Gamer-friendly PC publisher Stardock (Sins of a Solar Empire) has released what it is terming the "Gamer’s Bill of Rights" at PAX.

The company calls the document:

...a statement of principles that it hopes will encourage the PC game industry to adopt standards that are more supportive of PC gamers. The document contains 10 specific “rights” that video game enthusiasts can expect from Stardock as an independent developer and publisher that it hopes that other publishers will embrace...

 

the objective of the Gamer’s Bill of Rights is to increase the confidence of consumers of the quality of PC games which in turn will lead to more sales and a better gaming experience.

Of the Bill of Rights, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell commented:

As an industry, we need to begin setting some basic, common sense standards that reward PC gamers for purchasing our games. The console market effectively already has something like this in that its games have to go through the platform maker such as Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony. But on the PC, publishers can release games that are scarcely completed, poorly supported, and full of intrusive copy protection and then be stuck on it.

Chris Taylor, CEO and founder of Gas Powered Games, expressed support for the Bill of Rights, which Stardock enumerates as:

• Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
• Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
• Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.
• Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
• Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.
• Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
• Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
• Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
• Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
• Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

GP: While this would more properly be termed the PC Gamer's Bill of Rights, we have to say, Bravo, Stardock! 

Okay, so we've got a soft spot for board games as well as the video variety.

Maybe you do, too. 

If so, jump over to Campaign.com. The self-described nonpartisan voter education site is giving away a Stratego: Democrats vs. Republicans game every day between now and the presidential election on November 4th.

Until now, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) could only accept U.S. residents as members.

All that has changed with today's announcement that Canadian gamers can now join the ranks of the ECA, the only organization devoted to the issues which are important to video game consumers.

Organization president Hal Halpin commented on the news:

With a thriving gaming community already present and growing in Canada, we are proud to extend the opportunities and benefits that our U.S. ECA members have been enjoying over the years. Canada is an important area of growth for us and we are excited to welcome Canadian gamers who are interested in community and any issues that affect gamers.

The ECA will soon be unveiling a host of unique benefits and programs that will be specifically targeted towards Canadian consumers. Canadian chapter organizations are already underway in local gaming communities and these newly-formed networks will continue to grow and offer a great way for videogame players to stay informed and connect with like-minded ECA members in their area.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

CNet's Declan McCullough reports that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) has an anti-consumer track record when it comes to technology.

In the past the Democratic VP nominee-apparent has stood with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on copyright issues.

From the Cnet report:

[Biden] has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders... ranks toward the bottom of CNET's Technology Voters' Guide, [his] anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP [encryption]...

 

Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs...

 

A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks." Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits...

 

All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here.)

McCullough reports that Biden has "steadfastly refused" to answer Cnet's questions on his tech voting record.

GP: It's ironic that Biden has chosen to portray himself as an intellectual property rights champion. He has twice been outed for plagiarizing.

In June GamePolitics reported on the filing of a class-action lawsuit which alleged that EA's exclusive Madden deal with the NFL constituted a monopoly.

Yesterday lawyers for Electronic Arts filed a motion to dismiss the claim in federal court, arguing:

The antitrust theory of the Complaint is that EA “killed off” its only football competition by entering into the NFL exclusive... This, allegedly, allowed EA to raise the price of its NFL video game, Madden NFL, above competitive levels.

 

Plaintiffs’ case is fatally flawed on multiple levels... 

 

It is not illegal—under any theory—for EA to bid on exclusive licenses that intellectual property owners choose to offer. Exclusive intellectual property licenses are commonplace, and widely accepted in commerce and under the law as one legitimate way for an intellectual property rights holder to maximize the value of its property. Highly analogous case law holds that a sports league—in particular, the NFL—has the right to enter into exclusive rights agreements, and potential licensees have a right to bid on such licenses.

The timing of EA's dismissal motion may be related to the Federal Trade Commission's recent decision not to stand in the way of the proposed EA-Take-Two merger. The potential monopoly implications of combining the two firms' sports game divisions was likely one of the major issues under review by the FTC.

GP: Whether it winds up fitting the legal definition of monopoly or not, the end result still stinks for game consumers: EA jacked up the price of Madden by $20 simply because it could get away with it after "killing off" the NFL2K series.

Read EA's motion to dismiss here...

E For None?

Big Download reports that most video game publishers are taking a pass on the upcoming E For All Expo, scheduled for October 3-5 in Los Angeles:

...less than six weeks before the second edition of the event is supposed to begin, the official E For All web site has listed Microsoft and Electronic Arts as the only major game publishers who will be exhibiting at the show this year. Big Download has learned via their official PR representatives that THQ and Konami, both of whom attended E For All in 2007, have no current plans to attend the 2008 event.

 

...a large number of other major gaming publishers also have no current plans to attend. That list includes Sony, Midway, Atari, Sega, Warner Bros. Interactive, NCsoft, LucasArts, Sony Online, Square Enix, Codemasters, Gamecock, Southpeak, Disney Interactive and Capcom. When contacted, PR reps for Nintendo, 2K Games and Activision did not yet know whether or not their respective companies would be attending...

Big Download cites competition from shows like this week's PAX and October's Tokyo Games Show and Blizzcon as possible reasons for the lack of industry interest in E For All.

With poor publisher support for the second year in a row, the future of the show must be called into question.

Video game content rating in Germany is not for the faint of heart (or the easily confused), according to a report in DW-World:

Legislation recently passed in Germany in July, for example, makes it easier to put [violent] games on the banned list following the introduction of a rating index... Games on Germany's banned list cannot be sold publicly. That includes any advertising and sales through mail order. The decision to flag a game is made by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (BPjM)...

But the labeling system for content rating is run by yet another organization in Berlin, under the sponsorship of two game industry groups:

The labeling system is organized by the so-called Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) in Berlin... Two industrial associations assumed sponsorship from June 1: the German Association of Computer Game Developers (G.A.M.E.) and the German Association of Interactive Entertainment Software (BIU), both of which are headquartered in Berlin.

...but, despite the industry's involvement, the government has an additional layer of control here, as well:

The decision-making power lies with the federal states. The Protection of Minors Act calls for the Supreme Youth Agencies of the state to undertake the labelling, he said.

 

"And they employ the USK," [BIU spokesman Olaf] Wolters added.

 

The USK functions as a service provider, commissioning a circle of independent experts. These observers first play the game, present their results to a five-person committee consisting of at least four of roughly 60 expert appraisers from the USK, including teachers and employees of the youth agencies. The committee is then completed by a permanent representative of the Supreme Youth Agencies of the states.

GP: It would seem that quite a few bureaucrats are involved in Germany's content rating process...

The BBC reports that gold farming, a practice much despised by some MMO gamers, is a $500 million global business, employing a half-million people.

Citing research conducted by Prof. Richard Heeks of Manchester University, the BBC reports that 80% of worldwide gold farming is based in China. Workers there earn about $145 per month for their efforts. Said Heeks:

I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry. In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands... I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it's a significant phenomenon that academics and development organisations are unaware of...

 

It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld. Or at least the edges of a digital underworld populated by scammers and hackers and pornographers and which has spread to the "Third World" far more than we typically realise.

Heeks maintains that the worldwide gold farming business has already surpassed the annual revenue of India's booming software outsourcing market:

Meanwhile, Secure Play exec Steven Davis doesn't expect an end to gold farming anytime soon:

When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet... You could get rid of it," he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction.
 

As GamePolitics reported earlier this week, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the lobbying group which represents the interests of U.S. video game publishers, announced that it has hired Kenneth Doroshow to serve as the organization's General Counsel.

Doroshow was formerly employed as Senior Vice President, Litigation and Legal Affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). During Doroshow's tenure the RIAA gained a reputation for employing heavy-handed legal tactics against individual file sharers.

New York attorney Ray Beckerman, who runs the Recording Industry vs The People blog, worries that gamers will now face the same type of oppressive enforcement strategies:

I guess we may have to rename this blog "Gaming Industry vs. The People" some day, as we have just learned that Kenneth Doroshow -- the RIAA executive who was supposed to debate the statutory damages issue with me back in March, but who chose to avoid that subject and instead recounted his opinion of the facts in Capitol v. Thomas, and who later inserted some paper he'd written into the transcript of the conference instead of allowing his talk to be reported -- has left the RIAA and joined the ESA (the "Entertainment Software Association").

 

If he accomplishes for game manufacturers what he accomplished for the recording industry, I would say the industry's prospects are bleak.
 

Beckerman also reports that Doroshow defended the $222,000 verdict levied against single mother Jammie Thomas (seen at left) for file sharing mp3s:

At Fordham Law School's annual IP Law Conference this year, [Beckerman] had a chance to square off with Kenneth Doroshow, a Senior Vice President of the RIAA, over the subject of copyright statutory damages. Doroshow thought the Jammie Thomas verdict of $222,000 was okay, he said, since Ms. Thomas might have distributed 10 million unauthorized copies. [Beckerman], on the other hand, who has previously derided the $9,250-per-song file verdict as 'one of the most irrational things [he has] ever seen in [his] life in the law', stated at the Fordham conference that the verdict had made the United States 'a laughingstock throughout the world.'

GP: For more the Jammie Thomas case, click here.

Speaking at GCDC in Leipzig, EA exec Peter Moore said he did not favor the heavy-handed approach to file sharing embraced by five U.K. game publishers this week.

As GamePolitics reported yesterday, Atari, Codemasters and three smaller firms said they would demand £300 from 25,000 people alleged to be file-sharers. Those who fail to pay will be sued in court. A U.K. woman found guilty of sharing a PC pinball game recently was ordered to pay publisher Topware Interactive £16,086.

gamesindustry.biz reports on Moore's comments:

GP: Kudos to Peter Moore for having the brass to take a stand against the consumer-hatin' tactics of Atari, Codemasters, Topware, Reality Pump and Techland.

Let's hope that Ken Doroshow is paying attention.

Yesterday, GamePolitics reported that an unemployed immigrant mother of two was ordered by a British court to pay £16,086 (roughly $30,000) to Topware Interactive for uploading its pinball game to a file-sharing network.

Things are about to get much worse.

Today's Times Online reports that Topware's case against Isabella Barwinska may only have been the tip of the iceberg. According to the Times, a quintet of U.K. publishers are targeting those who share PC games. Calling the action an "unprecedented assault on illegal downloads," the Times names Topware, Atari, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemasters as the firms involved. The report says the companies plan to notify 25,000 U.K. consumers that they must pay £300 to settle file-sharing accusations. Otherwise, they risk a ruinous court judgment of the type lodged against Barwinska.

From the Times:

It is estimated that as many as six million people in Britain share games illegally over the internet. The aggressive action marks a dramatic change in the approach to copyright on the internet. The British music industry, hit hard by illegal file-sharing, has taken action against just 150 people in ten years...

 

The move has provoked strong criticism within the games industry. A source close to the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association said that most publishers would be reluctant to bring legal actions against their “core market” and would be likely to look for other ways to minimise losses due to piracy.

A lawyer for the five publishers commented:

Our clients were incensed by the level of illegal downloading. In the first 14 days since Topware Interactive released Dream Pinball 3D it sold 800 legitimate copies but was illegally downloaded 12,000 times. Hopefully people will think twice if they risk being taken to court.

Via: Edge Online

GameDaily reports on data released by Nielsen which holds that 17% of Grand Theft Auto IV buyers were under 17.

But in 39% of those cases someone else - typically a parent - actually purchased the game, which means that the actual number of unassisted underage buyers was about 10%.

While GameDaily and other outlets are finding alarm in these numbers, the 10% figure is actually twice as good as might have been expected.

Why?

In April the FTC released data showing that 20% of its underage secret shoppers successfully purchased M-rated content, the game industry's best result ever. The Nielsen data effectively doubles the game industry's ratings enforcement effectiveness. From the Nielsen report:

61% of these younger gamers indicated that they purchased the M-rated game themselves, with 39% of the young gamers responding that someone else bought the game for them," Nielsen said. "Interestingly enough, parents/guardians were pegged as the biggest facilitators for getting the controversial game into the hands of these young respondents, garnering 80% of the response. Friends, siblings and other relatives rounded out the other 20% of the response.

The GTA IV numbers also look pretty good when stacked up against a new Dartmouth study which says that 48% of minors have been exposed to R-rated movies.

GP: Obviously, you'd like to see zero sales to underage buyers, but we don't live in a perfect world. These results are a significant improvement over the 2008 FTC numbers, which were deemed extremely impressive when released.

It is great to see Nielsen providing this kind of data, as it gives context to the ratings enforcement issue. It's the kind of the data the industry ought to be providing on its own, however.

A report issued by the ESET Malware Intelligence maintains that July's most prevalent forms of malware targeted online gamers.

From Global Threat Trends - July 2008:

During the month of July 2008, close to 12.72% of all threat detections were flagged as Win32/PSW.OnLineGames. This is a family of Trojans with keylogging and rootkit capabilities which gather information relating to online games and credentials for participating. Characteristically, the information is sent to a remote intruder’s PC...

 

It’s important for participants in MMORPGs...  like Lineage and World of Warcraft, as well as “metaverses” like Second Life, to be aware of the range of threats ranged against them: not just harassment nuisances like griefing and pointless quasi-viral attacks like grey goo, but phishing and other scams that can result in financial loss in the real world. Their objective in such cases is to steal account information or game items and then resell them on the black market (or at any rate on eBay). 

ESET issues monthly threat reports. For the past three months, online gaming has been at the top of their malware threat list.

Kotaku reports that PlayStation 2 favorite God of War 2, officially banned by Saudi authorities, is available for purchase on the black market.

In fact, a Saudi reader even describes the process to Kotaku in great detail. It seems that a local mall peddles GoW2 discs concealed inside shrinkwrapped boxes for other games. In the instance described, GoW2 was covered up by box art showing Winning Eleven 7, a several years-old soccer sim. (see pic)

GP: It's nice to see that Saudi gamers aren't totally limited in their choices. And we hope that the store clerk still has possession of his thumbs now that this info is public.

Hal Halpin (left), president of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), gives a wide-ranging interview to gamesindustry.biz today.

The leadoff question from interviewer Phil Elliott concerns the May incident in which Dan Hewitt, public relations head for game publishers' lobbying group ESA, said some nasty  things about GamePolitics (e.g., "Calling GamePolitics a news site is as laughable as saying there's a Cuban free press.").

gi.biz has previously spanked Hewitt and the ESA over the incident. In today's interview Hal Halpin pointed out that some level of conflict between the consumer focus of the ECA and GamePolitics and the publisher-centric ESA, is inevitable:

The vast majority of time our expectations and our goals and our challenges are going to be the exact same as those of the IGDA [International Game Developers Association], the EMA [Entertainment Merchants Assocation] and the ESA - because they represent the industry and we represent the consumers.

And 80 per cent of the time we'll get along great, but that other 20 per cent of the time we're going to be divergent in terms of our interests on behalf of our members - and with respect to the comment that the ESA issued, I chalk it up to a month or two of frustration on behalf of the individual who made the statement. It was a difficult couple of months and they were under a lot of pressure, getting a lot of bad press, and it was easy to take a swipe. It was unfortunate and I think he regrets it.

Asked whether the ESA's future was cloudy, Halpin said:

The ESA is still very viable and the association is really needed. Because of that couple of weeks of discontent between the associations I think people are under the false impression that we want to see anything bad happen to the ESA - and that is not at all the case.

You know, I think a strong and vibrant ESA is really important to the sector as a whole as far as their membership going forward...

Hal also dishes on used game sales and other issues.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

As GamePolitics has reported in the past, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which represents the interests of US game publishers, is backing a proposal to bring tougher, DMCA-syle copyright laws to Canada.

Along those lines, GP just picked up on this video of a May, 2008 TV debate on the issue between ESA VP Stevan Mitchell and Howard Knopf, a Canadian attorney. Mitchell is specifically worried about mod chips. He holds one aloft during the program.

For his part, Knopf is aghast at the notion that American corporate interests might force copyright changes in Canadian law. Knopf seems to have the interests of Canadian consumers at heart.

Unfortunately, Knopf does not articulate his points especially well - perhaps due to the tight time frame of the debate - while the hosts of the program seem to jump right in line with Mitchell of the ESA. Maybe that's because the program aired on the Business News Network. shiny dot bulletin comments:

It’s amazing how the hosts are really willing to bend to American market interests as opposed to listening to Howard about the facts and issues.

Knopf runs the Excess Copyright blog, the motto of which is:

Copyright is good. Excess in copyright is not.

Worried that your ISP is choking your bandwidth?

Then jump over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has released Switzerland, a free tool with which users can "test the integrity" of their Internet connection. Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney, remarked:

The sad truth is that the FCC is ill-equipped to detect ISPs interfering with your Internet connection. It's up to concerned Internet users to investigate possible network neutrality violations, and EFF's Switzerland software is designed to help with that effort. Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit.

Peter Eckersley, EFF Staff Technologist and designer of Switzerland, added:

Until now, there hasn't been a reliable way to tell if somebody -- a hacker, an ISP, corporate firewall, or the Great Firewall of China -- is modifying your Internet traffic en route. The few tests available have been for narrow and specific kinds of interference, or have required tremendous amounts of advanced forensic labor. Switzerland is designed to make general-purpose ISP testing faster and easier.

Switzerland is described as an open source, command-line tool which will sniff out whether your ISP has modified or injected packets of data in your connection.

Via: boingboing

A consumer's difficulty in canceling a Final Fantasy XI account has led to a new Illinois law which mandates that MMO providers make an online cancellation option available. Companies are also required to provide online instructions on how to cancel.

As reported by Silicon Alley Insider:

Alex Edwards played Final Fantasy Online for a few months, then grew tired of the game... His parents Frank and Cinda, who were paying the $13 a month subscription, tried to cancel the account online.

 

But Final Fantasy didn't offer Cinda a way to do that online, and didn't offer her a contact phone number, either. The Edwards finally found the number via their credit card statement -- but when they called, they spent an hour and 45 minutes on hold before someone answered the phone...

 

But unfortunately for Square Enix, who makes Final Fantasy, Frank Edwards is an alderman in Springfield, Illinois and a good friend of his local State Rep. Raymond Poe.

After hearing the Edwards' story, Rep. Poe (R) introduced a bill, HB4178, which passed both the Illinois House and Senate in May. Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) signed it into law on Tuesday.

Here's a summary:

...an Internet gaming service provider that provides service to a consumer... for a stated term that is automatically renewed for another term unless a consumer cancels the service must give a consumer who is an Illinois resident: (1) a secure method at the Internet gaming service provider's web site that the consumer may use to cancel the service, which method shall not require the consumer to make a telephone call or send U.S. Postal Service mail to effectuate the cancellation;

 

and (2) instructions that the consumer may follow to cancel the service at the Internet gaming service provider's web site. Makes it an unlawful business practice for an Internet gaming service provider to violate the new provisions.
 

GP: From a consumer standpoint, it's hard to argue with this one. Plus, Gov. Blagojevich gets to sign a video game bill that might actually survive this time. His 2005 attempt to regulate violent game sales was declared unconstitutional and cost Illinois about a half-million bucks in legal fees.

Earlier this week Hasbro DMCA'd Scrabulous right off of Facebook.

But the popular Scrabble knockoff has returned with a new name - Wordscraper - and a slightly new look.

Cnet reports:

The game has effectively returned, but with a redesigned board, a few original play options, a different points tabulation system, and a new name...

 

The reason for Scrabulous' extreme makeover has its roots in some pretty gray legal matters: the real problem wasn't that it ripped off Scrabble, but that it ripped off Scrabble so blatantly. The colors of the board were the same, the list of rules led to a Wikipedia entry for Scrabble rules, and the two names were similar enough for Hasbro to cry foul...

 

So will this end the legal spat? Maybe... Many other games on Facebook bear strong-but-not-too-strong resemblances to board games like Battleship and Risk, but so far haven't encountered the same corporate scrutiny.

The ESA's 2008 Annual Report indicates that the video game industry hopes to uphold the controversial Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against critics who claim that it restricts Fair Use of copyrighted material.

Based on the following passage from the report, the industry's position seems to be that gamers can create user-generated content only to the extent that in-game tools allow them to do so:

The interplay Between Fair Use and Digital Rights Management User generated content (UGC) is a high-profile policy issue in the copyright community, sparked by the phenomenal success of social networking sites like YouTube.

 

Influential policy papers from the U.K. IP Office and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) cite UGC as a tremendous social benefit of the Internet and call upon policymakers to tweak current legal regimes to better accommodate UGC. This issue has captured the imagination of critics of the current U.S. copyright system, who argue that Digital Rights Management restrictions confound legitimate fair use.

 

ESA IP Policy staff is bolstering its ability to push back against this assertion. In discussions with domestic and foreign IP officials and the OECD, ESA emphasized the rich and varied UGC-features currently incorporated into DRM-protected games.