There’s burning bridges and then there’s firing a massive orbital strike laser at them. Google has effectively chosen the latter with its handling of an issue reported by Terraria developer Andrew Spinks, which started as a YouTube ban that devolved into a wholesale disabling of Spinks’ Google account and ended with the game’s Stadia version being cancelled outright.
Here’s the course of events: In late January, the game’s official Twitter account asked YouTube for help to resolve a problem with accessing the game’s YouTube channel due to an apparent TOS violation that ultimately resulted in the entire Google account being disabled three days later, despite the channel not uploading anything for several months.
Instead of taking the matter to DMs as asked, the Team YouTube Twitter account instead sought to resolve the matter via Twitter thread, where it coughed up some canned responses. Flash forward to three weeks later and developer Andrew Spinks fully calling Google out in a Twitter thread:
“My account has now been disabled for over 3 weeks. I still have no idea why, and after using every resource I have to get this resolved you have done nothing but given me the runaround. My phone has lost access to thousands of dollars of apps. I had just bought LOTR 4K and can’t finish it. My Google Drive data is completely gone. I can’t access my YouTube channel. The worst of all is losing access to my Gmail address of over 15 years.
“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 Google Stadia is canceled. My company will no longer support any of your platforms moving forward. I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little. Doing business with you is a liability.”
As of this writing, there has been no official response from Google regarding the matter. Even so, it would appear that the damage has been well and truly done.
