Turbine Responds To DDO Community Protest 57
Zarrot writes "Turbine has listened to the community and backed away from the partnership with SuperRewards that we discussed yesterday. Quoting: 'Based on your feedback, we're stepping away from the "Offer" category for now. We'll keep exploring alternate ways for players who want points to get them. We'll also continue to innovate in pricing and accessibility because that's who we are. As of today, the Offer Wall is coming down. We'll collect all the feedback we've received over the last few days and will use it to guide future decisions.'"
Re:Disappointed (Score:2, Informative)
FTFT:
Re:Why did Turbine respond to this... (Score:3, Informative)
Second, Turbine is basically small fry. Facebook, for instance, can be found in the dictionary under "Network effects, power of", right next to Microsoft and TCP/IP. Unless you do zero social networking(and can keep your idiot friends from tagging images with you in them) they know that they have you. What're you gonna do? Sign up on Beebo? Classmates.com? Freezecrowd.com? Hahaha. Because the "OMG, what about the Children!, Paedophiles!@!!" argument is so strong, Facebook does have to pretend to care, somewhat; but their commercial position is overwhelming. Google is similarly strong, and has the advantage of being relatively "quiet" and "classy" about most of its privacy destroying practices(except for buzz, which was a genuine fuckup on their part). Google knows more about you than mommy does, and ain't runnin' a charity; but(by virtue of their size and power) has no need to do anything as crass and upsetting as selling you out to SuperRewards. They have quieter and more tasteful ways of getting what they want.
Turbine, by contrast, has a few second-string MMORPGs to their name. Those aren't perfectly interchangeable goods; but they are a far weaker position than either facebook or Google. Also, since they sold their userbase out to one of the "crass-but-fast" wealth extraction/scam outfits, this suggests that they don't have all that much in the way of valuable information, aside from email addresses, and the ability to motivate people with fake game money. Google or Facebook don't need to stoop to "recurring free trial" scams and whatnot, not because they are nice; but because they have actual, valuable personal information to sell. Turbine has fuck all, by comparison, so they went with a direct scammer.
I don't think that there are any generally applicable lessons, other than ones about size and power. Because Turbine was weak, they didn't have the resources or knowledge to go with a quiet and subtle way of selling you out, so they fucked up and chose a crass and obvious one. Because Turbine's products are rather interchangeable, to all but crazed die-hards, they had to respond pretty sharply, lest their customers leave. Not really a tactically useful lesson. Everybody already knows that the weak must be cringing and servile, while the strong can be abusive.
Re:I was glad to hear this (Score:4, Informative)
I think that management had a rosy picture in their minds [slashdot.org], that was dispelled by the cruel, harsh light of reality. The original post appears to only live in Google's cache. Unclassy.
Here's the full link from the DDO forums [ddo.com] front page (obtained from google cache [googleusercontent.com]):
Re:Disappointed (Score:5, Informative)
If you have pre-cache turned on, your email and userid was sent even if you never left their site.
Actually using any of the offers, if you were so foolish, would result in malware installations.
You have to question either the competence or the ethics of any company that thought that was a good idea. I'm more prone to question their competence, in this case.