I was intrigued by the game Clash of Clans ads in Facebook, altho I never click on Facebook ads I still went directly to the source in the Apple store and installed the game to check it out. It definitely is addicting and for the looks of it the company that created the game was aware of that they were doing and how to do it right , with a monthly gross revenue of $15M as reported by InsideMobileApps you could think nothing could go wrong with this game and company. Until update 2.73 came around…
What’s New in Version 2.73
Chat improvements:
✓ Global chat is now moderated! Report offensive messages by tapping them and choosing “Report”.
✓ Improved profanity filter for global chat creates a nicer and safer chatting environment.
Clan Improvements:
✓ You can now set minimum amount of trophies required for your clan. Players won’t be able to apply if they don’t meet the minimum requirements.
✓ Added notices to Clan chat when members are promoted, demoted, join or are kicked out of the clan.
✓ You can now send a personal message when you kick someone out of your clan.
Other changes:
✓ Players with lower Town Hall levels now lose less resources when attacked by higher Town Hall level players (2 level difference or more).
✓ There is now a short no-attack period after maintenance breaks to allow players to log back in unperturbed.
✓ Added an extra confirmation step when loading village from Game Center to avoid accidents.
On Monday SuperCell posted a message on their Facebook wall with the comment “Clashers, it’s time for the UPDATE :)” as the time of this writing there are 394 Likes and 1,259 comments. it doesn’t take long to read through some of the comments to that post and most of them are negative towards the game. Some commenters display the amount of money they were able to get back from the Apple store after complaining.
For one I did not invest any “real” money in the game but I had a chance to play the game for some time and it was fun. What ruined it for me was the Global Chat moderation, after I posted a “hello” message to the global chat I was banned without any information on why I had been banned. After reading some comments it looks like I was not the only one being banned randomly but that anyone could “report” you and after a certain number of reports wether they were valid or not you would get banned from the Global Chat for a certain period of time. For sure I am not the ideal client for SuperCell since I didn’t spend any money on the game or gave them access to my social networks data, however I would be interested to find out what effects update 2.73 will have on this game. Will it ruin it completely or will the users get over it and live with the changes? It seems to me that one of the updates was driven by the desire to make more revenue which $500k a day doesn’t sound bad to me but maybe the company uses all the gainings just to keep the game running.
My predictions are that either SuperCell will learn from the latest update to Clash of Clans and create a new game similar which will not be so aggressive at trying to get more revenue or they will be able to revert some of the latest updates and make their current users happy again and have them return. For one I know SuperCell won’t miss me in Clash of Clans and I am happier now not spending time on such a fun game.
I’ve been banned for nothing a couple ov time and I spend a lot ov money I’m not happy I will stop playing if it happens again