Stadia

Stadia port of Terraria is coming after co-creator gets Google accounts back [Updated]

Ben Schoon | Feb 26 2021 - 12:00 pm PT

It’s unfortunately not a super uncommon issue for people to be randomly locked out of Google accounts, and in many cases the recovery process is full of a lot of frustrating waiting. That’s what happened to the co-creator of Terraria, and as a result the game’s upcoming port to Google Stadia was canceled entirely.

Update 2/26: Well, things have changed yet again. In a post today (via StadiaSource), Terraria developers confirmed that the game will indeed by arriving on Stadia “due to the hard work” of the Stadia team and 505 Games. The game is currently in certification review with Google on version 1.4.0.5, hinting at an imminent release.

Additionally, the locked Google accounts have been restored by Google.

The imminent arrival of Terraria was first spotted last week as the game passed through PEGI, but it was never officially announced. Presumably, the launch was set to be included in one of Google’s upcoming “This week on Stadia” posts.

Whatever the case, that’s no longer happening. Andrew Spinks, the co-creator of Terraria, announced the decision on Twitter to start off the week. He explains that his personal Google account has been locked for about three weeks now, leaving Spinks unable to access his Gmail account of 15 years, “thousands of dollars” in Google Play app/movie purchases, and his Google Drive data. The troubles started with YouTube when the Terraria YouTube channel was locked.

Spinks claims that he has done “nothing to violate” Google’s terms of service, leading to the decision to pull Terraria from Stadia entirely. The project has been canceled, and Spinks further says that his company will “no longer support” any of Google’s platforms going forward, saying that doing business with Google is “a liability.”

I absolutely have not done anything to violate your terms of service, so I can take this no other way than you deciding to burn this bridge. Consider it burned. #Terraria for @GoogleStadia is canceled. My company will no longer support any of your platforms moving forward.
— Redigit🌳 (@Demilogic) February 8, 2021

Terraria is still available on the Google Play Store for Android and Android TV, as well as being a part of Google Play Pass at this time.

We’ve reached out to Google to see if they can provide additional information on the situation.

Update 2/9: The folks over at Stadia Source got in touch with the studio behind Terraria to get a bit more context on the situation as well as to confirm the co-creator’s tweets. In the lengthy statement below, the studio confirms that the Stadia port of Terraria as well as future projects from the company will not be launching on Google platforms, but the current version of the game available on Android is not being pulled.

Earlier today, our CEO, Andrew Spinks issued a statement in regards to our ongoing issues with regards to his Google Account (demilogic). We have taken time to review public and media commentary in order to ascertain where any areas of confusion may persist. We have provided the following in order to help alleviate this confusion/misperception around the @demilogic account issue:

Android/Google Play versions of Terraria will not be affected. Punishing existing customers who paid for our game on these platforms is not what we are about. To be clear: there should be no impact whatsoever to Terraria on Google platforms, both existing/purchased games as well as ongoing store availability.

The comments around future availability of Re-Logic games on Google platforms is in regards to anything not-currently-available. This is inclusive of any future versions of Terraria (such as Stadia) as well as any other games that our studio will develop in the future.

The impacts here are not isolated to Mr. Spinks’ personal affairs, apps, etc. – though to be clear, those are many and substantial as well. Owing to the early days of the company, when Mr. Spinks was the sole employee of the company, there are quite a few legacy connections to the demilogic account that have been severed. This is inclusive of the Re-Logic YouTube account, many important documents stored on Drive, and much more. The impact is material in nature – and this has been made clear to Google repeatedly.

The Timeline of events:

Demilogic account receives a notice from YouTube alleging a violation in mid-late January. This was quite a bit confusing to us.

We have not uploaded in three months.

No one in our massive fanbase/subscribers noticed any new content uploaded at all, much less anything offensive.

Additionally, the initial correspondence from YouTube on this matter were clear that this was not a major issue:

“We know that you may not have realized this was a violation of our policies, so we are not applying a strike to your channel. We have removed the content.”

No action or response was requested or suggested in this email.

Since that time, through our efforts on Twitter with the support team at YouTube, we have been informed that our Re-Logic YouTube channel is clean and has no issues.

To-date, we have not been informed of any real details behind the actual transgression that is alleged.

Three days later, the entire Demilogic account – inclusive of Gmail, Google Play apps, Drive, and all other Google services – is disabled. Multiple appeals through the standard channels are met with an automated rejection absent of any further information.

Many avenues were attempted with Google in private to resolve this matter – well beyond what people may have observed on Twitter a few weeks ago. Information has been sparse and difficult to obtain even with us being a long-standing partner.

Even in the face of strong evidence that this is a mistaken action – evidence that has been in-hand for nearly 2 weeks now – this remains unresolved

This is not a position that we take gladly or lightly. Google has been a long-time partner, but the inability to resolve this for us – a supposedly valued partner – within a time nearly spanning a month is not acceptable.

Additionally, we are aware of many other incidents in a similar vein with a repeating pattern of “ban out of the blue” with no information as to the reason and no recourse. This has happened to countless individuals as well as developers for Android and beyond. We hope that our situation serves as both a cautionary tale for others as well as a vehicle for shining a bright spotlight on this issue as a whole. Perhaps some meaningful change on the customer service front will take place within Google as a result. It is sorely needed.

For those within Google that did their best to assist to no avail, we are appreciative of their efforts. It is a real shame that is has come to this point.