I recently got two people asking me why they cannot add other users to their lot unless the other user has a lot as well. While this has been the case for a long time, I think it’s worth explaining why we did it. So I created a FAQ entry regarding this topic:

We track user activity through their lot ownership. Once a user becomes inactive, they lose their lot. This is the first indicator that they also should not be able to do a number of other things anymore. We did this for several reasons: Active users (i.e. with a lot) started depositing large quantities of items for random inactive users and abusing the limitations on deposit space like that. Other active users thought it’s cool to add dozens of inactive users to their lot and messed up the 2D map that way. Further, when a user had large amount of shop offers and became inactive, the offers stayed around and active users had less chances to sell their stuff. So we automatically move all shop contents of inactive users to their deposit. So we treat users without lots as inactive users and don’t allow them to interact with in-game systems until they get a lot.