Maybe better known as "It's the economy, stupid", but the effect is the same - its all about the money...
Whether it's paying programmers to fix their blunders, goofs, and other problems, or determining what advertisement gets to show up on the Zone Friends messaging panel next.
(Frankly, my personal pick would be one for an effective ad-blocker .)
But I digress...
As any backgammon zoner who hasn't been hiding under a rock knows, there were major problems introduced by the Zone's upgrade to backgammon this past week. There are reports that some problems have been fixed and that the rumbling has appeared to die down (so, it appears, has the Zone's interest in fixing the remaining, very visible problems with the backgammon software).
On the other hand, many people still report regularly that they cannot complete a match without issues - One only hopes that they are still sending in their complaints - because the reality is that if the Zone hears nothing, then they have nothing to respond to...
But I digress even further...
The gist of this little rambling is to point out the other effect of the backgammon snafu.
People are leaving the Zone; Some say in droves. Last word is that actual attendance is down significantly, but since I have no access to real numbers, I have to defer that information to the Zone to examine.
Even many of the tournament groups are encouraging their own Zone players to play on the Zone's competitor's backgammon servers. In fact several of these competitors have opened up their access to welcome the fleeing masses....
Anyway, to sum it all up, follow this chain of logic :
1. Zone breaks backgammon and leaves it partly broke.
2. People leave Zone for other servers.
3. Less people play on the Zone.
4. Less people see the Ads that the Zone displays.
5. Advertisers get lesser return on their investment.
6. Advertisers wake up and advertise on the other Backgammon servers where attendance has increased, recently.
.)