And no before people ask, that was not confirmation of a player summit but I really want to do one so I'm putting it out into the world
Here's an easy solution. Give each player a long code that only they can see. To prove it's them, simply give support the code and they'll know. Sound good? It's what ludia does and it works brilliantly.
How is Kabam supposed to get players codes? If you don't have a Kabam ID (i.e. email address) registered with them they have no way to contact you, except through the game itself. And if they give the code through the game, that means anyone with access to your account can take over the account. That defeats the purpose of having an account authentication mechanism.
The problem is that by default, neither Apple nor Google passes player identifying information to users of the apps distributed in their app stores. In fact, they explicitly prevent app vendors from collecting many kinds of tracking information. They don't know who you are until you actually make a Kabam ID. If you don't have one or forgot what it was, they don't have obvious ways of verifying you are the original owner of the game account. That's why they ask for information only the original account creator would likely know, and cannot be looked up within the game account itself.
There's ways around this, but having brainstormed a few in discussions with Kabam, I can tell you this is not as easy as it sounds. Or rather, it is not easy to make a system that is both a) easy for original owners to use and b) extremely difficult for anyone else to use. You cannot make one that does the former but neglects the latter, or you will have people having their accounts hijacked left and right.
Give everyone a unique randomised code, new for everyone
And what would that solve? People have forgotten their passwords, their email addresses, what they originally called their accounts, where they were living at the time they first started playing the game. But we're going to give everyone a code, and problem solved?
Agreed. This also highlights one of the OP’s problems, creating an account when you’re a “little kid”
No matter how little I was, if they had said, by the way, you need to write down when you started, I wouldn't have been in this conundrum. Just managed to get the problem solved thankfully though, after many years
And no before people ask, that was not confirmation of a player summit but I really want to do one so I'm putting it out into the world
Here's an easy solution. Give each player a long code that only they can see. To prove it's them, simply give support the code and they'll know. Sound good? It's what ludia does and it works brilliantly.
How is Kabam supposed to get players codes? If you don't have a Kabam ID (i.e. email address) registered with them they have no way to contact you, except through the game itself. And if they give the code through the game, that means anyone with access to your account can take over the account. That defeats the purpose of having an account authentication mechanism.
The problem is that by default, neither Apple nor Google passes player identifying information to users of the apps distributed in their app stores. In fact, they explicitly prevent app vendors from collecting many kinds of tracking information. They don't know who you are until you actually make a Kabam ID. If you don't have one or forgot what it was, they don't have obvious ways of verifying you are the original owner of the game account. That's why they ask for information only the original account creator would likely know, and cannot be looked up within the game account itself.
There's ways around this, but having brainstormed a few in discussions with Kabam, I can tell you this is not as easy as it sounds. Or rather, it is not easy to make a system that is both a) easy for original owners to use and b) extremely difficult for anyone else to use. You cannot make one that does the former but neglects the latter, or you will have people having their accounts hijacked left and right.
Give everyone a unique randomised code, new for everyone
And what would that solve? People have forgotten their passwords, their email addresses, what they originally called their accounts, where they were living at the time they first started playing the game. But we're going to give everyone a code, and problem solved?
It would not fix the issue of people losing old accounts, but it would allow people to never lose it if they screenshot the code. There are very obvious flaws, I know, but it would help
And no before people ask, that was not confirmation of a player summit but I really want to do one so I'm putting it out into the world
Here's an easy solution. Give each player a long code that only they can see. To prove it's them, simply give support the code and they'll know. Sound good? It's what ludia does and it works brilliantly.
How is Kabam supposed to get players codes? If you don't have a Kabam ID (i.e. email address) registered with them they have no way to contact you, except through the game itself. And if they give the code through the game, that means anyone with access to your account can take over the account. That defeats the purpose of having an account authentication mechanism.
The problem is that by default, neither Apple nor Google passes player identifying information to users of the apps distributed in their app stores. In fact, they explicitly prevent app vendors from collecting many kinds of tracking information. They don't know who you are until you actually make a Kabam ID. If you don't have one or forgot what it was, they don't have obvious ways of verifying you are the original owner of the game account. That's why they ask for information only the original account creator would likely know, and cannot be looked up within the game account itself.
There's ways around this, but having brainstormed a few in discussions with Kabam, I can tell you this is not as easy as it sounds. Or rather, it is not easy to make a system that is both a) easy for original owners to use and b) extremely difficult for anyone else to use. You cannot make one that does the former but neglects the latter, or you will have people having their accounts hijacked left and right.
Give everyone a unique randomised code, new for everyone
You know, I might forget my password, my email, my username, the year I created my account, or where I was when I created my account, but one thing I’ll NEVER forget is a 10 digit code of random numbers and letters
And no before people ask, that was not confirmation of a player summit but I really want to do one so I'm putting it out into the world
Here's an easy solution. Give each player a long code that only they can see. To prove it's them, simply give support the code and they'll know. Sound good? It's what ludia does and it works brilliantly.
How is Kabam supposed to get players codes? If you don't have a Kabam ID (i.e. email address) registered with them they have no way to contact you, except through the game itself. And if they give the code through the game, that means anyone with access to your account can take over the account. That defeats the purpose of having an account authentication mechanism.
The problem is that by default, neither Apple nor Google passes player identifying information to users of the apps distributed in their app stores. In fact, they explicitly prevent app vendors from collecting many kinds of tracking information. They don't know who you are until you actually make a Kabam ID. If you don't have one or forgot what it was, they don't have obvious ways of verifying you are the original owner of the game account. That's why they ask for information only the original account creator would likely know, and cannot be looked up within the game account itself.
There's ways around this, but having brainstormed a few in discussions with Kabam, I can tell you this is not as easy as it sounds. Or rather, it is not easy to make a system that is both a) easy for original owners to use and b) extremely difficult for anyone else to use. You cannot make one that does the former but neglects the latter, or you will have people having their accounts hijacked left and right.
Give everyone a unique randomised code, new for everyone
And what would that solve? People have forgotten their passwords, their email addresses, what they originally called their accounts, where they were living at the time they first started playing the game. But we're going to give everyone a code, and problem solved?
It would not fix the issue of people losing old accounts, but it would allow people to never lose it if they screenshot the code. There are very obvious flaws, I know, but it would help
That's a pretty big if, considering that literally every piece of information necessary for account verification today can also be screenshotted.
I don't even know at what point email addresses became "disposable." I both remember and have records of every email address I've ever used or been assigned to, because it is an email address as in a way for people to reach me. It was actually a fairly big surprise to me when I started learning people would just make one or have one assigned to them and then casually lose, discard, or forget them like chewing gum wrappers.
Meanwhile, the really big gigantic flaw is how you do this retroactively? It is one thing to hand people a code if they are signing up right now. Which they will forgot to screenshot because they don't understand how important it is. How do you send that code to everyone else? By in-game email? What about the people who don't sign in today, or tomorrow, or next week? Do you just send in-game emails to all hundred million game accounts that have ever existed and hope players read them? What happens if someone sees the code? Everyone who has it now has access to your game account forever, because that's your one and only way to authenticate access.
When two separate people successfully verify account ownership, by policy that game account is permanently closed, because there is now no way to prove unambiguously who owns it, and reasonable inference is that account has been shared in some way. The code has to be sent, then immediately deleted to prevent anyone else from ever seeing it. How do you ask for another one? We're back to square one. If you're going to require people to memorize or otherwise record a code, why not just ask them to do that to their actual account password?
When it comes to things like this, the idea that "its better than nothing" does not hold true. The more ways you create to perform these kinds of authentications, the more likely it is to both go awry and also become expensive to administer. There must be a minimum number of avenues available to authenticate an account holder, and each one of them must be as resilient as possible. And every option that requires the player to go out of their way to do extra things will likely have a failure rate comparable to the current one, which just requires players to remember a few things or write them down. Asking players to remember or write down something obscure to fix the problem of players forgetting and not recording a bunch of things that are much less obscure is going to fail for what should be obvious reasons.
When I was brainstorming solutions to this problem, believe me i went to some very weird places. I won't describe them just in case Kabam ever implements any of them, but one of them was something I called the "authentication crystal." If that tells you how far outside the box the discussion went towards trying to solve this problem.
Im sick of losing out on stuff cuz i made my account when i was a little kid and dont remember the exact date. Like, it actually isnt even funny anymore
If you're problem is just the date check for achievements you can find the date there .
Im sick of losing out on stuff cuz i made my account when i was a little kid and dont remember the exact date. Like, it actually isnt even funny anymore
If you're problem is just the date check for achievements you can find the date there .
Some people download the game and start playing a month later
And no before people ask, that was not confirmation of a player summit but I really want to do one so I'm putting it out into the world
Here's an easy solution. Give each player a long code that only they can see. To prove it's them, simply give support the code and they'll know. Sound good? It's what ludia does and it works brilliantly.
How is Kabam supposed to get players codes? If you don't have a Kabam ID (i.e. email address) registered with them they have no way to contact you, except through the game itself. And if they give the code through the game, that means anyone with access to your account can take over the account. That defeats the purpose of having an account authentication mechanism.
The problem is that by default, neither Apple nor Google passes player identifying information to users of the apps distributed in their app stores. In fact, they explicitly prevent app vendors from collecting many kinds of tracking information. They don't know who you are until you actually make a Kabam ID. If you don't have one or forgot what it was, they don't have obvious ways of verifying you are the original owner of the game account. That's why they ask for information only the original account creator would likely know, and cannot be looked up within the game account itself.
There's ways around this, but having brainstormed a few in discussions with Kabam, I can tell you this is not as easy as it sounds. Or rather, it is not easy to make a system that is both a) easy for original owners to use and b) extremely difficult for anyone else to use. You cannot make one that does the former but neglects the latter, or you will have people having their accounts hijacked left and right.
Give everyone a unique randomised code, new for everyone
And what would that solve? People have forgotten their passwords, their email addresses, what they originally called their accounts, where they were living at the time they first started playing the game. But we're going to give everyone a code, and problem solved?
It would not fix the issue of people losing old accounts, but it would allow people to never lose it if they screenshot the code. There are very obvious flaws, I know, but it would help
That's a pretty big if, considering that literally every piece of information necessary for account verification today can also be screenshotted.
I don't even know at what point email addresses became "disposable." I both remember and have records of every email address I've ever used or been assigned to, because it is an email address as in a way for people to reach me. It was actually a fairly big surprise to me when I started learning people would just make one or have one assigned to them and then casually lose, discard, or forget them like chewing gum wrappers.
Meanwhile, the really big gigantic flaw is how you do this retroactively? It is one thing to hand people a code if they are signing up right now. Which they will forgot to screenshot because they don't understand how important it is. How do you send that code to everyone else? By in-game email? What about the people who don't sign in today, or tomorrow, or next week? Do you just send in-game emails to all hundred million game accounts that have ever existed and hope players read them? What happens if someone sees the code? Everyone who has it now has access to your game account forever, because that's your one and only way to authenticate access.
When two separate people successfully verify account ownership, by policy that game account is permanently closed, because there is now no way to prove unambiguously who owns it, and reasonable inference is that account has been shared in some way. The code has to be sent, then immediately deleted to prevent anyone else from ever seeing it. How do you ask for another one? We're back to square one. If you're going to require people to memorize or otherwise record a code, why not just ask them to do that to their actual account password?
When it comes to things like this, the idea that "its better than nothing" does not hold true. The more ways you create to perform these kinds of authentications, the more likely it is to both go awry and also become expensive to administer. There must be a minimum number of avenues available to authenticate an account holder, and each one of them must be as resilient as possible. And every option that requires the player to go out of their way to do extra things will likely have a failure rate comparable to the current one, which just requires players to remember a few things or write them down. Asking players to remember or write down something obscure to fix the problem of players forgetting and not recording a bunch of things that are much less obscure is going to fail for what should be obvious reasons.
When I was brainstorming solutions to this problem, believe me i went to some very weird places. I won't describe them just in case Kabam ever implements any of them, but one of them was something I called the "authentication crystal." If that tells you how far outside the box the discussion went towards trying to solve this problem.
I kinda wish some of your out of the box ideas went through. I'm in probably a different scenario than the rest.
I have trouble with support tickets as I have multiple accounts. In the past I just used the one Kabam login on that system for all accounts for support. I can answer 100% perfect all questions but 1st purchase, weirdly I remember creation date of all 3. I have even give to support previous support requests for each account from years ago with that login to said accounts but it seems security got tighter. 1st purchase for each account is impossible for me. My google account is 9 years old, due to hacker issues in the past causing me to make a new one but all accounts are 10 years old. Even if it was old enough how would I tell what account what purchase goes to.
Down side of creating random emails for kabam linking is now that I don't have access to those emails I can't use Kabam support for 2 of my 3 accounts.
Obviously I remember my Kabam login for webstore and getting in game though. Such a weird scenario to be in and was super annoying with that deathless selector bug. You get so frustrated with support and would be ok if they were that picky if I was asking for email or password changes but even dancing through this **** for game bugs drives me insane.
Comments
I don't even know at what point email addresses became "disposable." I both remember and have records of every email address I've ever used or been assigned to, because it is an email address as in a way for people to reach me. It was actually a fairly big surprise to me when I started learning people would just make one or have one assigned to them and then casually lose, discard, or forget them like chewing gum wrappers.
Meanwhile, the really big gigantic flaw is how you do this retroactively? It is one thing to hand people a code if they are signing up right now. Which they will forgot to screenshot because they don't understand how important it is. How do you send that code to everyone else? By in-game email? What about the people who don't sign in today, or tomorrow, or next week? Do you just send in-game emails to all hundred million game accounts that have ever existed and hope players read them? What happens if someone sees the code? Everyone who has it now has access to your game account forever, because that's your one and only way to authenticate access.
When two separate people successfully verify account ownership, by policy that game account is permanently closed, because there is now no way to prove unambiguously who owns it, and reasonable inference is that account has been shared in some way. The code has to be sent, then immediately deleted to prevent anyone else from ever seeing it. How do you ask for another one? We're back to square one. If you're going to require people to memorize or otherwise record a code, why not just ask them to do that to their actual account password?
When it comes to things like this, the idea that "its better than nothing" does not hold true. The more ways you create to perform these kinds of authentications, the more likely it is to both go awry and also become expensive to administer. There must be a minimum number of avenues available to authenticate an account holder, and each one of them must be as resilient as possible. And every option that requires the player to go out of their way to do extra things will likely have a failure rate comparable to the current one, which just requires players to remember a few things or write them down. Asking players to remember or write down something obscure to fix the problem of players forgetting and not recording a bunch of things that are much less obscure is going to fail for what should be obvious reasons.
When I was brainstorming solutions to this problem, believe me i went to some very weird places. I won't describe them just in case Kabam ever implements any of them, but one of them was something I called the "authentication crystal." If that tells you how far outside the box the discussion went towards trying to solve this problem.
I have trouble with support tickets as I have multiple accounts. In the past I just used the one Kabam login on that system for all accounts for support. I can answer 100% perfect all questions but 1st purchase, weirdly I remember creation date of all 3. I have even give to support previous support requests for each account from years ago with that login to said accounts but it seems security got tighter. 1st purchase for each account is impossible for me. My google account is 9 years old, due to hacker issues in the past causing me to make a new one but all accounts are 10 years old. Even if it was old enough how would I tell what account what purchase goes to.
Down side of creating random emails for kabam linking is now that I don't have access to those emails I can't use Kabam support for 2 of my 3 accounts.
Obviously I remember my Kabam login for webstore and getting in game though. Such a weird scenario to be in and was super annoying with that deathless selector bug. You get so frustrated with support and would be ok if they were that picky if I was asking for email or password changes but even dancing through this **** for game bugs drives me insane.