Another Hellgate: London EULA Explanation
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Greetings. My name is Max Schaefer, and I'm C.O.O. of Flagship Studios. Wow, this has spun way out of control! With any luck, I can hopefully clarify some things.
On the topic of the Consent to Use of Data, people are reading much more into this than there is. We gather data specifically to address technical support problems, to deliver patches, and to prevent cheating. This is something most every internet game does, and for good reason. We don't have nefarious goals with this, but need the ability to do these things to provide good customer support and create a secure playing environment that's as cheat-free as possible. Flagship Studios is a relatively small operation, and our focus is 100% on making Hellgate: London (and Mythos) as good as they can be. We're somewhat puzzled as to why our EULA, as opposed to all the others that have the same language, is singled out, and are distressed at the confusion it has caused. Maybe EA's legal wording isn't optimal (it's legalese, after all), but it's grounded in rational and necessary concepts that anyone running an online game needs to adhere to. The alternative is hacks, cheats, and a destroyed game economy.
On the subject of the in-game advertising, poor Kaiser has been misinterpreted more often than I could identify. We chose to have Massive stream ads into our game for two main reasons: It lets us have realistic ads that we approve and which are context-appropriate without having to make up fictional companies or movies or whatever. This really does up the realism of the scene. And secondly, we will make some incremental revenue on it, but it really did start with wanting to have realistic ads in the subway tubes. We make no apologies about wanting to make money as this is a business (and a non-corporate-owned start-up at that,) but if we didn't think this added to the game, we wouldn't do it. Please ask someone who's in the beta or get some screen shots and see for yourself what the ads look like. It's got to be one of the most unobtrusive, context-appropriate use of ads that have ever appeared in a computer game.
Again, we're distressed by this controversy, and would like to get the clarifications out there as best we can, and we will try to be as responsive as is possible given we're extremely swamped trying to get ready for our big US release on October 31.
Max Schaefer
C.O.O., Flagship Studios
While I understand the need to make money, it's not difficult to see why charging full price for a game on top of subscription fees and in-game advertising isn't being met with much optimism.
