ComplaintsforWildWorks

• Initial Complaint

  07/29/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Dear BBB, on 7/27/2022 I was on Animal Jam before their game went on maintenance and when the game went back up, my items were missing. I came to figure out that I got hacked, lost my beta ****** blue headdress RIM headdress, and 4 black long collars. My password wasn't easy to guess and I find it weird on how they even got into my account. My password wasn't changed or anything and my email was fine so theres no other way that I can think of than them cracking my hard password. I just came back 3 days ago before this incident happened and my friend gave me these rare items as a welcome back gift and I already got hacked that soon. I did change my passwords after the breach as well so I knew for sure I was secure but apparently not. This is your security issue and clearly it hasn't been solved yet. I want my Beta ****** **** headdress, RIM headdress, and my spikes back on my account, and if theres any issue to recovering any of those items I want my account rolled back to the date before I got hacked. Thank you.

  Business response

  08/04/2022

  Hello Counselor,
  
  Thank you for notifying us of complaint 17643047.
  
  As we understand, the user who submitted the complaint is requesting replacement of their lost items.
  
  We can confirm that the account seems to have been accessed as the customer mentions around the same date/time. But the only way this can be accomplished is one or a combination of four ways:
  1. If the password itself was easy to guess
  2. If the password was used across multiple sites
  3. If it was shared off site with other users. We do see where the player was found to be exchanging Personal information/off site contact information the day before the account was accessed.
  4. 2 Step Verification was not enabled at the time of the compromise. We can see that it was enabled after the incident occurred even though this feature has been available since September of 2021.
  
  According to our Rules, we are very clear that we will not replace any items as a result of improper game account safety.
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ
  
  

• Initial Complaint

  07/23/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Wildworks (Specifically Animal Jam Classic support) is lying to me and claiming that it is my fault that I was hacked, meanwhile I have done everything I can to prevent that from happening. They are claiming that I clicked on compromising links (I have not) and are claiming that their policy is that they cannot give back items at all (they refuse to show me where it states this) meanwhile in my case, items should be able to be given back. They have also refused to respond to further messages I have sent.

  Business response

  07/27/2022

  Hello,
  
  Thank you for sharing this dispute with us. We've already spoken with this customer via our ticket system and provided the additional information as follows:
  
  Per our investigation, it shows this account was accessed due to a weak password.
  Sharing passwords on multiple sites is never recommended. General password safety is to never use the same password for multiple sites. We suggest changing any shared passwords.
  We do state in our Rules that "Animal Jam HQ will not replace any items as a result of improper game account safety". While in the past we have made occasional exceptions, due to abuse of our CS system we are no longer granting back any items. This policy is for all players including Jambassadors.
  
  They have also mentioned in previous tickets that they did not have 2FA enabled at time of account access which has been available since Sept of 2021, so access was due to insecure password as well as they share their AJ password with multiple sites, including their banking. We hope these passwords have been updated to date. We will not be evaluating this further.
  
  We will be happy to discontinue their membership if needed. All they need to do is reply back to their ticket.
  
  Sincerely, 
  AJHQ
  
  

  Customer response

  07/30/2022

   
  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because: I was lying about the bank passwords so you would take it seriously. I actually used a different password for animal jam than everything else I use. Now I definitely know you’re just taking everything I say as an excuse against me. I did not have improper account safety. Give me back my items. I’m not giving up. 
  
  Sincerely,
  ******** ********
  

• Initial Complaint

  07/23/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Dear WildWorks, I'm writing this complaint due to what I think is an unfair ban placed on my child's Animal Jam account. My child's been playing the game for a few years on various accounts, but today I received an email saying my child's account with the username "nau" has been permanently banned, which completely devastated my child, due to him losing all of his "buddies", "rare" items, "animals", etc. This email was extremely vague, so I went to the parent dashboard to view a more detailed reason in my child's discipline history, but I was met with an even more vague reason, stating just "Mean". I think my child's ban should be lifted, due to a few reasons: First of all, I monitor my child's online experiences very carefully and I think the chat messages that could've led up to this ban were nothing but messing around with his friends, probably taken out of context, nothing my child said was offensive enough to be worthy of permanently restricting access to the game. Second of all, this is my child's first "offense" on the game, this account hasn't ever had any suspensions for 1-7 days or other smaller offenses, I don't think straight up hitting my child with a permanent ban is fair, when he's been following all the game's rules all until an extremely small slip up. And third of all, when watching my child play Animal Jam I've seen players talking about extremely inappropriate topics for a children's game, "scamming" other players, etc. yet their accounts remain unbanned even after being reported by multiple players. I think banning players like my child for stuff like this, but not banning people who actually endanger others will only hurt the game. Please either meet my desired resolution or provide me the chat logs that violated the rules so much, they led up to a permanent ban being the first offense on my child's account. If my desired solution is met, I will make sure my child is even more careful to not violate any of the rules. Sincerely, ******.

  Business response

  07/27/2022

  Hello Counselor,
  
  We have reached out to the player to address this reported issue within our ticketing system. Any future request can be directed to our Player Support Team by following this link: https://help.animaljam.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ

• Initial Complaint

  07/21/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  My children have had accounts with Animal Jam, a game put out by WildWorks, for several years. Some of them have spent money paying for in game purchases. One of my children's accounts was hacked on Tuesday, July 19, 2022. All of her little pets she has amassed for years were stolen by another player. There is no way for us to know who took them. I immediately emailed the company and begged them to please fix the situation. They responded that "we are unable to grant items back to an account." Though they have the ability to view their back ups and give the child back what was stolen, they are refusing to help. This world can be unfair, but we should strive to fix it when it is within our power to do so. Please help!

  Business response

  07/29/2022

  Hello Counselor,
  
  Thank you very much for sharing this customer's dispute with our service team.
  
  We are currently in talks with our customer in regards to her account, ***********. The account in question was created as a free account back in 2020, but unfortunately no email address was actually confirmed to the account as part of our registration process. This makes it difficult to verify ownership of their account, but furthermore without an email a user cannot self serve the account and manage or change the password since it was created.
  
  Our current rules state that users must "Keep their account secure." This includes following through with the registration process by providing a valid parent email address, confirming that email, and by selecting a secure and difficult to guess password for the player account.  To provide an additional layer of security, Animal Jam released 2-Step-Verification in September of last year. We messaged all users directly within the game app and across our social media channels to encourage players to enable this feature. Unfortunately because this account never had a confirmed email attached to the account to begin with, they also were not able to utilize this safety feature.
  Due to these reasons above, along with changes to our policies, we explained to our user and made clear that we no longer return items. Over time our policies change and we continually adapt those policies accordingly due to the increased fraud claims, social engineering, etc that our team receives. While this is unfortunate, we do not return in-game virtual items for any account and adhere to this policy for all players.
  
  We have researched the session history of this account and do not find any signs of technical intrusion. We do hate that their account was compromised at some point via a weak password. Once the user is able to register an email to the account, they will then be able to successfully change the password. We can absolutely let them know the situation has been evaluated by our moderation team behind the scenes to follow up with any wrong doing on the part of others, but due to privacy reasons we cannot discuss other's accounts.
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ

  Customer response

  07/29/2022

  
  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:you have back ups available and can easily restore what was stolen from a child’s account.  We also gave your company information regarding another player that had several of the stolen items, and you did nothing about it.  Please make this right.  Restore this child’s stolen items per the list that was sent to you.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ****** ********

• Initial Complaint

  07/15/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  My 9 year old son utilizes their Animal Jam app. We have made multiple purchases on the app which were eventually deleted because we were not logged in correctly. The app was very misleading it looked like he had a user name and I feel this app is unfairly targeting children and taking advantage that it may not be used correctly but you can still spend money. When I offered to provide receipts they told me there was nothing they can do. We have NEVER had this issue with any other app my son utilizes and I truly feel like they are preying on their targeted population.

  Business response

  07/19/2022

  Hello,
  
  Thank you for sharing dispute #********. We have reached back out to the customer via their ticket #******* and are awaiting additional information:
  
  We will need them to send us a full, unedited screenshot of their recent receipt. They can locate that receipt by following these steps:  
  - Log into purchase history in iTunes
  - There they will be able to view a detailed receipt for each order you've placed. 
  - This can be found at  - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204088
  
  We apologize for this inconvenience as it seemed our agent assumed there was no account since the email provided by the customer was not in our system and they were unable to provide us with a username. With the billing information for us to verify, we should be able to locate their account and proceed from there.
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ

• Initial Complaint

  06/27/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  WildWorks began opening the beta version of their new MMORPG for players aged 13+ called Fer.al. Most players were minor. When the company decided that their game (which was still in development and had not technically fully released yet) wasn't earning enough money, they hopped on the *** band wagon. For about 2 years a group of teens beta tested and spent Money on a game that WildWorks decided to morph into an 18+ only *** game. The huge player base of the early access game have sunk both time and money into something that no longer exists. Additionally, the negative response to the new *** game from the company was handled poorly. They left minors (not technically employed by the company) to try and pick up the pieces in community spaces with no communication from the company at all. When they finally communicated with the fans of Fer.al, it was to tell them that they were shutting down the game. WildWorks had originally planned to shut the game down immediately with no warning. Players called this out as it was against WildWorks' TOS. So instead they put the servers in 'maintenance mode' effectively shutting them down without breaking TOS. They promised to re-open the servers for 24h on the last day for players to spend just one day to say goodbye. Then instead they only opened the servers for a total of 3h on the final day. While the company may not have done anything illegal, they certainly wronged and took advantage of over ***** players, most of whom were minors.

  Business response

  06/28/2022

  Dear Counselor,
  
  Thank you for sharing with us the complaint and feedback regarding one of our games.
  
  Fer.al has been closed as of March 26, 2022. We are forever grateful to the brilliant, creative, and passionate community that gathered here. We do understand the feelings of users that were part of this wonderful experience, but there is nothing in addition that we can do.
  
  Sincerely,

  WildWorks

  
  

• Initial Complaint

  06/26/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Dear BBB, I have been playing Animal Jam since around 2014 on the account ***********, and I logged in about a year ago to find almost all of my den items were gone. I contacted support but was unable to get a resolution on my case. I logged in today (June 26, 2022) to find that most of my clothing items are missing now, too. I had an off-and-on paid membership amounting to about three years total, and many of the missing items were bought with paid gems. It saddens me to lose all of my memories from over the years, so if there is a way to get any of my items back and to know what happened to them, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

  Business response

  06/27/2022

  Hello Counselor,
  
  Thank you for sharing the complaint with us. As mentioned by the customer, we were in correspondence with them in August of 2021, where we discussed the safety of their account and that the missing items in question were too old to view any changes, trades, etc. Unfortunately if it was too old then, we definitely are not able to see those records currently years after the fact. We also were not able to verify them as the account owner via the parent email on file.
  
  We will be unable to help this customer further on their issue due to the age of the concern.
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ

• Initial Complaint

  06/18/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Dear BBB, my account (sealswimmer8680) was hacked after I transferred my items from my main account. I told AJHQ and they basically said they couldn't help me at all but I see them help out people all the time. I lost a ton of good items and I find it unfair that other people seem to be AJHQs priority but when someone like me gets hacked they could careless. I want my items back as I worked hard for them and I know it's not hard for AJHQ to go and see the proof of me being hacked and recovering the items I lost. The items got stolen on May 22, 2022. It was only possible to be taken in between the following timeline (we are ******** by the way so the time zone might be slightly different): 1pm-7pm.

  Business response

  06/27/2022

  Hello Counselor,
  
  Thank you for sharing this complaint with us. We are still in the process of reviewing the ticket they've created in our **************** system. We are responding to that today for additional pieces of information we need and will have our response as soon as possible after that is received.
  
  Thank you,

  AJHQ

  Customer response

  06/27/2022

   
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  Mikahael ********

  Customer response

  07/14/2022

  Complaint: 17447324

   

  Dear BBB, my account (sealswimmer8680) was hacked after I transferred my items from my main account. I told AJHQ and they basically said they couldn't help me at all but I see them help out people all the time. I lost a ton of good items and I find it unfair that other people seem to be AJHQs priority but when someone like me gets hacked they could careless. I want my items back as I worked hard for them and I know it's not hard for AJHQ to go and see the proof of me being hacked and recovering the items I lost. The items got stolen on May 22, 2022. It was only possible to be taken in between the following timeline (we are ******** by the way so the time zone might be slightly different): 1pm-7pm.

   

  Desired Outcome:Recovery

  
  

  Business response

  07/19/2022

  Hello Counselor,
  
  Thank you for sharing the reopened complaint # 17447324.
  
  We have been in touch with the customer via our ticketing system and will share the information we have shared with them. In the ticket exchange the customer mentions the account at one point belonged to someone else and they cannot provide proper ownership with their billing details. We've also reset the password and since then no one has accessed the account. Sharing accounts is against our Terms of Service, and we will not be able to recover any account that does not have proper ownership confirmation information. We consider this matter closed.
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ
  

  Customer response

  07/26/2022

   
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. I hope to hear from you soon.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  Mikahael ********

• Initial Complaint

  05/28/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Hello. I am writing this complaint, due an issue with accessing the parental dashboard for my child's Animal Jam account. When my child created his account with the username "Let" we added it to the email ************************* however I can no longer access this email, meaning I can't access a lot of options such as 2 Factor Authentication and password changes for both the account and the dashboard itself, also I am not even able to confirm the creation of the account. Can you please change the email to one I have access to, I am able to provide information such as account creation year and month, IP address and more to prove ownership. The email I'd like it changed to is: ******************

  Business response

  06/07/2022

  Hello,
  
  We have received no correspondence via our ticketing system where customers can go to get help from this customer's email. If they could please contact us at - https://help.animaljam.com/hc/en-us/requests/new - so we can gather some information on their issue.
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ

• Initial Complaint

  04/22/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Dear BBB, Hello, I have an Animal Jam account (*******) that was banned from the game. I see it still exist in the game because people are buddies with it still. I want my account deleted from the game as I don't trust this company with leaving my information sitting there as they already had a database breach. I would not want my information leaked again especially after having to change my password to tons of things and even lost so many emails because my password was sold from hackers who got it from the Animal Jam database. Even if my account is banned it is still in the game files and I want it long gone and permanently deleted from the game as I can't use it either ways.

  Business response

  05/02/2022

  Hello Counselor,
  
  Thank you for providing the dispute.
  
  Upon investigation, we see that the account A[******} and the parent email a[**********](and all its child accounts) were banned due to violations of our Terms of Service.
  
  Due to the specific violations on these accounts, per California Consumer Privacy Act Civil Code sections 1798.105(d)(2), we will not be complying with this deletion request. The below are some of the exceptions for right to delete:
  
  The business cannot verify your request
  To complete your transaction, provide a reasonably anticipated product or service, or for certain warranty and product recall purposes
  For certain business security practices
  For certain internal uses that are compatible with reasonable consumer expectations or the context in which the information was provided
  To comply with legal obligations, exercise legal claims or rights, or defend legal claims
  
  If the personal information is certain medical information, consumer credit reporting information, or other types of information exempt from the **** See Civil Code sections 1798.105(d) and ******** for more exceptions.
  
  We consider this matter closed at this time. 
  
  Sincerely,
  AJHQ

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩