It’s a story they’ll be telling for ages.
Update: It has been noted that ‘Varius Benson’ is of course not the real name of CapitalGamingRP’s CEO, but rather his name is Tanner Rozankovic.
Original: Here at MMO Fallout we pride ourselves on two things; Our commitment to keep consumers as informed and equipped as they possibly can be, a dedication to exposing underhanded actors in the industry, and our ongoing efforts to bring you the finest in quality entertainment. We are not so proud of our inability to properly number lists or our tendency to mix analogies, but when you think about it life is like a box of chocolates; the sand is rough and coarse and it gets everywhere.
Anyway, today I want to talk to you about GDPR, or the General Data Protection Regulation. I’m pretty sure I have that right. GDPR requires businesses to protect data and privacy for EU citizens for transactions. It also regulates exportation of data outside of EU states. Why should I care in the context of this article, you ask? I’m glad you asked.
But first, my cat. She’s a cutie.
MMO Fallout has received our first GDPR-related takedown request which may strike you as an odd statement if you’ve spent any time on this website. The request is related to an article posted way back in the yonder era of April 5, 2020 which with the ongoing quarantine feels like three years ago despite being less than a month and a half. In this article I posted about how the only positive review left on CivilContract’s Steam page at the time was either posted by CapitalGamingRP CEO Varius Benson himself or likely someone associated with the company.
The Steam account was listed as a “CapitalGamingRP official server” implying it had an official connection to the dev team and might run afoul of Valve’s policies against reviewing one’s own game. Allegedly.
The review has since been deleted by Benson himself. Now I received an email this morning not from any authoritative source but from CapitalGamingRP. I won’t post the email because people I’m actually interested in hearing from get scared when you do stuff like that and I respect them too much to make them think they can’t talk privately to me.
The takedown is over my use of Varius Benson’s name and implies that my doing so may be in violation of GDPR and Australian data protection legislation. You see GDPR and Australian privacy laws and things like that don’t actually prevent me from referencing the public-facing CEO of a business. Varius Benson does not hide his name, in fact if you join the Discord the first thing you see is this:
Varius Benson posts on the Discord under the username “Varius Benson”, on the Steam forums under the name “Varius Benson”, and I will note again he is the CEO of a registered business. I know he is the CEO because he posted such on the public Discord under his real name. Regardless, referencing the public name of a CEO is not a privacy violation unless that CEO bought some of the delicious figgy pudding I sell through Etsy and I leaked that data.
It should be unsurprising that a business known for threatening critics with spurious legal takedowns would try to pull this sort of mishegas. I’m not sure how they expected this to go. Unfortunately I’m not really the type of guy to pull my hand back when a chihuahua starts yapping at me.
More on CivilContract as it appears.
MMO Fallout 