Board Game Arena

Thanks for an awesome platform!

As a first time, non-premium player, my experience was a bit crazy, e.g.,

1. This seems to be the only way I can get a message to BGA, so apologies if it's the wrong place.

2. During the game I wanted to report a bug. I filled in a detailed bug report, only to be told I wasn't allowed to post it. Why wasn't I told that earlier?

3. I woke up this morning to find the game simply vaped. Eventually I found out that another player had won but I couldn't see how. I couldn't even look at the final board position or moves.

4. I found the replay feature, but I didn't want to replay the whole thing, just see the end of the log and board position. As usual, I wasn't allowed to use it anyway.

5. In desperation I decided to go premium, bit I wasn't allowed! Apparently that's because I've only played one game.

6. So I tried to message the winner with my congratulations and asking for the final moves, bit I wasn't allowed that either because of some red banner that was always scrolled off my phone screen (I'm traveling right now.)

Of course you need money and that's ok. So do I. But you won't even take my money right now, and my only game experience ended bitterly. Am I likely to start another?

I really hope there's an internal discussion about this, because you've done an incredible job on the coding and it's all going to waste as long as policies like this repel new players and make it almost impossible for them to tell you why. I wonder if I'll even be allowed to post this.

First of all, welcome to BGA, angthuonimo!

By writing in the forums, you mostly contact the playing community, not BGA admins or developers. The usual way to handle this would be to write a bug report here: https://boardgamearena.com/bugs(as you tried to do).

This might have been a temporary issue of some kind. Have you tried again? Have you logged out and in again? You may also try to fully clear your cache. Did you get any error messages (like the red banner you described) and what did they say in which case?

I think you should be able to write a bug report (but there might be a restriction I don’t know of, because you have only played one game) and watch any replay (allthough for newbies the number you can watch per day is restricted).

Once you opened the replay by clicking on „view game replay“ and picking a player, you can go to the end fast by clicking on „Advanced replay functions“ on top, then clicking the rightmost button and choose „Go to end of game (fast)“ to see the end game situation.

What’s more, in a turnbased-game you should be able to see the last moves of the game by clicking the matching button in the game log, if you do this within 24 hours after the game finished.

You definitely should be able to go premium (this doesn’t make sense at all.)

And you should be allowed to use the in-game chat or personal chat. When you first contact someone in their personal chat, there is a warning about bad behaviour, but this shouldn't hinder you from writing them a message.

All this has nothing to do if you are premium or not. The premium features are described here: https://boardgamearena.com/premium?src=globalmenu

If your problem remains, you can directly contact the support: https://boardgamearena.com/support
I think in your case you should handle this as a technical problem, so you may choose "other" and after that "technical issue" and "disconnected" (because the other two options just lead you to the bug system). There you have a technical test to check and if this doesn't solve your problem, you hopefully finally can send a report to the service. There you might refer to this forum post. Don't forget to add the error messages you got, because without them it's very hard for the support to help you.

I hope your next experiences on BGA will be much better!

Hi Cigma,

Thanks for taking the time to offer me help on this.

I think what you've described is how it should be but not what happened.

The replay button said I could not use it because I'm not a member. The bug report was rejected cos I'm not a member and I haven't played two games. It was at most 8 hours after game end that I found the table vaped so the log was not accessible. It did say explicitly that I could not go premium before playing two games, and accordingly there was no button to do so. I followed your directions through "disconnected" to the tech tests, they repeatedly failed to reach a server (this is new and probably a bug in the test because I could actually play) but then they just led back to the main support page. I'm glad you find it all as hard to believe as I do.

I'm also keen to get this sorted out for my own gaming pleasure, but the real tragedy is that such a great platform which must have taken aeons of developer effort to construct is repelling most newbies by kicking them all in the teeth at the end of their first game if they don't win, which they probably won't, being newbies.

Please could you do me a favour and just take all the text I've written and file it as a bug report? Obviously you'd explain that it's some other dude complaining and you don't vouch for whatever I say. I'd much appreciate that and I think it would save a lot of time. Perhaps I'd be able to see your bug report and post comments, if I'm allowed.

angthuonimo wrote: ↑11 August 2025, 11:31 Please could you do me a favour and just take all the text I've written and file it as a bug report? Obviously you'd explain that it's some other dude complaining and you don't vouch for whatever I say. I'd much appreciate that and I think it would save a lot of time. Perhaps I'd be able to see your bug report and post comments, if I'm allowed.

I did this and possibly you can find and comment it here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=179654

It might be that somehow BGA doesn't see you as a full member yet, because you have only played one game. So perhaps if you play some more games, this could solve at least some of your problems. I suggest you go ahead and try. Good luck!