orb ponderin'

Anyway, yeah, what it says in the title. On October 24th, around 10am EST, I was restocking my user shop when the entire webpage went white. I couldn't access the site at all and, when I tried to look for the Discord on my server list, it wasn't there. I knew what this had meant. I got banned from both the game, and the Discord - this is important to keep in mind for later.

I didn't receive any Discord DM or email notification about my ban, so after asking a mod what their support email was (and yes, I later verified that this is indeed their legitimate support email), I sent them this:

After a few hours, I get this back in response:

There's so much I'm confused about here. I think the one that screams out the most is that they're asking me to show them my photo ID so I can get unbanned. Absolutely not. I refuse to do this. This poses a massive security and privacy risk. They straight up banned my account, gave this half-baked explanation, and told me I need to send my personal information or... I stay banned?

Let me make something clear: The only personal thing they have on file about this account is the email address that I created my account with, which I've also used to contact them. My real name, date of birth, anything of that nature would not be connected because this was not asked for during account creation, therefore this wouldn't actually prove I'm the account holder. Theoretically speaking, I could show them any ID in the world and for all they know, that's my real information, because they have nothing else to go off of. They even say as much in their privacy page.

Secondly, "account has been compromised"? What does that mean? I think anyone's interpretation of this would be that my account got hacked. But if my account got hacked, why wasn't I informed of this? I had to reach out to support, they did not reach out to me first. That means my password, which I may share across other sites, would have been known to someone else and thus I should've been warned of this immediately, not roughly 5 hours after the fact.

Thirdly, what, was my Discord "compromised" too? If an automated system had flagged my account, does that system somehow interact with a Discord bot so they ban a user on both at the same time? How does that work? That makes no sense as to why they'd ban me on both the game and the Discord for something like this, which is why I'm calling bullshit.

Let me tell you what I think happened.

Recently, Santae has been in some really hot water with connections revealing their relation to an older petsite, Lurapets, which has a history of scamming and artist mistreatment, as well as proof coming out of them using AI art for their NPC art. You can find these posts on the @santae-salt blog if you want to see for yourself, but I'm also linking them throughout this post.

Once the post about them being directly related to Lurapets was released, several users that the Santae staff thought might be involved in the creation of the post got banned. As it turns out, I was banned at the same time as these users.

After speaking with the @santae-salt admin, we are both of the belief that I, a regular user, got caught up in this mess because they're assuming I'm an alt account of someone else and staff demanded to see my ID because they didn't think I was a different person. It may turn out to be wrong, and yeah that sounds a bit far-fetched, sure, but really, what else can I go off of here?? Santae staff has given me a very questionable and refutable explanation as to why I've been banned, and their radio silence after I refused to send them my ID is just making me believe they don't think I'm real. They don't want my photo ID to verify I'm the account holder, they want my photo ID to verify I'm not someone else.

This is unprecedented. I've never seen any petsite ask for a photo ID in any situation, and after asking around, not even those banned from Santae were asked for this. It's just me! This is an incredible attempted breach of privacy, and, with Santae now under doxxing allegations, I really don't feel confident they'd keep my personal information… well, personal.

I messaged back almost immediately after they responded to me where I told them I would not send my ID and I had asked if there were any other way I could verify myself to get my account unbanned. I've received no response so far, and after what I've learned, I feel like I'm not going to get one at all.

So, let this be a lesson to you: don't waste your time on Santae. You can be the most obedient player out there. You can abide by all their rules, be a nice and generous player, or just be minding your own business, but if they so much as think you're associated with someone who they think has wronged them, you'll be banned.

On the night that I made this post, I finally received another response from staff:

Needless to say, I was rather confused. It kind of felt like the explanation has changed a little bit, and now it appeared that there was some kind of hacker that logged into multiple accounts at once; not just my own account.

I sent back a rather livid response because, frankly, the way this whole situation was handled was incredibly unprofessional and, if my account really did get hacked, I could've been in a lot more trouble than just my Santae account for the reasons I explain in my response:

And just now I've checked my email again to find this response that was sent earlier this afternoon:

It's bittersweet. I got my account reinstated, which I am quite happy about and I do want to thank Santae staff for doing so, however, I am extremely disappointed by how this whole situation was handled and started. Given how silent Santae staff was to me before I made my post, I really feel like if my post didn't get as much traction as it did, nothing would come of my situation. For this, I thank everyone who reblogged and shared this. I feel like thanks to you, enough pressure was put onto Santae staff for them to take action.

Additionally, while I am appreciative of them taking steps to rectify the issues that caused this situation, as well as no longer entertaining the idea of asking for photo IDs from anyone, the fact that this situation happened in the first place has incredibly soured me from the game, and I'm unsure if I will return to it. But, I'll be keeping my eyes out, and watching how the game responds to its community and how it works to handle feedback and improve itself. Maybe with time, these wounds will heal, and I can return without feeling the way I do right now.

You can do with this information what you wish, whether you think Santae staff is telling the truth or not. I would still hesitate to recommend this game to others at this current time, and I am incredibly uncertain if I would find joy in returning to the game again after this. But, I'm tired, and I just feel like reading a book right now.

At the end of the day, I'm just happy that I got some form of closure, and the ability to make the choice of returning to the game or not at all.