Activision isn't my favorite game publisher; you all may have picked
up on that. Except, they sort of are my favorite, because their gaffes
are just so obvious and so much fun to pick apart. So too today.

But this time it isn't because of how their treating their employees
(underpaid, bullied, harrassed). Instead, it's actually game-related.
Well, tangentially, at least.

See, the "Modern Warfare II" remake is out soon, and Activision has
announced a new requirement for players. If you want in on this game,
you're going to have to give them a phone number. Specifically, a
"mobile phone number must be linked to your account", one that can
receive SMS messages (so POTS and VOIP land-lines and super-cheap
pre-paid mobile plans are out). And yes, this is for the single-player
campaign as well as online (although with recent Call of Duty games,
there's really not much difference; always-online is a requirement for
single-player these days).

The stated reasoning behind this decision is - of course - to deter
cheaters. By linking the accounts to mobile phone accounts, Activision
hopes to be better able to slow (or at least identify) cheaters. Its
effectiveness seems iffy, though; the game costs $70 bucks already. If
a cheater is so intent on cheating that he's willing to buy a second
(or third, or fourth) copy of the game after his first account gets
banned, the added cost of a new phone line probably won't stop him
either.

Unfortunately, I fully expect this won't be a deterrant for most fans
of the franchise, who will give up their phone numbers with only a
little grumbling. So while I tsk-tsk Activision, I doubt it's going to
affect their bottom line very much. Worse, it will only encourage
Activision - and other publishers - to start demanding phone numbers
for other games and services as well. And while Activision /maybe/ is
only interested in this information for its stated use (reducing
cheaters), you can bet that - once it becomes a common requirement -
other companies will quickly jump on the data-harvesting aspects this
offers. It's not like gamers - who have historically proven to be
spineless when it comes to resisting publishers' demands - are going
to stand up en masse and say, "No".

Anyway, this doesn't really affect me. I don't like "Call of Duty" and
I don't like Activision, so it's not as if I'm going to be giving them
my money or my phone number. But it saddens me to see the industry
move in this direction.

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote in
news:0sldkhtp7b099h6hlekjrpo0h87vsiupl8@4ax.com:

> If you want in on this game,
> you're going to have to give them a phone number.

Blizz just backed down on this requirement for Overwatch 2, following cries
of protest.

--
Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos -- the only sysadmins that matter

On 10/12/2022 8:24 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Activision isn't my favorite game publisher; you all may have picked
> up on that. Except, they sort of are my favorite, because their gaffes
> are just so obvious and so much fun to pick apart. So too today.
>
> But this time it isn't because of how their treating their employees
> (underpaid, bullied, harrassed). Instead, it's actually game-related.
> Well, tangentially, at least.
>
> See, the "Modern Warfare II" remake is out soon, and Activision has
> announced a new requirement for players. If you want in on this game,
> you're going to have to give them a phone number. Specifically, a
> "mobile phone number must be linked to your account", one that can
> receive SMS messages (so POTS and VOIP land-lines and super-cheap
> pre-paid mobile plans are out). And yes, this is for the single-player
> campaign as well as online (although with recent Call of Duty games,
> there's really not much difference; always-online is a requirement for
> single-player these days).
>
> The stated reasoning behind this decision is - of course - to deter
> cheaters. By linking the accounts to mobile phone accounts, Activision
> hopes to be better able to slow (or at least identify) cheaters. Its
> effectiveness seems iffy, though; the game costs $70 bucks already. If
> a cheater is so intent on cheating that he's willing to buy a second
> (or third, or fourth) copy of the game after his first account gets
> banned, the added cost of a new phone line probably won't stop him
> either.
>
> Unfortunately, I fully expect this won't be a deterrant for most fans
> of the franchise, who will give up their phone numbers with only a
> little grumbling. So while I tsk-tsk Activision, I doubt it's going to
> affect their bottom line very much. Worse, it will only encourage
> Activision - and other publishers - to start demanding phone numbers
> for other games and services as well. And while Activision /maybe/ is
> only interested in this information for its stated use (reducing
> cheaters), you can bet that - once it becomes a common requirement -
> other companies will quickly jump on the data-harvesting aspects this
> offers. It's not like gamers - who have historically proven to be
> spineless when it comes to resisting publishers' demands - are going
> to stand up en masse and say, "No".
>
> Anyway, this doesn't really affect me. I don't like "Call of Duty" and
> I don't like Activision, so it's not as if I'm going to be giving them
> my money or my phone number. But it saddens me to see the industry
> move in this direction.
>
>
Never going to go along with something like that. I've passed on
membership cards at stores that would have saved me money because of
that kind of requirement. And frankly I've got enough games already to
keep me going for the rest of my life.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 12/10/2022 16:24, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Activision isn't my favorite game publisher; you all may have picked
> up on that. Except, they sort of are my favorite, because their gaffes
> are just so obvious and so much fun to pick apart. So too today.
>
> But this time it isn't because of how their treating their employees
> (underpaid, bullied, harrassed). Instead, it's actually game-related.
> Well, tangentially, at least.
>
> See, the "Modern Warfare II" remake is out soon, and Activision has
> announced a new requirement for players. If you want in on this game,
> you're going to have to give them a phone number. Specifically, a
> "mobile phone number must be linked to your account", one that can
> receive SMS messages (so POTS and VOIP land-lines and super-cheap
> pre-paid mobile plans are out). And yes, this is for the single-player
> campaign as well as online (although with recent Call of Duty games,
> there's really not much difference; always-online is a requirement for
> single-player these days).
>
> The stated reasoning behind this decision is - of course - to deter
> cheaters. By linking the accounts to mobile phone accounts, Activision
> hopes to be better able to slow (or at least identify) cheaters. Its
> effectiveness seems iffy, though; the game costs $70 bucks already. If
> a cheater is so intent on cheating that he's willing to buy a second
> (or third, or fourth) copy of the game after his first account gets
> banned, the added cost of a new phone line probably won't stop him
> either.
>
> Unfortunately, I fully expect this won't be a deterrant for most fans
> of the franchise, who will give up their phone numbers with only a
> little grumbling. So while I tsk-tsk Activision, I doubt it's going to
> affect their bottom line very much. Worse, it will only encourage
> Activision - and other publishers - to start demanding phone numbers
> for other games and services as well. And while Activision /maybe/ is
> only interested in this information for its stated use (reducing
> cheaters), you can bet that - once it becomes a common requirement -
> other companies will quickly jump on the data-harvesting aspects this
> offers. It's not like gamers - who have historically proven to be
> spineless when it comes to resisting publishers' demands - are going
> to stand up en masse and say, "No".
>
> Anyway, this doesn't really affect me. I don't like "Call of Duty" and
> I don't like Activision, so it's not as if I'm going to be giving them
> my money or my phone number. But it saddens me to see the industry
> move in this direction.
>

I don't mind the option of having your mobile phone number to increase
the security on an account but making it mandatory. Not happy with that.
My worst experience of it was with World of Tanks and doing a request
under GDPR for the personal info they held on me. It insisted I added a
mobile phone number for added security. I didn't what to do that so I
raised a ticket with customer support. There was lot's of back and forth
with them saying it was for security reasons and me saying that it's
irrelevant now as the credentials required to raise a support ticket are
the same ones that allow me to add a mobile phone number so unless they
have a way of knowing that mobile phone number is associated with the
legitimate account holder then there is no added security. The end
result, they said if I wasn't happy I could write a letter to their
legal department in Cyprus. Well thanks for that.

Getting information out of you in general, my pet peeve is shops that
ask for my e-mail address so they can send the receipt to me. Er no, if
I want a receipt you can just print one out for me and no I don't trust
what you're do with my e-mail address.

On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 11:24:31 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Update: Apparently the SMS-phone requirement is only for people
playing the PC version. And the cheat-protection (unsurprisingly) uses
kernel-level drivers.

Still won't make a difference to fans of the games or cheaters. The
former would still buy the game if you had to fly to LA and personally
perform fellatio on Kotick, and the latter will quickly discover
workarounds.

(And while I get that cheating on PCs is /easier/, it's in no way
unique to just that platform. Likely the only reason PC users are
getting 'picked on' and XBox/PS users aren't is that Microsoft and
Sony put their foot down. It's unfortunate that there's no 400kg
gorilla dominating the PC marketplace that could similarly say 'no' to
Activision... right Valve? ;-)

On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 11:24:31 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>See, the "Modern Warfare II" remake is out soon, and Activision has
>announced a new requirement for players. If you want in on this game,
>you're going to have to give them a phone number. Specifically, a
>"mobile phone number must be linked to your account", one that can
>receive SMS messages (so POTS and VOIP land-lines and super-cheap
>pre-paid mobile plans are out). And yes, this is for the single-player
>campaign as well as online (although with recent Call of Duty games,
>there's really not much difference; always-online is a requirement for
>single-player these days).

News is Acti-Blizz is backing down on this stance a bit... but of
course are doing it in the stupidest of ways. You'll still need a
cellphone number to make an account/play the game (even offline) but
if you use a pre-paid card (you know, the cheapest way to get a
cellphone number) that will work now. And since that won't stop
cheaters, it's increasingly obvious the intent was less to stop
cheating and more to connect ActiBlizz accounts to real-world people,
making their data-collection more valuable.

Of course, given what we recently learned about Steam and gambling, a
lot of these secondary (teritiary/quaternary/etc) accounts are created
not necessarily for cheating, but for earning lootboxes that can be
used on gambling sites. Cutting off these players - preventing them
from easily creating new accounts - would likely result in a
significant reduction of microtransaction income for ActiBlizz. So
maybe this change was made less to benefit the 'average gamer' and
more to ensure that their lootbox income continues uninterrupted.

On 11/18/2022 9:32 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> So
> maybe this change was made less to benefit the 'average gamer' and
> more to ensure that their lootbox income continues uninterrupted.
>
"maybe"?

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.