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Why would Blizzard want to watermark their own screenshots?
by yen223 14y ago
Why would Blizzard want to watermark their own screenshots?
- gilrain 14y agoIt's not uncommon for griefers or cheaters to anonymously brag about their exploits via screenshot. If the screenshot were watermarked, identifying their account and whatnot, then Blizzard could take action against them.
- bradddd 14y agoDefinitely, but if it's common knowledge, will it still have the same ability? I would imagine people would adapt and find an alternative method.
- danielweber 14y agoIt probably worked great until someone blogged about it.
- lvh 14y agoThe suggested idea (regardless of whether or not it's plausible) is NDA leak tracking: finding the people in private betas that are leaking information when they shouldn't be. If it turns out to be true, it's a pretty cool yet creepy application of steganography in the wild.
- daveman 14y agoI'm not very familiar with the product, but couldn't they just turn on the watermarking for the beta versions, versus all of production?
- pavel_lishin 14y agoA couple of hypotheses, off the top of my head. 1. NDAs - if someone's in a closed beta, and starts posting screenshots, they can quickly identify the culprit. 2. Hacks - if someone anonymously boasts about finding some exploit in the game, and shows screenshots, they can be tracked down. 3. Abuse prevention - if someone posts screenshots of themselves abusing another player, or breaking the TOS in some other way - but with names blurred out - it would still be possible to find out who it was.
- cube13 14y agoAlso: If a user emails support, and their email address is not directly traceable to their login(for example, if they use firstlast@gmail.com for battle.net instead of first.last@gmail.com as the sending email), it allows support to add that to the ticket.
- chaud 14y agoThere is no direct email address for support. You must log in with your Battle.net account and file a support ticket.
- cnlwsu 14y agoSounds like it has information in it like account name and date. Could be useful for debugging.
- viraptor 14y ago"This item looks like it turned inside out, here's a screenshot!" (made up issue) -> now the support has all information they actually care about and which user may not even remember anymore - game version, time, servers, character ids, etc.