How Not to Treat Your Customers

The Blood Bowl servers are currently down for maintenance. Not a big deal. Granted I was going to add the final 3 teams to the league this morning and get that ball rolling, but it can wait.

But the way that Focus, or Cyanide, whoever is running the server show treats its paying customers is stunning.

This morning when trying to login I was greeted with an "Invalid User Name" error.

I try again. Ditto.

I try and resend my acct data -- it freezes the entire system. I can't Alt-Tab or use the Windows key to get back to the Desktop. It basically locked up my entire PC -- hung up on the 'sending data to server' message.

So after a reboot I head off to the forums.

Sure enough on the general discussion forum I see someone freaking out over the fact that the GAME says that their acct data is invalid.

Other chime with "same here", etc.

Finally someone posts that there is server maintenance going on -- they found it posted on the Tech Forum. And nowhere else. People who were playing games at the time -- had the plug pulled. No advanced warning that "hey you may not want to start a game, we're taking servers down soon."

The only way, that I know anyway, that you will know that the servers were taken down on purpose, was to either read the Tech Forum or read it via word of mouth. Because the game itself says your user data is no longer valid.

I find all of that pretty remarkable.