Account overwritten in Google Play (how to recover)
Greetings everyone.
So my kid's account was linked to Facebook only, and my main account to Google Play only.
After the latest update, kid's account was not working, so I did the dumbest thing one could possibly do: I loaded kid's profile (from Facebook) on top of my main account (even typed DELETE when prompted, believing my account would be deleted from my phone only, thus unknowing that it would actually overwrite my game progress from Google Play).
Long story short, my main account is now what I call a "ghost ship" (I can see it still exists in the game, but can't find a way to log into it). To make things even worse, I never wrote down the Player ID (I only have the ally code).
I've been trying EA Help (in-game support) for the past few days, whithout any luck. Either the advisors don't really understand my issue and point me towards an online FAQ (as if I could fix the problem myself), or they say my main account is already linked to my Google Play profile (when it obviously isn't). By the way, yes I have logged off and tried playing as a Guest, but still I get the same (wrong) account.
It's really hard to let go of an account that I've invested so much in the past years. What if it was a bank account? "Oh, the money is still there, but sorry sir you cannot access it."
If anyone has any advice on how to get back my old lost account, I'd be very happy to hear it.
So my kid's account was linked to Facebook only, and my main account to Google Play only.
After the latest update, kid's account was not working, so I did the dumbest thing one could possibly do: I loaded kid's profile (from Facebook) on top of my main account (even typed DELETE when prompted, believing my account would be deleted from my phone only, thus unknowing that it would actually overwrite my game progress from Google Play).
Long story short, my main account is now what I call a "ghost ship" (I can see it still exists in the game, but can't find a way to log into it). To make things even worse, I never wrote down the Player ID (I only have the ally code).
I've been trying EA Help (in-game support) for the past few days, whithout any luck. Either the advisors don't really understand my issue and point me towards an online FAQ (as if I could fix the problem myself), or they say my main account is already linked to my Google Play profile (when it obviously isn't). By the way, yes I have logged off and tried playing as a Guest, but still I get the same (wrong) account.
It's really hard to let go of an account that I've invested so much in the past years. What if it was a bank account? "Oh, the money is still there, but sorry sir you cannot access it."
If anyone has any advice on how to get back my old lost account, I'd be very happy to hear it.
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Howdy, Stranger!
Replies
Good luck!
This is a great tip, thanks for posting. In fact I do have a swgoh.gg account, but I never enabled the sync option, which means I never inserted my Player ID.
Thank you for your suggestion. I contacted Google Play support. Their answer was "It seems like your issue is related to the app itself. The best way to resolve your issue is to contact the app developer directly."
Yeah unfortunately they always say this. There were people who had similar problems and got the same response. But CG can do nothing to link your account back to Google play, because they can not access their databases etc. It's a totally different company.
I think now there is a SWOGH account with an EMPTY google link information.
Either that, or there are two swgoh accounts linked to the same gmail, and the one linked more recently overrides the other? I suspect this is what happened, based on the fact that the EA Help advisors claim that my old account is linked to my gmail.
The game prompts you to type "DELETE" when you go to "Link a Device", "This is the NEW DEVICE". Then you get to load a profile from Facebook, and you end up getting that prompt. To me, it wasn't clear that this procedure would overwrite my Google Play data (I thought it would delete the old account from my phone only). Huge misunderstanding...
It was not easy! Two weeks exchanging messages through the in-game help chat. Here's the feedback I sent them:
"I had to exchange messages with too many different advisors, until I found one that understood the problem and gave a solution. It felt like most advisors didn't read my previous messages, and presented instructions that didn't apply to my issue. I had to explain the same thing over and over again, for more than a week. I was almost losing hope, to be honest. I am very thankful though, since I got back access to my once lost account. My suggestion is to have the more complex tickets escalated to higher instances faster, instead of re-starting all the basic questions and having the customers repeat themselves in an exhausting experience."
Things I learned:
1) Write down your Player ID! (And don't share it with anyone else). Support will give you a very hard time if you don't have the Player ID. It's understandable, after all, how can you prove that the account is in fact yours?
2) Be very careful before linking your device to a different account. When the game prompts you to type "DELETE", the new account will over-write your Google Play data, so you'll lose access to the previous account (unless you have it linked to some other Google account -- see the next info).
3) You can actually have the same game profile linked to two different Google accounts. One of the advisors had told me to create a brand new swgoh profile and inform its Player ID (they would supposedly transfer the game progress of the old account to the new Player ID, they even warned me that the new profile would be completely erased/over-written with the contents of the old account). To be extra careful, I linked the new (disposable) swgoh profile to two different Google accounts (using Facebook to make the second link). In the end, they restored the old account's link to Google (instead of transferring the progress to the new Player ID), so I ended up with both swgoh profiles working (nothing got lost, not even the brand new "disposable" account).
I hope this might help someone facing the same problem. It was a long run, but with a happy ending. Thanks to everyone that showed interest in helping. MTFBWY
I'm not sure I understand your question. What I know is that on the iOS version of the game, there is a button that allows you to delete the account. On Android, what you can do is have your Google Play linked to a different account (if you pull it from Facebook, which is exactly the big mistake that I had made in the first place), then your old account becomes an "abandoned" profile (it's still there, but there's no way to access it). And if you don't know the Player ID, you'll have a very hard time trying to get it back.
So, if for some reason you really want to have your account vanished from the planet, maybe you could link it to Facebook, then load it on an iOS device, then hit that dreadful "delete account" button...
Oh, the "advisors"... Be prepared for a lot of frustration. It might be a lot easier if you know your PlayerID (this is the first thing they will ask you). Without the PlayerID, you have to convince them to escalate your issue to a higher instance, because apparently the advisors can't do anything about it, and will keep repeating the same questions and instructions that won't help you at all.
If you want to keep more than one game profile, I strongly suggest linking the SWGOH account(s) to Google (as a backup of your Game Center link). If you don't have an Android device, you could install BlueStacks on your computer (it's an Android emulator). It can be a lot of work, but if you really don't want to lose your game profile, it might be worth it.
Currently, I have three SWGOH profiles, each linked to a different Google account.
Let us know if you made any progress with EA Support. Hopefully, our experience might help others facing the same problem. Good luck!
Can you login to the webstore with that EA Connect? If so we might be able to recover from this