fruit s.

I played this game growing up, it helped me develop into an adult that has a passion for art, genetics and learn from my mistakes - though there are a decent range of problems you'd think given their success wouldn't be pervasive given their pay-to-play business model and over a decade to iron out problems.

Here's a TLDR - Potential security and financial safety hazards, lacks fundamental security features any other website these days would have as a minimum, focus more on whether they like users (for example children) when enforcing rules rather than assessing their claims and thus staff protected those who took financial advantage of minors despite the nature of the game itself, the admins repeatedly ignore serious questions and appear (from my recent experience) to treat those with neurodiversity as expendable customers rather than trying to address what is being brought up.

After 5-8 years of absence after some major issues when I played as a teenager - I thought "Hey, I should check out the game that was an integral part of my life for so many years" - this thought was a mistake and I'll explain why.

So, a few unique aspects of the game are the ability to have multiple accounts as long as you pay for them and that items/in game currency can be sold for real-world currency and as such despite being an online pony game - the audience and playerbase are older than you'd see on other games within the genre. When it comes to your "virtual pets", it's pretty unique and offers some cool challenges and advantages as it's genetic and colour driven giving users the ability to create ambitious projects with genetic combinations, multi-generation selective breeding plans and a creative approach to how the colours of these poinies can create practically infinite combinations - which, to re-iterate are commonly sold for real world money between players.

Now, let's talk about some of the flaws that I encountered on the less-than-a-week return as an adult and some I recall which were re-enforced from my time playing in the past.

Some websites will send you emails to the point you'd be frustrated - Ponyisland is not one of those websites. Despite being a platform that requires ongoing payment - you'll never get an email directly from them whether it be confirmation of you signing up, alerts to major changes to your account (for example someone changing your email or transferring your entire inventory and in-game finances to another account etc). Or receipts of any purchases made with them. Now that's a little worrying as if your account was compromised - how would you know if away from the game and if your email and password were changed - what could you possibly do?

Let's talk about my decision to return to this creative website and where the biggest issue I have really starts - like many users on the site I had many accounts and couldn't remember the login details so I did what most people would do - I searched my email, first my current, then the one I had when I was 10 and a few others but didn't have access to my school/educational email accounts for obvious reasons. I didn't have any hits anywhere, so I tried their general search with a few keywords however, no dice. When you try to reset your password you need to provide the username and email, which normally would be pretty standard but given my situation for example - I'm not sure whether my account(s) would be tied to one email address, or multiple, or what my usernames would be and what combination would work. So what can I do next? Contact support despite the low chance I'd be able to prove I'm the account owner - but you can't contact support without being logged in.

So here's the conflict, do you give up on your nostalgia and the desire to help keep a game afloat by chucking them a few bucks to re-live such an integral part of your life for a little while or buckle down. I should have given up here, but alas I chose another option that in retrospect, caused far more harm than good.

So after exhausting the normal ways you'd access an old account with no avail, I opted to register for a trial account for one purpose: The advanced search.

Signup is easy enough, a short form of the basics with confirmation you agree to the rules and terms of service - no mention of users being unable to delete these accounts and details explaining that if you've got multiple trial accounts or both a trial account and a paid account you may have a week's suspension - that's reasonable as I was intending to delete the account once I'd located my other accounts using the search tool exclusive to logged-in users. So it turns out, you can't delete these accounts and since they don't send confirmation emails I'd point-blank forgotten the username of my trial account as it was made at 1AM after a night of pre-new years celebrations with friends and my sobriety was questionable at best.

I was able to recover my old account and paid for it and 2 other of my old sub-accounts and figured it would be a major waste of staff time and resources to request they locate the account I'd made in a haze (especially the week between Christmas and New year as staff would likely be pre-occupied) simply to ask "hey can you find this account that was used for an hour and has absolutely 0 in-game assets which I don't have any way or desire to access" so, left it be and enjoyed 6 days of playing with genetics and exploring the game that hadn't changed since my youth.

So, I broke a rule and I own and accept that, however, there is absolutely no other option for people in my position to take and that's an integral flaw you'd think a paid service that's been active for over a decade and should easily be resolved when talking to support with evidence of the extended inactivity on my long-dead accounts, the choice to pay for multiple accounts and that the trial account in question was clearly not used in a negative intent given no assets were generated/used and it was abandoned entirely.

6 days later, I'm banned for two weeks for having an unpaid trial account. I opened a ticket asking for more information and requested to know what the username was as I had no details of it emailed to me and couldn't recall it, I explained the situation and my attempts to access my accounts prior to creating a trial account and queried why my ban length was double what is stated in the rules. Now, if it'd been a week, as said in the rules, I'd have tolerated it - I mean it's just a digital pony game. The issue was that these ponies die, and the 2 week time-frame meant that I'd have 17 ponies die and recovering them costs significant in-game premium currency which as I mentioned earlier, has out of game value and that seemed a pretty unpleasant and significant penalty for someone who tried every other possible avenue to recover their old accounts, it was evident the account was not accessed since or used for any of the game mechanics and I'd tried to explain this to and propose resolutions. Costing players significant ingame premium currency, which in this situation would have needed me to spend actual money to obtain because I needed to use a search tool after exhausting methods you'd use on any other website, free or not - that's not a healthy environment for people to engage in at any age.

So, in short, my recollection of their Mod staff's behavior prior to me leaving the site in the past hadn't changed. Honestly, until this point, I'd figured I was misremembering how they treated me in the past and assumed my child-brain made it worse than I thought. Well, I was in fact wrong.

After explaining the situation, proposing a variety of possible resolutions (including deletion of the account, transferring one of my paid memberships to it to avoid infraction etc.) they were repeatedly ignored to the point I wasn't sure if my enquiries were even sending within our support ticket (they were, they just chose to ignore them).

Now, in my situation, I had a particular kind of ban on my accounts permanently which has always raised red flags with how it was handled, however, I had accepted it as something I'd always have to deal with if returning to the site and taught me a lot of life lessons in its own way. I don't want to name names or go into explicit detail as it's old and doesn't bother me much now but at the time, 8-9 years ago as a high schooler working 2-3 jobs to earn money and the other users involved being adults who's minimum wage was around double that of mine - being scammed out of hundreds of dollars by fellow "artists" on the website, publicly shamed for being unable to dedicate as much time to this website as a child with multiple jobs and effectively losing the ability to participate in the community without other users bullying me for this - I ain't gonna lie I got upset and practically begged the staff to help me recover whatever I could at the time and it hurt. At the end of the day, I didn't handle it right as a kid who's community and financial situation was destroyed and I got banned from art permanently on the website with staff members calling me a troll. I bring this up as the artists involved are all now permanently banned themselves, at least one for them for a major reason I was upset - art theft.

I bring this up as I figured I'm already dealing with moderators, I might as well ask if I could get clarification from their side on what determined me to be on that list, clarification of the limitations (as their rules didn't go into it) and if, given the other users being banned for exactly what I'd alleged after I left the site for treating others similarly; would be either a) related to why I was treated with a harsher ban than the rules stipulate or b) if an appeal were ever possible for the art ban given the time since and what transpired following it.

Staff told me my reactions and how I handled myself at the time (as a child) were the reason I was banned and that they aren't going to reverse or handle an appeal for it, and I accepted that. They explicitly said maturity and respect - and I was an upset kid back then so I left it at that and said I accept that decision and outright apologized.

Now, days of going back and fourth later, staff were ignoring my inquiries, telling me how they can have leniency for users in my situation but not me and despite me being clear, factual, respectful, and simply - blunt: I was being called immature and disrespectful - I'm a grown adult with qualifications and awards in customer service - I didn't once make any comment like that towards staff, however, apparently those who are on the autism spectrum wanting to revisit a game that frankly has many attributes that would make it very popular with the crowd - aren't capable or trained to treat people like that with dignity or respect and that's bad for a free game let alone one that costs $14USD for 6 months.

I contacted Paypal with evidence after 8 requests for a refund if they're not willing to discuss this with me, pass on feedback or treat me with any level of dignity/respect and that was initially my last-resort solution.

I didn't come back to a website that facilitated me being scammed by an adult as a child and called me a troll when I begged them to take it seriously - to be treated as if I was acting maliciously or to be punished excessively when there is a major integral flaw in their systems that forced me to break a rule that they've told me they're lenient to other users regarding but had no way around. If they'd stuck to what was in their rules, honestly, I'd have probably accepted the punishment despite everything - but they didn't and the way they treated me proves not only is this website not particularly safe for kids even 8 years later, but it's probably a bad place for those who aren't neurotypical too.

The only reason they have 2/5 not 1/5 is simply because the premise has merit - it's a good idea and really inspired me to study veterinary nursing, game design and pursue my passion for art. Maybe the way the admins treated me as a kid pushed me to be blunter and state the facts when dealing with conflicts it customer service as an adult - since having emotions will only hurt you but that doesn't make their reputation for treating paying users of any age, mental capacity/divergence etc. poorly any more forgivable.

- Update my review was deleted so that was cool :)