by UPDATE April 23, 2009: After getting the inappropriate comment on this article from Slide this morning, my wife and I have decided to quit the game. It’s over. Any links to our SuperPoke Pets sites are no longer active and should be considered dead. Why should we pay for that sort of attitude from a company? We’re voting with our wallets and the answer is “No thank you.”
I enjoy playing Slide.com’s SuperPoke Pets and I’ve raved about SuperPoke Pets and ranted about SuperPoke Pets. Today, I am enraged — not by the game I have come to love — but rather by the lack of an artful and loving Slide.com technical response to what should have been a simple problem to solve. This is the story of a false accusation — an unfair incarceration of character if you will — and its ultimate unraveling in the light of indisputable, human, facts.
SuperPoke Pets is a child’s game that many adults enjoy playing.
The object of the game is to build a habitat for your Pet by purchasing things in the pet store. You can spend real money on Gold items or you can spend “coins” — fake money that you earn by playing with your pet and your friends’ pets — to decorate your Pet’s living space.
SuperPoke Pets relies on lots of intensive database storage and retrieval for each player and, sometimes, thing go amiss and items you purchase go missing. The SuperPoke Pets technical forum is filled with lots of horror stories of mysteriously losing purchased items from habitats.
I’ve been playing SuperPoke Pets for two months now and I was recently burned by a Slide.com database meltdown when I lost over 1,500 of my hard-earned SuperPoke Pets friends. It took a lot of muscle, and a little yelling, to get that “database glitch” resolved and I thank Elin at Slide.com for helping restore my status in the game.
My wife also enjoys playing SuperPoke Pets, but she doesn’t play as much as I do — every coin she earns has value to her as a new player.
A couple of weeks ago or so, my wife “purchased” a “Star Pets” Plushies pack for 3,000 coins. You get 20 coins for every pet you play with, so you can imagine how long it can take to earn 3,000 coins if you’re the only one doing the playing.
My wife received acknowledgment from the SuperPoke Pets system that her “purchase” was successful and 3,000 real fake coins were debited from her account.
The Plushies Pack did not show up in her habitat inventory.
She wrote a note to Slide for help in either getting the Plushies delivered or in getting a refund of her 3,000 coins.
After answering a slew of questions about the missing purchase, my wife was told to wait.
Finally, today, she contacted Slide customer support again and was told she “gifted” a 3,000 coin Plushies Pack to another player she did not know.
Huh?
Not possible.
My wife only exchanges “gifts” with me and nobody else. She told Slide.com that there had to be a mistake and she received this reply:
My wife has never been “friends” with that person Slide.com named and you can’t give a gift to someone if you haven’t each accepted a friendship invitation.
My wife told Slide.com there had to be a mistake and she asked for her 3,000 coins to be returned and here is Slide.com’s response:
There is definitely something fishy going on here over a measly 3,000 coins and that database exchange Michelle J. at Slide.com claims to have proof of taking place, never took place.
We know that exchange never took place — anyone can copy and paste a bunch of gibberish in an email message and call it “proof” even though nothing is proven — because my wife wrote to the woman Slide claims my wife gave her Plushies Pack to and that woman confirmed no such transaction took place.
So now what?
If what Michelle J. claims — that a transaction took place even though both parties deny it because they were never “friends” so the exchange could have never taken place in the first place — then my wife is a liar, but she is not, or the woman who “received” the Plushies was in on some scam that involved the forging/breaking into of my wife’s SuperPoke Pets account to “gift” the 3,000 coin Plushies Pack to the woman.
Those scenarios do not make sense and none of it passes the giggle test.
As Judge Judy says, “If it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t true.” None of what Michelle J. claims makes sense.
We need to keep in mind that Slide.com deleted 1,500 of my friends from their database with no interaction from me. We need to remember gold and coin purchases are missing from SuperPoke Pet habitats right now and in an ongoing, daily, basis as reported to Slide by end users in their online support forum. We need to recall the forgery scam of a few weeks ago when nefarious players were somehow copying expensive items in the SuperPoke Pets store and “trading” them with other, honest, unsuspecting players.
In each of those cases, Slide tried to slip in and do the right thing — but why are they now denying basic, human, decency in this new instance of thievery and deception — and why are Slide.com putting faith in a proven corrupted database setup over the incorruptible reputation of my beloved wife and this “other woman” that neither of us know or ever befriended on their service?
When we choose machines over people, we are beginning a dangerous slide into the ether of nothingness where fake coins become more valuable than the beating hearts of the players earning them. Honestly, 3,000 coins is nothing in the SuperPoke Pets world where 25,000 coin habitats are for sale.
Slide could have easily put this matter to rest by becoming the verifying third party between my wife and the other player by actually asking each side what happened instead of navel gazing into a corrupted database.
Instead of playing the kind negotiator, Slide.com chose to become a cruel accuser and, in that role, they strangely revealed the identity to us of the “other woman” in this mess who has now been unreasonably and unwittingly involved.
Slide should never have broken her privacy by giving us her identity. Slide should’ve erred on the side of caution and kept each side’s privacy intact and separate from the other just in case their database findings happened to be wrong.
Let us not forget one important nugget of information — Slide is a $550 million dollar company even in this rotten economy and, yet, they’ve done a very cheap thing:
Slide, the maker of applications for social networks, has raised another round of funding – $50 million from the private equity funds at Fidelity and T-Rowe Price, two major Wall Street investment houses. The firms have taken a 9 percent stake in the three-year-old, 64-employee Slide, valuing it at $550 million.
It’s yet another start-up valuation that takes one’s breath away. Investors are being sold on the idea of social networks as the new operating system and apps-makers like Slide as the next Intuit. Last year, Microsoft invested $240 million for a 1.6 percent share in Facebook, betting that the rapidly growing social network could mint the next Web platform. Now investors are trying to peg the next Adobe or Electronic Arts.
Max Levchin, Slide’s chief executive, trumpets the comparison to previous iterations of the technology cycle. “It’s impossible for social networks focused on scaling the network itself to build all the niche applications that bring people and keep people on these sites,” he said. Just as consumers bought Windows to play games, organize their taxes or create documents, application makers like Slide “add the bulk of perceived value to the consumers of these Web platforms,” Mr. Levchin said.
You would think Slide could afford to do the right thing and return 3,000 “fake money” coins to my wife and offer up an invaluable apology for doing the wrong thing.
We’ll let you know what happens.
lol
Liron —
I see you’re coming in on the IP address: 208.76.69.126 and you’re at Slide.com:
IP address: 208.76.69.126
Reverse DNS: nat3.slide.com.
Reverse DNS authenticity: [Verified]
ASN: 13949
ASN Name: SLIDE-INC
IP range connectivity: 2
Registrar (per ASN): ARIN
Country (per IP registrar): US [United States]
Country Currency: USD [United States Dollars]
Country IP Range: 208.76.64.0 to 208.76.71.255
Country fraud profile: Normal
City (per outside source): Unknown
Country (per outside source): — []
Private (internal) IP? No
IP address registrar: whois.arin.net
Known Proxy? No
Link for WHOIS: 208.76.69.126
What’s so funny?
What is your Real Name?
Why did you fake your email address as “a@b.com” and do you have any solution to the problem addressed in the article — or did you just take time to come here and laugh at us?
WOW! That’s harsh! Instead of refunding your wife her 3000 hard earned coins … it sounds more like she got the “brush off!”
This situation has been handled in really “bad taste” and “character.”
Perhaps, if you and your wife persist you can warrant a deeper inquiry as to what happened and why? Maybe, someone from slide will listen … hopefully.
Hi Kimberley —
After getting that “lol” comment from a Slide employee this morning on this article, my wife and I decided we were no longer interested in playing their game or in spending lots of money a month on buying Gold items.
We deserve to be treated better by a company we pay, and so we’re going to find something else to do with our free time since Slide prefers to laugh at our situation instead of solving our problem.
We’ve already deleted our SuperPoke Pets accounts and applications. We have no interest in going back.
We aren’t giving away any of the junque we bought with real money because we no longer support Slide or their mission and we will no longer propagate or promote them.
I’m closing comments on this article in case any other Slide.com people have more “funny” thoughts to share.
sorry to hear of your troubles… It seems that more than a year later, similar issues are happening still with Slide… which is what brought me to this article…
Hi Paige —
What’s happening with Slide now? Can you give us details on your experience?
sorry i know im not paige but yeah stupid things like banning people for NO REASON are happening, they took gifting, trading , recycling away for a week or so and there are still people not having them back , and most people tht dont have them back are the ones getting banned, isnt it just crazy stupid …. and many of the coins being taken away, missing items, and such are happening more often :
Thanks for that detail, Jenny.
It’s too bad things have devolved so quickly and so fast.
I deleted my SPP profile on Facebook, but it seems my account/pet is still active and visible — but I can’t login to it! So Slide still has all my paid-for stuff that I cannot access or give away. It still burns.
I’m having the same problem, though I didn’t delete my pet from Facebook. I’ve paid for gold items and have lost the ‘fake’ coins more than once, along with some of the items I’ve purchased. I waited a long time before actually purchasing gold, but now that I have, I can’t access my pet at all, so they stole from me.. and I can’t contact them at all.
That’s terrible!
What did Slide say when you told them about the “stolen” coins?
Slides has restricted 1,000’s of account due to a glitch in their own system. Forums are flaring…. My gifting pet was banned but they wont call it banned, they are calling it restricted, they say you can still buy gold but no one can play with you and you cant chat on any forums or send note, gift or trade.
They put the blame on so many who did not know they was doing wrong by their system.
Come and take a look around forums, SPP wont tell us a thing what went wrong. Telling us to contact feedback but feedback dont give us any feed back. Only a few has heard from them and they are saying restricted for life for duplication their items.
You could send gifts but they would not leave your storage and they would be sent also. Some took advantage of this and made 1,000’s of fake items and sold through paypal. But others who did not know this was happening got blamed also. Found guilty before we had our say in this matter.. So sad, lot leaving and lot no longer buying gold. So bad on spp part for the way they are handling this issue.
Hi possoms —
That’s definitely a big problem and there was a similar “glitch/scam” of the same nature back when I was playing! Slide cannot blame their end users for exploits that Slide allows and creates! You cannot punish everyone who was bitten with a blanket ban — even though that’s what they’re doing.
After they treated me so terribly about my missing coins — I knew I had to put down my gold and walk away because there was no hope that I would ever be able to convince them of my truth against their “database facts” — that were entirely wrong.
Isn’t it interested that they will still allow you to purchase gold but not be able to play? what’s the point of that? Why would they think we’d want to do that??? I can’t access my pet anymore, now that I’m actually buying gold. They are nothing but thieves.. making a LOT of money off of their users but not listening to the problems or solving them, only adding more problems all the time.
Yes, it’s strange how Slide are handling the problems with missing items and gold purchases. I don’t understand why they don’t have a better accounting handle on all of this.
Hi,
I see you saw a small bit about what is going on with SPP.
What is going on is horrible. They have been glitch city for a while now but in the past couple of weeks they had a glitch in which..if you sent anything over 2 items you would not lose your item they would just send the number you requested and only take one away from your inventory. People told them and they shut down gifting and trading. The people who had dupes in their inventory (which was A LOT of people! anyone who gifted or traded over those couple of days) and even people who told them were banned! It wasn’t their fault it was spps! They don’t care. They say if you had multiple of these items you were abusing the glitch and are banned. The worst part about it is during the “lock down” they told us no one was being punished so people who ended up banned bought gold including mps for 50 dollars!
so many people are upset and don’t know what to do or who to contact about their thousands of dollars of stuff…..today they have new posts that people are finding dupes again in their account…..
Thanks for that detail and insight. What does “mps” mean?
I enjoyed playing SPP a lot — loved designing the habitats and I even wrote glowing reviews — but when the company you are paying to play rips you off and then accuses you of lying… welp… I refuse to be treated like that as a consumer and I will vote with my wallet… against them as often as I am able.
I hope they get their obvious database problem fixed — but I’m not hopeful — there are clear signs something is wrong on their end for a long time now, and yet they still blame the players for their errors.
Mp is Masterpiece. It is a piece of spp art.
Right! Thanks for that reminder. I always tried to buy one of those, but they were always, perpetually, sold out. There was never a fair way to universally provide fair buying access to those special pieces.
wow that is the same thing that happened to me it happened alot but this happened two times this week i lost 50,000 today and a couple of days ago i lost 40,000 what is wrong with spp?
Wow! Those are a lot of losses, michelle.
Have you contacted Slide? Are they helping you or blaming you?
How can we contact slide if we can’t access the website? I can’t get onto spp OR slide, and so I can’t access my pet or contact them. Recently I started purchasing gold, and now they’ve cut me off with no explanation, and I joined a club I really like, too. I also planted my garden which is probably gone to waste by now. What can we do? PS/ I say “we” because my husband and I both have pets and neither of us can access them.
Contacting Slide can be a trying event.
You might want to start here:
http://www.slide.com/corp/contact.html
Good luck!
My 9 year old grandson needed an account number to buy gold on superpokepets. He used my debit card and spent $1614.80 of my real money to buy “stuff” for his fake pet in 12 days! What do you think my chances are of getting that real money back from Slide?
Hi Sandy! What a story! How did your grandson get control of your debit card?
He was waiting for me in my car and had the opportunity to write down the card number and expiration date. He knows where I keep it since he’s with me when I use it.
Yikes! I hope your grandson will find a way to pay you back for the money he took from your account without permission.
Were you able to work it out with Slide to try to get your money back by returning the items that were purchased with your stolen account details?
I’ll have to try that. Would I contact customer service to work that out? I know nothing of this game, so any direction you could give me would be helpful.
I don’t know how to get in touch with Slide, Sandy, but your bank should have contact information for the charges to your account.
Good luck!
I think you can mail them at feedback@slide.com
Slide have been unresponsive to all my inquiries about closing my account and deleting all my stuff.
About a year ago, I closed a pet and started a new one, but they never deleted the old one. I still see it on there,, even though it has no money and no items!
Strange. I wonder why your pet didn’t get fully deleted?
Well I am so angry with Slide that I could spit. I have been trying since July and nothing and Not one response to my questions just a computer generated message saying than the message I had sent was recieved and that someone would get back to me. well no one has
I have been restrictd since July 26 2010. and that I was suspended until July 26 2010. That’s right 100 years…….. I’m not happy especially since my account is worth a great deal of money…. If you would like to I do need your help please. Feel free to email me. I really do need your help
Hi Connie —
I’m sorry to hear about your trouble. Why have you been suspended?
This is the only thing I have received from anyone explaining the reason. I have never shared any personal information with anyone, my son doesnt even have that info. Then on the 26th of July I was restricted. no other messages were sent to me. I was not told anything else nor was I asked a thing about this. I have contacted the admins and ambassadors numerous times and nothing not even a hint of the reason for the suspension/restriction.. I was not asked a single question in regarde to this. I have no idea who these people are that I was accused of giving all my information too. I have no idea.
Rachel wrote:
Jun 18, 2010 01:18 PM
Hi Connie,
Thanks for the response. We always try to give people the benefit of the doubt. However, we have seen messages from you to other users here which shared your personal email account and spp password.
We can not be sure at this time just how many other people may have your log-in credentials.
I understand you may have been friends with some of these people, but not even friends should have access to information like this.
I am sorry that this has happened. For you, and for everyone else involved. My recommendation is to avoid contact with these people, do NOT post about what happened in the forums, and to change all of your login information.
It’s important not to post about this in the forums because it will just cause further drama and accusations, and possibly harassment for you. If I see talk of this in the forums I may have to temporarily suspend you from posting. We don’t wish to block anyone’s account at this time. When I get more information I will let you know. Plus just lay low for now and keep your privacy safe.
Thanks much, and I hope you have a restful Friday.
Rachel
Reading the email from Rachel — suggests to me — that your account has been compromised. It seems as if she’s saying someone hacked into your SPP account and, perhaps stole your stuff? I wonder if you were then locked out to block you from discovering the theft of your stuff and really setting you off? If that’s true, then they’re probably working hard to restore your account and return everything to you while they try to get their ongoing database problems resolved. Isn’t it easier to blame you instead of you blaming them?
Thank you for actually taking the time to talk and explain to me what that was all about. I know for a fact that I have never given my personal infoemation to a single person. That is just rubbish. I can get into my account but I can not interact with anyone nor can I post a single word. I started my Own Club a while ago ago (Perfectly Purple) and now I can not talk, post or interact with my members. This is so unfair.. I have written to Slide and have only a computer generatd message telling me that they received my message and that they will be in touch. I’m e-mailing you the letter that I sent to Slide
Do you have suggestions No matter where I have looked.
Again thank you for helping me
Connie
I really have no idea what’s going on with them, Connie, but I would try a different approach just to see what happens: Email them and tell them you’re closing your account, but that before you do that, you need 24 hours of access to your account so you can give away all your stuff you earned and bought. See what they say. If all your stuff is there — and you didn’t get any of it “illegally” in their eyes — then there should be no problem, right? If, however, they refuse your request, or ignore you, then I would say something really odd is happening and I would raise a fuss in the forums and other places to get yourself heard. Why are they so terrified of you going into the forums? Why the hush up? That says more to me than anything else in that email that the problem is theirs, not yours, and that in order to keep it quiet, they will keep cutting you off so you don’t speak the truth. You just need to make yourself heard. Do you have any Facebook contacts for the Slide people? Sometimes that private, but direct, approach works.
UPDATE:
I have just read Connie’s email to Slide she sent to me — and it is now my opinion that Slide did the right thing in cutting her off forever and for good.
I can’t access my account and have had no explanation from them, and I have no idea how to contact them since I can’t get onto their sites. I’m going to try and email them, but it sounds like that’s pretty worthless, too. It’s probably because my husband and I both have pets on the same IP address, even though we have separate computers… lately I decided to buy gold, and now I can’t even use it.. if I could, I would return the items for a refund, but I can’t even do that, so they basically ripped me off. did you ever get your problems with them resolved?
No, my problems were never resolved. They stole my coins and that was that. I wrote this article in protest.
I don’t think sharing IP addresses would matter. Lots of families do that. As long as you’re logging in to different pets, there shouldn’t be any problems or confusion.
I have no idea how to contact Slide. Maybe try Google? They recently bought Slide, so they’re the new “owners” of the games.
David the inventory that I was organizing was what he had before he started this idea and the items that I got from him did not come from the coop idea. I did not steal from Slide nor have I ever stolen a single thing from him. The only person that has been punished is me and I did not do anything what so ever. None of the other players that are doing this have been reprimanded Is that fair. I am sorry that you feel this way about me but I quit when I saw what this was doing and I did try to find out who the woman was that was creating the Gold but to no avail
Connie
You had direct knowledge of the gold scam, Connie — but instead of immediately reporting it to Slide — you instead became a part of it by “buying in” to the illegal gold co-op that you knew was wrong from the beginning.
You’re lucky Slide aren’t taking legal action against you for theft of property.
I did report it to one of the Ambassadors and she asked me to find out who the person was that was selling the Gold and all I found out was her first name
You were asked to find out the person selling the Gold… and then you bought in to the scheme. It really is unbelievable that you don’t see how absolutely complicit you were in the thievery.
Go after [redacted] and [redacted] check out thier PayPal accounts and you will see that I did not do any gold stealing or selling or the coin items either. I have receipts from Slide for the Gold items I have not a 1
[named edited out by David W. Boles]
Here’s a guilty part of the email you sent to Slide and then to me. I have no problem posting it here since you posted the names of the other people in your gang in your reply — that I had to remove — because I have no idea if you’re being honest or not:
You were part of the gang. Then you got angry and then scared when they wouldn’t let you out — and so you turned to Slide for help and ratted out your cohorts. Too little too late. You went to Slide with unclean hands.
I can’t believe I wasted an entire afternoon trying to help one of the bad guys! Please go away!
Get it straight not my gang I came to for help in fixing this and instead you jump to the judgement chair and offer to help me figure out how to fix this. …. I sure am glad that you have never done anything wrong… (or your wife in SPP) to be able to stand in judgement All I want to do is clear this whole thing up and I just wanted to find someone that maybe able to do that. Sorry to have bothered you and your afternoon
Here’s more from your letter to Slide that you sent to me:
The rest of that last sentence appears in my previous reply to you.
Here’s the part in your letter to Slide where you got angry and then scared and wanted out of the gang:
You were in pretty deep, Connie, and you only wrote your confessional to Slide after they already caught you and cut you off.
hi, i came across your post and it made me think… lately I can’t access SPP by any means, I tried a different computer but nothing, always says, “failed to open page” and after reading all this I thought maybe its one of this glitches you were talking about?
Have you tried clearing the browser cookies on your computer and clearing your browser cache? Sometimes that helps.
Wow, I don’t know what I found more interesting, the blog
or the comments with Connie. Ii remember when that happened and
wondered what was going on (I am never “in the know” around there).
They’ve recently done a new upgrade on SPP and changed the look of
all the pets. I’m still not keen on the new chicken, but I’m not
outraged like some people. The debate turned into this horrible
fight on the forums where people were name calling one another and
one girl even said that anyone who was upset about the new pets
should seek psychiatric care because they scared her…. I’ve
noticed a shift since even this blog was originally written,
towards the gold buyers. I originally refused to buy gold on the
principle that it is spending money for nothing (as you say, that
animated chicken is no good elsewhere!) but I’ve broken down and
now spend probably $30 a month or so on it, all told. I’ve never
been bitter or angry about the gold buyers getting better things
because they are paying to keep advertising off the site, but I did
get pretty pissed when they changed the quests mid quest.
Originally the passport quests (where you have to buy a certain
habitat to a themed place, and use it to complete the quest) had a
gold and coin habitat released together on the same day. Yes, the
gold was superior, but of course it was. Then one week they just
didn’t release the coin items. when people flooded the boards
wanting to know why the admins answer was that the coin quest items
would be released on Thursday at the ever annoying 9pm C. shopping
time – the day the quest expired – because they had decided to give
the gold buyers more perks because they were basically more
important. Is her right? sure, but damn, you don’t tell people
that! Luckily for slide, Myspace’s 3.0 move was such a PR nightmare
with current users that slide comes off looking thoughtful and
caring by comparison, LOL! Okay, now I have pointlessly rambled. Oh
well. It happens.
I appreciate your insightful update, Joleene. I wonder if one day SPP will be pay-only service? It certainly seems to be moving in that direction.
Yes, the conversation with Connie is still a numbing memory. It’s always a fascination learning how a mind works and the justifications that can be created to excuse behavior and bend morality.
SPP really is a genius entertainment event. Moving to a “New VIP Pet” system is a smart way to separate those who are willing to pay from those who want a free ride on Slide. I just wish there were some way for people to protect their monetary investment in the game beyond just having virtual things. Value should be sustainable and growth-inducing instead of just tossing money down a rabbit hole never to be seen again.
Isn’t it sickening how greed corrupts everything? Even a simple little ‘decorate a pixelated room’ application! Superpoke for me began as a little Facebook feature where you can virtually poke your Facebook friends in funny ways ( throw a pie at, share a martini with etc.) with the same little pets you see on the SPP app. While most were free, there were some that Slide charged for. Back in 2008, friends and I would use this feature to ‘poke’ each other and one of them sent an invite for the Superpoke Pets Application. It was fun and cute to have a little room to decorate and we would send each other little gifts that were purchased in the shop; mostly, these gifts had a little meaningful jest involved.
Slide then created a forum and gave a coin incentive for one to join. I think it went downhill from there since people conjured up all kinds of ways to earn coins that were very far from what I think the app was intended for. Too many people on there with bad intentions and now a means to communicate easily with one another! Instead of purchasing one pencil or gum ball machine, folks were buying all of them up.
I still love (and always have) the simple coin items. I believe I purchased a gold wind chime for a friend (just to make her day) who was so obsessed with it, but that’s pretty much it for me. The details are cute and I love the themes but it has gotten ridiculous! The posts above read like an international espionage novel 😉
I remember looking at those jumbo holiday plushies and only purchasing the one that matched my pet, yes, that’s it, I ONLY PURCHASED ONE, and it cost me 9 coins! Now they are for sale on paypal for $5?
I enjoy your writing so I thought I would say hello. Do you think the Slide likes all of this controversy? Maybe they should do away with the forums since it seems to breed a lot of bad, greedy activity from ‘pixel whipped’ individuals!
Thanks for the fine comment, Jennifer.
I do think Slide likes the controversy. They could easily shut down the forums and make the whole thing a for-pay object — but I think they get some sort of visceral thrill over the class warfare between the haves and the have-nots — the free players and the payers.
I remember one time I bought several washers and dryers so I could make a dueling robot aliens out of them with soap and water as the weapons — and I was shocked at the private messages I received from people. In the negative camp, people accused me of being elitist for showing off what I paid for, and others, in the same strata, begged me to gift them some of my identical items “because I didn’t need that many” even though they were all being actively used in my habitat.
I’m so glad I read this post when trying to find info about superpoke pets! My friend wanted me to join so I could be her friend on it, but because of this I didn’t. I also sent her a link to this site in my email explaining why I wasn’t going to join, so hopefully she’ll stop playing like I requested her to…
I just managed to come across this article while I was Google searching for someplace where I can post about some problems I have with SPP. Even though I have been on SPP since I forget when, I came back recently while I was e-mail spring cleaning and was buying one or two each of available items that match my pet and I probably now bought nearly $100USD in many different gold items. While I was searching around in the shop, they appeared to have page upon page of “Out of Stock” items listed (especially in the seeds department) which can get really annoying when trying to find something you want. On top of that, even though I got the March and May plushie pack (I only purchase one and I am done), the April one is sold out and leads a dead not gotten badge in it’s place. This could get annoying at times and makes you wonder why Slide won’t do away with the Stock count (which in turn could solve the problem being created by those individuals that purchase hundreds of a specific item at once and depriving others from it. I’m surprised I am yet to see someone discussing somewhere about getting a Macromedia Flash For Dummies book from somewhere and developing something similar to SPP out of annoyance from Slide or something.
It’s definitely a problem, Erik. I don’t know why Slide support isn’t more directly responsive.
I could post an image of the conversation I have with a Slide support member by the name of Katie who assumed my complaint was a suggestion and told me to visit the Suggestions Room on SPP.com to share my feedback with fellow members of the SPP Community and SPP staff, and to see where you think I might have to go from there in terms of another response back to them.
Hi Erik —
I don’t think you can post images in the comments. Can you copy and paste the conversation instead?
Here you go, lets see if this works. If it does, it should show the conversation.
Okay, apparently it doesn’t, but the URL for it is http://i55.tinypic.com/2e4fejq.gif
Definitely a disappointing response, Erik. Keep at them, though. The more people who complain, the more they’ll be forced to actually meet the needs of their customers.
The monthly plushies were also free gifts. Everyone has dozens of them – for instance in the October plushies I have like 25 of the chicken plushies. If you need the badges most people will give you the plushies (I have some, in fact – http://pandora-6666.superpokepets.com/ )
When they introduced the stock count they claimed it was because it took server resources to display each item so many times. (I know nothing about it, so no idea if this is a legit excuse or not). The people who buy 99 or more of items iritate me, though. I know there were a bunch of people looking for a stained glass cross in a forum post and many members answered, “Well I bought 100’s”. why?!?!?!
I love the kindness and the kinship you use to play SPP, Joleene. That’s the only way to make the game mean something. Hoarding the really neat stuff is a big problem and there needs to be a fair way to give everyone a chance for inclusion.
Yeah, as for me, I have the “March ’11 Plushie Collector” badge and the “May ’11 Plushie Collector” badge, but not the “April ’11 Plushie Collector” badge because the plushie pack that would have gotten me that is listed as sold out. And I see other badges that I don’t have listed that are based back in ’10, something about 13 Christmas plushies in 2009, and I think the Alphabet Seed thing may also be based on sold out stuff. This makes it next to impossible to get these badges due to those buying up hundreds of each item.
In fact, you can check out http://jennie-bunny.superpokepets.com/ and see what I have been doing with getting mostly items that match my pet and buying no more than 3 or 4 at most of each item and no more because I hate hoarding of items. And you will probably find my want list at a high due to those who buy a hundred or more of each item and depriving me of stuff, and my have list has a number of things I feel that I don’t need or don’t want and hoping that someone will want a remote trade. I even leave the option of a Paypal based trade (if someone wants cash in return) open while hoping that I don’t get someone asking for highway robbery prices.
As for them saying they introduced the stock count and claiming it was because it took server resources to display each item so many times, that is not an accurate claim because for starters, I can display a single image so many times on a webpage, and it doesn’t use resources as far as I can tell. That, and have seen a number of items that don’t even have a stock count and remain available in the shop. And if they are removing stuff to add new stuff, I don’t see that happening either since the plushie section in the shop for instance has over 300 pages of stuff listed and a lot of it being out of stock. Also, if server resources has anything to do it, then Slide, being a $550 million dollar company, should have no excuses in being able to afford better or more server(s) to handle the resources.
I buy 99 items usually coal and pillows since I enjoy making designs like once a made a lion. So basically i make crafts with multiple items
Hey there, I was spending some time now browsing through the official superpoke pet forums, and a topic for a recent item release called the Trainable Kitty has sparked a number of complaints regarding being over charged for gold and the item being out of stock already with them refusing to restock, .etc. One of the comments that I read mentioned, “So, TK. This was a LIE then???? IF I read your note correctly, if I didn’t get in last night 5/5/11 I am screwed? Our power was out, not your problem I know, but still, we were told by KEANE it would not be limited. I HOPE there are more restocks coming, at the promised price. If not, that is clearly Fraud. I have a screen cap of Keane’s post just in case I need it for further action.” Is it just me or is SuperPoke Pets turning into a fraud of some sort? And that may even be just the tip of the iceberg, so to say.
Also, my website link will show I just set up a forum for anyone to talk about this, even though it might attract Slide.
what i have not figured out yet is why some lawyer hasn’t latched onto all these folks– and there’s a lot of folks- that have been scammed in some way by slide. Most people believe that Kendra for example, is actually part of SPP. She owns sppstore and sppaddict- when one purchases from the store, items AUTOMATICALLY go into the buyer’s account- that can only happen if you have access to the accounts held by SPP- otherwise the store would have to ‘trade’ or ‘gift’ just like the rest of us. AND it is the only store ‘supported’ by them -even though KEANE NG has a thread devoted to pretending there ‘could’ be others. Sppswap and sppbargainbarn.com are great– and cheap if using sppbargainbarn.com –but neither are considered ‘affiliates.’ It is believed this is due to the fact not only does slide get all of the SPP money, but they then turn around and make no telling what on the sppstore— and since they sell old coin, mps, etc there— perhaps the glitches are not actually glitches, but perks for slide– the fewer the items the so called rarer—- A REAL lawyer could easily find all this out and make oodles in the process of doing so— perhaps we should all start inviting these professionals to play the game.
I had no idea all that was going on. I wonder if SPP uses an open programming API that people selling items can use to do instant transfers or something? Why wouldn’t Slide admit it if they had unofficial “official” stores?
I am not sure- but if an open API -seems that would be a bragging point for them and therefore mentioned in the thread dedicated to pretending they want authorized resellers- they do talk about tools for helping resellers but unlike legitimate companies do not mention API nor have a link for you to incorporate their ‘tools’. I contacted my friend at sppbargainbarn and she said that she wrote to Keane saying: “Hello and thank you for your time! I noticed there is only ONE authorized reseller– is it that hard to become one? I have my own spp site and my clients love it! I was wondering what it would take to become authorized by SPP? We’re willing to please! Again, Thank YOU! so very much for your time- my site is located at http://www.sppbargainbarn/shop/” — that was on 4/12/2011 — apparently not only is it that hard, but when inquired about seriously by someone, it becomes impossible because now the thread can only be found buried deeply in the forums which means it is no longer ‘pinned’ – this is still very suspicious as it was always pinned until she made her inquiry (or it sure seems that way) — — http://superpokepets.com/spp/trading_post/topic?tid=FnoT8w4sw5AHk3n6-JdLyA&posts=eooeoho3MUY40YDFOz_GH8Zc4kg4xHHR4N2Wz6d1L-x5viY-P6pCYaYfQsYsCjWfH3NyyQkC7bQ (note that until less than a month ago, this thread had been pinned for almost a year – and yet no one else has gotten this honor? I really don’t know what is going on– other than one fact seems to gain evidence more and more each day and that is- there are some very bad business ethics going on somehow with Slide, Inc..) There is one other thing to take into consideration, they are now setting up their own store- sort of– for the older stuff. This is yet to occur but seems that even if they are not affiliated with sppstore, creating their own market (tho still not quite like a store) they would be sticking it to their so-called trusted authorized resellers.
Thank you for explaining this. I hope Slide will be more transparent about how business is done on the forum.
We would love it if the post were still stickied, because it helps spread the word about our store to people that may not have heard of it. Unfortunately for us, that isn’t the case.
It isn’t stickied any more because there needs to be room for other posts. They did put a permanent page into the customer service area with the same information though.
Gloria,
My name is Kyle, and I run SPP Store with Kendra. We don’t have access to anyone’s accounts. There is a special page that is provided to authorized resellers by Slide. Instead of browsing through a list of items, we enter item id numbers on the page, enter the url, and click a send button. We are in no way working for Slide.
Anyone can become an authorized reseller if they apply and meet the requirements. Here is an excerpt from the authorized reseller info page:
We’re regular players just like you, and we have put a lot of work into SPPStore. We were the first, and have always been the largest SPP item reseller. There were only a couple other small stores at the time the reseller program was being developed. It makes sense that we would be asked to try out and give feedback on the Authorized Reseller program, doesn’t it?
I don’t appreciate it when people start making things up and spreading rumors about us. If you have any concerns, just send us an email at support@sppstore.com before you decide to post things like this.
Thank you for the clarifying comment, Kyle. You were stuck in a Spam queue and I didn’t see your thoughts until now.
I haven’t played SPP since Slide stole my coins and locked me out of my account.
Can you explain what’s in this for you as a seller? Do you get a real money cut of the transactions? What’s the point of having an SPP store like yours? Are players no longer allowed to gift each other?
It makes everything “official” and lets people that have never used our store before know that they can trust us. We also have a separate page for sending orders to customers, regardless of if they are friends or not. It sends a confirmation email when it’s delivered with a list of all of the items that were sent so the user can easily verify that they were all received.
Update: the ‘market’ is now open— however, there is no actual trade of gold or real money– items in the market are sold for coins and spp gets a percentage of each sale. So in other words this should not bother outside stores too much- so we are back to that point of it seeming suspicious that the thread became unpinned right after an inquiry was made as to why there was only one authorized reseller. Either way- as I stated before – there is a lot of dirty pool going on over there -and if a lawyer does show dirty business ethics, I am not sure what will occur with all the players investments.
Can you explain what “the market” is for the casual reader just finding this thread?
The market allows player to list their items for coins. No price can be higher than 999,999 coins (fake coins). For every sale made, a percentage goes to spp for the ‘transaction’ fee– why they need coins is slightly beyond me- other than just another way to rob their players. Whereas before you click the shop tab to go shop, now below it is the link for the Market.
Is real money playing any role in these sales? If not, what’s the point of SPP taking a percentage cut of the transactions?
no- there really is no point in them taking a percentage other than some sort of senseless greed. I haven’t checked in today – but I am being told a user can no longer ‘recycle’ to get coins- using the market is the only way- Since they have taken away the ‘training’ system they had before, one as you know, must work- darn near live at SPP – in order to come up with any coins. My guess- we’re about to see coin packages for sale in their shop as well.
What does “recycle coins” mean?
What was the training program cancelled?
Can you still buy coins on your own direct from Slide or is that finished, too?
Okay when I logged in I could still recycle some items in order to get coins. So I don’t know if she had some sort of yet another spp glitch or if something being slowly rolled out.
In 2009 and prior- you could bring in a ‘new’ player and so call train them. By getting loads to join in your training of this person, you could get the person trained to level 10 very rapidly and gain unheard of amounts of coins (one of my accounts still has over 4mil from those days). Unfortunately the good stuff always ends. As for buying coins, you can’t- you can buy gold bars. However, with the advent of the market and with idiots charging 999,999 for most gold items listed AND with slide already letting us know they’re getting a percentage of each sale- is what leads me to believe that they will soon be selling packages of coins.
That’s fascinating, Gloria. Looks like SPP is really a big business now. Are new items added to the store every day now, or do people on the East Coast have to stay up all night in order to get first dibs on buying new goodies?
East coast time –for gold
monday night 10 pm
wednesday night 10 pm –once in a blue moon on mondays at 3 pm there’s a masterpiece
As far as I can tell, the marketplace looked like a breeding place for the 500,000 to 999,999 idiots like they are running an idiot factory rather than a marketplace. And that was from when I was attempting to use the marketplace to get a number of the items I had on my wish list.
Is the marketplace run by Slide or independent operators?
I believe the marketplace is run by Slide.
recycle is when you “recycle” an item in your inventory and then are given “coins” (not gold) for that item – gold items are not recyclable. If you do it right you can make a mint off of garden items this way. You buy the seed, for coins, then grow it and harvest the three items it yields, then recycle all three items for their coin value. It varies from seed to seed, but you can triple your money on some of them, from what I understand. I don’t mess with it. Recycling is also handy of people send you a bunch of gifts you don;t want and have no one to give to, or for items they make you collect for quests (like for thanksgiving we had to collect so many turkey legs, and so many stuffing dishes, cranberry sauce, etc by clicking on cornucopias in friend’s habitats -0 you also had to have so many people click your cornucopias too, hence how I ended up with so many of them – after thanksgiving I recycled all the items – I had several hundred of many – and ended up with thousands of coins out of it)
They say in the official thread that the reason for the marketplace “fee” is to keep coin inflation down. I’m not an economist, though I figured it was more likely to make it more like a “real” market – when you sell something through online markets they take a % of the profits.
There was another game I used to play on Facebook where you visited and played with other people from house to house and then decorated habitats and stuff and fed and cleansed and danced with your friends and there was a killer recycling thing in that game that worked the way you’re describing the SPP recycle idea works. That’s a good idea. It helps to keep the game fresh.
Kyle, as you know, I love you and Kendra to death, and it DOES make sense for you to test the waters for SPP as a reseller. Your site is premiere and I very much appreciate your comments on this thread. You and Kendra and leagues ahead and above the rest. Your site was the first, and is by far the best. Thank you for your hard work and dedication.
Gloria, I appreciate your concerns about Slide, as we ALL have them, but please do your homework.
~Paige (^___^)
So very sorry – did not mean to offend anyone! As I said most people believe this– that means the friends and aquaintances I personally have – have been making this observation. The reseller thread just sort of aides in this simply because other people have applied to be resellers – the thread has been there almost a year- and still only the one store— that sounds suspicious whether or not anyone wants it to. I used to use Kendra’s store- however, I now use the sppbargainbarn.com store simply because it is far cheaper- not that I have anything against Kendra or Kyle (whoever you are). If they don’t have what I am looking for, then I use the other stores– you want what you want no matter where you get it. I have to agree Kyle it MADE good sense for your store to be used first– it apparently has been working for almost a year now– so where are the other stores yet? As for my homework Paige, I continue to do it- yesterday was another big glitch day –such as giving away gifts only for them to still be in your own gift box– wonder who gets deleted next for so-called duplicating? As I have said, there’s strange things going and that’s even if you take the entire business of resellers out of the picture.
Thanks for all the exquisite detail, Gloria, and keep banging the drum to make sure everything is on the up and up and out in the open!
Thank you David – I will do just that- I don’t see any reason to ‘personally’ email anyone. If it’s all on the up and up, right out in the open is where it needs to be. Still doing my homework! Guess what today? SPP has ‘accidently’ been charging people who have creditcard info on their accounts- not everyone! but a great many people and boy are they ticked!!!!!! Read their sorry apology here — http://superpokepets.com/spp/tech/topic?tid=i_XvPdtRK1y0UG50oOAzMw&page=1#post_dJGifo8qd7wwPPM6KNLF-Q —notice if anyone incurs overdraft fees that’s not SPP’s fault– that’s your fault for going with a bank who has policies like that– is there a bank that says ‘hey, it’s okay to overdraft- just put it back as soon as you can- we completely understand’ — if so tell me please cuz that’s the bank for me! They are already banning people and closing threads — freedom of speech is NOT in their vocabulary.
Oh, no! What a mess! I appreciate your updates, gloria! Keep on fighting the good fight!
This is looking like it is going to a class action lawsuit as I just pulled this out of the aforementioned thread above which was posted by someone called Bruce.
Consumer Protection Unit
San Fransisco District Attorney’s Office
415-551-9595
I have just had my call returned from the San Fransisco District Attorney’s Office, Consumer Protection Unit. They requested that anyone dealing with this fiasco to contact them and file a complaint for them to handle.
Do it now.
To SPP….You have ruined my weekend plans with the wife, (Hard to go anywhere on a $1.56), jeopardized my job and raised my stress levels to the point that I am sitting here physically shaking at the cavalier attitude you display.
I am now moving on to legal action as it seems that nothing else has been able to impress upon you the severity of this.
You continue to flat out lie to my face that this has been resolved and it has not.
Bruce
The marketplace is on Slides site and they technically manage/oversee it, but it works like ebay in the regards that you post the items yourself and set the price yourself. Since it is digital and on their servers, however, you have to have the item in your inventory (aka can;t sell something you don;t have like some people do with paypal) and it is also instant. If I go “buy” something on it (for spp coins) then slide instantly transfers the item from them to me, just like it does in the shop. Also to keep people from listing things, then trading them and leaving buyers empty handed, once you put something in the shop to sell it is removed from your accessible inventory until you take it down “off the shelf” so to speak.
sounds great, buttttt, of course, there are so many ridiculous people out there. For instance there is a cupcake that sells in the shop (and as of yesterday was still in stock) for 20 coins. In the marketplace people were selling these for 300 or more coins a piece. wtf? They are not worth that by any stretch of the imagination! AT the same time, there were three sellers who had them for 10 coins each – 50% off the shop price. (note they were the minority)
My advice to anyone using the marketplace would be to open it in one tab and the shop in another, then check the availability/original selling price in the shop vs the marketplace (This is why the sold out items stay listed in the shop, to try to prevent people from getting cheated too badly. Before they started doing that I used to get cheated on trades regularly because I couldn’t remember what something was worth)
I think the marketplace might be handy if it’s, say, 3 am and you need that blue bubble bath mat to fill in a gap in your habitat, but otherwise it’s mostly new items (most of which are still in the shop!) OR if you have a LOT of fake coins and want to get gold items as some sellers have listed gold items for very high coin prices. If you have a lot of playdates and play everyday you could feasibly buy a gold item a week or every two weeks by using the marketplace. I was hoping to see some of the old items (which are the only coin items I really want) but people seem to want to keep those on paypal where they can get cash for them.
One up side for brand new players is that people are selling those plushies Erik mentioned needing for badges for like 10 coins each, which is a much cheaper alternative to having to dig up and pay for the gold packs.
Overall, Slide does make plenty of mistakes but, just like with this marketplace, in the end it tends to be the greedy players who ruin the experience for me 🙁
Thanks for that excellent comment Joleene! I think I liked SPP better back when I was playing it. If you had something somebody needed, you’d just give it to them as a gift and be done with it. The Halloween stuff was hard to find back then and yet people still helped each other out to fill out their collections.
What are these other sellers doing? They’re anointed by Slide to have their own shops? Are they taking a real money cut from the transactions somehow? Why wouldn’t ever player want to set up a for-profit shop like that?
Exactly. That’s the way I prefer it, too. I can;t get into all of this haggling and watching prices and hopping around and buying low selling high stuff. I want to decorate a habitat and tickle a digital chicken, not make money.
Yeah, I think the off site seller shops take a cut – I’ve never used one, but I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t. I think the prices are outrageous, even for the “cheap” ones. I just can’t justify paying $5 plus dollars for something like a rug that cost 500 fake coins. Maybe I just don’t want it bad enough.
I know a lot of players rather than having store fronts just sell through paypal constantly. They fill their habitat with items and then write $5 (or whatever) paypal and then if you want the item you have to contact them, get their pay pal and pay them, then they gift it to you. Of course, there are also players who sell stuff once in awhile (I’d guess it’s when they’re low on funds and want new items – sell the old ones so you can get new ones, seems practical to me) and I will buy from those people now and then if it’s something I really want. I’ve been lucky and haven’t gotten ripped off yet, but the potential is definitely there.
As I said, though, there are some players who that’s all they do. I had a couple in my friends list that were always selling things, marked up dramatically, of course. I took them off my list after I figured out that that was ALL they did on SPP, they played to get coins to buy stuff to sell. I mean what’s the point? Go get a talent and sell something you made. Far more rewarding and you can probably make more, anyway.
Fascinating!
I thought Slide didn’t allow people to buy and sell stuff via PayPal. Do they now, or are those exchanges done on the low down?
Oh yeah, it’s allowed. Many deals are made in forums, etc and the shops that they endorse use paypal, I believe.
Oh, wow! That’s new! Selling the SPP stuff was verboten when I was playing. You could only gift. I know there were grifters out there looking to make money off of wants and yearnings — but that’s true with anything and it was always under the table.
definitely no longer that way- in fact there’s a thread dedicated to it call the paypal thrifty thread
That’s definitely a big change, Gloria. I guess it makes sense. If people want to make money off their SPP stuff, they should be allowed to do it without getting punished.
Especially since you can’t recycle gold so it;s the only way to make your money back – otherwise you’re just tossing it into cyberspace randomly
The deal about SPP charging peoples account multiple times is quite correct. My account was charged $4.99 a total of 113 times.
In this thread you will see in the fourth post down and admn stating that the issue had been resolved and refunds were being made.
http://superpokepets.com/spp/tech/topic?tid=arvP6c661pmxal2y98DkbA&click_source=11
I went to check my account in the AM on the 19th to see if the first 22 charges were reversed. I saw 1 (one) credit adjustment of $4.99 and an additional 92 charges of $4.99 dated for the 19th with an additional 22 charges pending.
All posts being made about this have been deleted or locked 1 by 1. In addition PM’s sent to me by admins have mysteriously disappeared from my inbox. I have taken screenshots of everything before it disappeared.
I have been urging everyone affected by this to contact the San Fransisco District Attorney’s Office, Consumer Protection Unit. 415-551-9595 and ask to speak to Sean.
In addition you can email Google at legal@google.com
I would also recommend sending an email to….
United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, subcommittee chair and California representative Mary Bono Mack
This is a nightmare. I have friends who have incurred over $1,700 in overdraft charges alone. Folks need to fight this one. Doing what I can to help point folks to the people who will call SPP to task.
Bruce
Thanks for the details, Bruce! For those who are not reading the Slide Forum, can you tell us how these overcharges happened? What triggered the events?
Yeah, I just took a look at my Paypal account and noticed a number of charges that I don’t think I recognize from Slide, Inc., and decided that I should call that number as it might be effecting me. So I talked to Sean and they are going to mail me out a complaint form to fill out and send back to them.
Bruce!
Is this THE Bruce? As in, in my top ten Bruce?? OMG. Im so sorry! How is this happening?? I had a couple of the $4.99 over charges, but was to lazy to address it. =( HOW are they billing people SO many times?? OMG. I am tempted to close my SPP account as well… Is your account still open? Are you frozen or anything? Let me know how you are. PM me if you like. Seems SPP may be too big for it’s britches??
Thanks!
Paige (^___^)
why did connie get deleted?
Connie isn’t deleted here. Do a browser search on this page for “Connie” and you’ll find everything.
In my opinion, SPP will always have glitches and they will never try to fix them. Personally, I have never bought anything SPP-related. I enjoy the marketplace because I can get gold items for no real moneya lthough I don’t undertsand the 10% transaction fee. The new issue in SPP is the friend ladder. The friend ladder was first introduced when they upgraded the pets. A week ago they updated the ladder which messed up the system, habitats disappeared, and some items were lost. In my case my 2 room habitats and everything in them were gone. I emailed SPP and the problem was fixed. Now my ladder had “friends” which I had deleted and some I never knew were my friends. Plus, playdates sometimes don’t count. Till this day those friends letters are a mess.
From what I understand the people being overcharged multiple times are the ones who pay monthly for a VIP account. If you don’t know, a VIP account allows a person to customise their pet’s colour and pattern plus other privileges. Yet another way for Slide to make money of course. But something obviously has gone drastically wrong and some glitch means that people are being debited from their credit card multiple times. asically the problems are not being adequately sorted, and no sufficient apology or compensation is being offered. It’s one thing to have problems with getting virtual coins back due to a glitch, but entirely different when it comes to real money. People’s accounts are literally going in the red due to Slides ‘little slip-up’. To top it all Slide/SSP are trying to hush it all up – you see that clearly when they tell people not to talk about correspondence with the helpdesk, they delete forum posts, and they delete emails – I guess anything that could screw them legally…
That’s a big problem, Celia. I can’t imagine Slide will get away with that sort of behavior. They need to apologize, fix it, and then make it up to everyone affected.
Hi there, I just recently came across this discussion thread and I could tell you many things wrong with SuperPoke Pets. For starters, this thread does not tell half the story, believe me, there is more. While I was reading through threads on the SuperPoke Forums, I have come across problems starting with the trainable kitty and how it is immediately out of stock, and people complaining about wanting their money back for gold bars. Speaking of wanting money back, this has happened again with the VIP Membership with people getting overcharged thousands of dollars on it and that turned into a serious wanting money back mess. That is not all, just recently Slide took away the friends tab and are having people using a messed up ladder to do playdates, .etc. with people wanting the friends tab restored. If that isn’t bad, I have come across yet another big mess with the marketplace. While I was reading through that thread, I have found out people are mass buying by the hundreds of a single item in the shop to list the same item in the marketplace at a ridiculous high price. Not only that, but with prices going through the roof at the 999,999 coin amount. There was one person who was talking about that and saying, “1.Put a CAP on how many of each item can be bought in the shop or
2 put a CAPon how many of the item can be sold in the market”, and a response to that about there needing a warning or something on those that mass buy in the marketplace or something like that, but recently found out from someone that post was removed due to harassment and I would wonder how that could be deemed harassment. And not only that, I have been finding out about there being quite a few users who have eight to fourteen accounts there for some reason which sounds a lot like cheating to me. Tell me, who in the world needs that many accounts? Oh, and someone in that specific topic said something that Slide sold SuperPoke Pets to Google, and I would wonder what documentation can be found about that. And there is probably more crazy stuff I can find there.
I know! a lot of those marketplace prices are insane! I have some cheap crap in it and, as a sort of joke, have a hat listed at 800,000 (no one in their right mind will pay this) the sad thing is there are six other of the same hat and they are all MORE expensive. It’s a pilgrim hat from 2008. It doesn’t even look as good as the newer ones…
as for Slide, google bought out the company:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/google-buys-slide-for-182-million-getting-more-serious-about-social-games/
Thanks for the great page here. It is extremely illuminating. I am a fairly recent player, who came to SPP as a refugee from FooPets and a lot of the comments back and forth about SPP perhaps going the way towards a pay-to-play site, and the “haves” versus the “have nots”, suspensions and scams really got me nodding in agreement because that is exactly what has happened to FooPets and why so very many players have migrated over to SPP. So far I am enjoying SPP but will bear in mind the experiences here. Sad to hear we have stumbled from one swamp into another. The suspensions also explain why so many “first generation” pets are abandoned. I have been enjoying the Marketplace as it has a garage sale air about it with players dragging out their pixel wares and setting them out for buyers. As for those nutcases with their six-digit prices, well…. he he Have also visited one of the websites offering gold items for PayPal and looks like a great place, too. Along the same lines as far as the prices go, and I can certainly sympathise with people wanting to cash their unwanted items in. Thanks again and also for confirming my instinct to not let anyone get my credit information or sign up for recurring charges. Cheers!! Will come by again.
Thanks for sharing your comparative experiences, Barbara. These virtual games mean a lot of money — and it is fascinating watching players spent real money for a virtual experience.
so does anyone know their ulterior motives for closing the shop– no longer selling gold- the way they became a multi-million dollar a year website? Are they fixing to stick it to the members as well as their investors? Or is it because they have another store in which they can make far more money since items will become even more rare- as we all know a great many will quite again due to this.
as far as I know they are still selling gold….
Nope! You’re 100% right. SPP will no longer be selling gold, or even creating new items. For those who can access the forum here is the link:
http://superpokepets.com/spp/playground/topic?tid=k5k6N_dxnl3V72pkX8LrbQ&click_source=11
for those who can’t it breaks down as follows:
June 6 – no more gold for sale via the buy gold button, only through checkout
June 30 – people with VIP memberships get to keep them free (as long as the program exists – exact quote) no one else will be able to become vip after this date
July 1 – no more gold sales unless you have bought gold up ahead.
no more retro plushies(these are free gifts that randomly pop up)
only select coin items will be restocked in an ever continuing cycle. everything else will remain sold out and there will be no new items added to the shop. if you want items you will have to purchase them from other players in the Marketplace (for fake coins) or from other people for real money.
later in July: all gold items, spa passes and garden expansions will leave the shop forever.
if you do not spend your gold by the time the items are removed tough luck. there will be no refunds.
when asked if SPP was going away Keane (an admin) said this:
“No, not at all! We have no plans to take SPP offline – the app will remain available and online for the foreseeable future so that you can continue to buy and trade items, play with your friends, and chat on the Forum. SPP Admins, Ambassadors, and Moderators will still be here to make sure everyone is having a fun time on SPP”
It sounds ot me as if they’re winding it down. It was obviously a very sudden decision because there were items made for a puppies of the world passport quest, which they are selling, but the quest was cancelled a couple days ago (obviously because of this). designers and programmers do not make items they know they don;t need, so I imagine it came a a shock to the SPP slide team. If I had to guess, I would say Google is working on phasing it out. Possibly they ended up in legal hotwater over all the VIP overcharges, or else it is because of the potential class action lawsuit involving Slide –
http://www.topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/1199-google-slide-hit-with-text-message-spam-class-action-lawsuit
which is about text messages, bizarrely.
They claim the app will remain opened for the “foreseeable future” but I would say that their foreseeable future is until the end of July. After that it’s anyone’s guess – IMHO.
That is some shocking news, Joleene! I can’t believe they’re closing down the game. I thought SPP was a massive money maker for Google now. Are there other Slide games that are closing, too?
According to people on the forum SuperPocus and Top Fish have both suffered this fate, and there is apparently something up with SPP Ranch, too, though I don’t play these so I can’t say for sure.
Sounds like the beginning of the end of Slide. I wonder why Google is killing it off?
There are rumors and speculation that Google is working on making it’s own social network and that they plan to have it centered around games and also that it is supposed to be android/internet compatible (which most of the current flash games aren’t really) so they bought slide for the designers etc. more so than the existing games. There are, of course, multiple articles that formed that theory, all of the links are in the forums, though I must admit to being too lazy just now to look them up. SPP swap.com seems of a similar opinion, though they seem to think that spp will stay around. I don’t. I think it will be left as is until no one uses it anymore then it will be quietly taken down 🙁
spp swap’s post on itp: http://sppswap.com/news.htm
Definitely the end of an era, Joleene. I can’t imagine Google inventing something better or more interesting than SPP. I think they’ll have a really hard go of it on their own and disconnecting from Facebook.
Nope, I have found out they are going to be removing gold items from the shop in a month from now.
I am wondering if this has anything to do with it:
http://www.topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/1199-google-and-slide-hit-with-text-message-spam-class-action-lawsuit
Something I just recently found in a SPP forum thread.
I saw that! I wonder, too, if they got sued with all that VIP overcharging. I know some people said they had fees in the thousands over it. And the announcement came so suddenly – shortly after that. Obviously it wasn’t something the Slide folks had planned on or they wouldn’t have had the quest items ready for the now abandoned puppy quest…. I’d guess they were as shocked as everyone else.
After June 30th SPP will no longer release any new items or content. The game will remain online allowing people to use the features they love like decorating, trading, and playdates. Some coin items will be on be stocked in the shop with an unlimited supply but there will be no gold items. There will be no new releases coin or gold. No spa passes. No new quests or badges.
^^They are sugar coating the whole thing. They might as well come out and say we are done with this game and too bad for you. I suspect with in a year the site itself will be gone and all of our pets along with it. It’s sad that SPP can turn a cold shoulder on us so easily. We, their loyal players have stuck by them all this time and they are so quick to give up on us. As someone who has been playing since 2008 and as someone who has spent over $1000 on this game between gold items and VIP I am upset to say the least. I of course assumed the game would eventually end. I didn’t think 20 years from now I’d still be playing with my little panda, but I certainly didn’t think that three years in I would be trying to sell off what little gold I can and holding my heart in a bag while I do it. I’m so disappointed. At the very least I would of liked a real explanation as to why a game I love so much is throwing in the towel.
from what i understand, spp will run on its own now, no more releases for either gold or coin when the month is over
I looked all the links and such up and ended up just slapping ti all together into a blog
http://ramblingsfromthedarkness.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/the-death-of-superpoke-pets/
SPP deleted all my items, I had to earn them back, do you know how long that took? After I got mostly everything I lost back I decided I would not play a game, a game that would take all my hardly earned items and toss them in the trash. I go on SPP sometimes but not as much as I used to. But right after I lost everything, I emailed them. They said:
Thank you for emailing us, we will take this suggestion.
It looks like an automated message. I also can’t believe SPP is technically closing SPP, SPP will probably rot and die like all of those old TV shows.
Sorry to hear about that trouble, Martina. Since it looks like Google is in the process of closing down the game, I hope you are able to get back what you lost before that happens. Let us know how it goes!
Yeah I don’t understand why Google have abandoned development of the game. Six months ago major new developments happened (eg moveable and dressable pets, VIP accounts, etc) then Google took over the game, then they give up because of a business decision. It makes no sense.
Spp feels like the old game all over again. I love the market place, I rather spend fake coins then real money anytime. I was quitting the game at one point and actually made more money then I invested. I have lost lots of friends due to SPP and all the glitches. It seems like no matter what they only cared for the gold releases and money until now. I still sell thru PP as much as I am able to but only to purchase from others in the PP thread. One of my accts got banned over a yr ago and for no apparent reason I email SPP never go an answer. I went on from FB and was able to login and found all my old coin items I thought got lost.
UPDATE:
It’f Official. Google killed SPP yesterday. Google bought Slide a year ago for $200 million and now all that’s left is nailing the coffin.
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-shuts-down-slide-a-year-after-paying-179-million-for-it-2011-8
SPP is a bunch of cr*p. I should have left earlier, you are lucky you left that soon, you didn’t get some more sh*t and didn’t wasted money on that sh*t.
Hello all and thank you for having such a free open discussion place for all our ideas/questions. My mom and I have been playing since 2008. We started the game out of boredom one day as my mom is disabled with emphysema and a myriad of other things, so for her our house is a tomb. My mom quickly became in love with this cute little game which provided her the opportunity to shop and decorate—she used to love to paint and draw before her arthritis got so bad). At first we didn’t buy golds or even intend on spending any real money, but as I said this game was such a fun escape for her that I gave in and spent quite a bit on golds and the like. I’ve been frustrated for a while with the game glitches and other weird goings on but have kept quite because I just wanted my mom happy. I really don’t care about my money being gone because it was worth every penny to see her happy again but I find it very sickening/angering that they couldn’t just leave the stinking site open so people could decorate. My mom is so crushed that they are closing after assuring us that they would stay open. I don’t know what she’ll do when March finally comes and the site is no more but I’m very sad just thinking about it. I’m looking for new games that would have the same type of cute drawings that allow you to decorate and maybe do a little shopping, but so far nothing comes even close. 🙁 If anyone has any suggestions I’d really appreciate it. Thanks and God bless~
Krystal