Add advance notice before auto-abandoning games

[jonathanmcc]

table=637390706

The main reason I am a premium member of this site is to play friendly turn based games of Unconditional Surrender with my son.
This is a really long game and the way we play, it can take us a year to finish one game as we drop in and out.

This year we have 2 games in progress, and both are nearing the end of the game.
I had paused playing one of them to concentrate on the other one.

Then, completely unexpectedly, the paused game was abandoned automatically by BGA and we can no longer play it.

There was no warning whatsoever that this was going to happen - although BGA spammed me daily with EMails to tell me I had 2 games waiting for my move.

This is an appalling user experience!

My suggestion is to add some advance notice before games are auto-abandoned.

[Meeplelowda]

Is there any way to get this game activated again so that we can keep playing?
And could you please, please add some advance notice before you abandon games?

There is a pinned post as the top of this forum. It is labeled "Suggestions (read this first)." In that post it says:

You can discuss your ideas and suggestions in this forum with fellow players.

(emphasis added)

I write this because you've already had one negative experience and it seems you have expectations that are contrary to what is in that post that will lead to another negative experience. The portion of your post I quoted above suggests that you think this forum is where you go to get customer service. For example, the use "you" implies you think you're speaking to BGA. Now certainly there are very knowledgeable users in here who can help with troubleshooting some issues. But we aren't BGA and we can't fix these types of things.

If you want action taken, the first step is to do what it also tells you in the "Suggestions (read this first)" post:

If you have a specific suggestion to make and want people to be able to vote for it, you can add an entry in our "Bug and suggestions" feedback system with the "Suggestion" category.

https://boardgamearena.com/#!bugs

Then you can paste the link to this suggestion in a thread discussing it like this:

https://boardgamearena.com/#!bug?id=<report_id>

There is also a "Contact us / Support" link at the bottom of virtually every single page on this site.

tl;dr This forum is for discussing suggestions, not submitting them for consideration or getting customer support.

[jonathanmcc]

Thanks for replying.
I took your advice and edited the original post to change it into a suggestion.

[Shivaware]

table=637390706

The main reason I am a premium member of this site is to play friendly turn based games of Unconditional Surrender with my son.
This is a really long game and the way we play, it can take us a year to finish one game as we drop in and out.

This year we have 2 games in progress, and both are nearing the end of the game.
I had paused playing one of them to concentrate on the other one.

Then, completely unexpectedly, the paused game was abandoned automatically by BGA and we can no longer play it.

There was no warning whatsoever that this was going to happen - although BGA spammed me daily with EMails to tell me I had 2 games waiting for my move.

This is an appalling user experience!

My suggestion is to add some advance notice before games are auto-abandoned.

First of all, I'm sorry to hear that BGA discarded the game you and your son invested so much time into.

Even though it says there is no time limit, friendly games do have a time limit. For turn-based games, that limit is 40 days without a move. Looking at your game log, it does appear that your son made his last move on 2025-09-07 4:43:11 a.m. (my time zone) and the game was abandoned on 2025-10-17 1:07:25 p.m. It looks like you made some partial moves on 2025-09-23 5:32:23 a.m., but I guess that did not reset the timeout.

The situation is even more frustrating if friendly games are started as real-time games, because then they will time out after 4 hours, and you can't play any other real-time games during that period. Also, there is a display bug that lists all turn-based friendly games as a "real-time game".

Anyway, the gist of the situation is that you have to complete your move in turn-based friendly games within 40 days or they will be deleted without warning.

[jonathanmcc]

I took a further look at what caused this.
In Email preferences there is this option:

Send me an email when a player is running out of time:
Yes

This was set to Yes for me - which must be the default.

Every day for months I have been receiving the same automated EMail from BGA:

You are expected on the following tables (with remaining time):
_ Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Europe #637390706 (No time limit)
_ Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Europe #640966219 (No time limit)

So I think the problem is, games with no time limit are being abandoned incorrectly by BGA.
And to make matters worse, it is a complete surprise to the players as the EMail does not give any indication.

So I guess the suggestion should be, do not abandon games that have no time limit.

[Jellby]

What do you mean "incorrectly"? They're abandoned after 40 days of inactivity, and that's intended. Perhaps the "no time limit" name is not quite accurate, but that's a different matter.

I agree there should be a warning or a visible description of this behaviour, though.

[jonathanmcc]

What do you mean "incorrectly"? They're abandoned after 40 days of inactivity, and that's intended. Perhaps the "no time limit" name is not quite accurate, but that's a different matter.

I agree there should be a warning or a visible description of this behaviour, though.

I received an EMail on the day saying it was my move and there was no time limit.
Later that day, the game was abandoned for 40 days inactivity.

It was 24 days since the last activity - not 40 days.

So that is what I mean by "incorrectly":
If there is no time limit, it's incorrect to abandon the game.
It there is a 40 day time limit, it's incorrect to abandon the game after 24 days.

Also, I had no idea there was a 40 day limit - and I am a member of this site for about 10 years (5 years premium).
Does it indicate this to the players when a game starts? I don't ever remember seeing it.

So this suggestion breaks down into several requests:
1. Change the automated emails so they indicate how many days are left out of the 40 rather than saying "no time limit".
2. Consider all activity - not just the date of the last completed turn.
3. If a game is abandoned this way, have a way to get it reactivated.

[Jellby]

It was 24 days since the last activity - not 40 days.

I took the 40 days from the previous answer. I don't know how long the inactivity timeout is. From previous threads and discussions, I thought it's around 4 hours for real-time and 2 months for turn-based. But I don't think that's clearly stated anywhere, and it may change depending on the game, or server load, or BGA whims. So games will be abandoned after an unspecified time of inactivity (probably several weeks, and it may require an actual turn being taken, not just some move+undo). "No time limit" refers to that you won't incur in penalties if you take too long, and you cannot be expelled. It doesn't mean the game will stay there forever.

[jonathanmcc]

It was 24 days since the last activity - not 40 days.

I took the 40 days from the previous answer. I don't know how long the inactivity timeout is. From previous threads and discussions, I thought it's around 4 hours for real-time and 2 months for turn-based. But I don't think that's clearly stated anywhere, and it may change depending on the game, or server load, or BGA whims. So games will be abandoned after an unspecified time of inactivity (probably several weeks, and it may require an actual turn being taken, not just some move+undo). "No time limit" refers to that you won't incur in penalties if you take too long, and you cannot be expelled. It doesn't mean the game will stay there forever.

I went hunting earlier and the 40 day limit is stated in the FAQ for turn based games. It took me a while to find and can't imagine anyone reading a FAQ unless they run into an issue.

This particular game had turns which are divided into many phases - move, combat, supply, etc. Each phase can take quite a while.
The moves I made 24 days ago where actual binding moves in the game - not move+undo. (They were air attacks which you cannot undo once they are made). Just for full disclosure, I had paused playing because we are playing 2 games at the same time. They are both coming near the end, so I wanted to concentrate on the other one and finish that, and then return to this one.

Now I'm terrified the remaining one will get abandoned also.

If I see "No time limit" in my EMail, I'm going to read that as no time limit for my turn.

This is the text:
You are expected on the following tables (with remaining time):
_ Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Europe #640966219 (No time limit)

I would not expect the game to get suddenly abandoned later that same day.

We could argue back and forth about the semantics of their rules, but the net result is I've lost a game I was really enjoying with my son, and BGA have lost a paying customer (unless they somehow managed to resurrect the game).

[Shivaware]

It was 24 days since the last activity - not 40 days.

I took the 40 days from the previous answer. I don't know how long the inactivity timeout is. From previous threads and discussions, I thought it's around 4 hours for real-time and 2 months for turn-based. But I don't think that's clearly stated anywhere, and it may change depending on the game, or server load, or BGA whims. So games will be abandoned after an unspecified time of inactivity (probably several weeks, and it may require an actual turn being taken, not just some move+undo). "No time limit" refers to that you won't incur in penalties if you take too long, and you cannot be expelled. It doesn't mean the game will stay there forever.

I went hunting earlier and the 40 day limit is stated in the FAQ for turn based games. It took me a while to find and can't imagine anyone reading a FAQ unless they run into an issue.

This particular game had turns which are divided into many phases - move, combat, supply, etc. Each phase can take quite a while.
The moves I made 24 days ago where actual binding moves in the game - not move+undo. (They were air attacks which you cannot undo once they are made). Just for full disclosure, I had paused playing because we are playing 2 games at the same time. They are both coming near the end, so I wanted to concentrate on the other one and finish that, and then return to this one.

Now I'm terrified the remaining one will get abandoned also.

If I see "No time limit" in my EMail, I'm going to read that as no time limit for my turn.

This is the text:
You are expected on the following tables (with remaining time):
_ Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Europe #640966219 (No time limit)

I would not expect the game to get suddenly abandoned later that same day.

We could argue back and forth about the semantics of their rules, but the net result is I've lost a game I was really enjoying with my son, and BGA have lost a paying customer (unless they somehow managed to resurrect the game).

The FAQ says:

A turn-based table is closed automatically if no move has been made in 40 days.

They certainly didn't define what they meant by "move", but my earlier message made it clear that the game was deleted a little over 40 days after your son made his last move. You can make the argument that partial moves by a player that can't be undone should be enough to reset the timeout countdown, but that is not how it currently works.