Twitter has been so unstable that a top game publisher in Japan has decided to end account binding
China-based game publisher Yostar announced to Japanese users on July 3 that they will be discontinuing Twitter account binding for several of their games. Yostar is the publisher of popular titles such as Arknights, Azur Lane and Blue Archive.
According to their announcement, it will not be possible to bind new Twitter accounts to certain games starting from the next app update. In addition, it appears that the Twitter account binding function itself will be removed in the future. Together with this announcement, Yostar is calling for users to register and link their YostarIDs on the official websites of each game.
Twitter account binding is a function that allows users to use their Twitter account for games that require an account to log in, play and transfer data. This function is used by various web services, including games operated by Yostar. At the time of this writing, the following Yostar-operated titles have announced the discontinuation of Twitter integration:
・Azur Lane
・Mahjong Soul
・Arknights
・Blue Archive
For example, the Azur Lane official Twitter account has stated that newly binding Twitter accounts will be disabled starting from the next application update around August or September, and that the Twitter integration function will be fully terminated by the end of 2023. Once the Twitter account binding function itself is removed, it will not be possible to log into the game or transfer data using one’s Twitter account, which is why Yostar is encouraging players to register and link their YostarIDs with the game.
As for Guardian Tales, which Yostar is co-publishing with Kong Studios for the Japanese market, no announcement has been made so far regarding the discontinuation of Twitter binding.
The official Arknights website, cites technical reasons as well as “Twitter API changes” as reasons for the termination of Twitter account binding. Yostar was the first company to contact Twitter when there was an uproar in February of this year regarding the API fee. At that time, Twitter responded by assuring that the change would not affect account binding.
Twitter has recently become unstable again due to API-related issues, so Yostar might have decided to cut ties with Twitter in fear of further future issues. In addition, Guardian Tales seems to have been experiencing problems with Twitter binding from July 1. It’s possible that these problems may have also had something to do with the decision to end the connection with Twitter.
Written by. Amber V based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-07-03 22:08 JST)