APL*Apple iTunes Store
Complaint 310534 Details

I played an mmorpg (Order & Chaos) for 3 years spending several thousand dollars over that time period. In November, during a time when I was going through a split with my former significant other, the ex logged onto my ipad and deleted all characters along with every item I had accumulated through purchases or earned in-game. I begged the developer (gameloft) to restore my characters since my account had essentially been hacked through no fault of my own. They refused and we went back and forth for many weeks. When I could get no where with the developer, I sought relief from Apple. None was given.

I still wanted to play the game so I started new characters. Over the course of 3 months I spent over $600 re-buying items that had been deleted. In late December, beginning of January, the game was hacked by nefarious players who were able to randomly target and crash players, leaving them unable to play for several days at a time. Gameloft spent several weeks telling the targeted players that the problem was fixed when in fact it was not. After several weeks of this issue being unresolved, the hackers breeched gameloft's "security" and were able change peoples passwords, steal the account and delete characters. Once again, I was left with no characters to play for well over 2 weeks. Eventually my account was restored (mid January) and I was able to play again.

During this time there was an ever growing group of players who had found an exploit to get free in-game equipment that typically costs 100-300 per item. When gameloft became aware of the situation, they informed the community that the exploited items needed to be removed and gave the offenders a 3 day ban. I never used the exploit and was never banned. People who had used the exploit were given until Feb 11 to remove the items from their characters gear because everything with stolen items would be deleted. I logged on after the deadline only to find that my characters had been stripped of every item I had spent the last 3 months earning and purchasing. I decided I had quite enough of this developer and chose to quit the game.

I opened a ticket requesting a refund from apple for the in-app purchased items their developer had selectively deleted from my account. They have refused despite my best effort. I have tried to have the issue escalated to a second tier agent but have been unsuccessful. I have opened two separate cases and have no confidence whatsoever that the agent understands what the problem is. They keep trying to send me back to the developer.