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A jury saw secret revenue sharing deals between Google, smartphone makers, and game developers. The jury saw internal emails between Google execs that suggested Google was scared of how Epic might convince its fellow game developers to join or create rival app stores, creating unwanted competition for Google.

Fuck Epic and all that, but a silver lining that this has bubbled up because of it

Oh, ok. I guess I shouldn’t trust memes!

How, when, where?

Here are the objectives that they want to assess with some examples:

"(…) explore options on how to improve consumer protection in the online environment and increase their trust, including by assessing the need for targeted prohibitions, for example with respect to:

• preventing traders from using dark patterns and other unfair techniques that pressure, deceive and manipulate consumers online;

So we’re talking hidden / obscured cancellation mechanics, hidden costs, misleading language. Fortnite 1 / Fortnite 2

• giving consumers greater control of their online experience by addressing addictive design features that lead consumers, particularly minors, to spend excessive time and money on online goods and services;

This addressee (literal) gambling and FOMO-style design, very present in mobile gaming. Don’t have links for this one, but pretty much all the big names are mentioned in lawsuits over the past years

• addressing problematic features of digital products such as in video games, in particular as concerns their impact on minors;

This is a broad one, presumably to identify key mechanics like loot boxes in any variety and gacha style mechanics and how they impact minors. Example study

• addressing problematic personalisation practices, including situations where consumer vulnerabilities are targeted for the purposes of personalised advertising and pricing;

Targeting your weaknesses to extract more money from you is not fair. Especially if these weaknesses are any addictions or unhealthy habits. Star Citizen

• preventing harmful practices by influencers (e.g. the lack of disclosure of commercial communications, the promotion of harmful products to their followers and clarifying the responsibilities of the companies that collaborate with them);

Content Creators / Influencers are the new way to market products to consumers, especially children. Transparency with regards to sponsored content is necessary, as these creators can have a huge influence. Jenner / Celsius (pdf)

• addressing unfair practices related to the price (e.g. “drip” pricing, “starting from” prices if the trader applies dynamic pricing, percentage/value discounts that mislead the consumer as to the nature of the promotion);

Pretty straight forward I think. You can’t display a €99 pack and list it as “starting from 4,99” where that price belongs to the cheaper pack.

• addressing problems with digital contracts (e.g. difficult cancellations of subscriptions, auto-renewals or free trials converted into paid subscriptions, use of chatbots for customer service).

See the first point about dark patterns, this is just in a wider scope to emphasise it’s not just online but specifically about subscriptions and cancelling them. Cancelling should be as easy as signing up. US Gov vs Adobe

Now I don’t have time to find more links, but there’s plenty of more material out there. I only shared some examples and some of them might have been resolved or rejected by court by now.

Feedback

Giving feedback is as easy as logging in to the website and filling in the form. I was able to use my eID that uses my national government ID app that I use for everything else in my country.

You get space for 4000 characters, and are required to share some details. You can decide whether you want to keep your feedback anonymous or share it publicly. You can browse public feedback on the main page linked in the post for inspiration.

It doesn’t seem to be copying the mechanics of Papers, Please as much as the mechanics of Schedule 1. It does use the idea of Papers, Please, but it’s executed differently.

A lot of games are similar or riffing on each other, which is fine. But aside from using your finger to make a hole in the soil, the planting pot mechanics felt too similar.

Okay so I’m going to echo the rest here and say it’s kinda wild. I imagine this is the idea with the chaos subtitle and all, but it might be a little too much of half-polished features in order to be enticing.

People will see this and call it a Schedule I rip, especially with the planting in a pot mechanics, so I’d try and make it a bit less obvious and change up some parts.

If you’re going for unrealistic chaos, you should really double down instead, so it’s really clear that it shouldn’t be taken seriously as it doesn’t take itself seriously.

As a Dutchie I can’t help but agree

Leaving a comment as a reminder, currently on a limited data plan and Steam likes to autoplay videos.

Will check back in later today to share some thoughts

That’s right, American free speech ends at your country’s borders, whether that’s geographical or online.

As we tend to say in Europe, the US is a third-world country wearing a Gucci belt

Looks more like Hank, if anything

12ft never worked for the sites I needed it to, so I got accustomed to using archive.is and sharing the link with others if it wasn’t already

And The Netherlands

Any community has shitheads, pay them no heed.

quite frankly

Full article: https://archive.is/8GyPF

Basically the fan tricked the band and he was stopped because he wasn’t playing the song he said he would play.

All in good fun I think, they seem very chill on stage

All the more reason to boycott X.

There’s plenty of other problems with bot accounts on different platforms, but X doesn’t have a Trust & Safety team any more so you can’t even get these accounts to be taken down.

But no, companies, public services and politicians are all still on X. Ugh

Right? It’s crazy to think these kinds of people exist, but they are real and they make decisions for other people.

“The [AI] safety stuff is more visceral to me after a weekend of vibe hacking,” Lemkin said. I explicitly told it eleven times in ALL CAPS not to do this. I am a little worried about safety now.

When officers arrived, they found the driver being assaulted by bystanders and determined he had sustained a gunshot wound

FAFO I guess.

Oo I didn’t know that last part, that would do it. Thanks!