Town of Salem moves away from Free To Play
Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2018 8:22 pm
After careful thought and consideration we have decided that taking Town of Salem away from a free-to-play model is best for the continued health and community of the game.
What does going Pay To Play mean for me as an existing user?
You are most likely already grandfathered in to the new system. All existing accounts with at least 1 game played or who has ever made a real money purchase (Steam, Web premium, Mobile premium, Coven, promotions, etc) are already grandfathered in (aka you still get to play for free). We didn’t grandfather in all accounts to prevent bringing a bunch of botter alt accounts into the new system.
A grandfathered account does not mean you now have a premium account however. If you hadn’t already purchased premium you still will not get the double merit points after the change, but you will be able to continue playing ToS for free.
Why did we make this change?
As many of you are aware in the recent months we have been attacked by a group of botters and scripters spamming the chat, making false reports, gamethrowing, and all around ruining games. We have done many things to combat these bots but at the detriment of future development.
We have tried auto detection of common bot phrases, and suspensions based on these. The bots were able to turn this against normal users by tricking them into saying these phrases, while changing their bots to say other things.
This led us to try logging their IPs and IP banning them, but they would just rotate their IPs between accounts. Normal users would sometimes then be assigned these banned IPs meaning they couldn’t log in anymore.
Next we tried altering our client and server networking code to break 3rd clients. Within a few hours they had decompiled our SWFs, looked at the source code to fix their 3rd party clients and were back to botting.
We added email verification to make sure that only valid emails could be used to create accounts, but these users used forwarding emails, or sites such as “10 minute email” to make temporary emails that were valid long enough to activate the accounts.
Then we added captchas to several parts of the registration process to make it harder for them to register accounts, but again, they found ways to get around it, or go straight through it. This made it harder for normal users to make accounts, but didn’t really slow down the bots.
Lastly, we added captchas when a newer user tried to join a lobby, and these would trigger again on spamming reports. This method slowed down the bots, but only as long as we constantly work to add new captcha questions, and actively work to brick any automated solvers they are creating.
Currently, we can only keep up with the bots by devoting all our time to the upkeep of the captcha system.
The botters and spammers seem willing to devote all of their time to coming up with new ways to spam, troll, bot and destroy Town of Salem. Every new system we add to stop botters just hurts the new user experience more and more and motivates the botters to find a way around the system.
The solution is going Pay to Play.
Even before botters we have always struggled to keep a clean community against spammers, trolls, multi-accounters, gamethrowers and downright toxic people who can make an alt account and be back on the game within 5 minutes of being banned. This is a common problem with free-to-play games. Now that we are no longer free to play we will be having a very large focus on cleaning up the community and creating a fun and safe environment for everyone to have quality games.
What will be the experience for new users?
They will be able to register and login but will be limited to friends chat and using the cauldron until they purchase an upgrade for their account. Steam, web premium, and mobile premium all count for this.
Do you have any plans for letting me play with my friends without purchase in the future?
We are planning to add referral codes for premium users to give out to their friends that will allow them to play a limited amount of games so they can try things out.
What does this mean for the future of Town of Salem?
We feel that this move will be a positive for the game, as well as all current and future users. The botters will not want to spend real money in order to troll. Even if they do, they will be very limited in the amount of accounts they can make this way without committing credit card fraud.
This also means that every account has an inherent value to it, as being banned means you will need to buy the game to play again. Any user that is suspended for breaking the rules will have to actually think about what they are doing, because if they end up permanently banned they can’t just make a new free account anymore. Better games in every facet should be much more common. We as developers can go back to trying to make a good game, rather than focusing on how to stop botters or how to rework reports to stop toxic behavior.
We will be working hard over the next few months to remove any alt accounts the botters may have stockpiled as well as improving the suspension and afk systems to encourage better behavior and quality games in the community. We believe that in a few short months there will be a drastic improvement in the quality of Town of Salem games.
What does going Pay To Play mean for me as an existing user?
You are most likely already grandfathered in to the new system. All existing accounts with at least 1 game played or who has ever made a real money purchase (Steam, Web premium, Mobile premium, Coven, promotions, etc) are already grandfathered in (aka you still get to play for free). We didn’t grandfather in all accounts to prevent bringing a bunch of botter alt accounts into the new system.
A grandfathered account does not mean you now have a premium account however. If you hadn’t already purchased premium you still will not get the double merit points after the change, but you will be able to continue playing ToS for free.
Why did we make this change?
As many of you are aware in the recent months we have been attacked by a group of botters and scripters spamming the chat, making false reports, gamethrowing, and all around ruining games. We have done many things to combat these bots but at the detriment of future development.
We have tried auto detection of common bot phrases, and suspensions based on these. The bots were able to turn this against normal users by tricking them into saying these phrases, while changing their bots to say other things.
This led us to try logging their IPs and IP banning them, but they would just rotate their IPs between accounts. Normal users would sometimes then be assigned these banned IPs meaning they couldn’t log in anymore.
Next we tried altering our client and server networking code to break 3rd clients. Within a few hours they had decompiled our SWFs, looked at the source code to fix their 3rd party clients and were back to botting.
We added email verification to make sure that only valid emails could be used to create accounts, but these users used forwarding emails, or sites such as “10 minute email” to make temporary emails that were valid long enough to activate the accounts.
Then we added captchas to several parts of the registration process to make it harder for them to register accounts, but again, they found ways to get around it, or go straight through it. This made it harder for normal users to make accounts, but didn’t really slow down the bots.
Lastly, we added captchas when a newer user tried to join a lobby, and these would trigger again on spamming reports. This method slowed down the bots, but only as long as we constantly work to add new captcha questions, and actively work to brick any automated solvers they are creating.
Currently, we can only keep up with the bots by devoting all our time to the upkeep of the captcha system.
The botters and spammers seem willing to devote all of their time to coming up with new ways to spam, troll, bot and destroy Town of Salem. Every new system we add to stop botters just hurts the new user experience more and more and motivates the botters to find a way around the system.
The solution is going Pay to Play.
Even before botters we have always struggled to keep a clean community against spammers, trolls, multi-accounters, gamethrowers and downright toxic people who can make an alt account and be back on the game within 5 minutes of being banned. This is a common problem with free-to-play games. Now that we are no longer free to play we will be having a very large focus on cleaning up the community and creating a fun and safe environment for everyone to have quality games.
What will be the experience for new users?
They will be able to register and login but will be limited to friends chat and using the cauldron until they purchase an upgrade for their account. Steam, web premium, and mobile premium all count for this.
Do you have any plans for letting me play with my friends without purchase in the future?
We are planning to add referral codes for premium users to give out to their friends that will allow them to play a limited amount of games so they can try things out.
What does this mean for the future of Town of Salem?
We feel that this move will be a positive for the game, as well as all current and future users. The botters will not want to spend real money in order to troll. Even if they do, they will be very limited in the amount of accounts they can make this way without committing credit card fraud.
This also means that every account has an inherent value to it, as being banned means you will need to buy the game to play again. Any user that is suspended for breaking the rules will have to actually think about what they are doing, because if they end up permanently banned they can’t just make a new free account anymore. Better games in every facet should be much more common. We as developers can go back to trying to make a good game, rather than focusing on how to stop botters or how to rework reports to stop toxic behavior.
We will be working hard over the next few months to remove any alt accounts the botters may have stockpiled as well as improving the suspension and afk systems to encourage better behavior and quality games in the community. We believe that in a few short months there will be a drastic improvement in the quality of Town of Salem games.