European Online Services Suffer DDoS Attacks

Earlier this evening when I logged into World Of Warcraft, there was a warning that things may be a tad slow. They were not. When I logged in later this evening, I saw the following message :

An image should be here
WoW Warning

A couple of my friends asked me if I was lagging, which is a question I sometimes get asked when I’m down the pub, but they were referring to lag and latency in the game. I was fine, they clearly were not as after not responding for a while both disconnected.

The issue it seems is due to a series of DDoS attacks on some European Online services, but certainly not all. The message from WoW indicated it’s not Blizzard under attack. Some Second Life users in Europe may have had a rough evening too.

Continue reading “European Online Services Suffer DDoS Attacks”

The Oculus Rift Widens Amidst Death Threats And Vitriol

Gamespot ran a story the other day regarding the negative reaction to Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR. In that article they link to an article on Game Informer in which Oculus VR Vice President Nate Mitchell is quoted as saying :

We assumed that the reaction would be negative, especially from our core community, beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. I don’t think we expected it to be so negative. As people begin to digest it a bit and think about it, you can see that Twitter and Reddit is swinging back the opposite direction. The onus is on us to educate people, and we want to share everything we’re doing.

However the original Gamespot article has been edited and had the headline changed to : Oculus VR employees got death threats after Facebook sale. In the updated article they quote Palmer Luckey :

We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term, we did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families.We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of sh** is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus.

I have absolutely no idea why anyone would find that sort of behaviour even remotely acceptable, this is not a life or death issue, it’s not that important in the grand scheme of things. I lean towards the unhappy camp over the purchase because I am not a fan of Facebook and I feel Oculus should have reached out to the Kickstarter backers but the deal is done and people will have to wait and see what happens next.

Nobody deserves to be on the receiving end of death threats over this issue and it is completely out of order to harass family members who have nothing whatsoever to do with this. I suspect some of that may be point scoring over the amount of data Facebook encourages people to share, but that is no excuse.

Continue reading “The Oculus Rift Widens Amidst Death Threats And Vitriol”

Facebook Should Not Buy Second Life For The Sake Of Both Companies

Bopete Yossarian has started a thread over at SLUniverse to discuss an article that appeared this week on Gamasutra : Why Facebook should buy Linden Lab. The article is posted by a community member called Nick Harris, rather than a regular member of the Gamasutra staff, the opinions in the article are therefore not the opinions of Gamasutra or its parent company.

The article doesn’t really delve into the reasons why Nick Harris thinks this is a good idea, which sort of undermines the article. However the idea is an interesting one, so is the idea that Microsoft or Yahoo! should buy Linden Lab. The ideas are interesting in terms of discussion but generally lack any real meat on the bones.

The article also falls into the trap of saying :

Facebook have tried to retain its dominance through simple critical mass, if that is where everyone is, if you have to join Facebook to not miss out on invites to your friend’s impromptu parties then their hope is that you will and you won’t mind the data mining they do on you for market research and the targeted advertising. You aren’t in a position to complain, really, as it is a service they are providing to you for free.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Facebook is not free, it’s an exchange of resources. They provide the service, users provide the content, Facebook then realise value from said content. Although there’s no money exchanging hands in terms of basic usage of Facebook, there is a trade of content for service. However that aside, the author really doesn’t make much of a case for Facebook to buy Second Life :

Not only is this primarily a social nexus like Facebook (a place where you can project whatever version of yourself you choose others to see, either using a younger image of yourself, or making an effort to dress up for the photo when you are actually a slob in real life, or use someone else’s image entirely out of low esteem, or some catfish scam), but you are encouraged to create an escapist alter ego through which to indulge your fantasies, to travel without time, cost, or hassle to “see the sights”, to meet new people who share your interests unrestricted by enormous geographical separation.

Whereas I can see to a degree what he’s trying to get at, he seems to be missing a gaping point about the differences between Second Life and Facebook.

Continue reading “Facebook Should Not Buy Second Life For The Sake Of Both Companies”

The Elder Scrolls Online Faces An Uphill Battle

I went back to World Of Warcraft recently, the road back has been a slow one but I’m now firmly back playing. One path on the road to return was the free to play option whereby you can play for free up to level 20, this was how I first returned to the fold. Getting to level 20 these days doesn’t take long and there are some other restrictions on the account, but it took me back to Azeroth and from there I was hooked enough to subscribe again.

The Elder Scrolls Online launches tomorrow, in what is called an early access stage. Those who have purchased the correct version of the game start five days ahead of the official launch. There are some who will start three days ahead of the official launch. The game comes with a 30 day subscription and then the monthly subscription costs are :

  • $14.99/30 days
  • €12.99/30 days
  •  £8.99/30 days

This is hardly extortionate but comes in an era when more and more titles offer a free to play option. The thing that oft gets forgotten with free to play options is that there are payment models included, some offer a monthly subscription with perks.

I started and subscribed to Age Of Conan, Star Trek Online and Star Wars, so I’m familiar with subscription models. However the times have changed and yet, World Of Warcraft is still going strong, with a largely subscription only model. This is the game that many cite as an example of how the subscription model works and they use it as an example of Zenimax making the right choice in going subscription only with The Elder Scrolls Online. However there are some gaping flaws in this theory.

Continue reading “The Elder Scrolls Online Faces An Uphill Battle”

Oculus VR Have The Opportunity To Generate Good Will To Kickstarter Backers

There have been a lot of column inches dedicated to the Facebook acquisition of Oculus VR. The initial reaction has largely been negative because Facebook are involved, as I’ve said before, Facebook only have themselves to blame for this, their actions have spoken much louder than their words and they fully deserve the reputation they’ve got. However this doesn’t mean everything they do is inherently evil or anything they touch should be written off.

Steven Poole in The Guardian believes the backlash tells us that Facebook Just Isn’t Cool. I believe it’s because Facebook just don’t have a good reputation.

Amongst the comments and debate on the acquisition I’ve seen quite a lot of comments regarding the Kickstarter backers. A lot of people have called them naive, others say they seem to be self entitled. I really am not a fan of this term, largely because it gets thrown around whenever anyone has a different view. I’ve seen this term thrown around a lot in debates about the forthcoming Elder Scrolls Online subscription only model, when people suggest a free to play model may be better, others accuse them of being self entitled, when in all reality, they are just pointing out where the MMO market is heading in terms of business models and I say this as someone who pays a subscription to World Of Warcraft. However WoW is a different kettle of fish, but I’ll leave this for another post.

What a lot of people seem to be missing is that in business terms, the Kickstarter backers are active stakeholders in the project, albeit external stakeholders, but they are stakeholders none the less.

Stakeholders are an important ingredient of any business, so treating them with respect and dignity is important. There are different levels of stakeholder and some are obviously more important than others, however in an ideal world, you want to keep as many of your stakeholders happy as possible.

Where Oculus have gone very wrong in this regard is in not recognising that a lot of those Kickstarter backers would be miffed at the Facebook takeover and therefore, they made no contingency plans for it. Oculus really should have considered refunding them in the light of the Facebook deal.

The argument against this goes that the Kickstarter backers got what they paid for, the rest is tough titty. In The Guardian article I linked to earlier, Steven Poole wrote :

Meanwhile, there seems to be an obvious question of economic justice here. The original Kickstarter backers of Oculus Rift might not have been explicitly granted shares in the company, but the company wouldn’t exist without their initial contribution. About 10,000 people gave Oculus $2.5m between them. I for one am struggling to think of a good reason why each of them shouldn’t get a proportional share of that $2bn sale.

In the comments we see :

Perhaps the fact that paying for a T-shirt, thank you note or dev-kit on kickstarter doesn’t make you an investor in a company?

You dont invest with kickstarter, you pledge a donation.

Because that wasn’t a condition of their pledge. They weren’t making an investment, and the terms of what they were paying were clearly laid out. By buying a band’s t-shirts you are contributing money to their cause, but you don’t expect to get a share in their album sales.

I agree with the comments and disagree with Steven Poole, but only because the comments are technically correct, however a happy medium should have been found.

Continue reading “Oculus VR Have The Opportunity To Generate Good Will To Kickstarter Backers”

Follow

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox: