Hello,
yesterday, on the audiogames.net forum an issue has been reported where a user tried to register, but after receiving a validation email and clicking on the link to validate their account, a page opened up asking to log in and the account never gets validated.
As it seems, the validation link received is somehow incorrect.
Several other users on the topic have also confirmed this behaviour, thus effectively blocking new users from registering.

Since Aminiel doesn't check audiogames.net that often, I thought it would be a good idea to bring it to the attention on the Playroom forum.
Do you have any idea on what could be causing this issue / what can users do to register? I personally couldn't reproduce it, after trying to create an account just now, the link worked as expected.

Finally, the link to the mentioned topic, so you can check a more detailed description: https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/44059/is-playroom-account-creation-broken/

Thanks.

Hello Nikola,
I'm not a developer, but we contacted the administrators about this issue and got a response. The problems users are describing could be related to a minor security measure during registration.
In order for a user to successfully register, the following conditions must be met:

1. They must click on the verification link within 15 minutes after the e-mail was received,
2. They must not be connected to any VPN when registering.
3. They must click on the link in the same browser as the one in which they filled in the registration data, the anonymous window is of course treated as a different browser.

So probably the most likely situation that can happen to a normal user is that they fill in their registration information in one browser, then open their email client and from there click on the validation link which opens in a different browser set as default.
Thank you for forwarding the topic from audiogames.net and I hope this information was helpful.

I think I saw it happening with a friend. It got solved by me creating his account with another email. Also, when I was trying to create the account for him, I tried using one of my other emails and it said it is used already, while it was not. I am not sure if removing a user, the mail gets also removed or not, because I have had other accounts in the past using the other email addresses, and now somehow can't use those addresses anymore, the friend I mentioned at first could not do it either, since he removed his previous account and then he couldn't use his usual mail to create it again.

At another but a bit different topic, still related to accounts though, I noticed in the past that users containing the word "king" couldn't be created, not sure if it's solved. My question is, if some user gets banned, and then someone tries to use an account containing such banned user, won't the new user be created? I haven't been able to test it, but I found it interesting.

In case it was not clear, let's suppose the user named king got banned, then someone tries to make a user named walking. Will it be forbidden because of containing the word king?

Hello,
first of all, @Snake_Eyes thanks for a very quick and detailed response, as well as for contacting the administrators.
I have forwarded the relevant part to the Audiogames forum and mentioned that it would be better to follow up here for a faster and more direct communication. It's also good to know about these new security measures being in place, I wasn't aware of that, keeping that in mind while helping new people sign up to the platform.

@Naday yeah unfortunately, now when removing your account the email associated with it is no longer removed. This used to be the case before, it was probably changed to avoid abuse of someone creating an account, quickly spamming someone, deleting the account to prevent getting blocked and then just re doing it again with the same data. I would still however remove the email after a certain longer period of time passes, to help exactly with this problem where someone deletes their account for legitimate reasons, but then wants to come back to the Playroom and can't do so via their prefered address.
Also, some usernames are indeed banned, obvious cases like Playroom, Admin, things like that, but of course I have no idea if King is a false positive. It seems like something too generic to ban.

hi. i'm having what might be a related problem. i'm attempting to update the email address registered to my account, but every time I get the email and click the link, it throws a htp 500 error. and nothing happens. same browser, same computer, same everything. just refuses to work.