Hello,
So since a couple of weeks, probably even months we have been experiencing severe playroom crashes, and, I, as many other people, would like to know what's going on, what causes it and if it is actually down because of a maintenance operation, as stated on the website, and sometimes even on the client itself, or if it is another thing the one causing it.
It is not only about wanting to know, though. It interests me, because I've noticed that when it happens, it's as if everyone stopped existing for Playroom, meaning that you can't log in, because it says your credentials are incorrect. Also, you can't see anybody's status messages, you can't add, block nor remove someone because it will identify the user as unknown. No, not just as unknown online player, simply unknown player. Also, the forum and the permanent messages stop working, and the status message field is empty, and it would be worthless to try updating it, because your own account doesn't exist.
I managed to stay online even after the crash, for around 3 to 5 hours, or even more, but then my internet kicked me out. It was interesting that the last I saw was 6 players online, in all of the languages, alltogether. Yet it was not kicking us out, although, if someone would log out, they would not be able to get back in.
I won't lie, one reason I want to know it for, is curiosity, but another reason is that I don't know if it somehow exposes our personal details, if we shouldn't be more careful with our credentials and so on. As it tells me that my credentials are incorrect, I'm afraid all my info can be either exposed or manipulated, or even get lost.
I hope I/we can get an answer soon to at least know what to do in such cases, or if we can contact someone when the problem occurs to do something with it asap.
Thanks in advance.

Adding to that, it would be nice if playroom users were kept up to date on these matters for the concerns mentioned by LP above but also because there are tournaments taking place with 20-60 players on the server every few weeks or so. If these shutdowns are indeed planned, then it would be helpful if we got advanced notice. Just a rough timeframe of these shutdowns would suffice so players aren’t left in limbo checking every few minutes to see if the server returned.

Aminiel has being doing some essential Maintenance on the website according to a message I got when wanting to update some Quiz party questions on Friday/Sunday. I am guessing he left out Saturday as he knows some people host tournaments on Saturdays. If work needs to be done to improve things then they have to be done sometime.

Hello,
Indeed, starting from December we have been experiencing technical problems. In fact, it is the same problem and it had occured 3 times, once on dec 2, once on dec 18 and last one on dec 20.
I can confirm these server problems are of course unplanned. The updates usually do not affect the availability of the server, so you can assume it's a technical problem when such thing happens, specially if it lasts for hours. Unfortunately, we cannot do anything about informing the players then, when they are planned we do inform the players by a notification.
However, the admins are atemting to find out the root of the problem in order to avoid it in the future.
About your information and privacy, I really do not think they are exposed, it is just that the server is down at the time, but of course Aminiel can confirm that.
We are really sorry for the inconveniences. Hopefully the it will be perminaently fixed soon.

Of course, if these issues aren't planned, there's not much anyone can do! Hopefully a solution can be found soon and the players are kept in the loopp.

Hello,

I confirm that the playroom was down because of a technical problem. We are trying now to find the root cause so to avoid it occurring again every other day.

Note that for planed maintenance work, we normally always inform helpers as soon as we know it. So these three last times were of course completely unexpected breakdowns.

Remember that the playroom is a free platform. wE are doing our best to make the server up again as soon as we can, but not all admins have all the necessary knowledge, and we all ahve buzy lives outside the playroom. WE are very sorry for the inconvenience.

Thank you very much for your answers, especially to @Marina7 and @Aminiel, as well as @YNWA, although I also wrote at the beginning that I didn't know whether it's a problem or if they are actually working on it, as written on the website.
And @Aminiel, also the friday (probably saturday morning at your country) the same issue happened, but only for a few minutes, around 30. I notify it in case it can help to find the issue, or perhaps you did something as soon as it happened, so it wouldn't be down for more than 12 hours?
I don't know if any helper can do something about it, I mean, if it is about restarting the server, maybe someone you trust could somehow restart the server remotely, or as I said, a helper, in case it happened once more.
As far as I know, all of the helpers at the English side have similar timezones, so, when it's evening for some users (including myself) more likely they will be asleep, so nobody would be able to do something about it when it occurs, because the problem seems to be happening only at around 2:00 your time, this is why I said someone you trust could probably take care of it.
If it's not possible, I guess the only thing we all can do is waiting until the problem gets sorted out.
Thank you once more for your answers.

We will eventually sort it out. We are working on it.

thanks so much about that, @aminiel and @marina7. today it also happened, it took me out of the server like 4 times during the day, as well as on december second, on the 20th and the 18th. I created a post in the spanish playroom leting them know the same thing. hope it gets fixed!

Yesterday afternoon and evening (from 14:20 to 20:40 PM GMT), it wasn't on our side. Ite seems that our host, OVH, had a general connectivity problem with some providers. Now this particular issue is fixed.