Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 1001 posts

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

#541

Post by harha »

blunte wrote: post #477

Google uses non-human automation to make some decisions, including banning accounts. As others have mentioned, this is not unreasonable as long as there is a reasonable (in terms of time and effort) path to disputing a ban - i.e., speaking to a human about the issue. But Google (and Facebook, and probably some other companies) don't have reasonable processes for disputing or resolving these situations. Some have said…

I'm actually surprised there isn't more legal action taken. Not this specific case, but in advertising there's quite some damage for automated bans with unreasonable time to resolve the issue.

In a setting where advertisers are effectively forced to use Google to avoid giving market share to competitors, there's the element of not having a choice while ending up with a significant disadvantage once these mechanisms falsely trigger.

With Google being the operator of the platform and judge at the same time, I don't think they can hide behind terms of use in all jurisdictions. Scaling up without carrying the costs involved seems pretty unjustified.

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

#542

Post by horsawlarway »

benlivengood wrote: post #537
blunte wrote: post #477

Google uses non-human automation to make some decisions, including banning accounts. As others have mentioned, this is not unreasonable as long as there is a reasonable (in terms of time and effort) path to disputing a ban - i.e., speaking to a human about the issue. But Google (and Facebook, and probably some other companies) don't have reasonable processes for disputing or resolving these situations. Some have said…

> But Google certainly could hire and train humans to follow a process for reviewing and assisting in resolving these cases. They don't. It is doubtful that they cannot afford to do this; I haven't checked their annual report lately, but I'm guessing they still have a healthy profit. They'd waste 99% of their time with spammers, scammers, and attackers trying to social engineer account access. There's no reason to wa…

There's no reason they can't put a reasonable support ticket price in place. Hell - MS has been doing it for ages.

Make the support request cost $250-$500. Guarantee a human on the other end. That drops spam/scam attempts down to basically nothing. It also helps cover the cost of providing real review. Plus, $500 is a very reasonable expense for most companies (basically negligible for all but the smallest), and it's a high bar for scams/spam.

Basically - No, your answer is not a valid reason to not provide human based support.

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

#543

Post by sneak »

echelon wrote: post #202
jug wrote: post #55

This makes me anxious about my long time Gmail address. Back then I got it just because it and Google was cool, and their services had a good reputation. It was a different Google back then. If they had launched it this year I would never have got one because chances are it would have been cancelled by 2025. Gmail is really the only valuable thing that actually ties my life to Google. And it's not that hard to replac…

What's the best way to back up your data? Google Takeout? Is that easily ingestible into other email programs?

It's better to use Takeout than IMAP export if you're one of the people who, for whatever reason, have Google rewriting URLs in your IMAP messages (having Advanced Protection enabled is one such trigger, I learned).

It gives you all of your mail in mbox format, which is a common format.

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

#544

Post by sneak »

jug wrote: post #55

This makes me anxious about my long time Gmail address. Back then I got it just because it and Google was cool, and their services had a good reputation. It was a different Google back then. If they had launched it this year I would never have got one because chances are it would have been cancelled by 2025. Gmail is really the only valuable thing that actually ties my life to Google. And it's not that hard to replac…

Using email at a domain that you own (and thus makes you provider independent) is table stakes for adulting online.

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

#545

Post by benlivengood »

raverbashing wrote: post #490
blunte wrote: post #477

Google uses non-human automation to make some decisions, including banning accounts. As others have mentioned, this is not unreasonable as long as there is a reasonable (in terms of time and effort) path to disputing a ban - i.e., speaking to a human about the issue. But Google (and Facebook, and probably some other companies) don't have reasonable processes for disputing or resolving these situations. Some have said…

> They do because they can, and because the damage still falls into the "acceptable losses" column. Yeah, until they piss off someone too big to not give up without a legal/public fight or they piss enough people to make a dent on their bottom line. I think Google right now is just coasting and the short term evolution is just reactive/siloed plans but no bigger picture of where they want to go (basically just "evolu…

Coasting at a rate of 20% Y/Y growth on $10^12.

The big plans are cloud/youtube. Smaller plans are things like Nest, Pixel, Stadia, etc. Web ads will take care of itself indefinitely.

There are always moonshots in flight but it's non-trivial to create a second trillion dollar business out of thin air.

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

#546

Post by krajzeg »

sofixa wrote: post #248
krajzeg wrote: post #186

I just wish that regulation would step in and make behavior like this illegal for the corporate giants. It is definitely possible to limit the power of the TOS, and it's already done in some cases in Europe (certain common TOS clauses are just void and do nothing). One simple thing I'd really like to see is forbidding companies from terminating service without stating a reason, which seems like a really basic require…

> One simple thing I'd really like to see is forbidding companies from terminating service without stating a reason, which seems like a really basic requirement. Once you have that, the next step could be legislating that there has to be a way to appeal service termination In this case Google provided a reason - a ToS violation. If you want to get in the details ( action X on date Y violates ToS section Z), that migh…

It needs to be enough information so that it can be either remedied (if the violation is real) or disputed (if it isn't).

I agree that currently, "you violated the ToS" is legally enough reason and enough information. I don't think it should be.

I also don't think we want the fight against bots and spam to justify taking inscrutable actions against real customers.

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

#547

Post by cableshaft »

Well, considering Google announced they're shutting down all internal development on Google Stadia games, and now they're locking people out of developer accounts, guess it's safe to say that once again, Google can't be trusted to follow through with their products and need to be taken with extreme skepticism on any and all future endeavors.

I didn't think for a moment this might be successful, especially when it stumbled out of the gate, because Google is so bad at sticking with projects that don't immediately do gangbusters.

Even still, it looks like the plug is being pulled faster than I anticipated.

https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-shuts-down-internal-studios...

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

#548

Post by Ansil849 »

Here's the thing people need to realize: your email address, phone number, and any other digital identifier can be stripped and taken from you by whoever owns the service at any time. It doesn't matter if you host your own domain/mailer daemon, the host and/or registrar can choose to suspend your account as well. So really, there is no solution. Other than the realization that our communications channels are not ours, they are always someone else's, and we are forever at their mercy.

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

#549

Post by tarruda »

> The worst of all is losing access to my @gmail address of over 15 years.

I've read quite a few of these stories over the years, and it is really bad if all your digital life is tied to the Google account.

A couple of months ago I took the courage and started migrating to a new email (using mailbox.org) with my own domain purchased via namecheap.

Took a few days to migrate most of my accounts to the new e-mail, but I highly recommend for anyone in a similar situation looking for some peace of mind.

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

#550

Post by foobiekr »

Pxtl wrote: post #526
blunte wrote: post #477

Google uses non-human automation to make some decisions, including banning accounts. As others have mentioned, this is not unreasonable as long as there is a reasonable (in terms of time and effort) path to disputing a ban - i.e., speaking to a human about the issue. But Google (and Facebook, and probably some other companies) don't have reasonable processes for disputing or resolving these situations. Some have said…

At this point I'd be more than willing to pay a monthly for Google services if it meant I knew I'd get prompt support if something went wrong. I've looked into getting a GSuite account but from my reading like there are some incompatibilities with services that I use on the free tier. I already use Google's paid-tier for their storage and I use their domain registrar. I get that I'm using a free product so that means…

There's an assumption here that Google would behave differently for paid consumer accounts which I do not think is justified/safe.
Post reply on HN