Unfortunately it is not a super unusual problem for people to be randomly blocked on Google accounts, and in many cases, the recovery process is fraught with many frustrating waits. It happened with the co-creator of Terraria and, as a result, the next version of the game for Google Stadia was completely canceled.
Terraria’s imminent arrival was noticed for the first time last week, when the game went through PEGI, but it was never officially announced. Presumably, the launch was set to be included in one of Google’s next posts “This week at Stadia”.
Whatever the case, this is no longer happening. Andrew Spinks, Terraria’s co-creator, announced on Twitter the decision to start the week. He explains that his personal Google account has been blocked for about three weeks, leaving Spinks unable to access his 15-year-old Gmail account, “thousands of dollars” in Google Play app / movie purchases and his Google Drive data. The problems started with YouTube when the Terraria YouTube channel was blocked.
Spinks says he has done “nothing to violate” Google’s terms of service, leading to the decision to remove Terraria entirely from Stadia. The project was canceled and Spinks also says that his company “will no longer support” any of Google’s platforms going forward, saying that doing business with Google is “a risk”.
Terraria is still available on the Google Play Store for Android and Android TV, in addition to being part of the Google Play Pass at this time.
We contacted Google to see if they can provide additional information about the situation.
Update 2/9: The staff of Stadia Source got in touch with the studio behind Terraria to get a little more context about the situation and also to confirm the co-creator’s tweets. In the extensive statement below, the studio confirms that the port Stadia de Terraria, as well as future projects of the company, will not be launched on Google platforms, but the current version of the game available on Android is not being withdrawn.
Earlier today, our CEO, Andrew Spinks, issued a statement regarding our ongoing issues with your Google Account (demilogic). It took us some time to review public and media comments to see where areas of confusion might persist. We provide the following to help alleviate this confusion / misperception about the @demilogic account issue:
- Android / Google Play versions of Terraria will not be affected. Punishing existing customers who paid for our game on these platforms is not our goal. To be clear: there should be no impact for Terraria on Google platforms, both existing / purchased games and the store’s continued availability.
- Comments on the future availability of Re-Logic games on Google platforms are in relation to anything not currently available. This includes any future versions of Terraria (like Stadia), as well as any other games that our studio will develop in the future.
- The impacts here are not limited to personal matters, applications, etc. of Mr. Spinks – although, to be clear, they are many and substantial as well. Due to the company’s early days, when Mr. Spinks was the sole employee of the company, there are some inherited connections to the demilogical account that have been severed. This includes YouTube’s Re-Logic account, many important documents stored in Drive and more. The impact is material in nature – and this has been made clear to Google repeatedly.
The timeline of events:
- The Demilogic account receives a notice from YouTube alleging a violation in mid-January. This confused us a little.
- We didn’t charge in three months.
- Nobody in our huge fan / subscriber base noticed any new content uploaded, let alone anything offensive.
- In addition, YouTube’s initial correspondence on this subject made it clear that this was not a major problem:
- “We know that you may not have realized that this was in violation of our policies, so we are not enforcing a strike on your channel. We removed the content. “
- No action or response has been requested or suggested in this email.
- Since then, through our efforts on Twitter with the YouTube support team, we have been informed that our Re-Logic YouTube channel is clean and hassle-free.
- To date, we have not been informed of any real details behind the alleged actual transgression.
- Three days later, the entire Demilogic account – including Gmail, Google Play apps, Drive and all other Google services – is disabled. Various resources through standard channels are served with an automatic rejection, in the absence of any additional information.
- Many ways have been tried with Google in particular to resolve this issue – far beyond what people may have seen on Twitter a few weeks ago. Information has been sparse and difficult to obtain, even as a long-time partner.
- Even in the face of strong evidence that this is a wrong action – evidence that has been in hand for almost 2 weeks – this remains unsolved
- This is not a position that we take with joy or lightly. Google is a long-standing partner, but the inability to resolve this for us – a supposedly valuable partner – over a period of almost a month is not acceptable.
- In addition, we are aware of many other similar incidents with a repeated “unexpected ban” pattern, without information about the reason and without recourse. This has happened to countless people, as well as Android developers and more. We hope that our situation will serve both as a cautionary tale for others and as a vehicle to illuminate this subject as a whole. As a result, perhaps a significant change in customer service will occur on Google. It is extremely necessary.
- For those at Google who did their best to help without success, we appreciate your efforts. It is a pity that it has reached this point.
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