Intrustive safety, even in our games.
Nov. 15th, 2005 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forgotten_ariaThis is about World of Warcraft, but it's more about a social issue, which is why I'm not putting this behind a filter. It is however a useless rant, so it may not bear reading.
It's already been known that WoW looks at the titles of all your windows and if one of the windows is named with the name of a third-party cheat, it will report you. We'll today's patch notes talk about that it will now scan for trojan viruses, third-party cheats and will provide the benefits of "additional anti-virus protection."
1) I'm glad they are being open about it, instead of just doing it in the background
2) I'm glad I'm playing on a semi-dedicated game machine, so really, WoW can be as intrusive as it wants.
The real issue here is that here is this game made by a reputable major developer taking these rather intrusive steps. It transmits the names of all your windows, and now it's scanning for who knows what.
My issue isn't that they're doing it, but that they can mostly get away with they're 4 million subscribers shrugging and saying "whatever, just let me play."
Plus every time they do this, it means it makes the machine slower if you are using your machine for other things, which is our guess at why![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
binkbink gets 4 fps sometimes.
I think this is just twinging all those nerves that are already raw from machine gun weilding special task forces in the subways and shoe removal in our airports. The public as a whole is so willing to ignore this little losses of privacy and freedom in the same of safty. I don't know about you, but machine gun weilding people make me feel less safe.
I was kind of hoping that my escape could be free of these things. It's a game! It's supposed to be fun! Not a slowly closing shroud of Big Blizzard.
It's already been known that WoW looks at the titles of all your windows and if one of the windows is named with the name of a third-party cheat, it will report you. We'll today's patch notes talk about that it will now scan for trojan viruses, third-party cheats and will provide the benefits of "additional anti-virus protection."
1) I'm glad they are being open about it, instead of just doing it in the background
2) I'm glad I'm playing on a semi-dedicated game machine, so really, WoW can be as intrusive as it wants.
The real issue here is that here is this game made by a reputable major developer taking these rather intrusive steps. It transmits the names of all your windows, and now it's scanning for who knows what.
My issue isn't that they're doing it, but that they can mostly get away with they're 4 million subscribers shrugging and saying "whatever, just let me play."
Plus every time they do this, it means it makes the machine slower if you are using your machine for other things, which is our guess at why
binkbink gets 4 fps sometimes. I think this is just twinging all those nerves that are already raw from machine gun weilding special task forces in the subways and shoe removal in our airports. The public as a whole is so willing to ignore this little losses of privacy and freedom in the same of safty. I don't know about you, but machine gun weilding people make me feel less safe.
I was kind of hoping that my escape could be free of these things. It's a game! It's supposed to be fun! Not a slowly closing shroud of Big Blizzard.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-15 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-15 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-15 07:37 pm (UTC)The cost
Date: 2005-11-16 05:32 pm (UTC)I'd rather have Blizzard, who can be held accountable, intrude than have a faceless hacker intrude on my escape. The launcher checks for known keyloggers which attempt to steal your password, so the hacker can then steal your account. The keylogger's installed by ads on some website.
Now, you may have antivirus and security sufficient to stop it. But of Blizzard's millions of customers, some of them don't. Any minute the GMs spend addressing stolen accounts is a minute not spent addressing your ingame problem. And if you happen not to have sufficient security, that hacker is going to seriously interrupt your escape.
The scanner checks for hacks and cheats. Programs which allow farmers to teleport from chest to chest, open them without aggro, and move on, without even a human at the keyboard. The results destroy what little economy Warcraft actually has. Programs which allow people to flat-out beat you in combat every time. Again, this will seriously interrupt your escape.
So you can have your gaming experience interrupted by Blizzard's hack-checking, or you can have your gaming experience interrupted by the hackers. I know which I choose: I click "accept" on the EULA and grumble at the hackers. Do I like the fact that Blizzard scans my computer? No. But I like it more than the alternatives.
By the way, some of the things they scan include the serial numbers of hardware. My guess on this is two-fold: if the same computer regularly hijacks accounts, they can ban the _computer_... and they can get a profile of how much of their user base they'll hit if they require a hardware upgrade.
Even so, apparently Warcraft sends home less information than Windows.
Re: The cost
Date: 2005-11-16 06:42 pm (UTC)I still don't like the trend, even if the gold spammers are getting really bad.
I often have problems with things that endanger the careful and smart to protect the stupid and careless. Back when full powered airbags were killing short people because they were designed to protect an unbelted 180 lbs man.
In this specific case there is also the malicious, which makes it not as simple a problem.