The following blog post carries the personal thoughts of Elder Prince, founder of Blossomsoft Games.
The Eternal Eden Facebook page got locked out of nowhere a few months ago. I tried reaching out to their team several times, but they never bothered to respond, leaving me totally clueless. I have no idea why they decided to delete my page, considering I never posted anything inappropriate or against their rules.
Something similar happened to a relative of mine who owns a fancy store selling handmade products. It was a disaster for her business. She lost a ton of sales because of it and had to start her page from scratch and could no longer stay in touch with her growing clientele.
From a Google search on this subject, it’s really discouraging to find out that this issue isn’t uncommon, and it’s hitting small businesses hard.
As game developers and business owners we should learn a vital lesson from all this mess. Relying solely on social platforms is a big no-no. Especially when it comes to Facebook, they’re the worst of the bunch, always playing dirty tricks.
Building a social media following can be a real pain in the neck and a drain on our wallet. I remember throwing money into ads a while back to get more followers, but Facebook couldn’t care less about my efforts. They can shut down a page without giving any explanation, just like that. And to top it off, these Facebook pages don’t offer much in return. They limit the reach of our posts, so only a tiny fraction of our subscribers, usually less than 5%, get to see them. It’s a completely unfair system that doesn’t help businesses grow their presence.
My doubts about Facebook’s reliability started brewing almost a decade ago. I created a page called ‘We all love Role-Playing Games,’ and it was doing great with loads of engagement. I had around 45K subscribers, and each post would get hundreds of comments and thousands of likes. But then, overnight, Facebook decided to change their algorithms, and suddenly, all those numbers took a nosedive. I was left with just a handful of comments and likes on each post. And to make matters worse, my posts were constantly getting hidden from people’s feeds. After that, I lost all interest in posting on Facebook.
Honestly, it seems like Facebook has turned into a meme graveyard. Maybe their shady practices will lead to their own downfall eventually. As normal citizens, we shouldn’t give too much power to Facebook, there are surely other ways for families and friends to stay in touch. It’s about time we start supporting new social platforms that aren’t just out to grab all the money they can get.
I’ve made up my mind. In the future, I’ll be cautious with social platforms and focus on entertaining my fans through my website or private forums instead. I’ll come up with some cool ideas to get people engaged on my own platform. I’ve already started to add more widgets on my blog and a new forum will be installed soon. External social platforms should remain a minor endeavor.
And if you’re a game developer or a business owner, I strongly suggest not letting Facebook control the fate of your business. Be sure you have a community platform installed on your website, this way there’s no chance your posts will be shadow-banned.
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