When Was the Only Time Gardenscapes Players Beat Playrix?

The fully documented story of the 2024–2025 Gardenscapes Activity Pass Prize Chest bug that allowed PC players to collect repeated rewards, build enormous supplies, and progress through thousands of levels.

This may be the only time in Gardenscapes history when a significant number of players managed to take advantage of a serious Playrix mistake before the company could stop it. In less than two months, some accounts accumulated millions of coins, thousands of boosters, and enormous supplies of in-level tools.

The most important result, however, was not simply the rewards. With endless hours of active boosters, players began flying through levels at extraordinary speed. Accounts that had been thousands of levels behind climbed toward the highest available stages, and several players reached the Golden League far earlier than they ever could have through normal gameplay.

None of this involved illegal software, modified game files, or interference with Playrix servers. Players simply closed Gardenscapes, opened it again, and collected another reward directly from the game.

It sounds exaggerated, but authentic video footage from that period exists. It shows the Prize Chest empty, the game being closed, the application reopening, and the chest appearing full again without a single new level being played.

This is the story of the Activity Pass bug that briefly overturned the normal balance of Gardenscapes and allowed players to benefit from a reward system that is usually designed to control every prize very carefully.

How the Activity Pass Works Today

The Activity Pass is one of the main reward systems in Gardenscapes. During each season, players collect points, progress through a sequence of stages, and unlock boosters, tools, coins, lives, and other rewards.

Players who purchase the paid Pass path receive access to additional prizes. After all the main stages have been completed, the Bonus Bank appears.

The Bonus Bank works like a controlled vault. Players continue collecting coins, which are stored until they reach a specific maximum limit. In the version introduced after the system changed, that limit was 5,000 coins, and the reward could not be collected immediately. It was awarded only at the end of the season.

The system is limited and predictable. It does not continuously generate boosters, tools, and lives. There is a counter, a maximum limit, and one final reward.

Before the Bonus Bank appeared, however, the final stage of the Activity Pass worked in a completely different way.

What Was the Prize Chest?

After completing all the main stages of the old Activity Pass, players unlocked a repeatable chest called the Prize Chest.

Players continued winning levels and collecting points. When the progress bar became full, the Prize Chest opened and provided a random selection of rewards.

The rewards could include:

permanent boosters,
timed boosters,
tools for use inside levels,
coins,
lives,
unlimited playtime,
or combinations of several different prizes.

After the player collected the reward, the Prize Chest became empty and the progress bar restarted from the beginning. To open it again, the player was normally required to continue playing and collect more points.

This meant that the chest could be opened many times during the same season, but every new opening was supposed to require real gameplay and the completion of additional levels.

Who Had Access to the Prize Chest?

The Prize Chest was not available to every player. To access it, a player first needed to purchase the Activate Pass, which was the name used at the time for the paid Activity Pass path.

The player also had to complete every main stage of the season. Only then would the repeatable Prize Chest appear.

Players who used only the free reward path could not collect these prizes and therefore could not benefit from the bug.

This initially limited the number of players who could discover it. Those who had an active Pass, had reached the end of the season, and played the Microsoft PC version were about to encounter something that probably had never been anticipated.

When the Prize Chest Stopped Working Normally

In late December 2024, the Prize Chest developed a serious bug in the Microsoft version of Gardenscapes for PC.

Under normal conditions, after the reward had been collected, the chest was supposed to become empty and the player had to begin collecting points again.

That did not always happen.

The player collected the reward, watched the Prize Chest become empty, and completely closed Gardenscapes. When the game was opened again, the chest could appear full once more or immediately ready to provide another reward.

No new level had been won. No additional points had been collected. No other action had taken place inside the game.

Restarting the application was enough.

The player could collect another prize, close the game, reopen it, and repeat exactly the same process.

Six or Seven Rewards in One Minute

The process was extremely fast, especially on a computer capable of loading Gardenscapes without long delays.

Within approximately one minute, the Prize Chest could be opened six or seven times. Every opening generated a new reward, which was added normally to the player’s account.

Under normal conditions, opening the same chest six or seven times would have required completing many levels and spending hours playing.

With the bug, players could receive the same quantity of rewards within only a few minutes without completing even one additional level.

A player who repeated the process for an hour could perform hundreds of openings. When the same process was repeated every day, the accumulated rewards became enormous.

The Authentic Video of the Activity Pass Bug

The video below is an authentic recording from the period when the bug was still active. The footage was sent to us by a friend who discovered the problem and recorded the process while it was happening.

We apologize for the low quality and limited resolution of the video. It was not captured directly from the computer with screen-recording software. The computer screen was filmed with a mobile phone, so the picture is not always clear.

Despite the image quality, the content of the video is extremely important. This is not simply a description or a vague memory of what happened. It is real visual evidence showing the process step by step.

The video also shows a level being played with several free timed boosters already active. Their remaining timers are clearly visible on the screen, providing additional evidence that the rewards obtained from the Prize Chest were active and usable during gameplay.

At the beginning of the recording, the Prize Chest can be seen empty. The player then closes Gardenscapes, opens the application again, and the chest appears ready to provide another reward.

The process is repeated several times. The video clearly shows that no level is completed and no new points are collected between the chest openings.

The footage also includes real gameplay. Levels can be seen starting with active timed boosters, while the player’s tool supplies and accumulated coin balance are visible on the screen.

At the time of the recording, the account was at level 5,772 and had already accumulated approximately 545,000 coins.

The video does not have professional production quality, but it contains something far more valuable. It records game behavior that can no longer be reproduced today.

No External Program Was Required

One of the strangest parts of the story is that players did not need to install an external program or modify Gardenscapes in any way.

No application files were changed. No scripts, automation tools, or unofficial game versions were used. No technical knowledge was required.

The entire process involved only four normal actions:

opening Gardenscapes,
collecting the reward,
closing the application,
and opening it again.

The official game itself was restoring the Prize Chest and adding the rewards to the account.

This is why it would be unfair to describe the players as if they had hacked or broken into the game. They did not bypass a security system. They repeatedly used a reward that the application itself continued to display.

Why It Was a Bug and Not Just a Glitch

The word glitch is often used to describe any strange or temporary behavior that appears in a game.

In this case, however, the more accurate description is a reward bug or a reward duplication bug.

This was not simply a visual error that appeared randomly. The behavior was repeatable, predictable, and could be triggered many times by following the same sequence of actions.

The game was probably failing to save the fact that the reward had already been collected, or it was reloading an earlier state of the Prize Chest after the application restarted.

For that reason, it could also be described as a synchronization bug. The application and the account’s saved data apparently disagreed about whether the chest had already been opened and whether its progress should have been reset.

The Bug Worked in the Microsoft Version

This bug was confirmed in the Microsoft PC version of Gardenscapes.

The same process was tested on a mobile device through Google Play, but it did not produce the same result. On mobile, closing and reopening the application did not restore the full Prize Chest.

This suggests that the problem did not affect every Gardenscapes account in general. It appears to have been connected to the way the Microsoft version loaded or synchronized the Activity Pass state.

The same account could work normally on a mobile device but display the bug when opened through the PC version.

How Players Built Supplies Worth Millions of Coins

The Prize Chest did not always provide the same reward. One opening might give coins, another might provide tools, another could award permanent boosters, and another could add free timed booster hours.

When the chest could be opened six or seven times per minute, however, small individual rewards quickly turned into enormous stockpiles.

During the weeks when the bug remained active, players who spent enough time repeating the process managed to collect:

hundreds of thousands or even millions of coins,
thousands of permanent boosters,
thousands of in-level tools,
large supplies of lives,
and many hours of active timed boosters.

The major advantage was that there was no practical maximum limit. As long as the player continued repeating the process, the rewards continued to accumulate.

The old system had been designed on the assumption that every new Prize Chest opening would require actual gameplay. Once that assumption was broken, the chest became an uncontrolled production line for game resources.

Timed Boosters Were the Most Valuable Part of the Bug

In my opinion, the greatest benefit was not the coins or the permanent boosters. It was the timed rewards.

The Prize Chest could provide free time for the boosters available at the beginning of a level. Each new reward added more time to the boosters that were already active.

After enough repetitions, a player could have all three starting boosters active for four, five, or even six hours.

Every new level started filled with power-ups. Explosions and combinations could occur before the player had even made the first normal move.

Levels that would normally require many attempts became much easier to complete. Players did not worry about the free booster time expiring because they could return to the Prize Chest and add several more hours.

The Bug Did Not Only Give Away Levels. It Gave Away Entire Events

To understand the true size of the advantage, it is important to remember that the Prize Chest did not provide only permanent boosters and tools. It also awarded timed boosters.

Through continuous chest openings, the free time accumulated extremely quickly. In approximately half an hour, a player could secure as much as two hours of free Rainbow Blast, together with two hours of the starting booster combinations known at the time as 2 Bombs and Dynamite + Rainbow Blast.

This meant that, for the next two hours, every level could begin with all available starting boosters activated. When the time was close to expiring, the player could simply return to the Prize Chest, repeat the process, and add even more free time.

The benefit was not limited to completing normal levels. Events such as Treasure Hound and Magic Hats were also active during that period. These events depended on consecutive victories and normally lost their progress when a player failed a level.

With every level starting full of boosters and enormous supplies of tools available, the chance of losing was dramatically reduced. Completing Treasure Hound, Magic Hats, and almost every other event running at the time became close to guaranteed.

The same was true for competitions that required players to complete levels continuously, including the Golden League and other tournaments. Players were not collecting only the Prize Chest rewards. While progressing through levels without interruption, they were also collecting prizes from every active event.

When the coins, boosters, and tools from the Prize Chest were combined with rewards from Treasure Hound, Magic Hats, the Golden League, and every other competition, the total benefit multiplied.

All of this happened while players continued climbing through the main level progression. They were not simply filling their inventories. They were completing levels, winning events, climbing rankings, and collecting rewards from several systems at the same time. This created a cycle that continuously strengthened the account.

Players Began Flying Through the Levels

With timed boosters constantly renewed and parallel events providing even more rewards, players were literally flying through the levels.

Account progress no longer depended as heavily on level difficulty, luck, or careful resource management.

A player could continue for hours, beginning every level with all the main boosters and using tools without worrying that the supplies would run out.

Within only a few weeks, some players completed a number of levels that would normally have required months or even years of gameplay.

Several players reached the end of the normal levels available at the time and entered the Golden League. This may explain why so many accounts suddenly appeared near the highest levels during that period.

They had not all suddenly become better players. They had not all spent enormous amounts of money. Some had simply gained almost unlimited access to everything they needed to progress for several weeks.

What Remained After the Bug Ended

In late January 2025, the old Prize Chest was replaced by the Bonus Bank, and the process stopped working.

The affected accounts, however, were not returned to the condition they had been in before the bug appeared.

Players who had used it intensively had already accumulated enormous supplies. Some accounts held more than one million coins, together with thousands of boosters and tools.

Many players had already climbed thousands of levels and reached the Golden League. Even without the ability to reopen the Prize Chest, they could continue playing for a very long time by using everything they had already stored.

The effect of the bug was therefore not limited to the few weeks during which it remained active. For some accounts, its consequences continued to be visible for months or even years.

The Change from the Prize Chest to the Bonus Bank

In late January 2025, Playrix did not simply apply a small correction to the old chest. The entire Activity Pass bonus system changed.

The repeatable Prize Chest was removed and replaced by the Bonus Bank.

The difference between the two systems was enormous.

The Prize Chest:

provided several different categories of rewards,
could be opened repeatedly,
reset its progress bar after every opening,
and had no fixed overall reward limit.

The Bonus Bank:

collects only coins,
has a predefined maximum limit,
does not provide immediate repeatable prizes,
and awards the stored coins at the end of the season.

With the Bonus Bank, there is no longer a chest that opens, empties, and begins filling again. There is only a numerical counter with a specific limit.

Even if a similar loading problem appeared today, players would not be able to generate endless boosters and tools because those rewards are no longer part of this final Activity Pass mechanism.

Playrix’s Unexpected Christmas Gift

The bug appeared in late December 2024, during the Christmas period. For the players who discovered it early enough, it felt like an entirely unexpected Christmas gift from Playrix.

It was not an official holiday promotion or a planned seasonal reward. In practice, however, it gave some players resources that would normally have required years of gameplay or extremely large purchases.

Another important detail is that when the problem stopped, the accumulated rewards were not broadly removed from the affected accounts.

Coin balances were not generally reset. Booster and tool inventories did not disappear. The accounts were not restored to an earlier state.

Players kept everything the game itself had already awarded. Playrix changed the system for the future, but it did not take back the resources that had already been collected.

For that reason, players who experienced that period still remember the Prize Chest as one of the most generous moments in Gardenscapes history.

Why I Believe the Players Beat Playrix

Playrix carefully controls the Gardenscapes economy. Coins, lives, boosters, and tools are distributed in limited quantities because they are an important part of how the game operates and generates revenue.

Normally, players must decide whether to use a booster, spend coins on additional moves, or purchase a package.

For a few weeks, that balance was completely reversed.

Players were no longer trying to conserve resources. The game was giving them more than they could possibly use.

They did not wait for lives to refill. They did not worry about running out of tools. They did not calculate how many coins they might need for the next difficult level.

For the first and perhaps only time, the game’s economy worked entirely in their favor.

That is what I mean when I say that the players beat Playrix. They did not win a legal dispute and they did not force the company to change its policies. They simply managed to take far more from the game’s own system than the system had ever been designed to provide.

Why This Story Still Matters Today

This incident is not simply the description of an old bug that was eventually fixed. It is part of Gardenscapes history.

It explains why some accounts climbed toward the highest levels so quickly. It explains how certain players reached the Golden League in an unusually short time. It also explains how inventories that appeared almost impossible for a normal account were created.

If this story is not documented, it may eventually survive only as a vague memory shared among a small number of veteran players.

This is why the video matters, even with its low resolution. The dates matter. The original operation of the Prize Chest matters. The real consequences for player accounts also matter.

The bug can no longer be reproduced. The Prize Chest no longer exists. The Activity Pass has changed, and many newer players do not even know that this reward system once existed.

Documenting the incident helps preserve a rare chapter in the history of Gardenscapes.

Conclusion

From late December 2024 until late January 2025, a bug in the Microsoft PC version of Gardenscapes allowed the Activity Pass Prize Chest to appear full again after a simple restart of the application.

Players did not need to win another level or collect any new points. They could collect the reward, close the game, reopen it, and repeat the process.

With six or seven chest openings possible in approximately one minute, some accounts accumulated millions of coins, thousands of boosters and tools, and many hours of free timed power-ups.

The timed boosters allowed players to complete levels at extraordinary speed. Several climbed toward the highest available levels and reached the Golden League far earlier than would normally have been possible.

In late January 2025, the Prize Chest was replaced by the strictly limited Bonus Bank, and the gold mine was finally closed.

Everything that had already been collected, however, remained in the affected accounts.

That is why, in my opinion, this was the only time Gardenscapes players truly beat Playrix. For a brief period, the reward system stopped limiting the players and began giving them more than they could ever have expected.

Nik Marlow, Gardenscapes Team Leader

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