Online Monopoly goes back to square one

Hasbro's problem-plagued online Monopoly City Streets game is going to be reset on Friday.

Having fixed many of the server capacity issues that plagued Monopoly City Streets' launch last week, Hasbro has announced that it will reset the game to bring several bug fixes and improvements into play.

Hasbro will be taking Monopoly City Streets offline starting from Friday 2am and is likely to be unavailable for 12 to 24 hours Hasbro reset and re-test the game.

The restart will also mean that existing Monopoly City Street accounts will be wiped with all existing users having to start over with 3 million to spend.

An online multi-player version of the popular board game, Monopoly City Streets uses Google Maps as a game board and allows wannabe property developers to buy streets and develop them in any of the cities covered by Google Maps.

Monopoly City Streets launch was marred by server crashes and chronic slow downs as over 1.7 million people simultaneously tried to play the game.

Controversy around Monopoly City Streets has continued unabated with fresh allegations of cheating emerging.

According to the numerous Monopoly City Street blogs that have sprung up since the games launch last week, less scrupulous players are taking advantage of Hasbro's lax registration processes.

At present player registration only requires users to create a username, a password, and provide a date-of-birth, allowing users to set up multiple accounts to gang up on other users, swap properties and create other mischief.

Whilst Hasbro has alluded to numerous in-game improvements, they have yet to confirm that loopholes such as their registration policy will be fixed by requiring users submit a verifiable email address and other similar measures.