EA To Rebrand Its Origin Platform As It Bows Out Of The PC Gaming Platform Wars
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It has been a long and largely fruitless road for Origin, EA's PC gaming client that it had planned on building into a rival of Valve's Steam. What was originally supposed to have been the chief antagonist to Steam in the ongoing PC gaming platform wars instead is best described as a failure to launch. Released in 2011, Origin began life as it lived in total: the walled garden for most EA games. Critics appeared almost immediately, stemming from odious requirements to relinquish personal information, the use of DRM, and security flaws. Couple that with a game library that was relatively stilted compared with Steam, by design mind you, and it's not difficult to understand why the adoption numbers for the game client just never took off.Several weeks ago, to the surprise of many, EA suddenly released its gaming catalog on Steam. Given the long history of the company keeping its toys for itself, it left many scratching their heads in confusion. This week, the inevitable occurred, with EA announcing that Origin will be no more. Instead, the PC gaming client will rebrand, rebuild, and become an optional place for EA gamers to play, rather than a Fort Knox for EA games.EA has yet another piece of interconnected news to share: it's rebranding its Origin desktop app to simply be called the EA desktop app, alongside giving its PC platform a visual refresh.Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, EA SVP, strategic growth Mike Blank says the overhaul is intended "to create a more frictionless, fast, socially-oriented experience for our players, where it becomes the best place for them to connect with the people they want to play with in the games they want to play." I'm frankly not used to giving EA a ton of kudos in these pages, but the overall strategy is a good one. The company appears to have finally realized that being permissive with gamers that just want to play the company's games is better business than trying to lock them into a failed client few want to use. The revamping of the UX was long needed, too, but the real star of the show here is that EA is looking to be more open in general."All of that is signaled by creating a common and consistent brand that is centered around EA and what EA stands for," Blank says. "And what signals it is this inflection about how EA stands for bringing your players together around the games they want to play on the platforms they want to play on. So yeah, it's not just a name change. It really signals an ethos that is critically important to us and that we know that's important to our players.It's been a long journey for EA in this regard to where our games show up and where they don't. One of the things that we value is democratizing gaming, which is: how do you enable more people to play? And how do you make it easy for them to do so? And by bringing our games to Steam, we are doing just that. So whether we were there in the past or not, I look towards the future. And what I think today is that we are stronger and healthier. And I think we're responding more effectively to the needs of our players today than we ever have, and Steam is part of that journey." Again, this is EA we're talking about, so it's going to take more than just the right words to convince most of us that this truly is a new direction for the company. Still, these are the right words. EA has long built a reputation for itself as being anti-consumer in many ways, but all of those ways come down to one thing: control. For a company with that history to suddenly start giving up that control, not out of surrender but out of a belief that it's good business, is a positive step.
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posted at: 12:00am on 17-Sep-2020
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Content Moderation Case Study: Twitter Removes Account For Pointing Users To Leaked Documents Obtained By A Hacking Collective (June 2020)
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Summary: Late in June 2020, a leak-focused group known as "Distributed Denial of Secrets" (a.k.a., "DDoSecrets") published a large collection of law enforcement documents apparently obtained by the hacking collective Anonymous.The DDoSecrets' data dump was timely, released as protests over the killing of a Black man by a white police officer continued around the nation neared their second consecutive month. Links to the files hosted at DDoSecrets' website spread quickly across Twitter, identified by the hashtag #BlueLeaks.The 269-gigabyte trove of law enforcement data, emails, and other documents was taken from Netsential, which confirmed a security breach had led to the exfiltration of these files. The exfiltration was further acknowledged by the National Fusion Center Association, which told affected government agencies the stash included personally identifiable information. While this trove of data proved useful to activists and others seeking uncensored information about police activities, some expressed concern the personal info could be used to identify undercover officers or jeopardize ongoing investigations.The first response from Twitter was to mark links to the DDoSecret files as potentially harmful to users. Users clicking on links to the data were told it might be unsafe to continue. The warning suggested the site might steal passwords, install malicious software, or harvest personal data. The final item on the list in the warning was a more accurate representation of the link destination: it said the link led to content that violated Twitter's terms of service.Twitter's terms of service forbid users from "distributing" hacked content. This ban includes links to other sites hosting hacked content, as well as screenshots of forbidden content residing elsewhere on the web.Shortly after the initial publication of the document trove, Twitter went further. It permanently banned DDoSecrets' Twitter account over its tweets about the hacked data. It also began removing tweets from other accounts that linked to the site.Decisions to be made by Twitter:- Should the policy against the posting of hacked material be as strictly enforced when the hacked content is potentially of public interest?
- Should Twitter have different rules for journalists or journalism organizations with regards to the distribution of information?
- How should Twitter distinguish hacked information from leaked information?
- Should all hacked content be treated as a violation of site terms, even if it does not contain personal info and/or trade secrets?
- How should Twitter handle mirrors of such content?
- How should Twitter deal with the scenario in which someone links to the materials because of their newsworthiness, without even knowing the material was hacked?
Questions and policy implications to consider:- Does a strict policy against "distributing" hacked content negatively affect Twitter's value as a source of breaking news?
- Does the mirroring of hacked content significantly increase the difficulty and cost of moderation efforts?
Resolution: While DDoSecrets' site remains up and running, its Twitter account does not. The permanent suspension of the account and additional moderation efforts have limited the spread of URLs linking to the apparently illicitly-obtained documents.
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posted at: 12:00am on 17-Sep-2020
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