Android APK size limitation in Google Play

Question

Docs say that APK size limit in Google Play is 50MB, with option for two 2GB expansion APKs.

However, I can find apps in Google Play store that are beyond this 50MB limitation (Gears & Guts for example is 371MB). I can download this game straight from Google Play itself without need for external downloaders. Do they have some extra feature as Top Developer to upload APKs over 50MB, or does Google Play just hide the fact that it's downloading expansion files rather than the APK itself?

Solution 1

Expansion files act kind of weird. To the user, they look like a normal app. A 50MB app with 150MB worth of expansion files will look like a 200MB download. Google Play will download the main app first. It will then download the main expansion file and then the patch expansion file. All in seemingly one lump sum.

However, it is possible for the download to be partial. I.E., the user can finish the main app download without the expansion files. As such, you MUST implement a custom downloader in order to retrieve the remaining files on the event the initial download fails. To make things a bit more complicated, sometimes the expansion files are not included in the initial download. I don't know what causes this, but I've seen it happen on rare occasions.

Solution 2

UPDATE: I just downloaded my APK again and Gears and Guts and they both show as one download but if you look at the status of the download in the status bar, it'll show that it's downloading an additional file.