4 ms·

Apple wages war on incentivized app downloads

47 points by ssclafani 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago
I am not sure why I find these sorts of stories fascinating. Maybe its some sort of schadenfreude, the World of Warcraft gold selling underground had lots of amazing back and forth between folks making money off selling 'fake' gold and Blizzard trying to shut them down. I always wondered why that was since Blizzard was just as much a money driven enterprise as the gold farmers.
- ChiperSoft 14y ago
  Blizzard has three vested interests in shutting down gold sellers. The first is that the majority of sold gold is stolen from compromised accounts. The customer service costs of resolving those accounts have a real world price. The second is that it devalues the in-game economy. This frustrates players and leads to the loss of subscriptions. Finally, Blizzard has to at least make a show of not wanting any kind of currency exchange. That leads to issues of taxation and financial auditing. Blizzard has no desire to be Lindon Labs. There's more to it than this, of course, but I'm on my phone and don't feel like tapping any more.
  - shuzchen 14y ago
    I disagree on your third point. First, Blizzard knows that it can't stop gold sellers. Even if they shut down all the big operations, there will always be people willing to pay money for virtual items and people willing to sell that can take their activity to some place that Blizzard can't police (like trades on ebay or in person). Second, and more importantly, gold selling is profitable and Blizzard definitely wants a chunk of this revenue. My evidence for this is to point out the real money auction house in Diablo 3, which was created in an attempt to solve these problems. Blizzard will probably introduce the same thing into WoW once they figure out how to do it properly (from what I hear, the D3 AH is having issues with inflation at the moment).
    - ChiperSoft 14y ago
      You're right, I had forgotten Blizzard had an active currency exchange going in D3. Point three was valid a few years ago but probably not so much today.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    You are probably correct, but would be interested in your take on the 'real money' auction house in D3. Doesn't it have all the same issues?
    - ChiperSoft 14y ago
      You know, I had forgotten about the real money auction. Point three was valid a few years ago but probably not so much today.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    >The first is that the majority of sold gold is stolen from compromised accounts. This doesn't seem true at first glance, given the number of stories of massive gold farming operations (by grinding, not by crime) floating around. Is there anything to support that?
    - sjm 14y ago
      I think that was true in the past. These days, as far as I'm aware gold sellers actually spend more effort on spreading keyloggers in an attempt to steal accounts. This was particularly evident on Blizzard's WoW forums a while back where every second post included a dodgy-looking link to a keylogger (usually including some broken English about sex or women — infamously one keylogger post promised "sex leg").
    - trotsky 14y ago
      as the gaming industry became more advanced in finding and shutting down traditional farming ops they more or less pushed the gold farmers into the compromised account business. no citations for that, but the facts on the ground seem to support it.
    - ChiperSoft 14y ago
      How about direct from Blizzard themselves? http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3768752 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3768752 "We've been hard at work for years now thwarting gold farming tactics, and we know that only a very small percentage of gold is actually "farmed" these days. The vast majority of gold that third parties sell to players is obtained through account compromises. Your friend, guild mate, or family member who had their account hacked was specifically targeted for their gold so that it could be turned around and sold to another player looking to buy some."
- zem 14y ago
  if you haven't read doctorow's "all complex ecosystems have parasites"[0], you should find it interesting. as for this particular case, i wouldn't go so far as to call it schadenfreude, but it really is fascinating to see apple's scummy practices (locking down and restricting what you can run on your device) come up against tapjoy's scummy practices. since there is no "good guy" here to get emotionally invested in, we can just sit back and watch this for pure entertainment value, like a good cyberpunk story unfolding. [0] http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt
stanleydrew 14y ago
> I can’t wait to see what Tapjoy does next in this ever-escalating arms race. One thing’s for sure – it’ll be very profitable. And very shady. This kind of cheerleading seems very distasteful. I hope that Tapjoy doesn't do anything next. I hope they just go away. Why would you hope for an unethical company that doesn't care at all about building an honest product to come up with a new way to get around restrictions preventing its dishonest practices?
- ihuman 14y ago
  I thought that was sarcasm. No one actually hopes a company will go and do unethical things.
beedogs 14y ago
"Circle Jerk"? Really, Techcrunch? Do we need to force this stupid term even further into the lexicon of the Internet?
JenniferAlderid 14y ago
Can anyone explain what FreeMyApps (http://freemyapps.com/ http://freemyapps.com/) is doing differently to avoid getting shut down?
olgeni 14y ago
The fun thing about all these Apple stories is that Apple either "wages war", "stomps", "goes nookular" over something, or it "quietly" acts to cover something up. It's more or less always the same four words.

47 points by ssclafani 14y ago

I am not sure why I find these sorts of stories fascinating. Maybe its some sort of schadenfreude, the World of Warcraft gold selling underground had lots of amazing back and forth between folks making money off selling 'fake' gold and Blizzard trying to shut them down. I always wondered why that was since Blizzard was just as much a money driven enterprise as the gold farmers.

ChiperSoft 14y ago
Blizzard has three vested interests in shutting down gold sellers. The first is that the majority of sold gold is stolen from compromised accounts. The customer service costs of resolving those accounts have a real world price. The second is that it devalues the in-game economy. This frustrates players and leads to the loss of subscriptions. Finally, Blizzard has to at least make a show of not wanting any kind of currency exchange. That leads to issues of taxation and financial auditing. Blizzard has no desire to be Lindon Labs. There's more to it than this, of course, but I'm on my phone and don't feel like tapping any more.
- shuzchen 14y ago
  I disagree on your third point. First, Blizzard knows that it can't stop gold sellers. Even if they shut down all the big operations, there will always be people willing to pay money for virtual items and people willing to sell that can take their activity to some place that Blizzard can't police (like trades on ebay or in person). Second, and more importantly, gold selling is profitable and Blizzard definitely wants a chunk of this revenue. My evidence for this is to point out the real money auction house in Diablo 3, which was created in an attempt to solve these problems. Blizzard will probably introduce the same thing into WoW once they figure out how to do it properly (from what I hear, the D3 AH is having issues with inflation at the moment).
  - ChiperSoft 14y ago
    You're right, I had forgotten Blizzard had an active currency exchange going in D3. Point three was valid a few years ago but probably not so much today.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  You are probably correct, but would be interested in your take on the 'real money' auction house in D3. Doesn't it have all the same issues?
  - ChiperSoft 14y ago
    You know, I had forgotten about the real money auction. Point three was valid a few years ago but probably not so much today.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  >The first is that the majority of sold gold is stolen from compromised accounts. This doesn't seem true at first glance, given the number of stories of massive gold farming operations (by grinding, not by crime) floating around. Is there anything to support that?
  - sjm 14y ago
    I think that was true in the past. These days, as far as I'm aware gold sellers actually spend more effort on spreading keyloggers in an attempt to steal accounts. This was particularly evident on Blizzard's WoW forums a while back where every second post included a dodgy-looking link to a keylogger (usually including some broken English about sex or women — infamously one keylogger post promised "sex leg").
  - trotsky 14y ago
    as the gaming industry became more advanced in finding and shutting down traditional farming ops they more or less pushed the gold farmers into the compromised account business. no citations for that, but the facts on the ground seem to support it.
  - ChiperSoft 14y ago
    How about direct from Blizzard themselves? http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3768752 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3768752 "We've been hard at work for years now thwarting gold farming tactics, and we know that only a very small percentage of gold is actually "farmed" these days. The vast majority of gold that third parties sell to players is obtained through account compromises. Your friend, guild mate, or family member who had their account hacked was specifically targeted for their gold so that it could be turned around and sold to another player looking to buy some."
zem 14y ago
if you haven't read doctorow's "all complex ecosystems have parasites"[0], you should find it interesting. as for this particular case, i wouldn't go so far as to call it schadenfreude, but it really is fascinating to see apple's scummy practices (locking down and restricting what you can run on your device) come up against tapjoy's scummy practices. since there is no "good guy" here to get emotionally invested in, we can just sit back and watch this for pure entertainment value, like a good cyberpunk story unfolding. [0] http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt

stanleydrew 14y ago

> I can’t wait to see what Tapjoy does next in this ever-escalating arms race. One thing’s for sure – it’ll be very profitable. And very shady. This kind of cheerleading seems very distasteful. I hope that Tapjoy doesn't do anything next. I hope they just go away. Why would you hope for an unethical company that doesn't care at all about building an honest product to come up with a new way to get around restrictions preventing its dishonest practices?

ihuman 14y ago
I thought that was sarcasm. No one actually hopes a company will go and do unethical things.

beedogs 14y ago

"Circle Jerk"? Really, Techcrunch? Do we need to force this stupid term even further into the lexicon of the Internet?

JenniferAlderid 14y ago

Can anyone explain what FreeMyApps (http://freemyapps.com/ http://freemyapps.com/) is doing differently to avoid getting shut down?

olgeni 14y ago

The fun thing about all these Apple stories is that Apple either "wages war", "stomps", "goes nookular" over something, or it "quietly" acts to cover something up. It's more or less always the same four words.