Viking Andrew wrote:

Eliza Whitehorn (178680937) wrote:I truly hope you’re happy. You’ve taken art that people can’t even get back most likely. You only care about how much money your game pulls in. I cancelled my VIP, I’m not buying yo cash again and neither are some people I’ve seen. Good luck ruining the rest of the game. Saying this was your only solution, sure it was.

Believe me, we're not happy.

This is not something that we wanted to do, it is something that we had to do. Again, I can't get into specifics, but wiping boards is something that we were required to do.

I genuinely wish there was an alternative route we could have taken.

MiMiX (104741846) wrote:Thousands of hours and years of hard work gone because of a few bad apples, Seriously!!!!????? Bad decision BVG You just signed your own death sentence, what the hell were you thinking? You literally ruined my entire game experience. Not only is all my art gone for art events but all my tour events are gone too! Super Mario tour gone! South Park tour Gone! Smurfs tour gone,Where's Waldo GONE!!!! Nearly every single tour had white board art incorporated into it and now EVERYTHING IS GONE!!!! You literally killed every single reason I played the game. No art, no tours, no events, NO reason to play anymore, I'M OUT!!!!!!! You suck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Technical or Security Concerns:

Exploits or Hacks: The whiteboard feature might have had vulnerabilities that were being exploited, posing a risk to the game's security and integrity.

With this particular discovery of a ToS violating complication in Paint Boards action needed to be swiftly taken, which meant that the underlying issue within Paint Boards arrived much sooner than we expected.

Chill (126579776) wrote:

x Milky x (6094472) wrote:

x Milky x (6094472) wrote:YEARS! of memories completely wiped clean and down the drain. Birthday parties! events of us celebrating our friends beating cancer! graduations from colleges! saved fits of items we may never have again because of the constant ban frenzies which remove access to our OWN items we have let others borrow now gone forever! Christmases! Weddings! Funerals! Best friend hangouts! The list goes on and on and on and ON! And you all would not even consider because of a small few, how bad it would affect your loyal and long-term member base? I am in absolute shock right now. We have known for quite a while that us YOs have gone on the back burner and we're just another number or penny to be squeezed out of us, but this is on a whole new level. I cannot even express to you the amount of memories I had in my rooms, that are just gone.. GONE! If you would have warned us, we could have at least taken screen shots.. this is just unreal.. I am done with this game. There is only so many ways you can make someone feel like just another nothing before the hands go up!

Hi everyone!

Since BVG stated they would reimburse us for the boards, I went ahead and put a receipt for the costs of what I have paid for the boards. I did the total boards cost through BVG at a rate of 150k to 1 YC.. Then I also put the amount of the labor costs we pay others to do the boards for us. For example, I have paid out 100s of millions just to have a few huge projects done for me. Usually on average the boards were only 50-250k per board though, so I went ahead and just did the average. Just like in a flood or fire in real, our insurance will not give us damages for losing all our memories, pictures, drives, etc.. so unfortunately I did not add a cost of what a huge loss that is.. the truth is, I do not think there is even a monetary amount that could justify the tragic loss of those, but since BVG knowingly decided to "burn down the house", hopefully we can start with the base real value of what it actually cost in their stores and the labor cost of the artists that I paid my hard earned YO money for. If the image is to small, that is 548,000,000. I hope I will receive that soon enough. Thank you!

I'm so sad for you Milky, and for every one of your buds. You guys loved paint boards and used them prolificly. You were done dirty here. BVG has let us all down today. Horribly.

BsZ Tee (2459101) wrote:

Technical or Security Concerns:

Exploits or Hacks: The whiteboard feature might have had vulnerabilities that were being exploited, posing a risk to the game's security and integrity.

This has been my suspicion with the updated info Adam posted. They went on a huge banning spree and I have a feeling someone found a back door way into BVG or was trying and they figured out it was through the Paint Boards. For them to have no choice but to zap them fast this is more then pictures being posted on them. That has gone on since waaaay back with the frames. This was more than someone posting nasty pictures on them.

It's this sentence that makes me thin that

With this particular discovery of a ToS violating complication in Paint Boards action needed to be swiftly taken, which meant that the underlying issue within Paint Boards arrived much sooner than we expected.

Viking Andrew wrote:I’d like to take a moment to clarify a few things on behalf of the team:

Whenever we look at taking action in game, our first focus is to make a change that impacts as small of a player group as possible. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bug, or an art issue, or a problem with a larger feature like the Buddy List - we know any change that’s made to YoWorld on a large scale has a chance to truly, genuinely harm your experience. I hope, at the very least, this can convey that the seriousness of this issue meant we could not stand by idly after we discovered the risk to our community at large.

We cannot fully discuss the details behind the trouble with our Paint Boards, but we can say that the main issue involved the use of uploaded images, violating ToS, and as such, we are required to remove this feature. In disabling them there have been a lot of valid points brought up within the community that should be addressed. Mostly around the way we’ve gone about our current, temporary solution.

Why disable all Paint Boards? The issue we needed to address in Paint Boards required us to disable the feature as the only means of protecting the community. This is due to the way the Paint Boards item works. As an older item, with older code, the solutions we have access to are much more limited.

Can’t we just fix it? Any change we would make to this feature would require a total overhaul of the Paint Board item.

Why didn’t you let me save my work? This is, currently, not how Paint Boards work. While the images are saved locally, any change or update to the Paint Board feature means that any work on the item as it currently exists is lost.

Will I get my images back? We understand how important this feature is to our players and we are actively exploring ways to address this concern.

Our team understands that these items don’t just represent creative fun - they’re an investment you’ve made. We aren’t ready to discuss compensation with the community yet, but we’re absolutely going to find a way to make this right.

The very nature of the item means that the second something was to go wrong, or any fix needed to be made, your work was at risk. Naturally, this wasn’t a problem when the item was working as intended. When things are fine, there’s nothing to worry about.

With this particular discovery of a ToS violating complication in Paint Boards action needed to be swiftly taken, which meant that the underlying issue within Paint Boards arrived much sooner than we expected.

Our team is extremely aware of the way Paint Boards are used. We know these items are integral to many social events, and have become a key component in your decorating. The art that you’re showing off here is a true testament to that. We also know that these items are key parts of events, trading, conversations between players, and are a staple to allowing you to decorate in creative ways our team can only begin to catch up on. So where does that leave us?

Our team is working on a solution for this particular issue. This situation involving Paint Boards is complicated, but we have a lot of faith in our team’s ability to resolve this issue.

We know you probably have questions, and we’ll be opening up a thread here for you to focus them all in one place.

Robyn VIP (8132649) wrote:Thanks Nami and Rod for explaining, you really opened my eyes. Yes, I would rather save the game.

ChloePumpkin (176209997) wrote:

Robyn VIP (8132649) wrote:Thanks Nami and Rod for explaining, you really opened my eyes. Yes, I would rather save the game.

Same here. I've been wondering if it had something to do with a possible lawsuit. Just looking at some of the pictures posted here, you can see several "characters" that are copyrighted. This whole thing reminds me of the 50 Shades theme, which was suddenly removed with no explanation. I think many of us thought there had been the threat of a lawsuit. The difference is that we had a period to buy the stuff before it disappeared forever. I still have a storage house full of the stuff.

I think it's terribly sad that people have lost so much of their beautiful work. I feel especially sad for those that lost ones that had sentimental feelings attached to them. They can never be replaced. But the bottom line is that I want to see the game saved. And not to sound like Pollyanna, but I truly believe that the Vikings feel terrible about this but are doing what needs to be done.

Viking Andrew wrote:I’d like to take a moment to clarify a few things on behalf of the team:

Whenever we look at taking action in game, our first focus is to make a change that impacts as small of a player group as possible. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bug, or an art issue, or a problem with a larger feature like the Buddy List - we know any change that’s made to YoWorld on a large scale has a chance to truly, genuinely harm your experience. I hope, at the very least, this can convey that the seriousness of this issue meant we could not stand by idly after we discovered the risk to our community at large.

We cannot fully discuss the details behind the trouble with our Paint Boards, but we can say that the main issue involved the use of uploaded images, violating ToS, and as such, we are required to remove this feature. In disabling them there have been a lot of valid points brought up within the community that should be addressed. Mostly around the way we’ve gone about our current, temporary solution.

Why disable all Paint Boards? The issue we needed to address in Paint Boards required us to disable the feature as the only means of protecting the community. This is due to the way the Paint Boards item works. As an older item, with older code, the solutions we have access to are much more limited.

Can’t we just fix it? Any change we would make to this feature would require a total overhaul of the Paint Board item.

Why didn’t you let me save my work? This is, currently, not how Paint Boards work. While the images are saved locally, any change or update to the Paint Board feature means that any work on the item as it currently exists is lost.

Will I get my images back? We understand how important this feature is to our players and we are actively exploring ways to address this concern.

Our team understands that these items don’t just represent creative fun - they’re an investment you’ve made. We aren’t ready to discuss compensation with the community yet, but we’re absolutely going to find a way to make this right.

The very nature of the item means that the second something was to go wrong, or any fix needed to be made, your work was at risk. Naturally, this wasn’t a problem when the item was working as intended. When things are fine, there’s nothing to worry about.

With this particular discovery of a ToS violating complication in Paint Boards action needed to be swiftly taken, which meant that the underlying issue within Paint Boards arrived much sooner than we expected.

Our team is extremely aware of the way Paint Boards are used. We know these items are integral to many social events, and have become a key component in your decorating. The art that you’re showing off here is a true testament to that. We also know that these items are key parts of events, trading, conversations between players, and are a staple to allowing you to decorate in creative ways our team can only begin to catch up on. So where does that leave us?

Our team is working on a solution for this particular issue. This situation involving Paint Boards is complicated, but we have a lot of faith in our team’s ability to resolve this issue.

We know you probably have questions, and we’ll be opening up a thread here for you to focus them all in one place.