Yep! It's about the Play First merger!

Hi Mohala,

Yup, that's right. I had bought Gotcha: Celebrity Secrets and had shadow medals for them. So I contacted Playfirst support about it and asked whether it would be possible for them to fill the medals for me, seeing as how I completed the game and earned all of the medals within the game itself. I'll copy and paste parts of what I sent to Playfirst as well as their response:

Quote from my letter:

And I
have a suggestion since it isn't possible to upload scores and medals
for
any missing ones. Perhaps if the user were to take a screenshot showing
all of their achievements, that might be proof? I can do so for the
game
I have as well as any future ones.

Quote from Playfirst support:

We also appreciate your feedback and
agree screenshots are a good option though many users are unsure how to
make a
screen shot. Generally customers send us a .jpeg image of their game
screen
which helps us perform fixes and new reports.

So if you do have any shadow medals and want them filled for games you have purchased, I'd go ahead and contact Playfirst support and make a case for it. Screenshots of the badges from the game itself will go a long way towards proof.

I'm not sure about games which don't have any shadow medals. I haven't encountered such a situation yet but I'll try to look into it.

Hi Scarlet

So are you saying that if we have PF games and all of the medals are not showing earned they may fill them for us? If so that is great. I have a game I bought and didn't get around to playing it until to late so I did not get all of the medals.

Also they are replacing my Delicious games with PF games since I can't download them anymore, wonder if they will assist with those medals as well?

Let me know what else you find out.

I'm bringing up this thread but I have recent info that might prove useful for others in a similar situation.

I had some shadow medals for a few games, which bothered me a bit since due to the merger, it looked like there was no way that they can be filled. However, I recently contacted Playfirst because I bought a game that had shadow medals. So I asked them if it would be possible to have those shadow medals filled and suggested the use of screenshots from the game as proof that we earned the medals, etc. Some of the games have their own badges/medals area and all that. Playfirst was accomodating and willing to do that so for anyone who's in that situation and has shadow medals, contacting Playfirst would be a way to get them filled. It's a bit of a hassle but if you really want them and all that.

I'm not sure about the games which don't automatically have badges in them. I realized this for Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! although I have an idea that might work. Once I finish the game and all, I'll contact them to see if the idea goes through.

I'll post with further updates if I have any.

Hi Shamashe,

I completely agree with you on the communication aspect. I'd felt for some time that Playfirst did not communicate well with its customers/members even before the merger. When I received the email from a BF representative, I figured that it was more Playfirst's doing than Big Fish's. Playfirst should have considered its customer base and even if they still wanted to get rid of medals and high scores in the end, a warning in advance would have been better, like at least a month before the merger took place. I have shadow medals now and I really want the medals back. I did end up buying a PF game using my coupon although it did end up redirecting me to BF. It's not to say that I don't like Big Fish-I like that company a lot. Just that I don't like how PF has handled certain things and it looks like things haven't changed much for the better.

I guess if they don't bring back the medals-don't want false promises or wait-and-see attitudes-just want results at this point-then I'll just use the coupon codes I do have and then be through with it. As the case is, most of my gaming nowadays is on Facebook. I do get games occasionally on Sandlot since I work for them as well and so I definitely understand the importance of communication.

Hi Scarlet, how great to hear from you! And also, thanks for giving Countrybelle that great contest idea.

It's semi-amusing to me that PF would spin the "weighing the cost" of medals etc. issue when they clearly haven't cleaned up their intra-company communication. It leads me to wonder - if they had polled or canvassed their affiliates about a pathway through the transition phase, and communicated that to their customers, would it have affected their financial bottom line in such a way that they could have made other, less objectionable choices about the merger? Their end customers could have been their greatest allies. Black and white didn't necessarily work here, as it pushed away their customer base, a curious choice for a license based business. For you Sci-fi fans, this may not make sense, but it's like "replicative cloning," too many copies extinguishes the race. For PF, I hope that too many changes, without giving the users what they want, doesn't diminish their base of operations into extinction.

Hi Shamashe,

I completely understand how you feel. I felt that way about another gaming site I used to frequent. It went down the same way as what's happening to Playfirst. I never invested as much in Playfirst as some members have but I can understand how it feels when we invest so much time in a place and then things like this happen.

For all:

I did receive an email from Big Fish back, finally getting a straight answer on what's been going on. I can copy and paste it here if anyone's interested or a PM can be sent to me for details. But the summarized version is that Playfirst weighed the costs of getting rid of medals and high scores and felt that it was worth it.

You know, I am feeling a sense of disappointment and loss about PF. I check it from time to time now and just haven't felt compelled to even give tips - which was something I really enjoyed doing. I always felt like it truly helped those seeking answers, but then the tips forum changed too, with people seeming to think it was a chat room or something and the immaturity of it got to me. Since I spend my limited available time on this site now, I just kinda of gave up on PF. I feel that, while I held faith that PF had some sort of backup plan for producing games to surge forth on the tale of the merger (my understanding of their plan) they have dropped the ball. I pulled out of Play Pass a few weeks before the merger was announced as I saw it coming, but I really liked the PF site. I miss the quality of it. Easy to navigate, lots of tips and information and originally, fun, which seemed to dull out as people got frustrated. I'm grateful though, I got to meet you all and It brought me here, but I still feel let down and a loss about it. Perhaps, with time, PF will get it's collective act together and re-create itself for real before it's too late, seems like the change of upper management got involved with PR and forgot to do BUSINESS, not an unusual occurrence, but hopefully not a fatal one! Meanwhile, thanks Mohala, for keeping us abreast of what's newly offered on all fronts - it's a pleasure to cruise through your posts without having to go through all the other stuff of the various sites.

Ahh I see. Well, I did send an email to Big Fish customer service to see if I could get a straight answer on the medals situation at least. I'm still waiting for thme to give me an adequate response since the one they gave me wasn't what I asked in the first place. lol

And I agree that there are things on this merger that I don't like. I don't think it was a bad idea for the two companies to merge if it meant that Playfirst would be operated better but so far, I haven't seen any significant good changes. The forums are still getting spammed but perhaps not as much? And the fact that there was no warning about taking away medals and high scores-Playfirst must have realized on some level that this would upset some people. I'm not so upset about the high scores since they never mattered to me but I definitely didn't like that they took the medals away.

I see most of PF Members always want medals and Highscores and PF try to fix it. And that is very hard and need a couple times to fix it. And that make Diner Dash 5 always pushed back a month. Grrrrrr...... Why PF change the download games portal to BFG, The games that no contains Medals and Highscores?

I had posted that I was able to earn medals. I did so after the merger for the game Diner Town Detective Agency. I pressed to enter a high score, not knowing if it would work or not. It was mostly out of curiosity! lol.... I think they are trying to see how they can do medals. That would be nice. They are supposed to be unavailable, but I found that one case that worked. Not sure if it would work for any other games.

The games I have purchased since the merger automatically reroute me to BF. I have bought about 4 games, and all routed me over to BF.

lol Yeah, that's totally understandable. It looks like things are still getting worked out. I haven't seen a lot of positive changes since the merger but maybe that's just me.

I do have a quick question. Has anyone tried to purchase a Playfirst game from Playfirst since the merger? I'm thinking of buying Valerie Porter since I like the game and have missing medals for it. I read on the forums somewhere-I forgot who said this-that that person was still able to earn medals so I'm wondering if it's possible to do so despite what was said about medals no longer being available. The thing that does bother me about the merger-besides the fact that there wasn't a lot of warning about it, which clearly annoyed people-is that I'm always going to have shadow medals now. lol

I was aware of the Playfirst merger with Big Fish and had my own thoughts about it. I can certainly sympathize with Corax, being the only mod on Playfirst. I'm sure it can't be easy for her to handle customers'/members' inquiries and handle any other business operations. I know what it's like to be a moderator for a gaming company although I think I have it somewhat easier than her.

Reading the posts regarding the merger, I do understand people's concerns. Even before it happened, there wasn't a good communication system between Playfirst and its customers/members. I know that I had issues with this as did others. I'm not sure if the merger will improve this but perhaps it's too early to tell.

Perhaps it's best to give this some time and then see how things go.

This one should go to the steam room! I have been buying games from PF for a long time. I have spent hundreds of dollars on their site. For the past two months they kept sending out special deals. It didn't matter if I was a PlayPass member or not. I never received any emails with promotions. Funny thing is, if it was to sell me a game at full price or if someone voted me as giving the best tip the email would go through. As much as I love my computer games I am seriously thinking about canceling my BF and Gamehouse games or at least cut down on the amount and make sure I order the CD for it. Of course, that still isn't any guarantee if you have to be hooked up to their site in order to play the game. I don't think that PF handled the situation very professionally but, that's just my opinion. Candy

Hi Mohala, I just read your PF post to Corax, and my understanding is that BF will charge but PF won't _ what would they charge for if there is no more Play Pass or sales? It's also my understanding that there is no exchange of information between the 2 companies. As to DDHHG, those games aren't my thing, but I wouldn't want to re-but a game either. I'll have to think about this re" other games. It looks like a fix in process though. Have a good one! Glad you're better!

Hi Shamashe
Because Im having such a problem staying logged on to Playfirst. Maybe you can answer this question because Im not clear on one thing. I am a member of Playfirst and BigFish. So does this mean that both companies will still be charging me monthly? I really nesd to have this clarified because it does not make sense to me. I don't want Playfirst to charge me and we are supposed to get are games from BigFish.

Never mind I have received my answer. But Im still peeved about my addon restaurants to the Diner Dash Hometown Hero Gourmet. None of them can be played. I will not purchase these games over again. I just refuse to do so.

So, I read your posts here first and then went over to PF as I didn't receive any notification at all. Geez, there were so many posts under the ..."notification" sticky in such a short time. I happen to casually know "Corax" and I'm surprised she held her cool as well as she did - not that the posted concerns weren't warranted, but I thought some of them were just people freaking out and attacking and I thought it was much to her credit that she responded the way that she did - it's very difficult to be in her position and remain the blade which cuts through chaos without cutting the creators of it. I've counseled so many people of late about not giving in to fears, not believing the voices of anxiety and practicing detachment, dissociation, distance viewing and just plain old trust in whatever they believe. Clearly there is a lot of this kind of energy up now as people are uncertain of their next steps and pardon me for sounding judgmental here, but frankly, I think the media has a great deal of responsibility for creating fear and upset, but that's another post. I found the PF posts quite interesting from an observational standpoint because it reminded me of the old formula for reaction to trauma that loosely goes: shock, denial, grief, anger/depression, bargaining, acceptance. I didn't see that things had gotten to the bargaining process in the mix, but the pattern was clearly running. It's not often this pattern gets to be seen in print. I don't mean to sound dispassionate here, just stating an interest observation. By reading the sticky posts, the answers were there, but I think there was a lot of posting time overlap and it looked to me like no one was actually reading the post answers before asking the same questions, resulting in a pile up of ? sameness and finger pointing. So back to "Corax," I posted a statement (to follow) because I thought she was unduly attacked. I don't agree with the way PF handled things, but she is not the corporation and I guess I just felt the need for some advocacy. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

My PF post:
Hi Corax, My, you have been busy! I just wanted to say that I think it's sad that the "innapropriates" found it necessary to attack you - especially one of them! You are not the company, so don't kill the messenger! I've never had anything but positive encounters with you and I admire the way that you've walked the neutral and helpful line here. You have my thanks.

Yes, I also have the sad sense of a passing era, but things change. It seemed obvious that this was coming, so it it shouldn't have been such a surprise, but (for the ear of higher ups), it would have been appropriately considerate, and better business to have kept us informed, there would have been less negative blow-back and anxiety all around. Maybe PF (specifically the CEO) could consider some graceful PR with something like an apology to it's members for overlooking them... In this case, the rewards don't outweigh the feelings of betrayal.

That being said, perhaps if PF is really focusing on what it says it does best, we may benefit by seeing new and next gen. games coming out faster. One can always hope - so I hope that the transition will be smooth for us all.

Corax's PF response:
Thanks for your compliments!

I'll be passing your comments on to the aproprate people. Thank you for sharing them with us! Your feedback is important, as is the feedback of anyone with a PlayFirst account. Via forums or emails, any way you get in contact with us, your words do reach their destination.

Myself, that's why I'm excited about the changes! I really think that now we can focus on where we excel, which is making awesome games!