Lock screen notification not working on store build (Windows Phone 8)

Question

We have a Windows Phone 8 game which includes text notifications on the lock screen. When we test the app on our devices the notifications work fine, and the app can be selected in the lock screen settings to display notification text. However, once the app is uploaded to the Windows Phone store and downloaded, the app is not listed in the settings for the lock screen, so can't be selected to show lok screen notifications. Has anyone else had this problem or might know why it's happening? I was thinking it was possibly something to do with the downloaded version being installed in the 'games' folder on the device, whereas the working test version is just listed in the main list of apps.

Answer 1

It turns out that this is a limitation with Windows Phone 8. Games cannot use lock screen notifications. From the Windows Phone developer forums:

I was hoping to find out WHY this limitation exists and if there was any way around this for you. Unfortunately it appears to be just a limitation that games cannot have lock screen notifications. You would either need to NOT post your game into the Games hub and make it an App, or not have a lock screen notification.

There was no indication that this would be changed in the near future, but I have made them aware of this issue and hopefully they will look into modifying this in a future update.

That's the answer from Dan Reagan, Team Manager, Windows Store Developer Solutions