Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
Well, it seems we finally have a resolution to the Rollback Bug. While it doesn’t seem to be the solution/resolution many of us were hoping for EA has come out with their plan to “fix” to Rollback Bug.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Rollback Bug check out this post. Or this episode of Addicts Live.
Many of you who have reported the bug to EA should have received an email yesterday about their solution to the problem. Thank you to many of you who forwarded this email to me. Too many of you to name, but I appreciate you all taking the time to pass the info over to me. And yes, you all got the same email.
So what does it say? What’s their solution? Let’s take a look…
Here’s one of the emails that was forwarded to me…
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Hello ______,
Thanks for sticking with us. We’re sorry you had to wait so long on this issue.
What happened?
The idle character button caused problems for some players in The Simpsons: Tapped Out.
What are my options?
We have two options for you to pick from:
We can roll your game back to a previous save. You’ll lose progress and Donuts from today until the rollback date, but you’ll get 50 Donuts per week of lost data. If you have receipts, we can restore the Donuts that were bought during the rollback period. Just attach them to your case when you respond. You will also be required to remain logged out of the game across all devices for 48 hours after we confirm rollback. This final step can help prevent it from happening again.
We can give you a brand-new Springfield: It won’t be the same as your current Springfield, but you’ll still have your level and can continue playing your game. If you have receipts, we can replace the Donuts you bought before the template land was applied. Just attach them to your case when you respond.
We’ll also be giving you an additional 100 Donuts to get you back up and running.
Let us know which option you’d like to go with through My Cases.
Is this issue fixed?
It’s possible that this could happen again, but we’re doing our best to prevent it.
Where can I go to see the details of this case?
Review this case and your entire case history on EA Help.
Where can I go if I still need help?
EA Help and Answers HQ
We’ll never ask for your password and you should never give it out—Keep it secret. Keep it safe.
Find more account security tips on EA Help.
Taylor H.
EA Help
So obviously the options aren’t great. You can either have your game rolled back (which is something we mentioned in our original post) OR they’ll give you a brand new Springfield. It seems to me, from what the email says, that the brand new Springfield is basically a nuked version of your town. You’ll have the same level and characters but it’ll be a different game. I’m not 100% sure if that’s accurate, but that’s how i’m interpreting it.
If anyone has talked to EA about it, let me know what their explanation on a new Springfield was.
UPDATE: Here’s a link from Hobbesisreal in the EA Forums with a better description of what EA told him, my advice is to read what he says before making a decision.
Also, some of you are saying you didn’t get an email. I don’t know what to say to that. I know a lot of players received this email, so if you didn’t try calling EA and see if you can get some kind of update. I know they look at this site, so they should be aware that it’s now public knowledge.
So as we discussed it the Addicts Live episode about the Rollback bug, I believe the Rollback Bug is a server-specific issue. So it appears that it’s not something they can fix with a patch since it’s not impacting every player. Their only solution is to move you to a different server (new Springfield) or roll you back to an earlier point.
It does appear, for those concerned they may get it, that they’ve worked to resolve the issue from spreading further.
Either way, the options aren’t the best in the world but at least they’ve finally put out some solutions to move forward. Not what many were hoping for, but at least they’re working out some compensation for players.
Which option should you choose? I have no idea. If I find out more info about the new Springfield I’ll certainly report that to you guys, but without that info, I couldn’t tell you which option is better.
Thoughts? Comments? Wanna just vent? Feel free to do so in the comments below…just keep the venting PG.
What most concerns me (other than their half-ass solution) is that I didn’t read anywhere that the glitch is no longer a threat to those who haven’t been affected. If nothing’s been fixed, how many more new tappers will still have to deal with this in the future? No reassurances anywhere I can see, and we are all still at risk of being infected.
As for compensation…they could make chosing the new town selection more attractive and make everybody happy… 5000 donuts and 2,000,000 in game cash should help anybody recover whatever’s missing. That kind of compensation would put a lot of folks ahead of where they were, and would mean they won’t be calling EA again anytime soon…a win/win. If it were me, I would be a pain in their ass until they agreed to a realistic settlement. Their first offer doesn’t mean they won’t “settle out of court”.
I’ve been worried too! I was really hoping that there’d be a better fix & some reassurances that it won’t happen anymore. My town is SO big these days that if this glitch happened to me, sadly I would probably just quit the game.
Has anyone else had trouble w/their game running really badly? Mine will be all jerky & a total pain to play, then suddenly it’s moving like silk. At first I wondered if it was my iPad which is a few years old, (but I have tons of memory) but I doubt if my town would suddenly start running so smoothly if it were. I’ve been wondering if the problem isn’t EAs servers. Forgive me if this has been discussed & I missed it. Lately I haven’t been able to make it over here every day. 😎 RachelS
I just got a bug… But it isn’t roll back..
Well, this only affected my “B” town.. “A” is fine. I’ve always wanted to Nuke a town, so I’m taking “B” (a 4 year old, level 939 town) out this afternoon. Should be fun.
How about I send EA my receipts, they give me back my money and I can flush this game down the toilet 😡😡😡
same here! that’s my wish since I hit this bug 2 month ago. give me my money and take away your game.
When I encountered the bug, I reported it immediately to EA… they rolled the game back to the day before, so I lost a character I had purchased with donuts the previous night. They replaced the donuts and gave me some more for the inconvenience. No issues since.
They did that for me but the glitch came back the next day, so don’t have any confidence it won’t return again
Alissa, thank you for referencing my warning post about accepting template towns, I was just going to share that here in the comments when I saw your headline for this blog.
Here is also the negative experience and confirmation from a player of what a template town is and more importantly what a template town is NOT:
https://forums.ea.com/en/the-simpsons-tapped-out/discussion/comment/1942864#Comment_1942864
I have been hit with this glitch 16 times since June of last year. When they offered me a template town last month (and originally offered it several months before that), they at least offered to restore ALL the donuts I have ever purchased (4,400 donuts over 4-5 years) as a means to help re-buy all the items I paid for with real world money that they knew would not be in my template town.
Now they are only offering 100 donuts to buy everything you will lose if you accept a template town.
It’s crazy really. They’ve got to have a better way to handle this. They should be able to go by screenshots submitted to restore all characters/buildings. It’s digital, they can add it.
I don’t mind the idea of a new town that’s nuked, that is what it is. But they should be able to give you back everything you had. They can see what it is…
Actually the last time they rolled back my game, I just bought 5 premium items lost during his initial roll back. The US based (and that is apparently a key point) EA rep was able to see an alphabetically organized list of all my items in my game. In this way he was able to find the right backup file to roll back to that had my 4 items I just bought, rolled back to that backup file and all was good in the world again.
So yes, they do have a digital list they could utilize. If they were smart in developing their backend tools, they could export that list of items and characters, and import it again in a new town. Again if they were smart in designing their database and backend tools, this should even be able to put into an automatic (or at least a semi-automatic) process to help the EA rep help the customer.
I’ve had them restore items that were lost at various points, so I know they can do it. I just don’t think they want to be extending themselves too much on the CS side (which is extremely unfortunate). They’d rather do it all through email or India based reps. But if you call and get a US or UK based rep they should be able to do it right on the phone for you, as I’ve had them do in the past.
I have called EA 20 times. Never got North American based call centre. They claim they can’t transfer you either.
The one said they just kept requesting calls until they got a US or UK based rep..
I’ve been super lucky not having to deal with this. My thoughts and prayers go out to all my fellow addicts dealing with this crap. Good luck to all you guys and gals dealing with this headache…
If you take the template, you start with just a hundred donuts? Also, what cash do you start with? Zero?!?!
At least this is a response. My case has about 4 entries from me adding more and more things I’ve spotted in my glitch and not 1 reply from EA. Not even an acknowledge of my case. My glitch happened so long ago I’d can even imagine how much content of lose and many items (like closing out all the stone cutter items and skins) might not not be available again for years. These options are rubbish, not that I’ve even been offered them yet.
I loved playing this game and have been playing for over 4 years, but now I feel there is no option but to uninstall.
I Have almost every item on the game. I’m playing since the beginning in 2012.
If this ever happens to me, I probably will quit the game for good
50 or 100 donuts? For such a major issue???
Here’s $2, screw off.
Wow.
i think it’s per week…
you are right, 50 donuts per week since issue. still for me personally this is not acceptable. I waited 2 months before getting any valid reply from EA, and loosing progress of 2 months is not what I am about to accept.
i explained ea support that I do KEM farming which equals about 6 x 4 = 24 donuts per day, and would be happy to have 24 x number of days to rollback = donuts back. they did not accept that stating 50 per week is a hard limit.
well ok, i did not spend a single penny since the bug, and i am not gonna spend a penny until it’s fixed.
PS from the chat with EA and your post I see, they guys do not even understand the root cause of the issue. and since they do not know, or do not tell us what the real cause of the issue is, this could come back and hit anyone again.
PPS my biggest issue now is that the button in top right corenr does not work. i wonder how fixing this is related with doing a rollback. what kind of spaghetti-code it should be that EA cannot fix the button issue.
What an awful choice. Mucho condolences to all the long timers hit by the bug, and thanks to Alissa and the TSTO crew for keeping us up to date on the “fix” such as it is.
I have been lucky so far, but should the bug finally hit me, I would seriously consider the “template town” if it fixed the glitch for good, but it sounds like even that’s not guaranteed.
I would probably just quit the game. TSTO is still just a phone game, an EA one at that, with the crappy support that’s standard of all phone games, despite our love of The Simpsons. Good luck all. :/
If I couldn’t keep my current progress for any means I would be done with the game. After spending over a k it would be bitter. There would be nothing left in me to crawl/pay back to my glory.
While I appreciate that EA is trying to make-good on this, it still seems like a slap in the face to daily players. Either one of these options basically makes me lose all of the content I have earned over the past 3 months. Even with donuts to make up for it, I’ll have to wait for a future mystery box or donut deals to purchase all the content.
I sent a final email to EA last night asking them to look at the most recent reviews on Google Play and the App Store as this is affecting more and more players daily. Hopefully (but doubtful) they will realize that they are going to be losing more and more players that are affected.
Tried 3 seperate times this morning to get a rollback. All they were willing to do is escalate the call. ( Which has happened everytime I’ve called of last 3-4 months) The techs I talked to didn’t even know about the “solution email.” 1 didn’t even know about glitch I was talking about.
Going to lose everything from last 2 events and more if and when I find a tech who knows what
They’re doing
The solution sucks but can’t even get it applied. What a joke.
I’m really close to just packing it in here. As I stated before, I have 2 open cases with EA regarding the rollback glitch. I just went onto their Support site to request a phone call and ask why I didn’t get an email offering me a rollback (maybe it’s in their queue, but I just want to find out).
When I go to create a new ticket, it accepts all of my information, but the “Request Call” and “Email Us” buttons are disabled. This is too much work for a time-wasting app…if it weren’t for the 6(?) years spent playing, I probably would have quit once the glitch actually hit.
Does anyone know of any other way to contact EA Support? I’ve tried 3 different browsers…all have the same behavior (can’t submit a request for help).
EA sucks so bad.
As a technical guy, I have a lot of trouble accepting that this is the best they can do without a better explanation of what happened. Is anyone aware of a discussion of the underlying bits behind all this?
Even if a real fix is legitimately too hard/expensive, it seems like patching the symptoms shouldn’t be impossible…even for EA.
Based on the Battlefront 2 launch experience, it is apparently possible to influence EA’s behavior. However, I can’t imagine that Tapped Out is a big enough drop in their bucket to enable us to get a real fix for this. I will continue to vote with my dollars…lousy support = no $ for EA.
Really hate to think im gonna lose neighborinos because of all this. So much anger😞 Sleep on it….get a clear mind….dont rush and pick an option! Honestly have no idea what i would do! Good luck kids!
I don’t know if I am your neighbor but yes, I am now done with them. They fought me the last time it happened several months ago and would NOT roll me back so now I would lose the previous mini event and event work. This is all on them. This is a game. This isn’t power, cable, internet, etc. so I did not keep fighting to get my rollback and I am not going to go through that garbage again. I have uninstalled the game and am deleting all my bookmarks to all related websites. Good luck all.
Luckily, I wasn’t hit.
Can you (and others) (ugh!) make a list of all your neighbors. And then, go through the tedious process of contacting each one and placing a friend request.
If we all agree to ‘cool it’ on adding friends for a week, then we can all ‘remember ‘ “oh, yeah, sandytoes74 was a friend before. I’ll accept and re-instate”
The difference between
ADD ME, and
RE-ADD ME
Just spitballing
Pity excuse of a solution
If it can’t be fixed with a patch there’s not much more they can do beyond options. I agree the should offer a little more so you can get back what you lost, but if it can’t be fixed what else can they do?
They could add the items you got after being hit with the glitch. since they wouldn’t roll most of us back 2 months ago, losing 2 months progress because they can’t accept a screenshot of your character purchases doesn’t sound like decent solution.
So if they roll you back, I’m guessing that you lose everything you’ve done since the glitch occurred. Would I lose everything that I accomplished in the Heist event plus characters that I’ve purchased with donuts since?
Also, I filed 2 cases with EA regarding this bug and both times I asked for a rollback, which they would not do. So two things: 1. Had they done it when I asked, the “damage” would be much less severe and 2. I didn’t get an email telling me about these new rollback options.
To add fuel to the fire, loaded the game this morning, everything was “normal” (or as normal as things can be when you’re stuck with the glitch). Went back an hour later after my Daily Challenge finished, and it tells me I’m logged in as some strange user. Now it won’t accept my username/password. I’ve seen this topic here before, so I need to see what I need to do to log back in properly.
Sorry…Alissa did say we could vent, so I’m venting. I know people have been playing a broken game much longer than I have (about a month), but the rollback “fix” just doesn’t cut it for me. While it might take a little more than no effort (EA’s standard amount of effort), there absolutely has to be a way they can merge your files (rollback state plus everything you have now). Ah well…
P.S. Thanks Alissa and everyone at TSTO! Had it not been for this site, I’d have no idea they were offering these options.
Hello Alissa. How can I get a response from EA like these you mentioned? I tried reporting a bug and in the response email they sent me they said:
“While we cannot reply to you on the status of this report, you can watch for future game updates containing information on bug fixes”
So I wonder if they will get in touch with me like they did with the people you mentioned.
Thanks for this post, regards.
I honestly don’t know. I was just sent that email from others who go it. Maybe try calling them?
What pisses me off is when I talked to them on the phone 2 months ago, they would not do a rollback, leading me to play an additional 2 months of purchasing loads of new content that I will now just lose, if I choose to.
I’ve contacted EA and requested the roll back option. As my glitch dates back to roughly just before 4/1/18, the only silver lining is that hopefully they’ll be crediting my account with about 450 donuts. That said, this is gonna suck…probably going to wipe out everything I achieved & bought during the Heist Event (which sucks because I really like the Pow Wow Casino)…but, again 450 donuts should put me back on pace…and to be honest…I really wasn’t even that impressed with the last event. Fingers crossed…will keep the community updated
How did you get in touch with them? I opened a bug case but it looks like they won’t answer me on this bug case.
I think the compensation is too stingy. I opted for the roll back 8 or 9 weeks. But asked for more compensation I can grind a value in donuts higher than that plus I can grind a value in task much higher than that . Plus I will lose 6 or 7 characters from the events who have to worth at least a 60 donuts vault price each.
If everyone says the same thing perhaps we will get some success. I think they should be looking at 150 donuts pet week. This will compensate us for the mess plus giving us back what we already earned which we will now lose.
From what I was told, a template town has No Event Items. So that’s pretty much a no go for me. I’m going to go for the rollback and sacrifice my last 3+ months to the EA gods for the chance at some “regular game play” again…wish me luck. 🤞
At least they finally acknowledged it. It sounds like a new Springfield is probably the way to go in order to keep any characters earned during the problem period which for me is significant as I’ve been playing this way for nearly 3 months. Just have to spend effort building a new Springfield.
I’m confused about the donuts however. Do you lose donuts with both options or just the first? By “template land” do they mean land you have to purchase with an earned “land award”?
There’s a link in the comments here from someone on the EA forums regarding getting a new town, they said it’s not a good option.
I have been playing since Christmas 2013, i´m now a level 939 player. I got “hit” by this glitch in the middle of the last event. Hardcore Simpsons fan since I was a teenager. You can imagine I´ve spent a lot of rEAl money in this game after all this time.
I´m also a professional software developer, i´m making 20 years now. Whoever played this game for so long knows the QA Dept at this software studio had to be fired (and publicly shamed) a long time ago, it has been plagued with errors and glitches for so long, that having anything like this glitch from appearing was just a question of time. But somehow they´ve managed to keep the engine running, and I think that is mainly because of our love for The Simpsons. Honestly if it was a different game I´d have quit a long time ago.
These so called “options” they are throwing at us cannot be seriously considered. Asking for a rollback is not preventing the issue from happening again, and what´s even worse, EA´s Customer Service capacity to solve issues out of the big market (that´s the US) is near to ZERO, so that means that all of us, players in small countries-markets affected by this glitch are completely abandoned. At least that´s how I feel. The other solution only seems available to players at the big market as I explained before, go figure try to explain that to a rep in Argentina, Portugal or Slovenia … months of wasted time waiting for a response that will never come.
Lesson learned, no more EA games for my mobile, pc´s or Playstation at home, as this could potentially happen again. I´ll not spend any more money on EA again, guess there´s plenty of software houses out there that deserve it better.
Rant is over, i´ll now go and take a screenshot of my Springfield and say goodbye.
Thanks Alissa, Wookie, Patrick, Safi and Bunny for all these years.
E.
I’m in the same boat…also a software developer…and sounds like the glitch hit us at roughly the same time.
What I don’t understand is that if they can roll your town back to a certain point in time, they also have the capability to compare what you have now with what you had then and roll your town forward after restoring it to a “good” point in the past.
Instead, they’re taking the easiest way out, and from what Alissa posted from that email, it’s not even a guaranteed final fix. I’m going to give it a few days, wait to see if I ever get an email, and if not, it may be the end of the road.
Was a good run, I guess…
They should offer to make good the limited items obtained during the period. For myself, I don’t mind the loss of money and donuts but limited items from events take a long time to be offered again. But I think this message was only meant for that one user. I didn’t receive this reply from EA yet. It has been a month of playing in a glitched state.
Many users received the same message, I’ve got loads of emails from players in my email with that message. All unique to them
Yeah just check my email and I got the message today. Thanks.
From what I’ve seen over at the EA forums do NOT get a template town. You will lose a ton of stuff. Best to get a roll back and lose a little progress not your entire town!
Also since the security updates there seems to be no further reports of this glitch happening.
To those of you playing with a broken game there’s no answer. Continue and hope for an unlikely future fix or take the roll back and compensation. My gut says take the roll back sooner rather than later… today.
Thank you Alissa for keeping us informed 🖒
There is a third option which is to just keep playing with the glitch. I never reported my issue so I didn’t receive the email.
Not sure what I’m going to do. I have over 1500 donuts, all characters and 85% of the buildings offered, over 500M in game money and well over 180k in Krustyland tickets. I’m going to lose a lot with either option….
Important read regarding template towns on the EA forums by user hobbesisreal:
https://forums.ea.com/en/the-simpsons-tapped-out/discussion/comment/1941555/#Comment_1941555
Love playing russian roulette with my good friend EA ❤