So this suggestion was born out of a problem a friend of mine who recently wanted to play Subeta had- he found out that he somehow had an account he hadn't used for seven years, and did not remember he even had an account. He is currently trying to ask that his old account be deleted so he can continue playing on a brand new account, as he refuses to take his old account and any of the pets or items back, and is already attached to his new ones.

That got me thinking about all of the people who might have made accounts when they were young and then simply left them inactive, then tried to come back, only to be greeted with a freeze and accused of cheating. So I propose a way to make sure inactive accounts won't get in the way of people re-joining: once an account has gone inactive for long enough (say one, two years), send some kind of alert, perhaps through e-mail, to the owner of the account, letting them know that they must confirm they want to keep the account alive. If the person does not confirm in a month (or if they respond that they do not want to keep the account up), the account will be deactivated.

I wonder if others will think this is a good idea? It seems fair to me, but well, what do you think?

Subeta used to delete accounts of inactive or long time frozen users, but they stopped a few years ago to give people a proper chance to come back. (Sometimes 1 month, or even a year isn't enough, this is a petsite and people have lives and some people are teenagers who cannot make their own internet choices yet.)

I get the desire to start over, and I don't think that's a wrong way of wanting to enjoy the site, however... Changing this back would also effect people who do want their original account back but cannot come back for an extended period.

Perhaps a better suggestion would be to have an option TO purge your account when you come back, but I'm not sure if this could be abused and it could lead to accidental deletions.

I...don't know how I feel about this. I understand the idea behind it, but any kind of time frame for an email to go out feels kinda shitty. The one year mark is when pet names and usernames become available for other people to take, so it kind of rubs me the wrong way on both sides of the equation there (a "Hey, we reminded this person to log back in just in time that you can't get this name" and a "Hey, we know your pet names just all got grabbed, but why not log back in?" both kind of feel like slaps in the face. I know no one is entitled to pet names or anything, but it IS frustrating). Longer time frames feel equally shitty for the account holder, because not only would there be salt about the fact that their pet names potentially got "stolen" but also likely about the fact that they were reminded of the site, but not in time, etc. I'm just not totally sold on it, I guess.

I wouldn't, however, be opposed to letting people choose which account to keep if they sign up and it turns out that they have two. I believe generally the newest account is frozen, but the user is allowed to keep their previous one. I don't see the harm in letting them choose to keep the new one instead, and freezing the old one. Obviously, they'd still only get to keep one set of items/pets/whatever, but I don't really see the harm in that, aside from maybe only allowing this if the previous account has already gone inactive and/or was in good standings to make sure no one is trying this out for shady reasons

In some ways this is a tough one. However, I'm completely against deleting accounts. They did that years ago and there were lots of reasons to stop doing it. But the issue of an old, completely forgotten account, that deserves some thought and perhaps a different solution.

I know that I've joined sites, looked around and then left pretty much right away. I've probably forgotten most of these and would be completely surprised that I'd ever heard of them, never mind joined. In cases like these I don't think someone should be forced to reactivate that old account if they forgot it, created a new one and then got attached to the new one.

However, I think it would need to be done on a case by case basis by staff directly, rather than creating some kind of policy. Because you'd really need to look at the database and see that the account in question was only accessed for a very short period of time, a few days, maybe a week or so.

I have sympathy for someone in this situation, but I really think its something that only staff can decide. They're the ones who made the one account rule in the first place and their understanding behind why that rule exists would direct how strictly they enforce it and if its worth making exceptions.

I think a good solution would be for Subeta to run a check when you're first signing up to see if the e-mail is already in use or not.

Registering for a new account, input your e-mail & whatnots. On the next page, Subeta tells you if your e-mail is already in use and suggests that you use the password retrieval system instead of registering for a new account.

That would save returning users the headache of accidentally multi-accounting. (Edit - this is already a thing!) Even though imo it's not even multi-accounting when you register for a whole new account that has nothing to do with your old one & has no item or sP transfers but ok.

I do understand the caution involving multi-accounting, but it'd be way more user-friendly to give returning-yet-newly-registered users a heads-up instead of immediately slamming down the banhammer.

Thank you everyone for responding! This is somewhat my first time in a long while dabbling in forums in pretty much any pet site, as I'm more of a shy and casual player. I've certainly learned a great deal from what you had to say as well. When I made this post, I was mostly just thinking of my friend and how he seemed genuinely bummed out he was kind of forced to give up his new account in favor of an old one he barely remembered. I'm happy to hear you empathize with that!

I DO love the idea of letting people who already had an account know that when it recognizes their e-mail, I imagine then it could save them a whole lot of trouble! But you guys are also right, this is a VERY specific type of situation that can't be easily solved with any general policy, and I do realize now my idea for giving a time period for old accounts to be deleted is flawed, to say the least.

All in all, as stated before on this thread, this is something that will only be up to staff in the end, though I do think it's important to point it out in a suggestion thread to avoid situations similar to my friend's in the future- after all, nobody likes being accused of cheating when they are just trying to play a game.

wait, can you even sign up for multiple accounts with the same email? because if so that would be pretty unusual. i always assumed these sorts of cases happened when people change their email service or address and either forget they had an account under their old email, or lost access to their old email preventing them from retrieving their original account password. in which case there'd be no way for the site or staff to know that the new account was being made by the same person - it'd only become apparent based on IP address, and even that could be different after a number of years.

@ Bug Good to know, thanks for clarifying! This is not something anyone here can comfortably check without feeling like they might be risking their account, so the little heads-up is appreciated. ❤️

Edited for wording because brain cannot do the words today.

Idk an automated email at the 6 month inactive remark would be good imo. If the whole point of not formally clearing accounts was to hope some of those users come back and play, then an effort on the sites behalf to encourage them is probably a smart idea.

Just a hey we haven't seen you in a while; here's a handy link to the website and some sP! Also an fyi any account that's been inactive for a full year is subject to having their pet/user names claimed by others!

Anyone who really lost interest/doesn't care will ignore it, and it might help to actually bring back people before they lose things. I mean I know I wouldn't magically start caring again after I lost my names |D

That said... If you can't create more than one account per email (confirmed by Bug), then I'm a little confused as to how multiple accounts can be associated with the same user? Outside of situations where users realize the site is familiar and they may have an older account and reach out to staff.

HOWEVER I'd find it very concerning if I was suddenly told some account with some other email was somehow mine and that I'm frozen because that account existed first. How can anyone be really sure a user with an older account associated with a different email is really that user?

I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this yet or not, but if it's been long enough that you've forgotten you even have an account, especially if it's one you created when you were a kid, you likely no longer use the email associated with the account. So sending out reminder emails at the time they would be most useful (maybe 4-5 years of inactivity?) would go...nowhere.

If you have nothing to do with your old account, they probably can't. However, if you bring it to Subeta's attention or somehow advertise that you have two accounts, that's when things get tricky.

I created my account back in 2010, and then stopped playing for a few years. When I returned in 2013, I couldn't remember the name of my account, so I created a new one. On most sites that would have been NBD, but I happened to be reading the FAQs and realized I'd done something that was against the rules. Fortunately, I recalled the name of my first pet, found my account, and got the new one deleted. All of this happened through the ticket system.

I agree with that this is something that should be handled on a case-by-case basis. I think that we don't want people abusing the one-account only rule, but we do want people to be happy on this site so that they keep coming back and encourage others to do the same.

Now, if Subeta had a regular newsletter that came out quarterly or even just twice a year, that might be better. People would still get regular reminders that they have an account without the awkward question of timing, and it would also serve to pique interest in the site.

It's a sticky situation but I'm of the opinion that if someone leaves, the account goes inactive for over two or so years, if that same person comes back... that old account that should technically have been purged should not be a duplicate, a secondary account or the user should be forced to take that account back under conditions of "you're cheating otherwise."

My two cents.

I would like to hope that, even if someone made a statement there was some means of really looking into it and statements are taken with a grain of salt until throughly investigated.

Upon knowing you can't create more than one account per email, I'll admit I traveled down the route of paranoia and I do hope this (opps a user has two accounts a mistake was made) isn't something that happens very often. It did make me a bit concerned, though.

Like, in theory, what if someone claimed "oh well whoops this other seemingly active account is mine" to someone they don't like or something. They claimed it publicly, so it has to be looked into right? I would hope there's more to check than just IP addresses, which can change randomly or people using computers vs mobile devices (or traveling, like I did for four years, who knows what trail my phone has left on my account oof).

Perhaps this is a paranoid rabbit hole I stumbled into, and really I don't expect staff to give details (never tell the public what you do or those inclined will find ways around it) mostly just.... I hope there's checks and balances on the back end -laughs-

Also, agreed entirely on regular emails being sent out. Perhaps news posts, or log in prompts (many sites do that) asking a user to ensure their email address is up to date, or even offering the option for a backup email! I lost a yahoo email somehow (technology lol) several years ago and lost access to several sites because of it.

I know the news letters that do go out tend to, er, not make it to some users, and I wonder if some of that is outdated emails.

The only big issue I can see with sending out more frequent newsletters is screwing over people who are waiting for a petname/username to clear. (I'm very aware of the "make petnames non-unique" discussion. Let's please leave that in its own topic, thank you!)

iirc, yeeeeears ago, Subeta did send out periodic "oh hey you haven't logged in for a while, you should log in or your stuff will clear" e-mails, but they stopped. I don't know why, I'm guessing it's either because people would log in once, then not log in for another 8+ months, or because that feature glitched and stopped working. Or both. Or neither.

I mentioned in another topic that Subeta needs to comb through its e-mail list to make mass-mailing smoother. Do newsletters go out to users who haven't logged in for 10+ years? Do they go out to e-mails for accounts that were deleted back when Subeta was deleting inactive accounts? Do they go out to frozen or permabanned users? Comb it through. Easiest way: ask users to verify their e-mails. Give users the choice to opt in to newsletters & reminder mails for account inactivity.

And back on the topic of better handling of accidental "duplicate" accounts - it should absolutely be handled on a case-by-case basis. If Bob registers today, but he has a 12-year-old inactive abandoned account that he forgot about, give him a choice - do you want to start again, or do you want to continue where you left off. Sure, you can freeze his current account, but clearly tell him exactly what's up, why he's frozen and what he can do.

Slamming the banhammer down immediately and letting the very confused and sad user try to sort it out for themselves (esp if they do not remember an old account at all, or it's tied to a dead e-mail) just makes the site look bad.

tl;dr - separate the bans and automated messages for legit multiaccounting & someone starting anew while having an existing superold account that they have not made any item/sp transfers to.