Farewell, flingers…

[DJLarryt]

My story:

I began as a devout player on the original Angry Birds years ago. It was immense fun. I moved on the the later incarnations and played them all. The day AB2 was released I started playing it as well. It was insane fun that I could enjoy for hours at a time. I even paid for a few of the update packs and enjoyed those too. I purchased one of Rovio’s ‘advantage packs’, the one that would give more treasure chests so I could build up my bird/spell backup.

A few years ago I noticed the fun starting to wane in favour of in-game purchases. I also noticed the game being tweaked in small, innocuous ways. The treasure chest pack I bought and paid for was secretly narfed with no warning whatsoever, even though I paid for it.

Soon, I started noticing birds doing less damage, structures not collapsing when they did before, screens changing to add more to knock down, game dynamics changing… the list goes on. At one point watching ads for bonuses was an option. Now they are shoved in the player’s face and happen pretty much on every screen transition. (I happen to know that in the world of paid marketing, every time a user watches an ad Rovio gets a $$.00 kickback (Adchoices agreement) ). This means Rovio gets paid by using your bandwidth, and in exchange they give you an intangible token, and pocket real money. Apparently the other Rovio games were following suit.

So one day I decided to take a break from playing. I went almost 9 months without touching the game. The day I picked it back up I noticed the player experience had been reduced significantly. I was spending 20 minutes watching ads and 10 minutes of actual gameplay. More places to watch ads were present. Things that were free before were costing gems now. The perpetual treadmill of bird/slingshot increment levels had moved ahead from x10 to x100+. There was no sign of any control, just an endless tunnel of non-achievement. Ads were locking up my game/phone and I was being forced to spend gems and start over.

I took another hiatus for about 6 months. Got totally bored waiting for a flight one day and played it again. Everything I listed above was now x10. More ads, more ways to spend gems, more dynamics being changed to corner the player into spending said gems. It’s clear that the greed of profit had turned Rovio into a pack of drooling hyenas.

Last week I traveled abroad, and somehow my phone number was hacked and being spoofed. As a measure of security, I installed a couple of tools on my phone to monitor data access requests and unauthorized operation. To my shock, when I booted up AB2, a request popup came that the game wanted access to:
– my personal contacts
– my FB usage
– my network
– my AppleID (including other games)
– my internet history

Enough is enough. I sent an email to Rovio and their response was simply, “Read our EULA.” So, I’m pretty sure when I agreed to play the game way back when, a lot of these access necessities weren’t in the EULA. Typical sneaky corporate moves to add them in after the fact.

So this weekend, I decided enough was enough. I deleted all my Rovio games and am moving on. In as fun as the game was to begin with, the whole purpose has changed. The game just simply isn’t worth it anymore. Screw Rovio, and screw anything they are going to get their grubby little mitts on.

Good luck flingers, and all the best in chasing down those pigs. I’ve had enough of greedy pigs for awhile.

Topic

[Falcon Falcon]

I don’t blame you for wanting to step away.  The greed from the hat event alone (10,000 black pearls for the new Exotic Hats versus 500 black pearls from the previous hat events a while ago) would probably be reason enough.  If you don’t pay out the nose for gems or get extremely lucky in the TOF (or already have a nice gem stash) you probably won’t complete those sets for a while.

[DJLarryt]

@falconfalcon You are right, and it’s just going to continue onto infinity. I got one of my birds pretty high (remember I’ve been playing since day 1) and the classification was “You have upgraded (bird) to Legendary”. Legendary what? Rovio hadn’t even named the class yet, which means as soon as players start getting close to this level (and judging by some of the people in Arena I’ve encountered who have bird levels of 135 and higher, they are already reaching it), Rovio will just take 5 minutes and pop another name in the dB with another skill value.

I’m sure if I hadn’t deleted my apps and checked back in say, in a year, I would see another x amount of new hats and insane amount of BPs required to get them. Pay-to-play.

But my real beef is the privacy issue I mentioned above. Rovio needs to see my personal contacts, my internet usage, and my other Apple Games in order for me to play their stupid game? What for?

This is simply clawed marketing greed thinly disguised as a fun game. The exchange isn’t balanced, you give a lot more than you get when playing Rovio apps.

[datguygamer]

@djlarryt

This is simply clawed marketing greed thinly disguised as a fun game. The exchange isn’t balanced, you give a lot more than you get when playing Rovio apps.

So you realised that just now?

[DJLarryt]

Haha, no @datguygamer, but I decided to do something about it now ;)

[jo-ha]

@djlarryt : I’m assuming you use iOs, since you talk about the apple ID – could you please tell me the app that you use to track the data stream from apps? Been wondering what I could use for that for some time now.
Thank you.

[Yue]

I am close to abandon this game too. Rovio’s greedy has pushed players away.

There is no more fun brought in, only money grabbing design.

[Joe B.]

DJlarryt, thanks for posting this message. Hopefully enough people will notice so developers can eventually change their greedy revenue model closer to how the original game was.

[007]

As an EU based company it is worth bringing up with them WHY they need to have access to your contacts and internet usage.  The EU-wide GDPR laws are very strict on what EU companies can do with data and what data they can collect. These laws came in to force in May 2018.

This UK site lays out the laws (they will be pretty much the same in Finland)

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/principles/

The interesting point to the OP is section 5(1) part (b)

“(b) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes shall not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes (‘purpose limitation’);”

Therefore Rovio cannot collect any data from you unless they have a specific and legitimate need for it.  Your MAC address and app usage history etc would be legitimate, your phone book is most definitely not.

It should not matter whether you play the game in the EU, USA or Timbuktu, Rovio as a Finnish company must comply with these laws.

 

[RawDataSystems]

Only permission AB2 has on my (Android) devices, is for storage. I’ve not tried to revoke it, so I don’t know if even that is mandatory. Contacts or any other arbitary permissions were never asked, not granted and they just are not there.

Why apple version requires extra permissions, I have no idea whatsoever. They simply should not be required or even requested!

 

[Pomme]

Copy/pasted by request.

I haven’t played in months. Last fall I think. Played yesterday and today. What have they done? It’s terrible. Video after video. Nothing but videos. And no matter what you do the birds are mostly useless. 5 full on hard hits to the king pig and nothing. Not even a bandaid. Just rocked a bit. Micro pigs are totally indestructible. It is no fun at all. The TOF is a joke. Didn’t even get the first 5 without 2 pigs. Always have to use a full set of spells due to being outranked. It’s nothing but a data suck and a money racket. Been playing since the original. What an absolute shame that greed has destroyed one of the best games ever. Y’all have fun. That was my last game. Deleted.

[RawDataSystems]

I’m done with this crap now, too. Also, as uninstalling AB2 takes away any chance to continue later, I will not return. I will check here every now and then just for a few weeks, but that’s it.

Writing  honest review for Google Play may take some time, because a very condensed version is apparently needed. Long first version was not accepted, so quite a bit of rewriting is needed. :D

 

[Peter Porkor]

smh as i said this community is going to dead soon,they are not fixing any of issue,late response,rude response not helpfull at all,no reason no nothing they just know how to “ban” “ban” “ban”

[SB311]

@rawdatasystems, sorry to see you go. :(

Thanks for all your helpful posts. It is sad what Rovio is doing to this once fun game. I think a lot of people are reaching their end and moving on. :(

[DDeck]

@djlarryt

On one side of the spectrum there are triple-A games that have Hollywood-scale budgets and development periods, with people knowledgable in “game theory” to balance game play and make it generally fun.

Then, on the other side of the spectrum, you have get rich quick companies that prey on people’s propensity for gambling, and they use this to generate revenue instead of great game mechanics. They design the game so it’s easy to get hooked and everything is free… up to a point — just enough to get you addicted. Then updates add micro-transactions, and it’s nearly impossible to progress past some point with out using in-game currency.

From a regulatory viewpoint, as long as it’s actually possible for a human to complete the game without buying anything, they’re allowed to label it as a “free game” in a store.

Now having said that… Rovio was never a triple-A studio, but they certainly focused on good mechanics and game play… in the beginning.

Everything lately is textbook sleazy tactics. Think of a level that is impossible to clear without spending gems. If the game didn’t eventually fall into pity mode where there’s a golden pig in each room, you could easily see regulatory issues for Rovio. Honestly, this game is so focused on gambling that it is no longer appropriate for children.

Remember that half the revenue of mobile games comes from less than half a percent of the players. AB2 is being optimized for that revenue stream, period. We can all quit, and it won’t make a difference. Rovio no longer even bothers to engage with this community.

Oh, and the game industry uses the same term that Vegas uses for players that spend huge amounts of money in the gambling mechanism: whales.

[RawDataSystems]

@sarai, it’s not the community of wonderful people I’ve met here. It’s the author, Rovio, not giving a flying f**k about the community or basically anything other than filling their pockets.

@sb311, I’m also sorry (to leave), but if you think about it, leaving the thing (AB2, not the community!) swiftly behind is a way to go. Gone are the daily annoyments and quite frankly, a lot of  daily stress I did not want or order, but still felt.

@ddeck, that sounds strangely… it’s almost like spoken by one with an insight with the issue here…

 

[Peter Porkor]

ima quit this trash game too,but ill not leave this site. (i dont know about all) but some peoples are good here.and they help each other about game.and that is impressive.

[Patrick12]

I have gave up on this game too, it’s boring now. I’m in the legendary league and I need to use around 4 spells just to win the very first step of the levels, sometimes 4 is not enough as I get a c$#p choice of birds/spells so they want me to spend 15 gems to shuffle them.  All my birds are around the 80 mark, I have around 700 spells, i have not assigned my game to any Facebook yet so if anyone just started with the game wants to make up a new Facebook, give me the login details I will sign this game into it, once that is done they can uninstall AB reinstall it and sign in and have my game, they can then change their password, I had enough of this game but it’s a shame to just leave it after all the time and money I have spent on it.

Edit: I also own a clan.

[Peter Porkor]

@patrick12 look my 2 accs got banned both above (600+fp) i dont have any acc, but the main thing is they didnt even gave me valid reason that, why they banned me? that email just say “We do not release the details of specific cases. We only ban players in cases where there has been a violation of our Terms of Service, which you can find here: http://www.rovio.com/terms-of-service

For specific information about this, you can jump to Section 3. Code of Conduct.

We will not respond further to any inquiries regarding refunds, the nature of the ban, or removing the ban. If there’s anything else we can help you with, please feel free to contact us again”

i was like tf mine all money and hardwork got f up but i know they not gonna lift the ban so i stop playing this game, in future if they improve thier game ill give one more shot!!

[Peter Porkor]

@patrick12 if u willing to give,i’ll take.

[Patrick12]

Like I said, just make up a new Facebook and send me the login details via private message, not pushed about the game no more. But have spent a lot of time and around £30 on it so it would be a shame to just throw it away when someone else maybe happy to get a head start

[Peter Porkor]

check out pm!!

[DDeck]

@rawdatasyste

Insight into the industry in general? Yeah, but no information about Rovio specifically.

It’s quite obvious that Rovio has gone “all in” to the Vegas-style sleazy method though. Unfortunately…

[DJLarryt]

@ddeck well said, and as a former game developer (I quit that career as soon as I learned what the nature of the job is like and went into the business sector instead), you hit the nail on the head with remarkable accuracy. Something changed part-way on the path and Rovio swung down into the sleazy depths of groveling for nickel-and-dime revenue, aka like gambling/addiction lords. This is usually the doing of management/ownership. The excellent fact that you pointed out that they don’t even care to PR in this group anymore is a shining example of how it’s no longer about their game.

This whole ‘different games for different players’ was the biggest red flag that they are f**king with their client base in a less-than-honest way. But like I mentioned above, the undefined implications in their EULA and their wanting access to my personal contacts was enough to tell what they are doing is not entirely over the wire. I almost wish I captured a screenshot of when the message popped up with Rovio requesting access to the points above… but now that I’ve uninstalled the game I want nothing more to do with them.

[Patrick12]

@Peter That’s it done, clear out your AB then log into that FB account, hopefully it works

[RawDataSystems]

@ddeck, exactly, as in general.  Like having a background in industry.

 

I thought Rovio being mentioned with winners at The Finnish Game Awards was full of irony, but it turns out the award had nothing to do with any specific game. Instead, it was just one guy from Rovio who was awarded for Europe wide project of preparing game industry for GDPR. Funny, how Rovio itself did not get any rewards for games…