Delete Account?

[Rimmy]

When you guys make a game, and let's say there is a user who hates the game. (I don't know why, I guess he just can't stand not being able to beat a game within 3 minutes.) Anyways, he decides he wants to quit the game. Does anyone here give them the option to permanently delete their account? Or do you just let their account sit there, inactive, forever? Do you do a combination of the two? I would like some input for my future game, so any answers would be welcome.

[danielOut]

I think a good method is having an auto-clean script that runs once a month. It checks for last login date, and deletes users that haven't been seen by the game in X number of months.

[Rimmy]

So you wouldn't give them the option to delete the account themselves?

[danielOut]

Nah, probably not. What does it hurt to keep it on the server for a little bit, and plus they might come back. Too many times I've seen people delete game accounts in frustration, only to wish they hadn't later.

[Rimmy]

Good point. I (yes I know this sounds silly) actually never thought of that. T_T I feel stupid.

[danielOut]

Haha, don't feel stupid. I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't known people who did that exact same thing!

[leZourite]

Hmm plus deleting accounts can be a problem with eventual transfers going on on the account (say things being sold on a market etc)

What i do is flag them as "disabled", keep the automated transactions to finish and do not allow any player to interact with these account, then after some times i may or may not delete the accounts, for the sake of DB integrity it's better to flag a user as disabled (or inactive) so it doesn't mess with the logs.

Having inactive users in the database is not that a problem if they are filtered at query level, the number of players in the database  won't make it go any slower (well unless there is a 10 millions users table !!) this is usually the number of online players that make the game go slower.

[JGadrow]

I go for a different approach.

Users cannot change their account names. In logs, the account names are written without being account references so that even post deletion the name will remain.

Users can delete their account but the account is not 'truly' deleted immediately. The account is exported to a format which could be used to restore the account to its previous state. Obviously, some things that do not make sense are not saved such as locations of bases or whatnot in a strategy game as that location may be taken later. Usually, if I can't reliably restore an object, I convert it into the equivalent in-game currency so it can be recreated by the user.

Once the restoration is complete it is verified by restoring the account in a test environment. If the account restoration succeeds, then the account is removed from the database. Notification messages are sent if an account was deleted but the restoration creation failed as that is a good indicator of a bug.

This way, the user can delete their account which will free up a slight amount of resources on the server, but they have the possibility of restoring their account by contacting an admin if they require it.

[foxumon]

I haven't put a system like that up - it seems to me like if a person doesn't want to play they can just leave.  I really like Makari's approach though - being able to clean out the DB, but let users restore their accounts later sounds great.

I think that would be a good system for it you wanted to clear out players account that were X months old.  I understand that a lot of times if a player hasn't been around in months there a good chance they're not coming back - but I think it's a little cruel to delete a user's account just cuz they weren't around.  I've had it happen to me a couple times...and I'll usually just give up and leave.  If my account was deleted and I make a new one - that one will prolly just get deleted too right?

If you were to store the information somewhere else and give users a chance to reactive if they come back later I think that could be a good system if your worried about old accounts clogging up your DB.

[raestlyn]

If you were to store the information somewhere else and give users a chance to reactive if they come back later I think that could be a good system if your worried about old accounts clogging up your DB.

I generally use that system, when a player wants to get rid of his account I store it on different database so I can get everything back easily

[Kimmybwoy]

Sit there is the best, it makes you seem more popular , and it gives ovva members an account to attack