It needs to be. First, let me be clear, as i did not participate in this mess, I’m not speaking from a defensive position. I’m irritated.
Last night was a mess on XBox. Apparently, the XBox Store on the web had a link for an in-game item listed as free, and unlimited. That item contained keys, and some users were spamming said link, and so much mythic spam was hitting global 001 that people were landing in 002 upon login. Same story there.
This lead to @Kafka and another dev arriving in global and making threats to ban anyone using the link on Microsoft’s website. While i understand this has significant impacts on the game’s economy, and the game’s large-scale balance, I feel the approach of the developers was so far out of line that an apology to the community is warranted. For these reasons:
The issue here is an issue between the developer, it’s chosen publisher, and the owner of the platform.
The owner of the platform, with whom you and your publisher have a contract, offers its paying customers (Gold Subscribers), discounts and freebies.
You came into an increasingly toxic global chat, and began making threats of reprisal against the platform owner’s paying subscribers for using (albeit some were abusing) the benefits offered to them for being subscribers.
This bullying threat left an air of uncertainty about being banned, creating anxiety amongst players who have spent hundreds of dollars buying into the game’s reward scheme and new players alike.
You have demonstrated the ability to take away mythic troops awarded in error (Zuul’Goth and an upcoming mythic). You have that option, despite how much work that might be.
You had the option to immediately remove all mythic (and legendary) troops from chests until you could work out a fix with the party responsible for the error.
Instead of handling the issues professionally, and like emotionally responsible adults, you choose to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt by threatening the people who pay your bills, the publishers bills, and the platform owner’s bills in a way that probably would get you in hot water with the platform owner.
I strongly support removing any mythics obtained through exploiting that link. But threatening to ban people from the game for using a benefit offered by the platform owner to Its subscribers is a foul way to stop the bleeding when you had other, adult ways to handle it that wouldn’t leave your customers upset and confused.
Apologize and deal with your problems like adults.
You’re missing the point @UKresistance . More like, how dare they take out their frustration with their publisher and platform owner on the players. They can take back the ill gotten gains. That’s the point. Instead, they choose to attack the players emotionally. They created a vague line of “those found abusing it” for punishment, leaving anyone who tried it even once uncertain that they’d be able to play again. That’s how bullies act. They’re powerless to attack the cause of the problem so they pick on someone smaller than them.
That players who abuse (without saying what classifies exactly as abusing) it would be banned. This could mean one use in their eyes, 10, 100, who knows. They don’t have any right to tell Microsoft customers not to use benefits from Microsoft anyway, nor any right to punish people for using what Microsoft offers to Its customers as a benefit. If Microsoft screwed up, or the publisher agreed to something without the developers approval, that’s between them.
Again, i support reclaiming ill gotten troops. I support temporarily removing all valuable rewards until the bleeding stops (though not ideal), and it was an option last night. I do not support emotional abuse of customers who are taking advantage of a benefit offered by an involved business entity.
OK. I don’t really see that as bullying or making threats, nor as acting unprofessionally or as emotionally irresponsible adults, or emotionally responsible children, or whatever the opposite of “emotionally responsible adults” would be.
In terms of putting a hard line on what defines abuse, that should be sort-of obvious to anyone who is doing it, don’t you think?
I didn’t see what happened last night, but in regards to “abuse”, I think we can all agree that if a player did it once, that would not be considered “abusing.”
I get that some of you are going to make competitive statements about what is available on what platform, but it’s irrelevant. A benefit was offered by Microsoft to Its customers, and three devs attacked Microsoft’s customers for using said benefit. That’s what’s at issue, not exclusive armors or troops. Won’t further address it.
Clearly it is not something intended. Or how things work, contracts do not give them free for all privileges to do whatever they want to games they do not own. If Microsoft gave away the farm to games it does not own, it would not have many online games like this left after too long.
You’re making some pretty strong statements about dev behavior, but so far, all I’ve heard is that they said that those who abused (whatever that means) the offer might be subject to bans. I get that the offer was labelled as free and unlimited, but it sounds like that was a mistake. In the time between discovering that mistake and getting Microsoft to update their store, I’m not sure what else they are supposed to do to limit the damage done.
If something more was said that could be interpreted by an emotionally responsible adult as bullying, threatening or being a prick, I haven’t heard it yet.
I have no idea what the original page said, but it’s entirely possible that the intent was “unlimited” in the sense of “an unlimited number of players can use this promotion” (as opposed to things like, game codes from a stream, which are limited to X uses).
Either way - isn’t it pretty obvious that “click this for infinite keys!” can’t possibly be the intent?