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Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

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Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#41

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #15
rochak wrote: post #2

Is there really no way for a user to get in touch with a human agent? I read that Google automates the flagging and disabling of accounts but given how many people have their livelihood linked to these accounts, Google must have done something. It makes me scared how deep I have dived into the Google ecosystem. Time and time again I think about transitioning to someplace else but don’t know how to. It seems too daunt…

At least stop signing up for new things so you don't make the problem worse. It is a risk. I had a problem with my Google account, and while I was able to find a human to email about it, they were completely unable to help. It was literally "you have to do the thing, even though it makes no sense, because that's what our algorithm requires" (in my case it was repurchase an old domain in order to prove that I owned it…

> in my case it was repurchase an old domain in order to prove that I owned it

What happens if the domain-name is repurchased by someone else or claimed by Sedo, etc?

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#42

Post by Hamuko »

apexalpha wrote: post #25
p410n3 wrote: post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people Most likely yes. And the annoying thing is that they don't take into account different languages. The AI can recognize words, but not meaning. A while ago some Dutch person tweeted: "Die Bernie Sanders toch." Die = that, in Dutch. But the A…

It was like a couple of weeks ago when an Android app got banned from the Play Store because they supported Advanced SubStation Alpha (ASS) subtitles and mentioned it in the description.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#43

Post by brynjolf »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #32
p410n3 wrote: post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

There's virtually no chance that the automated system that banned him knew the account belonged to someone with whom Stadia was doing business. Even if we assume there's a list of high profile people/accounts not to automatically disable, I can't see him being on it.

He is developer of Terraria including their official Youtube has been suspended. What does a guy have to do to become a true Scotsman? Fall acy?

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#44

Post by nmfisher »

thow-01187 wrote: post #21
rochak wrote: post #2

Is there really no way for a user to get in touch with a human agent? I read that Google automates the flagging and disabling of accounts but given how many people have their livelihood linked to these accounts, Google must have done something. It makes me scared how deep I have dived into the Google ecosystem. Time and time again I think about transitioning to someplace else but don’t know how to. It seems too daunt…

No, this is a problem inherent to the business model Google/Facebook run. Stating a truism - to make a billion dollars, you either have to get $10 from 100M sales, $10k from 100k sales or $10M from 100 sales. Although each option leads to the same revenue, there are major implications as for the amount of support and attention you can spend on each customer. Google/Facebook/Twitter obviously run the "$10 from 100M sa…

These are literally some of the most profitable companies in the world. Are you honestly saying they would cease to be profitable if they hired a few hundred people to staff a customer service team?

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#46

Post by mtgx »

p410n3 wrote: post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

Using an AI to automate banning is not an excuse for not being able to quickly redress the problem for a multi-billion dollar company such as Google.

In fact, it should probably be illegal for companies to automatically ban any of their users/customers with AI/algorithms without being able to respond to said complaints within 24h.

Bottom line is that Google should have better customer support, because it's not like they can't afford it.

The only reason they don't have good support is because they are a monopoly and monopolies don't care about the repercussions to any individual customer unless something is illegal.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#47

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

thow-01187 wrote: post #21
rochak wrote: post #2

Is there really no way for a user to get in touch with a human agent? I read that Google automates the flagging and disabling of accounts but given how many people have their livelihood linked to these accounts, Google must have done something. It makes me scared how deep I have dived into the Google ecosystem. Time and time again I think about transitioning to someplace else but don’t know how to. It seems too daunt…

No, this is a problem inherent to the business model Google/Facebook run. Stating a truism - to make a billion dollars, you either have to get $10 from 100M sales, $10k from 100k sales or $10M from 100 sales. Although each option leads to the same revenue, there are major implications as for the amount of support and attention you can spend on each customer. Google/Facebook/Twitter obviously run the "$10 from 100M sa…

> Google/Facebook/Twitter obviously run the "$10 from 100M sales" model - meaning the only way they can provide profitable support or moderation is via inanimate algorithms, and deal with the PR fallout when they go wrong.

That isn't necessary though - other companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP also have tens of millions - to billions - of customers all with their own support requirements: the solution is simple: make the customer put up their own money as collateral for getting to speak to a human.

Microsoft charges $500 for a single business-class support ticket with ~8 hour return time[1] - and you get the money back if the ticket was not a PEBCAK issue. If you're a company that depends on Azure or Visual Studio or Windows Server then keeping $500 around just makes sense.

I just don't understand why Google and other companies that deal with long-tail customers don't provide this as an option.

[1] In practice, if you have an Enterprise support contract, the effective cost is much lower AND you get a much quicker response time - but there's more paperwork involved.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#48

Post by MattGaiser »

dsissitka wrote: post #38

Some context: > However, they were hit with a Terms of Service violation via email. They assumed it was issued accidentally, but three days later, their entire Google account was disabled without any warning or recourse. https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/terraria-studio-re-logic-...

> They assumed it was issued accidentally

That seems like a dangerous assumption to make.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#49

Post by ZephyrBlu »

poisonborz wrote: post #39
p410n3 wrote: post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

Maybe the solution is to not have single platforms that are this big.

Network effects are pretty handy, though.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#50

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

rochak wrote: post #2

Is there really no way for a user to get in touch with a human agent? I read that Google automates the flagging and disabling of accounts but given how many people have their livelihood linked to these accounts, Google must have done something. It makes me scared how deep I have dived into the Google ecosystem. Time and time again I think about transitioning to someplace else but don’t know how to. It seems too daunt…

Google only takes calls for ad sales and gsuite support as far as I know. Beyond that shaming them on social media is the only way to get their attention. I used to work for a top five web site and even we couldn’t get ahold of anyone - one day Google decided to start crawling us at a rate of 120k rps and it was killing the site by pulling ancient content that was 100% cache miss. No way for us to get in touch with Google officially, our billionaire CEO hadn’t traded numbers with their billionaire CEO so no help there, one of the developers had a college buddy that landed at Google and that guy was able to use some sort of internal mailing list to get them to drop the crawl rate down to 20k rps.

(Microsoft is just as bad - their sales people can’t be bothered to talk to anyone who isn’t a partner, but that worked out great for me, I wasn’t really feeling azure and it made a great excuse to not consider them. One of their sales people did leave me a VM three or four months later but we had already chosen another vendor by then).

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