Accept all FarmVille gifts with a single click? Yes, you can

One of my biggest pet peeves about playing FarmVille and other Facebook games is accepting gifts from friends. It's a needlessly laborious process, so much so that I put it off during the weekdays and then set aside an hour on the weekends to accept all of my virtual booty. Then I gripe to myself as I click back and forth between the Facebook gifts page and the dozen or so games I play on a regular basis. It's during these moments that I sometimes wonder when playing games started to feel more like work.
farmville gamers united
Until yesterday. I spotted a red button on my Facebook game requests page -- right above my FarmVille gifts -- that said 'Accept All.' Is this something new from Facebook? I wondered. I clicked the button and noticed that one-by-one my gifts were being processed and accepted for FarmVille. Awesome! Then I did the same for Mafia Wars, then FrontierVille. And, always a skeptic, I double checked my games to make sure my gifts arrived -- and there they were. Sweet!

gamers unite one-click giftsAnd then I noticed that this new 'Accept All' button was not from Facebook, but a new offering from Gamers Unite!, a clever and semi-controversial application that help you find friends, lets you trade virtual items (when possible) and -- what's frowned upon the most -- automatically snags all game bonus items from your Facebook feed, no clicking required. Basically, using the Gamers Unite toolbar can get you banned from certain games, and I personally know a few players who will unfriend people who use this application.

So, if you're in the anti-Gamers Unite! camp -- you're probably not going to like what I have to say next. The new one-click gifting is ingenious, so much so that I'm counting down the hours until Zynga or Facebook either put a stop to it or simply buy the app to make it official.

Whether or not you use GU's one-click gifting is up to you, but either way, this new add-on just underscores how badly the social gaming gifting process needs a complete overhaul, making it as easy as possible for us farmers, mobsters and restaurateurs to get our quick game fix without any distractions.