Today, this game lost one of its best players.
Samba, a player whose mind was sharp enough to allow them to best almost any foe, and whose bank account let them keep their heroes ahead of the curve.
Wednesday 13th, it began. Someone, somehow, managed to obtain access to Samba’s account, and began actively sabotaging it. Selling mods, wasting stamina, reducing the arena defense to nothingness. (This particular party shall be known as “The Hacker” from this point on.)
Eventually, Samba regained control of his account long enough to contact support. They said it was a result of Samba sharing accounts and whoever did this had accessed through one of the recovery methods, so all Samba had to do was change the recovery method and they’d be fine.
They weren’t. The Hacker could still access Samba’s account. In a war against Guardians and Den of Dragons, The Hacker wasted not only Samba’s attack, but one of the precious extras, both times sending single heroes against whole teams of 3.
Later, support claimed they had managed to disconnect all devices linking to Samba’s account, and that simply turning the game off and on again would resolve the issue.
It did not. The Hacker was still able to access the account. At this point, Perblue’s support desk was offline. Gone home for the weekend. The Hacker had free reign to run rampant and destroy as much of Samba’s work as they liked. They deleted Samba’s friend list, and blocked almost everyone on it.
Despite multiple efforts on Samba’s part, they were unable to regain control of their account without The Hacker slipping in and lashing out for whatever pathetic reason they started this whole mess over.
Eventually, support claimed that they got the devs involved, and that the issue was finally, FINALLY, fixed. Samba enjoyed a brief period of peace as they rejoined Guardians and conversed with friends.
It didn’t last. However The Hacker kept accessing the account, they did it again. Frustrated at both the loss of control and Perblue’s inability to fix it, Samba deleted their account to end it once and for all.
And so, a message.
To The Hacker. What exactly did you want to achieve? Was it merely to drive one of the best players out of the game? If so, congratulations, but in doing so, you have emboldened the guild Samba has left behind. We Guardans will continue to defeat all the enemies before us, and now we’ll do so with much greater ferocity.
To Perblue. Why was it you were unable to solve this problem? Did you even try beyond the most token efforts? Do you even CARE that one of the best players is now gone? Or does it not matter as long as you still have a playerbase willing to pay?
To Everyone else. A warning. If someone manages to gain access to your account, I’m sorry to say that it is over for you. You cannot get rid of them, and support is either unable or unwilling to help you. Think about THAT next time you want to buy a deal to get yourself just a little bit more stamina to keep up with this game’s resource creep.