Blizzard Rolls Out Real ID Privacy Options 145
tacarat writes "The last time Blizzard mentioned their new Real ID system, there was a strong backlash from users over privacy issues. Blizzard reconsidered their plans to require real names for forums, and little has been heard about it since. Now, they've announced new privacy settings, allowing users to limit how their name gets shared or to disable the system entirely. Quoting: 'These options provide Real ID users with additional tools for customizing the service based on their preferences, enabling the ability to opt in or out of the Real ID "Friends of Friends" and "Add Facebook Friends" features or to turn off Real ID altogether.'"
Re:Dear Blizzard... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good! Disabled it. (Score:1, Informative)
If you have a WoW account and paid with a credit card ever, you had to give them your real name.
Re:Dear Blizzard... (Score:3, Informative)
You could already disable RealID support anyway, so I don't know what the OP is having a cow about, unless he wants no one to be able to use it. All this update does is give you a finer grain of options about how you want to use the service.
Before this change, if you decided to use RealID, you had no control over your friends' friends seeing your name and trying to add you to their friends list. This allows you to disable that, and a few similar options.
I've been waiting for this. There were a few friends I can finally add now because they didn't want to deal with the Friends of Friends feature, especially after one got essentially facebook stalked because of it.
Re:Dear Blizzard... (Score:3, Informative)
It is opt-out by default. In order for anyone to see your real 'meatspace' identity, they have to request to be your RealID friend, and you then have to approve them. And in order for them to do that, they have to know one of the following:
- Your battle.net account name
- Be a friend of a friend of yours (who you would have approved by means of the above or below)
- Be a friend of yours on facebook, and you would have had to login via SC2 to your facebook account.
All of those require you to have done some deliberate action to get into the RealID pool. These new options let you disable #2 and 3, and let you completely disable RealID. You could already block requests.
Re:this is the problem (Score:2, Informative)
You're an idiot. Pro gamers account for like 0.01% of people who bought SC1/SC2. SC was already a massive success as far as PC game sales were concerned before Koreans even knew what it was. And the majority of people who bought SC2 played through the single player campaign on medium or easier and then played maybe 10 ladder games before moving on to custom maps (which, by the way, accounted for like 90% of the people playing BW on battle.net last time I check like 6 years ago) or going back to playing WoW, MW2, etc.
Certainly professional gaming helped keep Starcraft in people's minds the past 10 years, but Diablo 2 doesn't have anything even resembling a "professional" class, yet its sequel just as anticipated as SC2 was, if not more so.
Professional SC/SC2 could end tomorrow and its impact on the popularity of the game (outside of Korea) would barely even be a noticeable.
Re:Dear Blizzard... (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Dear Blizzard... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure the Real Name Required / Made Public aspect was what people were up in arms about. Having the option to keep 1 friends list across all your alts is pretty universally desired.