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This is unfortunately not a Great rare problem for people to be randomly excluded from Google accounts, and in many cases the recovery process is full of frustrating expectations. This is what happened to the co-creator of Terraria, and as a result, the game’s next port to Google Stadia has been canceled entirely.
Terraria’s impending arrival was first spotted last week as the game passed through PEGI, but it was never officially announced. Presumably, the launch was to be included in one of Google’s upcoming “This Week on Stadia” articles.
Either way, that doesn’t happen anymore. Andrew Spinks, the co-creator of Terraria, announced the decision on Twitter to start the week. He explains that his personal Google account has been locked for about three weeks now, leaving Spinks unable to access his 15-year-old Gmail account, “thousands of dollars” in Google Play app / movie purchases and his data. Google Drive. The problems started with YouTube when the Terraria YouTube channel was locked down.
Spinks claims he did “nothing to violate” Google’s terms of service, which led to the decision to remove Terraria entirely from Stadia. The project was canceled and Spinks further claims his company “will no longer support” any of Google’s platforms in the future, claiming that doing business with Google is “a responsibility.”
Terraria is still available on the Google Play Store for Android and Android TV, and is also part of Google Play Pass for now.
We reached out to Google to see if they could provide additional information on the situation.
Update 2/9: People at Source Stadia contacted the studio behind Terraria to get a bit more context on the situation as well as to confirm the co-creator’s tweets. In the lengthy statement below, the studio confirms that Terraria’s Stadia port as well as the company’s future projects will not launch on Google platforms, but that the current version of the game available on Android is not. withdrawn.
Earlier today, our CEO, Andrew Spinks, released a statement regarding our continuing issues with his (demilogical) Google Account. We have taken the time to review public and media comments to determine where areas of confusion may persist. We have provided the following to help alleviate this confusion / misperception of the @demilogic account issue:
- The Android / Google Play versions of Terraria will not be affected. We don’t want to punish existing customers who have paid for our game on these platforms. To be clear: there should be no impact on Terraria on Google platforms, both for existing / purchased games and continued store availability.
- Comments on the future availability of Re-Logic games on Google platforms relate to anything not currently available. This includes all future versions of Terraria (such as Stadia) as well as all other games that our studio will develop in the future.
- The impacts here are not isolated to personal affairs, applications, etc. from Mr. Spinks – although to be clear, they are also numerous and substantial. Due to the early days of the business, when Mr. Spinks was the sole employee of the business, many legacy ties to the demilogic account were severed. This includes the Re-Logic YouTube account, many important documents stored on Drive, and much more. The impact is material in nature – and this has been made clear to Google on several occasions.
The chronology of events:
- The Demilogic account receives a notice from YouTube alleging a violation in mid-January. It was quite confusing for us.
- We haven’t downloaded for three months.
- No one in our huge fan / subscriber base noticed any new uploaded content, let alone offensive content.
- Additionally, YouTube’s initial correspondence on this matter made it clear that this was not a major issue:
- “We know you may not have realized this was a violation of our policies. So we are not enforcing a warning on your channel. We have removed the content.”
- No action or response was requested or suggested in this email.
- Since then, through our efforts on Twitter with the YouTube support team, we have been informed that our YouTube Re-Logic channel is clean and has no issues.
- To date, we have not been made aware of any real details behind the actual transgression that is alleged.
- Three days later, the entire Demilogic account – including Gmail, Google Play apps, Drive, and all other Google services – is deactivated. Multiple calls through standard channels are greeted with automated rejection in the absence of any additional information.
- Many avenues have been tried with Google in private to resolve this problem – far beyond what people saw on Twitter a few weeks ago. Information has been scarce and difficult to obtain, even though we are a long-time partner.
- Even in the face of strong evidence that this is wrong action – evidence that has been in hand for almost 2 weeks now – it remains unresolved
- It is not a position that we take willingly or lightly. Google has been a long-time partner, but the inability to resolve this issue for us – a partner that is supposed to be appreciated – within almost a month is not acceptable.
- In addition, we are aware of many other similar incidents with a repeated pattern of “sudden ban” with no information as to the reason and no recourse. It has happened to countless people as well as developers for Android and beyond. We hope that our situation will be both an uplifting tale for others and a vehicle to shine the spotlight on this issue as a whole. Perhaps a significant change on the customer service front will take place within Google as a result. It is sorely needed.
- For those within Google who have done their best to help to no avail, we appreciate their efforts. It is a real shame to come to this.
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