I need help solving a problem my team is running into with our DeepLink solution on Android platform. We deprecated Firebase dynamic links last year, and replaced it with Android AppLinks + our own custom DeepLink backend; we host our /well-known/ folder with apple app site association and assetlinks.json file, along with an HTML redirect page.

For context, the DeepLink is supposed to take the user to the Google play Store if the app is not installed, then once installed and opened, it launches a specific screen in the app. If the app is already installed, then it launches the app directly and takes the user to the specific screen in the app.

The issue we're running into is - our QA engineer clicks on the DeepLink from their device when the app is already installed, it navigates them to the Google Play store, instead of directly launching the app and navigating to the specific screen.

We managed to fix this issue by having them sign out of their company Google Play account they were using on their QA test device, and sign into their personal account; this completely fixed the DeepLinking issue, and the app directly launches and takes them to the specific page in the app.

My question is: why would changing the Google Play account fix this? Are there some restrictions that can be set that would prevent this from working?