Zynga suspended gift sending from the FarmVille market place today. It comes as no surprise given that the past few days have been awash with farmers taking advantage of a glitch in the game that enabled them to spend FV cash over and over again to repeatedly send market gifts to their neighbors.
The FarmVille unspendable FV cash glitch occurred whenever a player sold every item on his farm. Once the farm was barren of plots, crops, buildings, animals, trees and everything else the game stopped registering the expenditure of FV cash while the game waited to issue its famous “Out of Synch” dialogue. This gave quick users the opportunity to send to their neighbors market items that usually cost FV without losing any FV in the process.
I suspect that once Zynga and FarmVille’s developers see a drop in game uptake they will reinstate gifting of market items. That drop is bound to dent interest from potential advertisers who will see a game on the wane. Multiple accounts used by individual people are not always a bad thing from a statistical viewpoint.
If you know when gifting might be resumed or if you have any further information about the removal of FarmVille gifting then please let us know.
Update One
According to the official FarmVille forum, the inability of players to send gifts to neighbors is a bug:
“Cannot Send Purchased Gifts to Friends
Last Update: 6/22
Description:
Players are unable to send gifts to friends by selecting the send feature in the Marketplace.
Status:
The FarmVille team is aware of this issue and looking to release a fix as soon as possible.
Workaround:
N/A
If you find your issue in this section, please refrain from creating additional threads unless otherwise specified in the description of the Bugs listed above.”
I’m not a conspiracy theorist but it smacks of the old Rolls Royce trick of paying garages and roadside breakdown recovery companies to keep broken down Rolls Royce cars under cover to stop people from knowing there was a problem to fix.
I will update again as soon as the “issue” has been resolved.
Update Two
Gifting has been restored!
wpDiscuz