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Criticism: Stolen! Thieved by GSS!

Kaiowas (NL1)Kaiowas (NL1) Posts: 153
I just got a message from support.

We have taken back some of the rewards you got...


Lost around 30kk don't remember exactly... I mean WTF! I've now an empty barn and no dollars.
How can they just do that... First days of trouble and then just steal my money! This is unacceptable. I based my next update on it....

If I accidently click on a hidden gold button I don't get my gold back either.... !

A big
Post edited by Kaiowas (NL1) on

Comments

  • Porkies (INT1)Porkies (INT1) Posts: 103
    edited 13.08.2015
    Hidden gold button?....They aren't hidden, they just seem to get clicked when you least expect it...Welcome to the world of GGS making money when players have brain farts
  • CM NafaruCM Nafaru Posts: 1,325
    edited 13.08.2015
    Hey Kaiowas,

    your account was affected by the bug that caused several million dollars to be paid out for one single neighbor request.

    As you may have read, we have performed a rollback on all servers in order to remove these high amounts of dollars. Unfortunately the rollback caused further issues on some servers, including US and NL.

    Therefore we performed a second maintenance and rolled back some data, including these high cash amounts, in order to take care of more severe problems caused by the rollback.

    Manual action had to be taken by support afterwards, in order to remove excess dollars granted by the aforementioned bug. These high cash amounts had the potential to destroy the game's balance and fairness.

    In case you got to spend most of these dollars already, and the amount we had to take from your account exceeded your current balance, you were left with 1,000,000 dollars to work and build up your cash balance again.

    I reckon your barn is empty due to frequent market usage and I can understand that us resetting your farm dollar balance to a lower amount might feel unsettling.
    However, I hope you can understand that this is a step we needed to take in order to make sure that fairness is preserved within the game.

    Regards,
    Steffi
  • Kaiowas (NL1)Kaiowas (NL1) Posts: 153
    edited 13.08.2015
    No I have little understanding for it... it's days after the update... if I hand out accidently gold to GSS I don't get it back either. I don't have to pay for your mess :)

    it seems I had better spend all that farm cash :) stupi dof me to save it :p
  • Kamilcom (GB1)Kamilcom (GB1) Posts: 1,499
    edited 13.08.2015
    There's a valid point here. If a player accidentaly wastes their dollars or gold by mistake on something they didn't want, there's no refund by GGS. And it can be big values. When GGS accidentaly 'wastes' (gives) some excess stuff by mistake, GGS is "refunded".

    GGS is not overly concerned about spoiling the "game balance" in favour of GGS, but very concerned about it when in favour of a player. We are touching some moral issues here. Do you and your company need a business etiquette advsor Steffi?

    Say you go shopping to the same shop all the time. And every time they charge you more by mistake, you never get refunded. It's your fault you overpayed. But every time you pay less by their mistake, the laywers are right at your dorstep demanding you to pay the difference back. Not right.

    Funny how it is no issue at all to even manualy take things away from players ............

    I suggest that GGS somehow balance their approach to be fairer and not so obviously one sided.

    EDIT: Actually, thinking about this issue, in my experience normaly companies favour me as a customer at the expense of their own loss when disputes of this type arise. GGS is just on the reverse of sound business etique. :) Hence the title of this thread sounds rather appropriate. :)
  • gizmo22 (AU1)gizmo22 (AU1) AU1 Posts: 1,720
    edited 13.08.2015
    I agree with kamilcon.......I recently upgraded one of my fertile fields from an accidental click. If I contact GGS saying it was an accident and ask for my gold back there's no chance it will be refunded. When GGS makes a mistake they fix it through a rollback. A gold lock is required and has been asked for many times yet nothing has been done about it.......very unfair in my opinion.
  • CathyD (INT1)CathyD (INT1) INT1 Posts: 958
    edited 13.08.2015
    Nafaru wrote: »
    Hey Kaiowas,

    your account was affected by the bug that caused several million dollars to be paid out for one single neighbor request.

    As you may have read, we have performed a rollback on all servers in order to remove these high amounts of dollars. Unfortunately the rollback caused further issues on some servers, including US and NL.

    Therefore we performed a second maintenance and rolled back some data, including these high cash amounts, in order to take care of more severe problems caused by the rollback.

    Manual action had to be taken by support afterwards, in order to remove excess dollars granted by the aforementioned bug. These high cash amounts had the potential to destroy the game's balance and fairness.

    In case you got to spend most of these dollars already, and the amount we had to take from your account exceeded your current balance, you were left with 1,000,000 dollars to work and build up your cash balance again.

    I reckon your barn is empty due to frequent market usage and I can understand that us resetting your farm dollar balance to a lower amount might feel unsettling.
    However, I hope you can understand that this is a step we needed to take in order to make sure that fairness is preserved within the game.

    Regards,
    Steffi

    So if there is still excess money in an account (no, not mine) what then? The player in question did not obtain the money through a neighbour request payout as she never interacted with the neighbours, nor did she do any of the contracts in the farm management tab. Yet, after the rollback that returned the missing co-ops, there was approx 20 mil extra in her account.

    And I agree that GGS is quite quick to claw back any amount that benefits the player but not so much when it benefits GGS. Why not, just for once, take it on the chin like you expect us to do when a mistake is made in your favour?
  • Pingo42Pingo42 Posts: 537
    edited 13.08.2015
    GGS, this is very poor customer relations. If a small number of people have a few more farm dollars than they were supposed to have because of some problem with the game (absolutely no fault of the affected players), how on earth does that affect the whole balance of the game? If it was an ongoing issue, ok, then it is affecting the game balance, but for someone to have a few measly dollars more in no way affects the game for other people.

    Removing money that the game has given people is not only wrong, it makes the company look very petty and small-minded.

    If it is unfair and damaging to the game's balance for some player to get a few extra farm dollars because of a game bug that has since been corrected, what about the players who took advantage of Monica's deals to buy farm dollars with gold?

    Player A got farm dollars from a game bug - the game balance is in danger and this error must be corrected forthwith!

    Player B got an equal number of farm dollars by buying them from Monica with gold. No danger at all to the game balance there.

    Really, can anyone possibly say that and keep a straight face?
  • Kamilcom (GB1)Kamilcom (GB1) Posts: 1,499
    edited 13.08.2015
    Well, to exhaust all possible options, GGS might actually be concerned for the players well being and not wanting them to miss all the developement fun by having too much money at their finger tips suddenly and unexpectedly. :):):) Too much wealth freely acquired has proven to ruin a many lotery winner life. :):):)
  • Kaiowas (NL1)Kaiowas (NL1) Posts: 153
    edited 13.08.2015
    Kamilcom wrote: »
    Well, to exhaust all possible options, GGS might actually be concerned for the players well being and not wanting them to miss all the developement fun by having too much money at their finger tips suddenly and unexpectedly. :):):) Too much wealth freely acquired has proven to ruin a many lotery winner life. :):):)

    Yes indeed they are very concerned with our health. That's why they make events where u have to be online 24/7 to make it... (hard work event) so that u can't do anything unhealthy.
    As far as game balance.. the 20kk would have gotten me like one extra patch of the flower farm a bit quicker (as I am still only lvl84). So that's not a spectacular advantage (though an advantage with discussion). However,
    if i would have spend the money then nothing would have been taken from me... So there is something wrong here. Cuz then 'the balance' would have been disrupted as well... Next to the fact that this take back only works in one direction :)
  • Latten (DE1)Latten (DE1) Posts: 6,246
    edited 13.08.2015
    gizmo222 wrote: »
    I agree with kamilcon.......I recently upgraded one of my fertile fields from an accidental click. If I contact GGS saying it was an accident and ask for my gold back there's no chance it will be refunded. When GGS makes a mistake they fix it through a rollback. A gold lock is required and has been asked for many times yet nothing has been done about it.......very unfair in my opinion.

    Hey guys,

    I totally get what you're trying to say here, but there are big differences:

    If a player spends some gold or Dollars on accident, it's only affecting that player's account. Also, that player gets something for this gold or Dollars in return, and even if he feels like it's "wasted", it's really not.
    Finally, I heard of quite some cases where our Support team actually was able to help with this, in particular situations. Granted, that's not always the case, since it's super hard to prove a click was done on accident, but there are plenty cases.

    Alright, now, our bug had lots of players end up with hundreds of millions of dollars. This not only affected those players, but the entire game, the game's economy and, most importantly, would have impacted the game of hundreds if not thousands of other players that weren't affected, by placing them in the very unfair situation of not having this money.

    The Gold lock, on the other hand, is a completely different topic, and you can feel absolutely free to bring it up again in another topic. We will then of course bring it to the devs attention again, as we always do.

    So, Kaio, it's very unfortunate this happens to you, but I'm sure in the end your game will be fine again. If you have further issues with this, please (as with all currency issues and technical help) ask our Support team for help, since we can't really help from here :(

    All the best,
    Timo
  • farmerjohn 22 (US1)farmerjohn 22 (US1) US1 Posts: 37,770
    edited 13.08.2015
    I can see that both sides have a valid point here, but I lean towards the point that Kamilcom made, that when a player spends gold by mistake they aren't refunded while when the company makes an error, they get it back. I have to disagree with Latten on this one. Although a player receives something for their mispent gold, it's sometimes something they have absolutely no use for. How is that fair? :huh:
    As the saying goes, what's good for the goose is good for the gander! ;)
  • bikeboy (GB1)bikeboy (GB1) Posts: 486
    edited 13.08.2015
    Latten wrote: »
    Hey guys,

    I totally get what you're trying to say here, but there are big differences:

    If a player spends some gold or Dollars on accident, it's only affecting that player's account. Also, that player gets something for this gold or Dollars in return, and even if he feels like it's "wasted", it's really not.
    Finally, I heard of quite some cases where our Support team actually was able to help with this, in particular situations. Granted, that's not always the case, since it's super hard to prove a click was done on accident, but there are plenty cases.

    Alright, now, our bug had lots of players end up with hundreds of millions of dollars. This not only affected those players, but the entire game, the game's economy and, most importantly, would have impacted the game of hundreds if not thousands of other players that weren't affected, by placing them in the very unfair situation of not having this money.

    The Gold lock, on the other hand, is a completely different topic, and you can feel absolutely free to bring it up again in another topic. We will then of course bring it to the devs attention again, as we always do.

    So, Kaio, it's very unfortunate this happens to you, but I'm sure in the end your game will be fine again. If you have further issues with this, please (as with all currency issues and technical help) ask our Support team for help, since we can't really help from here :(

    All the best,
    Timo

    We would NOT have any problems of accidental clicking the "use Gold" if there was a " ARE YOU SURE" pop up after clicking. GGS not adding such a thing is losing players, annoying players and giving support extra work and personally the reasons or excuses for not adding a "fail safe" shows that GGS do not actually care what the players think or wish. Add a"fail safe" on the "use gold" and we all will shut up about it. I know how much of a problem these maintenance sessions were, but its strange how they can do it for a "loss" of theirs, but if it is a loss on the players side, there is nothing on earth that can be done about it. I missed the roll backs ! so if mine was rolled back I do not know, but if someone did not even use the "neighbour" thingy, but had harvested his special seeds etc , did they still get rolled back ? thereby losing all his harvests and gold bought boosts ! ( go on tell me its in a thread somewhere)
    Could you explain in more detail how joe blogs having been handed $20,000,000 on his farm, would effect my farm ?
  • gizmo22 (AU1)gizmo22 (AU1) AU1 Posts: 1,720
    edited 14.08.2015
    Latten wrote: »
    Hey guys,

    I totally get what you're trying to say here, but there are big differences:

    If a player spends some gold or Dollars on accident, it's only affecting that player's account. Also, that player gets something for this gold or Dollars in return, and even if he feels like it's "wasted", it's really not.
    Finally, I heard of quite some cases where our Support team actually was able to help with this, in particular situations. Granted, that's not always the case, since it's super hard to prove a click was done on accident, but there are plenty cases.

    Alright, now, our bug had lots of players end up with hundreds of millions of dollars. This not only affected those players, but the entire game, the game's economy and, most importantly, would have impacted the game of hundreds if not thousands of other players that weren't affected, by placing them in the very unfair situation of not having this money.

    The Gold lock, on the other hand, is a completely different topic, and you can feel absolutely free to bring it up again in another topic. We will then of course bring it to the devs attention again, as we always do.

    So, Kaio, it's very unfortunate this happens to you, but I'm sure in the end your game will be fine again. If you have further issues with this, please (as with all currency issues and technical help) ask our Support team for help, since we can't really help from here :(

    All the best,
    Timo

    How is a gold upgrade on a fertile field from an accidental click NOT a waste? I didn't want to upgrade that field in the first place and because of a game lag I accidentally used up 1000+ gold that I was saving for something else AND on top of that had to find 5 free workers to make this field. Now I get a few extra wildflower, corn, etc every time I harvest........wow, hang on a minute while I sit here and ponder if that was worth the gold, I think NOT!

    A simple "are u sure" message would fix a problem like this but GGS refuses to add this to the game due to their greed and lack of respect for their customers.
  • BriannospamGame (SKN1)BriannospamGame (SKN1) Posts: 1,803
    edited 14.08.2015
    Hmmm ... my immediate impression of this case is that it can appear to GGS has this attitude:
    When morale is good, then the double morale indeed be twice as good?
    (This is directly translated from a danish saying, and if no saying like that exist in english, I'll here give an typical example which should show the meaning of it:
    There are certainly not many people who will care about appearing in public, wearing only underwear (men only in underpants, women wearing only bra and panties)
    But on a beach render all like around the trunks and bikinis that often covers less than ordinary underwear. )

    Well, now I'll tell an little interesting story from the real life in Denmark:
    A week or two ago, on the danish tv the danish TV2 news tells about two Danes who few weeks ago had won one million Danish kr in a Danish lottery and these two people also got money paid :)
    But !!! - So two to three weeks later, these two people get a letter from the lottery company to which an error has occurred in the lottery system, so they have all nevertheless not won anything, and therefore lottery company now get the money back! :(

    Now these two unlucky 'winners' go to the media (TV2) with their story .... and then when tv2 turn to the lottery company to get confirmation, explanation and an interwiev, the lottery company did not provide interwiev, but tells TV2 that the lottery company has changed their position on the matter so that the two 'winners' now can keep the money even they because of an error in the lottery system really had not won.


    Now back to this actual situation from the Bigfarm world:
    To me it seems that GGS has handled this case fairly incompetent.
    I mean ... farm dollars is the only virtual play money, you can not buy anything in the real world for the farm dollars we earn in the game.
    Gold ... Yes, when we buy gold we pay this gold with real money! - But when GGS gives us gold as a reward or gift, this gold course also only virtual money for GGS, GGS first may buy gold for real money before they can give the gold on to us ...
    - And not to forget: Gold we have on our accounts also only are virtual money, whatever we have buy the gold for our own real money, or we have get the gold a rewards or gifts. (We can not take the gold out of the game, and use it in the real life)

    If GGS really believe that the large sums the players have mistakenly been paid, I think it would have been more handy if GGS had initially contacted the players and explained to them about the error and the situation and presented these players a fair compromise proposals.
  • Pameow (AU1)Pameow (AU1) AU1 Posts: 266
    edited 14.08.2015
    Kaiowas and the others effected should get to keep that farmcash because GG$ made the error. Sick to death of hearing all the BS excuses about balance etc. Whilst on the subject of balance how balanced was it to do a second rollback after us down under went to sleep? You didn't do any balancing there for that 8 hours we lost. So do the right thing and give them their good luck cashstash.
  • Kaiowas (NL1)Kaiowas (NL1) Posts: 153
    edited 14.08.2015
    thanks guys :)
  • emilylennox (US1)emilylennox (US1) Posts: 217
    edited 14.08.2015
    Maybe it was just a bug? I don't think GGS was trying to be mean. They may have just given you too many rewards. It could be a bug.
  • edited 14.08.2015
    I feel that ggs have turned off their hearing aids and can no longer hear what anyone has to say lol
  • emilylennox (US1)emilylennox (US1) Posts: 217
    edited 14.08.2015
    I feel that ggs have turned off their hearing aids and can no longer hear what anyone has to say lol

    I agree with you. lol
  • Kamilcom (GB1)Kamilcom (GB1) Posts: 1,499
    edited 14.08.2015
    Never knew GGS had any hearing aids ? :)
  • monica1230 (US1)monica1230 (US1) Posts: 370
    edited 14.08.2015
    I can see taking some money back but lets be honest the players were not trying to cheat the game. If you get a windfall in the game but think it is a normal part of the game, and used the money to buy land etc it would be a huge shocker to find that you were punished for gg programming mistake. Saying they were left with a million dollars is a insult to anyone who has played longer than a week or is over say lvl 25? Contacting them first would have been a big help. There has been enough game time loss in the past few weeks, maybe a better fix would have been to gift players more, I know we got the gold and that was a nice plus, but many failed events, got behind on island, had to redo upgrades more than once, missed entire play time due to inability to get online and more. These things are critical set backs to many in the game. Launching more events to have more to distract us isn't working we are just getting more frustrated.
  • In recent event. Since the dollars were taking for me due to inbalance. I do want all the gold I'm missing due to not having videos. If not the gold should be taken away from these players...  . Or at least give my dollars back. It's clear you don't have an argument over here
  • CathyD (INT1)CathyD (INT1) INT1 Posts: 958
    edited 29.09.2015
    Latten said:

    ...
    Alright, now, our bug had lots of players end up with hundreds of millions of dollars. This not only affected those players, but the entire game, the game's economy and, most importantly, would have impacted the game of hundreds if not thousands of other players that weren't affected, by placing them in the very unfair situation of not having this money.

    Now, with the movie/video/add thing on some farms but not others, (for 4 weeks) and some farmers raking in up to 1,000 gold per day, how is that not affecting the "entire game, the game's economy and most importantly, impacting the game of hundreds if not thousands of other players that weren't affected, by placing them in the very unfair situation of not having this (money) GOLD." ???  

    Just curious how a few farm dollars can upset the whole applecart, but hundreds of gold does not.
  • No game I have ever played has given back accidental special purchases.  I played another farm game on ipod run by a company called Supercell.  They are exactly the same way.  Oh, you accidentally spent a diamond?  Tough luck.  Oh, you had double click turned on but it didn't require a double click, suck it up, it's a bug, it's not our fault.  None of these companies give a flip if it keeps people paying for gold or diamonds or money, so long as the bucks still line their pockets.
  • A) Ok, another scenario:  Hunting for mushrooms...hidden around the farm exterior...but "not within the farm"....you search and search for the last mushroom...it's getting close to the end of the farm day so in order to complete the event you agree to pay the 290 gold to reveal the last missing mushroom.   But lo and behold, the mushroom is on the roof of your fancy house!  Well I never would have looked there because the game instruction said the hidden items would not be within the farm but the surrounding environment.  Does ggs owe me my 290 gold?  I can find no argument stated above that would indicate the ggs did NOT have to refund my gold.  We will see.  

    B) With all due respect, I take issue with the moderator's statement that GGS has to rollback rewards due to the potential of destroying the games "fairness and balance." This is a talking point that I've heard repeatedly over the last year after other bugs and glitches.   If there was such concern then why do some farms get gold for watching ads and others don't get that option? 
  • CathyD (INT1)CathyD (INT1) INT1 Posts: 958
    A) Ok, another scenario:  Hunting for mushrooms...hidden around the farm exterior...but "not within the farm"....you search and search for the last mushroom...it's getting close to the end of the farm day so in order to complete the event you agree to pay the 290 gold to reveal the last missing mushroom.   But lo and behold, the mushroom is on the roof of your fancy house!  Well I never would have looked there because the game instruction said the hidden items would not be within the farm but the surrounding environment.  Does ggs owe me my 290 gold?  I can find no argument stated above that would indicate the ggs did NOT have to refund my gold.  We will see.  


    Technically, it was not on the roof of your house, within the farm, it was on the road behind your house.  Being a 'foreground' object it appeared on the roof of your house. 

    Not apologizing for GGS - the shroom should not have been on that road, so close to the farm - but it did - technically - follow their rules.
  •   DuffyPoo222 (INT1) said:
    A) Ok, another scenario:  Hunting for mushrooms...hidden around the farm exterior...but "not within the farm"....you search and search for the last mushroom...it's getting close to the end of the farm day so in order to complete the event you agree to pay the 290 gold to reveal the last missing mushroom.   But lo and behold, the mushroom is on the roof of your fancy house!  Well I never would have looked there because the game instruction said the hidden items would not be within the farm but the surrounding environment.  Does ggs owe me my 290 gold?  I can find no argument stated above that would indicate the ggs did NOT have to refund my gold.  We will see.  


    Technically, it was not on the roof of your house, within the farm, it was on the road behind your house.  Being a 'foreground' object it appeared on the roof of your house. 

    Not apologizing for GGS - the shroom should not have been on that road, so close to the farm - but it did - technically - follow their rules.

    You may be technically right, Duffy, that the mushroom was hidden on the road.  However, I refuse to accept any argument that the game developers did not know that hiding the item there would be impossible to find.  Thus, the mushroom was "hidden" on the roof, clearly contrary to event instructions that items would be found in the farm environment and not the farm itself.  Minor annoyance?  Yes, but collectively it probably resulted in GGS making a LOT of money from people who paid to find this mushroom.  290 gold (minimum charge after one free find) may be nothing but if a percentage of people paid for this hint, I bet GGS made some nice profit. 
  • CathyD (INT1)CathyD (INT1) INT1 Posts: 958
    It wasn't impossible to find.  I found it because I don't have houses there. :)
  • ok, I'm obviously not speaking for you, duffypoo, since you were obviously much smarter than the rest of us who had the audacity to put a building near the road. My point is that most people would not bother to look for a mushroom on top of the house, barn, silo, stable or whatever building happened to be located on the farm near the road.
  • CathyD (INT1)CathyD (INT1) INT1 Posts: 958
    I've always thought that road was a good 'hiding spot' simply because it is so close to the fence line.  While I'm doing these hunts, if I can't find an item, I look there, move the buildings, or switch farms to one that doesn't have something tall built along that fence.  GGS is saying it should never have been hidden there.  I'm only surprise that there isn't one hidden in the back of, or under, the truck.

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