Google Play internal app sharing no longer works on any device

Question

At my company we use Google Play's internal app sharing links to provide builds to QA. As of an hour or so ago, opening any link now fails, showing this error inside Google Play :

To view this content, install and set up a web browsing app.

• This happens on every device & OS tested, all of which previously handled links perfectly.
• We are not using opt-in testing, only 1 google account is whitelisted for the builds.
• The links are in the format https://play.google.com/apps/test/xxxxx/xxxx-xxxx_xxxx .
• Since it happened on all devices at the same time, I suspect it's a remote config switch.

Is there any known workaround?

Note: None of these suggested solutions work, as they just let you open the URL in the browser. That doesn't help, as the URL just provides a link to open it in the Play Store .

Answer 1

Try directly this if link is originated from an app for Android to handle:

market://details?id=<package_name>

Note: There's no domain and host.

Answer 2

It was caused by a temporary outage on Google's end. It resolved itself a few hours later.