Facebook and Google make a business out of violating your privacy…
… when will games follow suit?
I hope never, but I fear that is a pointless hope. Last night I read this article: Google Stops Wi-Fi Mapping Project After “Mistakenly” Scoring Personal Data. It got me thinking about the accelerating violation of “customers’” private information for profit by so many companies out there.
Zynga has already gone down this path with so much of their gameplay based on nagging people into spamming their own friends about their games for free marketing.
Facebook and Google are legendary for it.
When will we have our first MMO that makes the gathering and selling of customer data a major part of their business model?
As a gamer, how much of this would you tolerate? And try to be honest, because the continued use of Facebook and Google by so many of us shows we are actually willing to tolerate quite a lot.
How do you think an MMO could successful move in this direction to make money without completely alienating their customers?
That’s very creepy. On the topic of an mmo doing this, I personally wouldn’t mind depending on the “type” of game it was… i.e. a game that I pay monthly for that has a good reputation I would feel less concern with them data mining me compared to say some f2p game that just popped up last week. As long as it was up front and honest about it from the get go so I can make a decision before installing the spyware or not.
That is interesting Song7. I’d be more angry at a monthly subscription MMO selling my data because I am already paying them a monthly fee. They shouldn’t need any additional monetization. But the free to play games, at least I am getting some benefit from their non-traditional business model – namely, a free game.