Recent posts by Phoenix00017 on Kongregate

Topic: Soul of Guardian (SOG) / SOG Says Goodbye to Kongregate

Due to the short notice of this takedown (Kongregate found out the same day this was posted), all kreds spent in the game on or after 4/13/2013 will be returned to the players. Please contact kreds@kongregate.com if you have any questions.

Topic: Wartune / Temporary Fix for DNS Issues

FWIW, we (Kongregate) are not officially condoning this fix, nor have we verified the data as accurate. The DNS issues should be solved now, but may take some time to fully propagate. Change your hosts file at your own risk.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Please don’t PM me. While I helped organize this I can’t manage all of the 1-on-1 fixes and issues. Please email support@kongregate.com for help with any problems that you’re facing. In some cases we may need to redirect you to the developer, as we have no way of verifying in-game status.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Quick update: we’ve talked with ConArtists (The Last Stand) and they think they have a fix for those who didn’t get the packages. It should go up later today. A few of you accidentally got the bronze and silver packs – that was an error on our part, and in each case you did in fact qualify for silver, so it was just an extra bronze. Hopefully you’ll be able to get the silver pack to credit in the game, though we can’t help if you used the bronze code in Galaxy Online first – there’s a hard one-code-per-account limit enforced there.

Thanks again for the patience everyone – hopefully this last hiccup will be settled shortly.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Update: Galaxy Life items should be almost entirely fixed now – feel free to check it out. You may need a reload to trigger it.

Update 2: We’re confused about Backyard Monsters. It’s actually working in most, but not quite all, of our tests. Anyone having any luck? Or lack thereof?

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

I apparently didn’t sacrifice a goat to Lord Murphy before doing this whole thing. It’s amazing how many things have gone wrong in every conceivable way.

- As far as I know, Galaxy Online codes are working. You do have to create a character first, but that only takes a second. If someone has problems, let me know.
- Galaxy Life items are broken and we know why. We are working on correcting that now, I don’t have an ETA yet beyond that it should not be a problem to be corrected sometime today. When it works, you’ll get a series of 5 – 10 pop-ups telling you that you got a bunch of stuff (various creatures, some consumable weapons, etc.) to click through.
- The Last Stand items don’t appear to be working and we don’t know why. They worked perfectly in all tests prior to going live. The developers are based in Australia, so it’s early still, but I’ve emailed them and hopefully will be hear back very soon and update everyone. When this one works, you should get a pop-up that says “Welcome to your new backyard” and explains what you’re getting. It should not be very subtle, but does not appear to be working.

Sheesh.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Yup – all packages have actually been sent on our back-end (so you should be able to load up the games and get them), and the whispers (with Galaxy Online codes) are going out now. :D

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Most of the bronze packs have been sent out on the back-end, silver will follow soon. This means you should be able to load Galaxy Life and Last Stand soon and get your items. Messages with the Galaxy Online codes may go out tomorrow due to how long processing these item giveaways is taking, but they are definitely underway. So Alison argues she doesn’t have to eat her hat. :)

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

- hamuka: Yeah, I was kinda hopin’ for the hat eating myself, but goodies will have to suffice.

- sorrowthewolf: I’m afraid we’ve already reached our finalized lists…sorry. :/

- AirmanAlex: I’m sorry to hear that you ran into those problems, but thank you for the compliments. And also thanks for the Galaxy Online review. It’s not a game for everyone, but people who get into it really seem to love it and keep coming back. It’s quite a bit deeper and more complex than the other two, which is great for breadth of gameplay but does make learning everything a bit more effort. I’m glad to hear you’ve had a good experience with the developers – they’ve been great to work with for us and definitely are generous with giveaways.

- Haha, sorry eightspoons and The_Atari_Kid. Tens of thousands of these things are going out. We’re awarding the packages now, which will be followed by the private messages, and then by emails. Right now the Bronze packages are being processed, silver and gold to follow (but quicker as there are fewer people in those groups).

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Bad news everyone! It looks like we’re not going to get a video of Alison eating her hat. :-(

On the plus side, messages are going out right now and will be sent over the next hour or so as we process all of the userIDs in the various lists. If you have any questions please let us know, and thanks again for your patience and understanding.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Ok, packages will be going out today. We’ve got a lot to send so it may be a few hours before our server processes them all. Sometime soon(ish), you should get a PM on Kongregate, as well as an email (if your email address is correct) with details as to what package you qualified for and your unique code for Galaxy Online. The code will be given in both PM and email, and you have until April 1st to enter it (longer than the 14 days we originally thought it would be). For both Galaxy Life and The Last Stand: Dead Zone, the items are deposited automatically into your account. You may need to complete the tutorials in those games to get the items to appear in your inventory. If they still don’t, try a refresh, but so far we haven’t had problems with any of the packages crediting in the games.

Thanks again for your support and patience, and I’ll keep checking this thread for more questions.

At this point, the lists are finalized – we grabbed it as last minute as we could and caught anyone had a missing badge report approved up until this morning. I’m sorry if we missed a couple of you, but I think we managed to get high accuracy on nearly everyone.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Due to a few issues with the packages we’ve set up, on two of the games actually, we’re going to need to delay by hopefully just one day. We want to make sure everything is 100% functional before sending out and unfortunately we’re not there yet. I’ll update the first post, thanks everyone for your patience, sorry about this.

cheeseex – I’ve already pulled what will likely be the final list, sorry. :/ I don’t know if we’ll do another pull tomorrow, at some point we do have to declare a cut-off for adding more badge reports.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

I wouldn’t worry about it – I checked with our community team, seems to be a mistake. There was definitely nothing wrong with the question. And to answer it, each account will receive the package, but they aren’t transferable or combinable.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

I had assumed it was the “But with the idea of making a few of those guys that do pay recycle and/or ragequit :P” part. Though I see another post got hidden too. I’ll check on that, seems to be a mistake. Anyway, I don’t want to sidetrack this thread. We’re sorry to see you go to Facebook, but hope you’ll stick around here too to play other games. :)

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Thanks everyone. :)

The notifications have not been sent yet. We’re doing some last minute badge request verification for those missing badges that were submitted last night. I expect everything to be sent out this afternoon (Pacific time). You will get both an email and an on-site private message with the Galaxy Online codes and instructions for the other games.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

That’s my hope, but I need to make sure the packages aren’t already set. I hope we can do a final round, but sometimes things get locked in place a little early and I haven’t talked with our engineers yet to find out for certain.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

- eightspoons: Kreds aren’t quite $0.10 since you can buy them in bulk. Looks like 1087 kreds is the magic number, so you’re fine.

- Lordleelee2: The Galaxy Online gifts do have a time limit of around 14 days to be redeemed. That may get extended slightly, but I’d be sure to claim them pretty quickly. The other two games should be good indefinitely, but I’d log in (and maybe complete the tutorial) before too long to play it safe.

- AleXinoS / ddyddy: Please submit a missing badge request for the game today if possible. You’ll want to grab a screenshot before the game comes down to do that.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

More quick replies:

- SS_Seedlings (and everyone else asking about the hard badge): I’m honestly not sure exactly what will happen in this case. Officially, we cut it off when I posted the original thread. Right now you’ll probably get the Bronze package, and that’s going to get complicated if we later try to add the Silver if we can verify the badge. It may be that we need to just use that cutoff since from a giving everyone a Silver and a Bronze who falls into this category is a) unfair and b) may cause problems in some of the games. We may see what we can do on a case-by-case basis, but realistically there is a chance that we may have to hardline it since we have tens of thousands of players affected here. I’ll see if we can figure out more details.

- Wily_One: Thanks, we really appreciate the support. :)

- Wave_Rida: I’m not sure, I think a mod may have thought you were trolling some of the paying users. I unhid it since it wasn’t that bad.

- asd123: Thanks – as I said above, I’m not exactly sure what will happen, but I’ll see what we can figure out. Hopefully we can re-run our query before finalizing the messages tomorrow, as it sounds like IAmTheCandyman confirmed.

- Athena007: I know you figured it out, but just to confirm these packages will go to BYM players regardless of whether they were already playing the other games, and hopefully will hold value for you unless perhaps you’re really super advanced in those games.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Thanks for the support everyone – we’re happy to hear that this will be able to be valuable to most of you! To answer a few questions:

- HorneyClaws: You’ll need to contact support@kongregate.com for individual support. I can’t answer specific questions here as I don’t know every case. We’ll try to be as far as we can with people, while also maintaining the integrity of the system.

- killhim340: Kreds will be refunded if they were spent on or after Jan 19th. We still need to process these, this should happen sometime next week. We have a general policy of ensuring that purchases within games are good for at least 30 days, but we cannot guarantee that games will be around forever. Since Feb 18th is the last day for BYM on Kongregate, we’ll refund back through Jan 19th.

- dad_e_oh: The game page and forums will be up for a while, but I don’t know for how long. It would probably be wise to connect with your BYM friends and perhaps move to another game. Or even something like Kongregate Chat that is a dedicated chat room. That said, I misunderstood your suggestion: you want a new global chatroom. This would be a Community Team decision, but in general I think we’d prefer not to continue keeping the BYM name in one of our chatrooms. Can you and your friends pick a new chatroom to “adopt” and hang out in?

- asd123/xAngelx/anyone else with badge problems: Same as HorneyClaws, that’ll need to be handled on a case-by-case basis. See if you can grab some screenshots before the game comes down. In general we’d want those to have been submitted as missing badge reports a while ago – you should probably go ahead and submit one as soon as you can.

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Thanks everyone! We’re doing what we can to try to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation. While we understand some of you will also go to Facebook for BYM we hope you’ll stick around and keep playing games here too. :)

These packages will go out automatically. Galaxy Life and The Last Stand will be auto-applied to your account sometime on Tuesday. We’ll send out a whisper and an email to let you know. The Galaxy Online one is only slightly trickier – you’ll get a unique code that you’ll need to enter into the game within 14 days, but those codes will be in the whispers/emails as well. You do not need to sign up or do anything to receive these.

The 90 day limit for the Bronze package is the only time-limited one. If you ever spent at least $10 or got the hard badge you’ll get the silver, and ever spent at least a total of $100 you’ll get the gold. I’ll be running the query for the 90 days in just a minute, so anyone who played today prior to now (2pm Pacific) will be in the list. Jumping in after that I’m afraid won’t qualify you, but we also don’t want all players from the other games to jump in and start playing tomorrow just to get the free stuff, as that wouldn’t be fair.

Please feel free to keep firing questions our way. :)

Topic: Backyard Monsters / === BYM Compensation Packages on Kongregate ===

Hello Backyard Monster players! As we get closer to the last day Backyard Monsters will be hosted on Kongregate, we’ve been working with the developers of three popular, high-quality games. They are delighted to offer new homes to BYM players and have agreed to give away some great stuff to help ease the transition. The games we’ve partnered with are:

Galaxy Life: This is probably the closest match for Backyard Monsters; if you’re craving some strategy/tower defense gameplay where you can kill cute animated monsters, this is the game for you!

The Last Stand: Dead Zone: The most recent entry in the popular series, TLS:DZ lets you kill zombies in a multiplayer strategy, empire-building combination. It has swanky 3D graphics and you can control your survivors in realtime battles against zombie hordes while you loot for supplies.

Galaxy Online: A bit more of a “hardcore” game, this build-and-conquer sci-fi sim has developed a very strong community among those who get into it. The gift package here will help you jump in and catch up if you’re just getting started, or pull ahead if you’re already in the game.

The best part is that you don’t have to choose – you will get free items in all three games and you can play any or all of them!

Because we have three games vying for your love, and because of the sheer number of BYM players, we have grouped everyone into one of three tiers:

Bronze: You have played BYM at least once in the last 90 days (from Dec. 16th to Feb. 15th) or you ever spent any kreds in it. Each of our three games will give you a package worth at least $5.

Silver: You earned the hard badge in BYM or you spent at least $10 worth of kreds in it. Each package here is worth at least $20.

Gold: You spent at least $100 worth of kreds in Backyard Monsters. Each package in this bunch is worth at least $50.

(Note: you’ll get the goodies for your tier only, aka the highest tier that you match. Players in the gold tier will not also receive the silver and bronze packages.)

These packages will be sent out, along with messages and emails explaining the details, this Tuesday, February 19th. Thanks again for working with us as we move through this transition. Kongregate has more great games than ever before and we’re committed to giving you an excellent experience. Please let us know if you have any questions!

Edit: Due to some technical difficulties, it looks like we’ll need to delay by one day until Feb 20th to send out the packages. Sorry everyone, and thanks for your patience. We want to make sure we get this 100% working correctly instead of accidentally causing mass confusion with broken codes and packages. :)

Topic: Heroes of Gaia / Recent pricing errors and bans - official Kongregate statement

While I am talking with multiple people at Snail, I’m afraid we don’t have a firm plan yet. They tend to prefer to conduct communication on their own forums, as many of our developers do (it’s easier for their customer management to not have to deal with separate forums for every platform that they are on). They posted briefly about the issue in their forum here — it doesn’t have any answers yet, but it shows that they are looking into it. I’m afraid I don’t have any information beyond this at this time.

I’m not going to try to get into legal debates with you guys. I’m not a lawyer so my opinion really doesn’t matter. All I can do now is try to help get things fixed as best as possible. We will be returning the kreds for the purchases made during this attack, hopefully today.

Topic: Heroes of Gaia / Recent pricing errors and bans - official Kongregate statement

Ok, I know this sucks, there’s no getting around it. When someone illegally breaks into computer systems and starts changing things it creates big problems that have to be solved. We’re spending a lot of our time and resources trying to repair the damage that this jerk created. I’m sorry that it happened, and we’ve put in a lot of steps to ensure it won’t again, but we have to figure out how to move forward. And to clarify, I’m writing as a representative of Kongregate – I cannot speak to any earlier hacking problems or support issues as those are within the developer’s domain.

Pricing errors do happen and stores do not have to abide by them. I personally once ordered a great deal online, got charged and a confirmation, and then later got an email informing me that there was an error and the order had been canceled. Yeah, I was pissed off, but it was their right to fix it. In this case, leaving all of these accounts unbanned in their current state would completely screw up the game. It would be unfair to everyone who didn’t jump on the exploited price, especially to people who had been playing for years and in some cases paying the normal, full price for the items. The game would be broken – whether these purchases were just or not they’ve screwed up the servers substantially. That’s not a placement of blame, just an observation that the result is a mess that needs fixing.

We will be giving back all of the kreds that were spent on the 1-kred packages. We are still communicating with Snail to try to figure out how to fix the situation as best as possible. We will update here once we know more, which will hopefully be later today.

Topic: Heroes of Gaia / Snail Sale or picking up the bar of soap? You decide.

Thanks for the well-written post LoganVexx / Grizzly. Things were admittedly not quite so simple, and let’s be honest, have you ever seen someone do a 99.9%-off sale? Even when stores are closing they don’t go that cheap – something was clearly wrong.

In any case, it wasn’t Snail’s fault at all, as I’ve explained in this post. We’re working to figure out what sort of solution is possible. There should be some sort of official response once we are able to get details from the main team in China – so far I’ve only been talking with the US team. Hopefully we can figure something out that makes sense and is as fair to everyone as possible.

Topic: Heroes of Gaia / Recent pricing errors and bans - official Kongregate statement

As many of you have noticed, there was a substantial problem this weekend with prices being changed in Heroes of Gaia, with packages previously costing $100 suddenly only charging players $0.10 (1 kred).  This pricing change was not intentional, and in fact Snail Game had nothing to do with it.  It was unfortunately due to a security exploit on our (Kongregate’s) side.  We have added substantial security measures to ensure that this never happens again, but unfortunately some damage was done over the weekend to a few games, Heroes of Gaia included.

While it’s true that games do have great sales every once in a while, 99.9%-off probably should have been a clue that something was wrong.  A few users decided to go crazy with this situation, one user literally purchasing that package over 1000 times (thus gaining $100,000 worth of HoG Points for only $100) and quite a few people purchasing this package hundreds of times.  As far as we can tell, no one alerted us as to the problem – it was only discovered this morning by Snail Game.

Quick actions had to be taken to control damage and triage until the facts could be sorted out, which is why a number of accounts were banned.  We are not intending to ban anyone on Kongregate’s side – while you should have known that something was amiss, this was not criminal and none of you were the hacker responsible.  Instead, we’re going to try to figure out the fairest solution possible.

The fact is though, with nearly $1,000,000 worth of points illegitimately flooded into the game over the weekend, the game’s economy is substantially messed up for these servers.  We’re working with Snail Game to figure out, both technically and logistically, what can be done and what would be fair to as many people as possible.