with the reviewer as well who asked us to send a video of the game.

We resubmitted the app and it was accepted, I am not sure if they fixed the issue or just passed us based on the video we sent them. But if you do encounter the same problem I would advise raising a TSI, and reference it every time when submitting the app.

It's a known issue to the developers but the app review took a while to understand where the problem was. We didn't have to do a lot for the dev to take responsibility and remove the burden from us to update or fix the app, then referencing the TSI and speaking with the reviewer to explain the situation got the ball rolling....

Good luck!