Welcome back to another roundup of businessy things of interest to MMO players this week!
Discord
If you’re one of the bajillions of MMO players who use Discord, heads-up for you: Discord made unilateral changes to its terms of service this week, effectively revoking your legal right to sue Discord as part of any future class action. Any issues you might have with Discord in the future – say, a massive data breach – would instead be subject to arbitration. To opt out of this, you’ll need to email Discord (deleting your account won’t opt you out). Discord employees have confirmed the move on Reddit, claiming it’s not trying to “dodge responsibility” but rather trying to avoid frivolous class action lawsuits.
Hey, so apparently Discord decided to quietly update their TOS with a clause that says you must forfeit your right to sue them or take part in a class-action lawsuit.
There's a way to "opt out" if you do so within the next 30 days by emailing arbitration-opt-out@discord.com pic.twitter.com/vcBYWFeKud
— Vivian 💫 (@aeonlamb) October 18, 2018
Steam China
Don’t fret too much about the state of gaming in China since the state crackdown on game approvals; turns out that Steam counts 30M users in the region thanks to Dota 2 as well as local titles aimed specifically at the Chinese market.
EA and Actiblizz
And don’t fret about Activision and EA either: The analysts at DFC Intelligence estimate that EA’s value has skyrocketed from $4B to $33B over the last six years, while Blizzard has leaped from $10B to $60B, chiefly a result of the pivot to “games as a service.” We’re sure they’ll spend all that money on making sure their employees are properly compensated and not overworked.
Dota 2 lockboxes
Valve’s becoming one more company to climb on the “transparent lockbox” bandwagon, and we’re not sorry at all. This week Dota 2 began displaying the odds of receiving items in the game’s equivalent of lockboxes, which ought to make the game more palatable in Asia, to say nothing of the west.
“We’ve also taken this opportunity to simplify and rework the way we calculate escalating odds for this treasure and going forward. You can now click on the escalating odds arrow next to each of the rare, very rare, or extremely rare drops to see the exact odds of receiving them based on how many you’ve already opened.
WASD what now?
Finally, Vox has a fun video on how WASD came to be the thing we all use!
There's a reason gamers use the W, A, S, and D keys to move, rather than the arrow keys. @PhilEdwardsInc explains: pic.twitter.com/ONXlQjf4gU
— Vox (@voxdotcom) October 18, 2018
Spy anything else we should be including in our business roundup?
