The video below shows a guy laughing at his mother, who is a player, and is upset that the game is not working. This video was uploaded in May 2010. I can’t imagine how upset this person must be now.

Still, one of the points she raises has been echoed many times since the announcement. “As much money and time as people spend on here…”

Be warned that there is some strong language.

And here is the reaction when Super Poke Pets was finally loaded:

It wouldn’t be fair to say that this video is representative of all Super Poke Pets players, as we’ve seen various reactions to the news, but you can imagine how upset some are with Google’s decision.

As reported earlier, users are less than thrilled with this decision. Some are upset as they have invested real money into the gameplay. One user sent me a huge list of transaction receipts. Some of the transactions were as much as $25 a piece, and I’m guessing there have been plenty that have been larger than that, judging from the amount of passion users have displayed since the news came out.

We looked at a response from Google’s Super Poke Pets team. In that response, the team said, “The closest real-life analog[y] to SPP items is probably a Halloween costume. You purchase it to dress up and enjoy the experience, but likely don’t wear that costume day in and day out, or for every Halloween thereafter. Unlike a costume, there are still months ahead for you to make the most of the items in your inventory and we are working on tools to help you export some of your SPP content/items to keep and access outside of SPP. We are still in the process of working out the details of what these tools might be and will update you as soon as we have more information to share.”

That was only part of the response (you can read the whole thing here), but as users have been commenting on that article, it’s clear that they’re not buying the halloween costume analogy. Here’s what some of our readers have had to say about it:

Tracey Sheets:….”The Halloween costume analogy is a SLAP IN THE FACE!!! I am deeply offended. I have been playing SPP since April 2009. I love my little bunny named Snowball and I don’t understand why they can’t offer SPP on Google+. Playing social games is the ONLY reason I was going to try out Google+. I am disabled and SPP is art therapy and social interaction for me.”

“By the way, in case you’re wondering, I have multiple degrees. One of the best things about SPP is that I have been able to find intelligent and loyal friends to play with!”

I’m sure there will be plenty more reactions as time goes on. What do you think of the analogy?

If nothing else, even if your’e not a player of the game (which I’m not), it shows how truly passionate users can be about the products you develop, and that simply pulling the plug on them can always create a massive backlash and damage one’s reputation. Google’s big enough where this will probably do little to tarnish its reparation and usage overall, but it’s clearly left a stain for some users in this particular group. For a smaller business, that stain could be much greater.

Some users of Slide’s games (mostly Super Poke Pets) are upset that they have put invested money into the game with the impression that it would be around for a while. Others are more worried about losing relationships that they have established with other players as they have engaged in the game.

Some have vowed to stop using Google services altogether because of the ordeal. Others have even suggested a potential class action lawsuit.

“Since I have been with the Super Poke Pets I can say I have spent over $200. And $60 of it was when they announced that they where not making anymore Animated gifts , toys & habitats,” Chris (from PA) tells WebProNews. “Mad? Yes, I am mad. They stated they were not closing down. If I would have known I would have cut my loses & just played till the end & begged for them to keep the game up & running.”

“I put up with the glitches & the poor tech services, but [it] was the game that we loved,” she adds. “There are not many games out there that are not time measured, stressful & that anyone can play. This was one of the few that was just that, no violence no stress & a great family to play with.”

A reader named Reba said in comment on another article, “I’m a SPP player who has invested hundreds and hundreds of dollars in this game and I am so upset. I was assured this site would not close , so I continued to play and purchase now we are left out in the cold. This should be illegal!!! Had I been told the site would be leaving I would not have spent my money. This game is very important to us , some of us are disabled or sick, and we have made very good friends with this site, we need it to stay. At the very least they need to return our money and rest assured if they shut us down I’ll never invest myself in any other games.”

We contacted Google about the the whole thing, and a spokesperson directed us to the original Slide announcement we shared before, and a forum post from the SuperPoke Pets team discussing SuperPoke Pets specifically. Here is the text of that in its entirety:

SPPers,

We understand that the last few days have been difficult for many of you. We are reading your posts and wanted to provide more information about several of the themes and topics we’ve seen emerge.

Since stopping active development on SPP, we’ve seen quite a bit of speculation about Slide turning off SPP altogether. We want you all to know that, until this week, we did not have a plan to shut down SPP. In our June announcement about the changes, you can see that at the time, we saw very little reason to turn off SPP and intended to keep it running for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, as all of us have experienced, the future is not very predictable. As you may have read in our recent Slide blog post or other articles, the Slide group will be splitting up to join other areas within Google. Unfortunately, this means that we will be shutting down almost all of our products, including SPP and several that we just launched. This is not something we anticipated or planned for when we made our announcements about SPP back in June.

Many people also brought up questions about the value of items on SPP and we want you to know that we have spent a lot of time thinking about this very topic. You can use and enjoy virtual items however much you want – and over the course of SPP, we’re sure that there are items you’ve used for hours, even months. While you can use SPP items in a number of different ways: trade, decoration, gifting, and collecting, one thing you can’t do is bring them home and keep them forever.

The closest real-life analog to SPP items is probably a Halloween costume. You purchase it to dress up and enjoy the experience, but likely don’t wear that costume day in and day out, or for every Halloween thereafter. Unlike a costume, there are still months ahead for you to make the most of the items in your inventory and we are working on tools to help you export some of your SPP content/items to keep and access outside of SPP. We are still in the process of working out the details of what these tools might be and will update you as soon as we have more information to share.

We know that the SPP community, and the friends you have made here, are incredibly important to many of you. We encourage you to transition the relationships you’ve built on SPP to an outside platform so that they may continue to grow and flourish. As an example, Nicole established a FB group for SPP users as a place where you can go to make these sorts of connections:http://www.facebook.com/groups/104602236311763/. I also anticipate that some of you will have groups of your own that you will wish to promote or invite your SPP friends to. We are also looking into whether we can find an existing public forum that might host SPP Community rooms so that you can continue your interactions there. If we are able to find something we can implement, we will communicate the details here. As I mentioned in my original post, we will not be shutting SPP down for about six months. One of our hopes is that this will provide you with plenty of time to re-establish these connections outside of SPP.

There is still a lot to plan and do as part of the SPP shut down, and as mentioned above, you will continue to hear from us. We are saddened by the eventual loss of SPP and committed to doing what we can to make this transition as smooth as it can be for you, the incredible SPP community.

Thank you,
The SPP Team

Are you a user? Do you think the Halloween costume analogy is a good one?

All of this time, however, Slide’s team has operated separate from other Google projects, and Google of course recently launched Google+, and even more recently, games on Google+. It would appear that the Slide acquisition isn’t bringing much to the Google+ table.

Google, after dropping $200 million on Slide, is shutting it down, as first reported by Liz Gannes at AllThingsD. Meanwhile, Slide founder Max Levchin, who Google made a VP of Engineering following the acquisition, is leaving the company.

The Slide Team posted a message on the company blog saying:

We wanted to give you all advance notice that in the coming months, a number of Slide’s products and applications will be retired. This includes Slide’s products such as Slideshow and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products such as Photovine, Video Inbox and Pool Party. We created products with the goal of providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share. While we are incredibly grateful to our users and for all of the wonderful feedback over the years, many of these products are no longer as active or haven’t caught on as we originally hoped.

For example, on Slide.com, we will enable users to either download their photos or export them to a Picasa account. We are working to release this export feature over the coming weeks and, once added, users will have several months to take advantage of transferring their photos.

A Google spokesperson is quoted as saying, “Max has decided to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best. Most of the team from Slide will remain at Google to work on other opportunities.”

According to Gannes, at least some of the Slide team will be going to the YouTube team. I’d be very surprised if others didn’t make their way to Google+, given the aforementioned gaming offering on Google’s new social network.

Google also acquired another social gaming company last year in SocialDeck.

Google of course has some prominent third-parties offering games through Google+, such as Zynga, which makes some of the most popular games on Facebook, and Rovio, which makes the very popular Angry Birds.

Google had 21,805 fulltime employees as of June 30th, and just ten other people are linked to the exact title "Vice President, Engineering" on an official "Google Management" page, so this development appears to put Levchin pretty high up in the organization.

He’ll actually share the title with people like Vic Gundotra, Udi Manber, and Andy Rubin, who are well known for their work in the fields of mobile, search, and Android, respectively.

As for what Levchin, who cofounded PayPal, will focus on, a Google spokesperson told Kim-Mai Cutler that he "will be working on social products with a variety of teams."

Cutler’s also heard from unnamed sources that Levchin will be leading the development of Google’s would-be Facebook rival, Google Me.

The news that Levchin will join Google should help offset the recent departure of games developer advocate Mark Deloura, in any event.