Well, having to be connected to battle.net continuously when playing D3 isn't the end of the world, but I'm not really a fan of it. I really like the ability to play a game whether I'm in my home or at some random location with no net connection! Thank god for Torchlight 2, I guess, which I'll absolutely be picking up when it comes out.
For me the biggest privacy issue is the interpersonal one, where I am ALWAYS appearing "Online" to any friends I add via BattleTag or RealID, or even recent players who were in games that I happened to join with a friend. Whether I like it or not, these people know I'm online and who I'm playing with. They can see that it's 4AM in the morning and I was online for the past 6 hours. Why is that anyone's business? Why should I be forced to share that information with people who I'm not really comfortable sharing it with?
I mean, what if I joined a game with a friend, and he happens to know coworkers of mine - I join his game, and a couple of my coworkers are in his game. Now, I'll be on their "Recent Players" list, and they will be able to see my online status for whatever length of time, at least days (I'm not sure when ppl's names leave from that list), or perhaps until they play more games with others. Regardless, I have no choice or control over that. If I'm playing Diablo 3 all night, they will know. Maybe I'm not okay with them knowing? It's none of their business, and I should have the ability to control that personal information. To me, it's a major flaw on Blizzard's part to not realize this.
Well, this is pretty funny timing, considering I've been trying to raise awareness about the issue in Diablo 3 that we cannot "Appear Offline", and any of our friends (BattleTag OR RealID) as well as recent players can see you online, see whether you're in a game, and see WHO you're in a game with, whether you like it or not - you have no choice whether to appear online or not. Major privacy concern IMO.
In the consumer protection category, video game company Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. won a Big Brother Award for a change of terms that raised a host of privacy concerns, including a scan of the computer’s working memory to prevent cheating, chat recording that captures text communications, game recording and player rankings that reveal how often and how long players have been playing. “Our reason to give today’s Big Brother Award is the full interaction between numerous components, under the label ‘Real ID,’” the judges noted.
Hopefully this will pressure Blizzard to consider these issues a little more closely in the future. I can still very clearly recall the major controversy about the "real name" issue a while back.
For me the biggest privacy issue is the interpersonal one, where I am ALWAYS appearing "Online" to any friends I add via BattleTag or RealID, or even recent players who were in games that I happened to join with a friend. Whether I like it or not, these people know I'm online and who I'm playing with. They can see that it's 4AM in the morning and I was online for the past 6 hours. Why is that anyone's business? Why should I be forced to share that information with people who I'm not really comfortable sharing it with?
I mean, what if I joined a game with a friend, and he happens to know coworkers of mine - I join his game, and a couple of my coworkers are in his game. Now, I'll be on their "Recent Players" list, and they will be able to see my online status for whatever length of time, at least days (I'm not sure when ppl's names leave from that list), or perhaps until they play more games with others. Regardless, I have no choice or control over that. If I'm playing Diablo 3 all night, they will know. Maybe I'm not okay with them knowing? It's none of their business, and I should have the ability to control that personal information. To me, it's a major flaw on Blizzard's part to not realize this.
Anyway, just posted today:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/and-privacy-invasion-award-goes-to
Hopefully this will pressure Blizzard to consider these issues a little more closely in the future. I can still very clearly recall the major controversy about the "real name" issue a while back.
There's another much longer writeup about Blizzard's privacy concerns back in April: https://www.bigbrotherawards.de/2012-en/.cons/ Very informative read.