How NOT to keep loyal players happy….

So last week I found a fun, really entertaining game called Braaains on Facebook. It was cute, it had zombies, it was fun and easy to play, but still a bit challenging. I’ll admit it, I got hooked on it – I’ve played every day since last week, sometimes logging in multiple times to check in on my terrifying Zombie horde…

Until today. Because today, when I logged in, instead of seeing my happy and smiling legions of the undead ready greet me, I found this:

Braaains login screen - click here?

So it tells me I need to ‘click here and enter my email address’ – well that’s odd, I thought to myself. Facebook already has my email address, obviously – it’s my login. Why would Braaains need me to enter it again? Well, let’s click and see…

Here is who wanted my email address... really Braaains? Bad form!

Braaains sent me to what looks like a complete scam site ‘Get a free iPad just enter your email…’ blah blah blah. These sites are NEVER legit and I can’t imagine the flood of junk – or worse – I would get in my inbox if I were to sign up for this. I could not circumvent this in any way – not in different browsers, not by manipulating the URL tags, nothing. If I wanted to keep playing Braaains I would HAVE to give my email address to this ‘service’.

Sure I could put in a fake email address, but that’s not the point. While I understand a developer putting out a game is doing it to make money, FORCING your players to sign up for some disreputable service is just plain wrong, and I cannot, will not support this. I’ve deleted Braaains from my profile, I won’t be supporting them any more, which is sad, because it’s a game I was really getting into.

So for anyone who started playing Braaains because of my glowing recommendation last week, I do sincerely apologize – obviously I couldn’t have known about this shady business practice, but I still feel bad if anyone started playing and either got tricked into doing this or, like me, got invested in the game and then was forced to stop playing because they were uncomfortable with giving their email address to such a questionable site.