Till a couple of days back I was able to challenge the various "Komodo" bots in Live Chess for unrated and rated games, as my games history shows. Suddenly none of the Komodo bots will accept challenges. It keeps saying "searching..." forever, and then "you've sent too many requests to this player" or something like that.

Is anyone else experiencing this? The games history on the bot's profile shows it is still playing games with others but somehow not accepting me. Am I shadow banned or something like that?

They may have just withdrawn them temporarily.

I will ask and let you know if I hear anything.

yes, same here unfortunately

Thanks for your effort. Please keep us posted if you receive an answer.

I got an answer from Zane at chess.com and it is bad news. It appears chess.com has had a plan of getting rid of playing bots for rating. It started with those named bots (Laura-bot, etc.) and now the Komodos. 

Thanks for the info. But that still doesn't explain why I can't even play unrated games against these bots. When I click Play, it is indefinitely searching. Not even a message from chess.com saying you can't play these bots any more. They could have at least informed us.

Also curiously, if you head over to the bot's profile (as an example: https://www.chess.com/member/komodo9), you can see that it is still playing games against some people. So this seems to be selective action.

Maybe chess.com have silently banned those people who largely played against bots (like me) from doing so? Maybe those who rarely play against bots can still do so?

A little transparency would help, one way or another.

You are right Santosh. I had never tried playing unrated, but I tried it now, and I also can't play Komodo either unrated. I will find out for us. 

Unfortunately it's the same here. I found playing Bullet Chess against the bot was helpful as Komodo Bots premoved and ended up with 50 seconds after the game. It was a nice experience.

completely agreed

please contact customer support (by clicking on the question mark in the bottom left corner). Maybe if enough of us complain, they will correct their mistake.

Hopefully.

The bots in chess.com/computer are not as good as the komodo bots

I know there are the komodo  engines in chess.com/computer but I like the live chess ones are better.

I don't think chess.com feels that this is a mistake. I think they had a plan to do this partly because people were manipulating their ratings with Komodo. In some cases, people were losing 50 games in a row on purpose to lower their rating for some reason. 

please contact customer support (by clicking on the question mark in the bottom left corner). Maybe if enough of us complain, they will correct their mistake.

Sending email suggestions is probably better than sending complaints. Also, starting a separate thread suggesting hyper bullet play for bots is probably better than hijacking a thread about why games against the Komodo bots are no longer available.

I think complaints are fair game. I think it's better to be honest and say that one is dissatisfied. There is no problem if a user honestly expresses his/her feelings.

In the past, I could play an unrated Game in Live Chess against the Komodo bots in order to test connectivity problems.

I believe this was extremely useful for testing a WiFi or network connectivity problem to chess.com considering I did not need to find a human player in Live Chess to test connectivity.

I have submitted a Feedback / Problem Ticket asking support for an alternative method for testing connectivity to Live Chess.

I have received a response from support;

"matches against bots in Live Chess are no longer possible and bots can only be played offline. Playing against the bots in Live Chess is no longer available as a way to check connection issues."

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

what does "offline" mean in this context ?

On Android, Playing the Bots or the Computer offline requires no network connectivity to chess.com, (once you are logged in), whereas Playing the Bots or Komodo in Live Chess requires constant network connectivity to chess.com or you will abort the game.