Tag: Nontroversy

Nontroversial: Blizzard and the Disappearing Half Million


Now I’m mad at Blizzard just as much as the next guy, which is why this article is going to hurt me more than it does the people who I am about to point out.

Today is October 31, 2019 of the year of Arnold, and that can only mean one thing; it’s time for the internet to do what the internet does best and that’s to deliberately misconstrue a statement in order to justify being outraged at something that the collective net already does not like and has no interest in viewing criticism of with any sort of rationality or objectivity.

Blizzard! They’ve done some crappy stuff lately. Today marks the start of Blizzcon with Overwatch World Cup preliminaries today and the festival really kicking off tomorrow and running through Sunday. One of the highlights of the event are two World of Warcraft tournaments called the MDI and AWC, the Mything Dungeon International and Arena World Championship respectively. Today’s nontroversy surrounds outrage about the wording of the prize pool, specifically that people are coming out and claiming that Blizzard used deceptive tactics to withdraw $500 grand in promised prize money.

In the run up to Blizzcon, Blizzard sold items for World of Warcraft with the following language:

“For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level.”

The wording is pretty clear; 25% will go toward the prize pool with Blizzard guaranteeing a minimum prize pool of $500k if the collective sales don’t meet that amount. But this is the internet, where outrage is king. Cue Cloud9’s Adam Chan claiming that Blizzard pulled their “base contribution” of $500k.

“Blizzard did not contribute a single cent to the AWC & MDI prize pools this year. They pulled their own ‘base’ contribution of 500k when they realised how well the crowd funding did ($2.64m USD).”

Youtuber and outrage merchant Bellular News, speaking on behalf of the WoW community, claimed that audience expectations looking at practices of companies not-Blizzard would interpret the wording as Blizzard contributing a base $500k and then the amount from the toy sales being added on top of that. He refers to the wording as “ambiguous,” which it isn’t, and he says that it is technically the case, but morally isn’t, which doesn’t make any sense.

He goes on to state that the practice is not industry standard, which it may not be. That doesn’t change the fact that the wording is very clear; The minimum prize pool will be $500k, it does not even imply that Blizzard is putting forward a base of $500k. But when you’re an outrage merchant, you gotta ramp up that hyperbole. He goes on to make numerous nonsense statements like “it goes against the spirit of such a system” which doesn’t mean anything, and how flabbergasted he is and how disrespectful the whole ordeal is to the community! Rabble rabble rabble!

I’ll be frank: There’s no fancy wording at play here, if anything Blizzard is speaking at probably a fourth grade level. Even MMO Fallout’s muse Massively has joined in to take Blizzard to task over “false pretenses.”

Right; here’s two things. Blizzard didn’t withdraw anything, let alone in a stealthy way, and there were no false pretenses. Nothing was ever stated or implied that Blizzard would put forward $500k and the money from those toy sales would be icing on the cake. It simply didn’t happen. It’s also being trumped up by players who have a financial incentive to gin up a faux outrage campaign to shame Blizzard into increasing the prize pool as well as Youtubers whose channels traffic in outrage.

It’s very plain language.

Bad Press: No, NDTV, Civilization VI Isn’t Milking Its Users For Data


Civilization VI has become the latest Steam title to play victim to review bombing, and players are incredibly unhappy about recent changes to the game’s End User Licence Agreement. But are they correct in their conclusions? It doesn’t seem so.

The gist of the controversy seems to be coming from this particular extension of the EULA:

“The information we collect may include personal information such as your first and/or last name, e-mail address, phone number, photo, mailing address, geolocation, or payment information. In addition, we may collect your age, gender, date of birth, zip code, hardware configuration, console ID, software products played, survey data, purchases, IP address and the systems you have played on. We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use.”

It sounds bad, even disturbing if you’re Rishi Alwani writing for NDTV without doing the bare minimum research. You might for instance find out that the quote above doesn’t appear anywhere in Civilization VI’s EULA which Alwani has presumably not even bothered to read or cross-check for accuracy, because if he did he would have found that it doesn’t exist. He might also have found that the last update for the End User License Agreement he is quoting a false version of, was in January 2018. The quote he’s taking as proof of the EULA is citing an old review from last year as well.

It might also have stopped Alwani from making the embarrassingly reckless if not slanderous claim linking the “new” (January 2018) EULA to the notion that Take Two is “milk[ing] its existing user base,” and that this deplorable action is somehow turning Civ VI into spyware to collect on some investments. I’ll throw some calendar knowledge down on Rishi; January 2018 is in fact not one week after February 2019.

“With its earnings call taking place last week before the change to Civilization VI’s EULA, it is possible that its below expectations performance has resulted in a move to milk its existing user base as much as possible. That said, it is deplorable that despite shifting over 17 million units of Red Dead Redemption 2 in under weeks, Take Two still thinks it’s not making enough to keep it or its investors happy, perhaps playing a part in turning Civilization VI into spyware.”

In short, Alwani didn’t bother (1) fact checking anything and (2) didn’t even verify the date of the post he was quoting as though it was official. Don’t quit your day job, Rishi, unless this is your day job in which case you might want to read up about how defamation covers statements made with reckless disregard for facts.

“[r]eads the new EULA for Civilization VI.” No it doesn’t. There is no new EULA. This article falls over itself so hard to try and create a controversy that I thought it worth calling out directly. Where the text does appear is the Take Two privacy policy, and Alwani’s posting of the text leaves out a very important preface that this information corresponds to data gathered through voluntary activity. (click on photo to enlarge)

The personal information that is collected by this policy is in reference to voluntary acts. When you sign up for services, websites, jobs, purchase DLC, post on the forums, respond to surveys, request technical support, download demos, etc, you’re going to voluntarily give information along the lines of your contact info, games you play, your purchases, your PC specs, mailing address, etc, and various other personal information. While playing the games themselves, they are also aggregating information like your achievements, scores, performance, etc. Very basic info.

By the way, the privacy policy was last updated in May 2018, so Alwani is lying both on where the text comes from and when it was added.

Ultimately it’s not some clandestine intelligence gathering operation that you’re agreeing to, nor is it Firaxis or Take Two digging their greedy little hands into your computer to try and find some personal data to sell. Steam user Panic Fire does a great job of explaining why the blowback is undeserved (full text here):

“The “EULA” everyone keeps posting is actually Take 2’s privacy policy and not actually found in the EULA for this game. (Crazy I know) And take 2’s privacy policy covers everything take2 does from Running a forum, technical support, selling products (aka games to you), and all sorts of other things. The points to take home is that all the information gatherd by Take2 in this case are things you directly tell them or that they use to facilitate a direct service to you. (EX giving them your name and credit card information to facilitate an online purchase) Edit: The Privacy policy hasn’t changed since last May and the EULA since Last January.”

You can find Take Two’s EULA here, including all of the details you need to know about what personal information is collected and how. If you don’t want Take Two to get their mitts on your information, your best method is not filling out surveys for their products. If you want to read the actual facts, I suggest avoiding Rishi Alwani’s coverage.

Nontroversial: Secret World Legends and the Unsurprising Subscription


Subscribing to Secret World Legends is a subscription that automatically renews like a subscription. This statement may be obvious to anyone who has subscribed to a game, a newspaper, or television service, but for some reason it needs to be reiterated when talking about Secret World Legends. The community has been in a bit of a tizzy this week, which may have origins in trolling, over some misconceptions regarding the game’s subscription.

First, let’s discuss the claim that Secret World Legends signs you up for a recurring payment without explaining this. It isn’t true. The button to subscribe says “subscribe,” and when signing up with your payment details it explicitly states that you are signing up for a recurring payment. This is standard for virtually every video game with a subscription on the market and is made clear when checking out.

Second, there are statements floating around that the game sets you up for a one year subscription through Paypal when signing up. This is another falsehood. When you sign up with Paypal, you authorize Funcom to charge you the subscription fee every month as long as you’re still subscribed. The authorization lasts for a year, a limitation imposed by Paypal, but does not constitute a year-long subscription. It basically means that you won’t have to log into paypal and authorize Funcom every month. In a way, this subscription system is more restrictive as other games won’t stop after a year and will keep billing as long as the card is good.

In short, a subscriptions constitute subscribing to a service, and setting up a recurring payment means a payment that occurs more than once. It does not, incidentally, allow Funcom to take money whenever they feel like, for whatever sum they feel like.