Greanylovkets Private

Type "gold" into the game chat in CoW, and send the message. Everything works fine. Now do the same with "spam". I'm sure you can see where this is going. If you type "gold spam" into the chat, it is replaced by asterisks. The same asterisks that would replace a swear word or something deeply offensive. Firstly, I just want to laugh at how poorly coded this system is: you can literally write "g o l d spam" and the detection fails. But secondly, this hints at a much, much larger issue - Bytro Labs is unwilling to take negative feedback from its community about the gold system. The fact that they felt the need to implement this censorship suggests that there must be a huge amount of resentment in the community. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Complain about the gold system in the game discord, banned! Complain in the chat, banned! Even speaking about gold in a vaguely negative way can get you banned, at least temporarily. This is not a sign of a corporation that cares about the people who play its games. Nor is it the sign of a group of designers who are intelligent and self-aware enough to be able to take criticism, adapt and improve. It is instead a symptom of insecurity, selfishness and apathy. Do you see why this is a problem? Surely you do. Bytro Labs has decided that the gold system is flawless and turns a deaf ear to any critique or complaint. This is not a good design ethic! It is the responsibility of game developers to listen to their players and respond to feedback. Of course they have a right to decide that these players are wrong, and that might be the correct decision. However, when they receive so much criticism they don't want spread that they resort to hard counters such as censorship, that is a sign that it is the players who are right. They have a duty to listen!