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Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

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Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#81

Post by danudey »

Gareth321 wrote: post #4

I'm fine with Epic getting financially reprimanded for dark patterns and anti-consumer behaviour. I am not on board with this: > That lawsuit also accused the company of illegally enabling real-time voice and text chat communications for children and teens in the game by default. So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyo…

Turn off voice chat by default for everyone. Let people opt-in to the toxicity that is online gaming.

I played a lot of Destiny, and it doesn't (didn't?) have voice chat. No problem. I also played a lot of Overwatch, which has voice chat that I didn't use. No problem. When I wanted to queue up for ranked, I would join a group and we would turn on voice chat. Also no problem.

I'm not sure why your position is "children should have to opt out of voice chat". Why not "adults have to opt in to voice chat"? After all, it's single button press?

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#82

Post by wccrawford »

danudey wrote: post #81
Gareth321 wrote: post #4

I'm fine with Epic getting financially reprimanded for dark patterns and anti-consumer behaviour. I am not on board with this: > That lawsuit also accused the company of illegally enabling real-time voice and text chat communications for children and teens in the game by default. So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyo…

Turn off voice chat by default for everyone. Let people opt-in to the toxicity that is online gaming. I played a lot of Destiny, and it doesn't (didn't?) have voice chat. No problem. I also played a lot of Overwatch, which has voice chat that I didn't use. No problem. When I wanted to queue up for ranked, I would join a group and we would turn on voice chat. Also no problem. I'm not sure why your position is "childre…

I didn't play Destiny, but Destiny 2 definitely has voice chat enabled by default.

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#83

Post by BryantD »

josephd79 wrote: post #6

Quoted post unavailable.

You’re not wrong about it being an easy fine to pay. But the meat of this is in the rest of the consent decree; Epic is under a 20 year order to maintain good privacy policies, report on them regularly, use a third party auditor (approved by the FTC), and so on. This is not trivial work and from experience the FTC takes these seriously.

It’s corrective justice, not punitive. The FTC is prioritizing prevention of future incidents above making Epic feel pain.

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#84

Post by flyingpenguin »

superkuh wrote: post #78

I'm still waiting for something to be done about Epic buying video games that support multi-platform like Rocket League then removing multi-platform support from those games. I bought Rocket League. I played Rocket League. Epic bought Rocket League and suddenly I couldn't play Rocket League. And I'm just left hanging with a useless "single player" rocket league that can no longer play the game. Epic is as much of a m…

You did not buy a guaranteed life-long access to online Rocket League in all its future forms.

Your purchase of Rocket League came with access to the online service as it currently stands as a trust only relationship between you and the owners of the online Rocket League service.

I understand your pain here, and I don't want to defend Epic games, but as someone who has created multiple free cloud services only to have their costs or development requirements exceed my ability to maintain them I am weary of anything that would legally require me to maintain a cloud service past my desire to do so.

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#85

Post by [deleted] »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #61
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 year olds aren't as dumb as you're assuming here, they'd either make a new account, or have already been been putting an 18+ birth date for years. All anyone cares about is covering their own ass, so it'd solve that issue, but it would have neglibile effect on anything real. Source: Used the internet when I had to lie to every site about being over 13, so lied to every site about being over 13. Also vrchat require…

It doesn't matter whether some will circumvent the age-gate. The company made an attempt, and enough kids are blocked by it, this is a good enough for the law, at the moment. But Epic is not willing to even walk this short way...

[deleted]

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#86

Post by jakevoytko »

devmor wrote: post #40
ethanbond wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just set it to off by default for everyone? That seems like a pretty pragmatic and very non-theatrical improvement. Of course it will have to contend with the theatrics of gamers whining about the immense hassle of a one-time settings change to enable voice chat.

"Off by default" is also a great way to make sure your feature is not used by the vast majority of people. It could easily lead to user attrition for new players looking for a social experience as well.

For what it's worth, games like Dota 2 already default all communication on new accounts to "off". It's a rite of passage for new players to play some games and realize they haven't heard anyone say anything. Then they find the setting and realize they're being relentlessly flamed for being new.

Once you climb out of the beginner ranks, literally everyone has found the communication settings and has adjusted them to their preferences.

I agree that most of the time, people don't change defaults. But isn't true for team games in my experience.

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#87

Post by toast0 »

Gareth321 wrote: post #4

I'm fine with Epic getting financially reprimanded for dark patterns and anti-consumer behaviour. I am not on board with this: > That lawsuit also accused the company of illegally enabling real-time voice and text chat communications for children and teens in the game by default. So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyo…

> So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? And what is the gate between on and off by default? A single button press?

I mean, if it's just turned off by default under the plain meaning of words... just turn it off for everyone by default, and if you want to listen to children calling you racial slurs, you can turn it on. No need to collect ages.

Otherwise, I've never seen much more than asking for your birth year to determine age, so it only affects children who can't figure out how to lie about their age. A skill that I've seen develop in minutes within the right framework.

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#88

Post by uwuemu »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #15
Gareth321 wrote: post #4

I'm fine with Epic getting financially reprimanded for dark patterns and anti-consumer behaviour. I am not on board with this: > That lawsuit also accused the company of illegally enabling real-time voice and text chat communications for children and teens in the game by default. So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyo…

Amazing how many people in this thread want to run to the government to solve the problem. It’s kind of like that musk thread from yesterday where a bunch of people showed up to defend the policy of banning links. If someone makes a rule, there will always be someone else who thinks it’s a good idea. As someone who grew up on roleplaying games when I was about 13, and had lots of exposure to the adult side of life, I…

[flagged]

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#89

Post by zug_zug »

superkuh wrote: post #78

I'm still waiting for something to be done about Epic buying video games that support multi-platform like Rocket League then removing multi-platform support from those games. I bought Rocket League. I played Rocket League. Epic bought Rocket League and suddenly I couldn't play Rocket League. And I'm just left hanging with a useless "single player" rocket league that can no longer play the game. Epic is as much of a m…

I can't speak generally, but I bought rocket-league on steam, and I still play it online, multiplayer, on steam, with steam friends or epic friends.

Re: Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations

#90

Post by zamadatix »

ethanbond wrote: post #58
zamadatix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is that https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2017/10/... Even if "by default" was the law though that would seem to make things even more theatrical and less pragmatic anyways.

Right but could it possibly be the case that FTC knows there's no reasonable way to validate ages, and they'd not go after companies for "affirm you're not at least not set the default to be in clear violation of the law? You know, alcohol, weed, and porn companies have managed just fine with user affirmations.

“I am 18+” is a well known joke as well and you can’t get purchased alcohol/weed without ID before it shows up (well, legally) because that’s when people realized they need a real measure not a fake one for show.

That the FTC would know there is no reasonable way would be a strong indicator it is indeed not a reasonable law. The default is definitely why Fortnite got fined, and is a reasonable reason to be fined, but it doesn’t make the law somehow effective it just makes Fortnite wrong for intentionally violating the law. I.e. they should have be fined but not because the law protects children effectively rather it’s not up to them to decide if it does on their own.

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