Coming Soon: New, Better User Accounts for SplashDamage.com

For the past few months and working closely with the chaps over at Fireteam, we’ve been tinkering away on a brand-new accounts system for the Splash Damage website to provide greater security, unified game accounts for future releases, beta management, and more. We’ll be migrating all of our current Splash Damage forum accounts over to the new system in the coming days, so you’ll be able to take advantage of the new features. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s the deal with the new system?

One of the main benefits of the new system is that you will be signing into your account via a secure server, meaning that all of your data is properly encrypted at all of the time. The new system will also provide a centralised facility for checking out and, if necessary, updating your registration data.

You’ll be able to sign in using either your username (as you would right now) or your email address, so if you ever forget your username, just pop in your email and log into your account that way.

The other thing we’re hugely excited about is that you will be able to use your account to sign into future Splash Damage games – so you’ll keep your name, player data, and even friends list without having to set up new player accounts every time we release a new game. This system also provides us with ways to handle future beta tests and opportunities for creating game-related web services, which is something that has tickled us in all the right places for quite some time now.

What do I have to do to take advantage of the new system?

In short, nothing or very little. We’ll be migrating all of the current forum accounts over to the new system, and for the vast majority of you this transition will be completely seamless. One thing we’re changing is the requirements for usernames to make them more consistent across the board in terms of size and format. There’s a small number of usernames that don’t fit this new convention right off the bat – should yours be among them, you’ll be prompted to modify your username when you log into the new system. Easy stuff.

What if my account stops working after the migration?

If you have any issues with your account after the migration, just shoot us an email sent from the email address used to register the account and we’ll do our best to help you out.

If you have any other questions about the impending migration, just post them up in the comments and we’ll get them answered there. Next stop: the future!