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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#331

Post by dylan604 »

protimewaster wrote: post #222
mariusor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it's different with GOG? Both GOG and Steam allow you to use local copies of games, and both would deny you access to your account to download more games once banned. Steam allows you to install games without DRM from their platform.

Another issue is, how do you get your games when you're banned? Most people don't have all their games installed at any given time. With GOG, there is at least an unofficial, supported way to get an offline installer for each of your games. With Steam, there's no officially supported way to do this, so it's likely to be a bigger PITA to archive all your games ahead of time. In reality, though, almost nobody is thinki…

How is something unofficial yet supported? Is there just no "download installer" button on the site, but can be done as long as you know how to obtain the URL?

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#332

Post by vablings »

IshKebab wrote: post #164
vablings wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the real issue here is with the banks and the payment processors. It's very likely that they have metrics for larger marketplaces about being below a threshold for fraud. Online game stores like steam live, breathe and die by payment processing. This was the reason why free trade was removed from RuneScape back in the day and it wasn't even a Jagex issue. People would go to 3rd party gold selling websites and…

> Sadly, the real issue here is with the banks and the payment processors I disagree. The issue is these huge platforms can arbitrarily ban people and consumers have no recourse. This sort of thing wasn't really possible before the internet age. We need new laws to deal with it. Banks are nothing to do with this. You could have your Steam/Google/Apple/etc. account summarily executed for any reason; it doesn't have to…

> This sort of thing wasn't really possible before the internet age. We need new laws to deal with it.

Yes, it was and it always has been[1]

>I disagree. The issue is these huge platforms can arbitrarily ban people and consumers have no recourse

This is par for course with every single EULA ever. I will say in the case of Steam it's hard pressed to find your account completely disabled and unable to play the games you rightfully purchased. I think the worst-case scenario is that you will be banned from engaging with the steam online community which restricts your ability to play with other users on steam

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#333

Post by Rohansi »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #282
autoexec wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-DRMed steam game will stop working after a while if you haven't logged into steam after a very long time. If steam ever went under, your locally installed single player games that work offline will stop working. Ask me how I know. I've taken to getting a cracked copy of every steam game in my library so that steam can't screw me over again in the future.

>I've taken to getting a cracked copy of every steam game in my library so that steam can't screw me over again in the future. you can trivially crack any steam DRM game yourself within minutes.

Yup, and you can find open source "cracks" if you don't trust using a binary for it. It's barely DRM.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#335

Post by vablings »

lurk2 wrote: post #273
vablings wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the real issue here is with the banks and the payment processors. It's very likely that they have metrics for larger marketplaces about being below a threshold for fraud. Online game stores like steam live, breathe and die by payment processing. This was the reason why free trade was removed from RuneScape back in the day and it wasn't even a Jagex issue. People would go to 3rd party gold selling websites and…

> This was the reason why free trade was removed from RuneScape back in the day and it wasn't even a Jagex issue. People would go to 3rd party gold selling websites and then pay for gold with stolen credit cards. They could easily keep the money because the trade cannot be reversed without a moderator and what they were doing was against the rules so everyone would just get banned. Gold farmers were paying for bot me…

It wasn't a blackmail scenario specifically Jagex got punished either way because the fraud was enabled by their platform. I don't have the time to check but I believe this was mentioned by the one of the Gower brothers in the runescape documentary. My broader point is that even if they cracked down on fraud which was absolutely not the fault of Jagex because of the poor security options at the time from Credit Card companies, they still had the issue of people buying gold from RunescapeGoldSeller.com and chargebacks

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#336

Post by moffkalast »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #280
morgan814 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never pay for something with DRM you cannot remove I take this to mean to sail the seas but I have apprehension over running modified binaries from random people. Is there anything that can be done to alleviate this worry?

the same way you should run _all_ proprietary binaries. restricted inside a sandbox. linux makes that easy with flatpaks.

Flatpaks would make it easy, if they ever worked when you needed them to.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#337

Post by rsync »

eCa wrote: post #140
rsync wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have neither a Google nor an Apple account. Well, to be fair, I do create an ephemeral Apple ID every time I get a new phone… But I immediately log out of iCloud after downloading the two or three apps that I use. I have no idea what my Apple ID or password is… I would have to go look them up. Further, if I lost said Apple ID, I would lose nothing of value. I believe, as you say, I exist meaningfully in society.

> I do create an ephemeral Apple ID every time I get a new phone In other words, you do have an in-use apple id at (pretty much) all times.

Sure, but it has no value and nothing negative happens if it is revoked.

Further: the three apps I install are not crucial - I could live just fine without them. All I really need is Safari and a working POTS endpoint for my cloud-hosted phone number ...

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#338

Post by arcfour »

Apreche wrote: post #18

The real problem is that companies do not offer any accessible, powerful, and intelligent customer support. Even if they have real humans to talk to, they simply follow a script. Those agents do not have the ability to investigate a situation or the power to use their discretion to take meaningful action. We should impose, by law, the following rules on all companies that offer accounts to their customers. 1. If they…

If Google bans 100,000 bot accounts a day, and even 1% of those "users" request a human appeal, you are demanding 1,000 hearings every 24 hours. Who pays for this? Magic? If the cost of providing a "free" email account includes the potential for a $500 human-led legal adjudication, free accounts will simply cease to exist.

Further, the current court system is already backlogged by months or years for serious crimes and property disputes. You are suggesting we socialize the cost of private customer service disputes. Why should taxpayers fund a judge to decide if a "common sense" decision was made about someone's banned World of Warcraft account?!

I'm sorry but this idea is very obviously not congruent with reality as we know it, as nice as it may sound.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#339

Post by moffkalast »

wrxd wrote: post #38
purpleflame1257 wrote: post #4

Every time a read a story like this, I feel an atavistic desire to self-host eveything. But I've had my Google account for 20 years now; the die is cast.

If you never start you'll never be free. It's also not all or nothing. You can keep things with Google, self-host new stuff and gradually move over things that make sense to mover over.

How does one self host an email server these days and not get flagged into oblivion?

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#340

Post by Gander5739 »

dylan604 wrote: post #329
ndriscoll wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original question was "how do you know these things before you buy the game?" My answer was "You could buy from a provider that advertises non-use of DRM like GOG." Whether it's a developer choice is irrelevant. GOG tells you the information you need for your purchasing decision, so if you want to know what you're buying, buy from somewhere like GOG. Also, don't assume that because it's DRM-free on GOG, it is als…

> it provides an economic signal that there's some segment of customers that requires no DRM as a condition of sale Do you just assume that's the reason someone uses GOG vs Steam? People could be using GOG for other reasons, and the lack of DRM is just bonus. So how does that signal really get interpreted correctly?

What other reasons?
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