Turbine's new paywall crashes and burns

[Stormwaltz]

Classical French Alchemy

 

Edit: Apologies for the derail, but these are seriously the only two words I can see in the whole thread.  It's like I stared into the Sun again.

Apparently that blinded you to the third word.







Shit, someone had to pick that nit. I mean it was just hanging there, all nit-like.

[Stabs]

Rightly or wrongly an awful lot of Turbine's players believe that simply viewing the wall transmitted their email address to SuperRewards.

A thread on the DDO forums purports to show that "By simply VIEWING THE OFFER WALL, Turbine is passing them information about you"

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=2889279&postcount=2

Here's what is actually sent to get offers when you view the page:

Sent to www.ultimat[Link breaker inserted]epay.com (albeit over https)
GET /app/api/live/?sn=TDDO&method=StartOrderFrontEnd&display=OfferPa nel&accountname=(your_username_here)&email=(your_email_here)&userid=cmpncfdk4lttt3knpehqlt3ey&hash=752c9dea8cb ebedd14b69f5807b64941
HTTP/1.1

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=242982

[Grimwell]

The phishing emails were confirmed by two or three people at least. I think there's a pretty good reason why most people don't test whether or not their email is being given away. Turbine failed to comment on the e-mail issues, so the truth (or the corporate response) is still in the air...

(bold emphasis mine)

That there is sum great stasticials Jeb!

No way at all that it could be a coincidence when it's backed  by so many anecdotal validations!

Would I have done this for my product: No.
I still stand by my earlier statement - anyone who'd sign up for those offers... would sign up for them anyway.

[Stabs]

I still stand by my earlier statement - anyone who'd sign up for those offers... would sign up for them anyway.

The issue is not about signing up. It's about looking at the page to see what is offered. That, apparently, was transmitting DDO user name and email to SuperRewards, possibly without the knowledge of Turbine.

I tried to look at it but I wasn't logged in on this computer and couldn't remember my password.

In any event I don't see what is so terrible about a person participating in a marketing scheme if they want to. Don't you have a supermarket loyalty card? If you do, does that make you an idiot who deserves to be scammed?

[Reg]

Using a supermarket loyalty card doesn't trick me into signing up for a 10 buck a month phony subscription service on my cell phone and it doesn't install spyware on my computer. I don't care what Turbine's disclaimer says. By associating themselves with these crooks they've made the crooks look more legitimate and themselves less so. It was a very bad idea.

edit: word omissions

[Lantyssa]

Account info is not the same as forum/My sites. Unless the user decided to use the same stuff.

Well there ya go.

[Jamiko]

The wall is no more.

[Stabs]

Nice save.

[Reg]

It was such a mind bogglingly stupid move in the first place that I'm still left feeling less respect for them than before.

[Shatter]

Cant wait to see what they come up with next!

[tazelbain]

Become a bank and issue a credit card the earns turbine points instead of miles?

[Mrbloodworth]

I mostly expected this outcome.

 

[sam, an eggplant]

It was such a mind bogglingly stupid move in the first place

No it wasn't.  You're falling into the trap of thinking that only classic subscription, freemium (get the basic product for free, pay for more content) and advertiser-supported business models are legit. You're wrong.

Surveys are a labor exchange; you do a survey, they get valuable demographic information, you get game credits. The offers are cross-subsidies; you sign up for a netflix account or buy a pair of shoes online, they get a new customer, you get more game credits. Same deal as referrals where you sign up a friend for game credit, and yes absolutely, credit card miles. Nothing shady about any of that. Totally legit.

These are all perfectly legitimate monetization methods, Turbine just implemented them wrong. They released their users' private information and neglected to screen out many scams, and in so doing they've poisoned their userbase against these alternate forms of monetization and shot themselves right in the foot.

There's a psychological obstacle all free to play games have to overcome-- it's called the "penny gap". Consumers will put up with an amazing amount of shit as long as it's totally free, but if you charge them a single penny, they'll either go elsewhere or demand quality and services that will decimate profit margins before pulling out that credit card. Thankfully, consumers are stupid too. They'll spend half an hour filling out a non-anonymous survey for a dollar credit in a videogame, thinking they're getting something for nothing. And you need that, it's essential.

[Reg]

These are all perfectly legitimate monetization methods, Turbine just implemented them wrong. They released their users' private information and neglected to screen out many scams, and in so doing they've poisoned their userbase against these alternate forms of monetization and shot themselves right in the foot.

That's entirely true.  The mind boggling stupid thing that Turbine did wasn't to try to give out points this way it was their failure to do the simplest due diligence to filter out the obvious scams.

[Mosesandstick]

Neither PlaySpan nor Super Rewards passed the information on. It was stored in the user database only and not transmitted to any of the companies who advertised via Super Rewards. Players who visited the page did not expose any new information to PlaySpan (our in-game store provider) that they did not already have.

Even though this implementation did not constitute a technical breach of our privacy policy...

I'm not sure either of those statements are true.

[sam, an eggplant]

I'm not sure either of those statements are true.

The latter certainly is. Try reading their privacy policy. It says they won't share personally identifiable information with third parties unless the user agrees in advance except in a bunch of cases. These use cases include but are not limited to, well, pretty much everything. Also, they're free to give your personally identifiable information to third-party subcontractors/licensees without limitation and the third-party's privacy policy then applies. In other words, their privacy policy, like all such policies, is smoke and mirrors. It was created to eliminate potential liability resulting from not having a privacy policy at all.

[koro]

I think the only really "mind-bogglingly stupid" bit was not doing the proper amount of research into their choice of partners and said partner's history.

[Mosesandstick]

Good spot. What does the phrase "including, without limitation" mean? That it applies to anybody they want it to?

[sam, an eggplant]

It means they can trade your identity to the russian mafiya for ecstasy and cialis bulk packaged for resale without broaching the "agreement". The agreement has no teeth at all, that's the whole point.

[tmp]

I don't understand how this is a travesty.

Would I have done this for my product: No.

If you don't understand how this is a travesty, why not?

[Ingmar]

I don't understand how this is a travesty.

Would I have done this for my product: No.

If you don't understand how this is a travesty, why not?

It isn't a binary question, it is possible for something to not be a travesty but also not be the right choice.

[tmp]

It isn't a binary question, it is possible for something to not be a travesty but also not be the right choice.

True enough, however i'm reading "travesty" to be pretty much in green; it's rather the overall attitude which seemed to be "i don't get why people are upset, these suckers would've got scammed anyway" that made me curious if it's genuine unability to realize how the concept of enabler/accomplice might be part of the picture here, or if it's just fashionable snark...

[Grimwell]

What Ingmar said.

I wouldn't have done this, but I don't think the bowels of Hell should open up and swallow Turbine whole for it. Their intent wasn't evil, the execution drew these results though. It happens.

[Mosesandstick]

I don't think it was a bad idea, except that:

1. Don't send user information off to your partners
2. SUPERREWARDS. That would've taken a 10 minute google search. SERIOUSLY?!

You expect a certain level of competency, especially from a company that has been online for this long. They failed bad. Nothing wrong with the idea.

[Khaldun]

You get shit for having a "potentially good idea" if it's executed badly. Execution in a business or institution is everything. Almost nothing that a business might do is always and forever a bad idea no matter what. If there's one thing you ought to know if you're trying to run an online business of any kind where: a) many of your customers are reasonably savvy about 'best practices' and seamy shit in online commerce and b) it matters to you that you have a good reputation as an online vendor is that you do not under any circumstances look c) like you have anything to do with the seamy shit and you do not under any circumstances appear to be doing the ecommerce portion of your business in a cheap, shoddy or amateurish way.

I'm trying to get a professional association that I'm a member of to understand why membership has dropped steadily since they introduced a website where members can renew membership and pay for the annual conference registration fees. The major reason, I think, is that the whole thing looks like a drunken Serbian teenage hacker built it in about ten minutes--it has dead links, looping redirects, an old link to PayPal which they used to use but don't any more, and garish coloring and ugly fonts. You want to give your credit card to that? But all I get back is that they used a professional service and "this is the most-requested service that our members have said they wanted" (e.g., it's a "good idea" and well meant). Again, that means shit in this context. It's all about how you do it, not what you're doing.

[CharlieMopps]

It was a stupid idea from the start.
How long does it take a person to learn that "Click here and get free stuff" is the internet equivalent of "Follow me into this dark alley to get a neat surprise!"

[Mrbloodworth]

It was a stupid idea from the start.
How long does it take a person to learn that "Click here and get free stuff" is the internet equivalent of "Follow me into this dark alley to get a neat surprise!"

Quite a while, as many F2P publishing houses use it.

[LK]

But all I get back is that they used a professional service and "this is the most-requested service that our members have said they wanted" (e.g., it's a "good idea" and well meant).

I can't suffer ignorance and stupidity like that.

[Khaldun]

Makes me a sad panda, that's for sure. Guess why I'm not rejoining after this year, after many years of being a member? (Well, it doesn't help that some of the other members are cunts who annoy me when I'm actually *at* the meetings.)