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So in case you somehow haven't noticed, many players who have bought the Pass Royale are experiencing a bizarre glitch where the unlock timer on their ladder chests will reset, seemingly randomly. So how does this glitch work, why hasn't the Clash Royale team fixed it yet, and what can we do about it?
TL;DR at the bottom of the post
What is the glitch?
The Pass Royale includes a feature where you can "queue" a chest. While one chest is unlocking, you can queue a second chest that will automatically start unlocking when the first one finishes. This gives the player much more time where they don't need to log onto the game to open a chest, and it can make unlocking chests much more efficient so you never lose time where you could be unlocking chests.
But many players who have the Pass have noticed a strange glitch: When they log onto the game, sometimes the timer on their chest will randomly reset. For example, a player will start unlocking a Silver Chest and queue a Golden Chest at night, and when they open the game in the morning the Silver Chest will be unlocked, but the Golden Chest's timer will have reset to 8 hours. It doesn't happen all the time, so it seems like it's resetting randomly.
But it's not actually random. u/Micsfyuen in this post, u/AmanoJacu in this comment, u/GG_shi7head in this comment, and u/InsertPlayerTwo in this comment, all came to the same conclusion for what is causing the timers to reset. Let's use the example above. Suppose you unlock a Silver Chest at 10:00 pm, and queue a Golden Chest. If you wait the full 11 hours (until after 9:00 am the next morning) before opening the game again, both chests will unlock with no issues. But if you open the game at any point while the Golden Chest is unlocking (from 1:00 am to 9:00 am), it will show the correct time, but then if you log out and log in a second time, the timer resets. If you open the game during the queued chest's unlock time, it can also reset by simply opening (not unlocking) another chest, going to TV Royale, or switching to the Clan War tab.
So here is my theory for what is causing the glitch: When a queued chest is supposedly unlocking, it actually just starts a "queue timer" that is equal to the length of time needed to unlock the chest. When the queue timer ends, the chest instantly unlocks. But if you open the game at any point during this queue timer, the game glitches out. The first time you log in it shows the correct time remaining, but it also cancels the queue timer and starts unlocking the chest normally, so when you log in again the timer display updates and seems to have reset. This is fairly complicated, which explains why it seems random most of the time.
Why hasn't Supercell done anything about it?
This glitch is pretty significant. If you don't know how it works and how to avoid it, then you can lose hours of chest unlock time. There have been similar glitches in the past, and the Clash Royale team is usually quick to fix them, so why aren't they doing anything this time?
First of all, despite what you may have heard the Clash Royale team has responded about this glitch several times. On the optional update post, they responded to people's complaints about the glitch here and here, and they also posted a comment here.
So if they are aware of the glitch, why haven't they fixed it yet? Well according to the Annual Leave Act of 1973, employees in Finland "earn 2 vacation days per month of service. The annual vacation shall normally be given as one continuous period during the holiday period of 2 May through 30 September." For the Clash Royale team, this vacation is always taken during the month of July. This is why they launched the update on July 1st. They wanted to release an update before their vacation, so there wasn't a drought of content while they were gone.
Since they're on vacation, they can't do anything more than fix simple game-crash glitches and post comments on social media. According to u/Supercell_Daria, this glitch "would require another update - we won't be able to push this through maintenance." To fix this glitch, they would have to get all their programmers back to the office, set up a maintenance break, release a new APK, and update the app on several app stores. This is why they can't fix it immediately.
What can we do about it?
Until the Clash Royale team updates the game, what can you do to prevent your chest timers from resetting? Well, since the glitch is caused by logging into the game while a queued chest is unlocking, there are two simple things you can do to prevent it from happening:
- Don't queue chests. It's annoying to lose this feature, but it's better than losing unlock time. If you stop queuing chests then this glitch will go away completely (except for whatever chest is currently unlocking, if it's a chest that was queued).
- Don't open the game while a queued chest is unlocking. I would recommend that you just don't queue chests altogether, but you can still queue them if you know that you won't be opening the game until both of them are finished unlocking. For example, if you want to go to bed at night but you have two Silver Chests, then you can unlock one and queue the other because you probably won't reopen the game until at least 6 hours later. Again, I wouldn't recommend it except for specific situations like this.
Using these two, you should be able to completely avoid the chest unlocking glitch. You'll be able to enjoy all the other features of the Pass without having to worry about chest timers randomly resetting.
Also, here is what you should NOT do if you're mad about the glitch:
- Don't refund your purchase of Pass Royale. Unless you think that all the other features of the Pass aren't worth $5. Now that you know how to prevent the glitch, you can still enjoy the other benefits without losing chest unlock time. It would be petty to refund it just because you're mad at Supercell because of the glitch, or you're mad that you can't queue chests like you were promised. You still get all the other benefits, which are over 10x value! If you already bought the Pass, then losing the ability to queue chests shouldn't be a dealbreaker.
- Don't give a 1-star review on the game. This is brigading, and posts that advocate brigading are breaking Reddit's site-wide rules. The Clash Royale team is already aware of the problem, and giving a bad review won't help at all. Besides, the game has been fun for over 3 years, and it doesn't make sense to give a 1-star review just because of one glitch that will be fixed eventually.
TL;DR: If you open the game while a queued chest is unlocking, and then close and reopen the game, the chest unlock timer will reset. The Clash Royale team has responded about this glitch, but they are currently on vacation and the glitch will require a major update to fix. Until then, you can avoid the glitch by simply not queuing chests, or by not opening the game while a queued chest is unlocking.
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