Hi guys and gals!

We are working on two much requested improvements to the chat system:

CLEARING A CONVERSATION

You’ll be able to delete messages from a conversation on your end, while keeping the other user on your contacts list. The other person will still have a copy of the conversation in their inbox and will be able to contact you again in the future.

BLOCKING ANOTHER USER

You’ll be able to block another user on chat - they won’t be able to write to you and you won’t be able to contact them. They will disappear from your contacts list and will be added to your list of blocked users. You'll be able to unblock users on a dedicated page in your settings.

Our web team plans to implement these two options within the next 2 weeks.

Let me know if you have any questions, I’ll gather them and pass them over to the web team or get someone from their tech-savvy band to stop by and answer them for you!

EDIT: You will be able to block a user on chat not only via the chat tab itself, but also in the forums via the tooltip that currently lets you add them to friends, view their wishlist or send a message. Therefore, if you see a spammer on the forum, you will be able to pre-emptively block them from contacting you.

Sorry if it seems like we were inactive on the issue - from what I understand in terms of workflow here, various tasks are "in progress" for a longer time as they're in plans to be done at some point, or after some other feature is created/fixed/amended. Since I was now able to share that the team is actively coding/testing this functionality, I used the term "working on". Sorry if that wasn't specific enough!

As for other questions/suggestions, I'm forwarding them to the web team to be answered, addressed, or added to the forum improvements list as they appear. I'll get back to you, or ask one of the guys to do so, as soon as we can.

Blocking is tied to account ID - so, even if someone changes their display name, they'll remain blocked on your list until you manually click "unblock" on your account page. Account history is also on the list of features we're planning on introducing in the future.

No, it does not - the changes I wrote about are for chat only. However, additional or amended forum functionalities, this one included in the list, are on the drawing board as well for a later time (that I can't yet confirm).

Glad you appreciate the blocking option!

As for deleting messages, this can come in useful as well - for instance, if you have a lot of old messages (i.e. from a giveaway or contest, or just a one-off conversation) that you got just once, have nothing more to add, don't keep in touch with the user, etc. It'll help in cleaning up your inbox without banning non-spammers. It's much like deleting an email rather than redirecting all messages from that user to junk/trash and never seeing them in the first place :)

The alt user problem takes more than one solution to resolve - here, we're bringing one or two that can help in keeping at least part of any spam/hate you may get personally at bay. As I've said in some previous posts here, more forum, chat, and other-forms-of-being-social-online features are in various levels of progress, planning, or brainstorming.
Sorry about that! Were you perhaps in the quoting thread of the person that asked? I'll try and go back to fix it so the right person is quoted, though, thanks!

As Chamb said, "it was touching only our servers infrastructure, there were no changes to the code of the application at this time."

This issue will be fixed with the currently-in-development blocking mechanism. As you said, it was previously "one-sided". Now it will work both ways, so even the competent spammer that was then able to spam you this way now won't be. If he unblocks you, spams, then blocks again, his messages will vanish - if he doesn't block you again, you'll block him and never hear from him again.

An important feature that I'll be adding to the main topic as well is that blocking users on chat will also be available through the forum tooltip (where you can start a conversation with them or add them to friends) - this aims to help you avoid personal attacks or spam from users you're already recognizing as ones you want no contact with.

I can tell you that I am hearing the criticism in this (and other) thread(s) and making sure it's heard further down the line. However, I cannot give a date at which/by which action will be taken, as that decision falls beyond my competence and often depends on a multitude of other factors, from staff availability, through other priority tasks, to the amount of time it takes to make a functionality work, and probably more that I'm not aware of.

It's also beyond my competence to assign a task, judge the importance of a feature or effort required to complete a feature, so all I can do is pass your feedback along and sincerely sympathise that certain site features are not up to the expected standard - and even if I do get internal information on what is or isn't in the works, I'm not always able to pass it along.

(Sorry if that was a bit of a wall of text, just wanted to clarify some things).

As for the info about blocking users on chat via the forums, I only got clarification and full explanation on it now - I've edited the main post appropriately to reflect it. :)

I do understand your doubts. I will try to communicate in a more transparent way, however sometimes I simply don't know about something or am not able to pass on that information, and I apologize for those cases in advance. Thank you for appreciating the honesty, though - it means a lot.

With that, I've got to go do some personal stuff away from the computer, including a doctor's visit and a trip to a public institution - I should be back in the later CEST evening to check on this thread, but I may not be able to provide answers until tomorrow morning.

The option to paygate the forums has been considered (for instance, when the Korean spammers attacked), but discarded in favor of letting honest users, who just want to find out if a game's worth their purchase (or if it has a certain feature they remember) ask their question without the need to buy something. However, since you're not the first person saying it may be a good topic to consider, I'll try to get back to it with the team :)


I'll see if I can get some information about why old PMs aren't showing up or when they might. I'll get back to you!

The information I got is that it's an issue we're aware of, it's on the list of things to do/fix, and the messages are not gone (they are safely stored), but there are a lot of other tasks on the table as well. Sorry to be keeping you waiting - the messages will reappear, that I can say for sure, but no accurate timeline for it can be given at this time.

I was actually talking about showing more info on the contacts list in chat with some colleagues earlier today. I'll be passing on that and other suggestions to the web team - although I believe they may already have been brought up by others within the company as well.

Sorry it is taking longer than expected, but rest assured that we've got top men working on this right now.

Web dev team (yes there is one ;) ) is working on it. Sorry you have to wait though!