Google is in hot water after banning the Google Account of Andrew Spinks, the lead developer of the hit game Terraria. The YouTube account of Spinks ‘game development company, Re-Logic, was hit with a kind of breach of service terms, which led to Google banning the entire Google account of Spinks, which severely hampered its business’ ability to do business. disrupted. After three fruitless weeks to rectify the situation, Spinks says announced that his business will no longer do business with Google and that the upcoming Stage version of Terraria be canceled. “I will not be involved in a business that values their customers and partners so little,” Spinks said. “Doing business with you is an obligation.”
Three weeks ago, the official Terraria Twitter account has publicly pleaded with YouTube to resolve a recent ban on Google accounts. The Terraria account explain, “We have not added anything new to our only YT channel (RelogicGames) for several months. However, we received an email randomly stating that there was a TOS violation, but that it was probably accidental and that the account would therefore receive no warnings. “The Terraria Twitter account continued: “Three days later, the entire Google Account (YT, Gmail, all Google Apps, even every purchase made in the Google Play Store for over 15 years) was deactivated without warning or use. This account links to many business functions and as a result the impact on us is quite large. ‘
Re-Logic’s vague reminder of “a TOS violation” highlights one of the main frustrations of a Google Account ban: you immediately lose access to your Gmail account, so you can not fully report what happened or did not say any communication because you can not read your email. Re-Logic’s YouTube channel, which is still up here (with a disabled profile photo) seems to be nothing more than a preview of the company’s games.
Spinks says his entire Google account has been down for three weeks now, and Google has “done nothing but give me the go-ahead”. You can see for yourself the quality of Google’s support on Twitter. After the official’s tweet Terrarria account, YouTube support declined Re-logics’ request to solve the problem privately, but rather to offer irrelevant suggestions to the game developer with more than 30 million customers. First, Asked YouTube if Re-Logic could gain access to its banned email account, which the developer had already explained was banned. Dan, YouTube suggested try Google’s account recovery system, which is only for users who have forgotten their Google password. Finally, YouTube shared instructions for how to recover a voluntarily removed Google Account, which is in no way relevant to an account ban.
Then Spinks made his big announcement.
I did absolutely nothing to violate your Terms of Service, so I can only do so unless you decide to burn this bridge. Consider it burnt. # Terraria for @GoogleStadia be canceled. My company no longer supports any of your platforms to move forward.
– Andrew Spinks (@Demilogic) 8 February 2021
Google is notorious for dealing with issues on Google Play and YouTube, where every violation of the rules feels like it’s handled by a bot, and finding a real person can be an impossible task. Google wants people to build a business on top of its platforms, but the lack of common sense is, as Spinks puts it, “a liability.” Google makes billions of dollars a year from both of these services.
Google uses a single account system in almost all of its products. On the one hand, it makes it easy for users of one Google service to try out other Google services, but it also leads to ridiculously excessive penalties if a user gets an account ban. A YouTube authoring trip, Google Pay transaction dispute, or a TOS violation may result in your entire online life being destroyed. If you use everything in the Google ecosystem, a ban on Google Account means that you will lose access to your entire email account for all the photos you have ever taken; your cell phone service; your ability to communicate with friends and family; all your 2FA accounts; anything that uses Google OAuth; your app development company; your YouTube business and all your followers; your purchased programs, games, movies, music, and books; and all your contacts, documents, bookmarks and notes.
For many people, a ban on a Google account is an online death sentence, and it is also a punishment that is solved without much use for the victim. How would you even dispute a Google Account ban if your Gmail is no longer working? If you happen to be a famous indie developer with a hit game developed for Google’s streaming service, this is probably a great way to cancel your case on Twitter in public.