Wait that’s actually like a really smart way to crowdsource navigation data. Maybe they should have said they were doing it but like either way I feel like it doesn’t really hurt anyone since they already knew their location was being sent to them
Waze was kind of like that back before Google bought it. It had an RPG element to it. There were coins along the roads and in last traveled roads there were larger rewards to entice you to take them. It was very upfront with what it was and what it was trying to accomplish.
Yes, it actually really is quite clever. The issue is they should have clearly informed people that data was being collected and how it would be used. What really rubs the salt in the wound is that the players who bought microtransactions, thinking they were supporting a game they liked, were actually paying to do valuable data collection work which they saw no upside from.
The Pokémon Go playerbase would have been much, much smaller if they had disclosed from the start, and that tells you all you need to know about whether this was a scumbag move which should be illegal.
Did they clearly state what they’d be doing with the data? Or was it just buried in their terms as a general license to collect and commercialise player data?
Rhetorical question. It was the latter. But what I said was:
The issue is they should have clearly informed people that data was being collected and how it would be used
There’s a certain point at which the argument “but they agreed to the terms of the contract” starts to sound disingenuous.
Wait that’s actually like a really smart way to crowdsource navigation data. Maybe they should have said they were doing it but like either way I feel like it doesn’t really hurt anyone since they already knew their location was being sent to them
Waze was kind of like that back before Google bought it. It had an RPG element to it. There were coins along the roads and in last traveled roads there were larger rewards to entice you to take them. It was very upfront with what it was and what it was trying to accomplish.
Yes, it actually really is quite clever. The issue is they should have clearly informed people that data was being collected and how it would be used. What really rubs the salt in the wound is that the players who bought microtransactions, thinking they were supporting a game they liked, were actually paying to do valuable data collection work which they saw no upside from.
The Pokémon Go playerbase would have been much, much smaller if they had disclosed from the start, and that tells you all you need to know about whether this was a scumbag move which should be illegal.
They did disclose this from the start. Niantic has always been a geospatial computing company.
Did they clearly state what they’d be doing with the data? Or was it just buried in their terms as a general license to collect and commercialise player data?
Rhetorical question. It was the latter. But what I said was:
There’s a certain point at which the argument “but they agreed to the terms of the contract” starts to sound disingenuous.
Honestly I’m not sure.
I played their first game Ingress back in the day and I remember at the time knowing that this is what they were doing with that data.
I don’t remember reading it in the TOS but just looking into Niantic made it pretty obvious.
When Pokémon go pushed for that AR feature it seemed clear what their goal was with it.
I’m not defending them. Obviously people feel misled so it wasn’t made clear enough.
Also not saying people who didn’t know this were ignorant or anything. It’s just that I don’t think it was really a secret.
Wait til everyone finds out about what they are doing with the Pokémon Sleep game data.
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