Wednesday April 05 10:00 PM EDT
Online game backs away from privacy threat
John Borland, CNET News.com
Sony's popular online game EverQuest dodged a public relations bullet today, as a new
policy was rescinded
after some players had called it a potentially massive violation of their privacy.
Game developers Verant Interactive, worried about tools which allow
people to cheat or
disrupt the online game, wanted to examine players' personal
computers for "hacking
tools" as a part of a new software upgrade. As recently as last
night, executives said they
would bar people from the game who didn't agree to open their
systems to the digital
bloodhounds' inspection.
But after an outcry on electronic bulletin boards devoted to the
game and threats by some
devoted players to leave the game, the company backtracked.
"We can admit when we make mistakes, and I believe this is a case where we owe an
apology to our player
base," wrote Verant Interactive chief executive John Smedley in a message to players
this afternoon. "In our
haste to try and thwart people from damaging the game, we went overboard."
Privacy concerns have been an increasingly potent weapon with which consumers can
change corporate policy
online. Recent concerns over Internet advertising firm DoubleClick's plans to collect
and distribute personal
information gave that company's reputation a black eye and forced it to swerve from
its goals.
Even companies as powerful as Intel have been affected, as when the chipmaker backed
away from its
controversial Pentium III "serial number" identification system.
EverQuest is one of the most popular "massively multiplayer" games now on the market.
Like peers Ultima
Online or Asharon's Call, it creates an online world in which tens of thousands of
players can interact at once.
But the game's developers were concerned about unauthorized software that apparently
gave some players extra
information that they could use to take advantages of others, or even try to disrupt
the game's servers.
In a message to players yesterday, the company said it was changing its game software
to include a small
program that would identify these "hacking" programs when players tried to use them.
"You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload … data relating to any
program that we, in our
reasonable discretion, determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest,"
the new clause read.
After the complaints erupted, the company took an online poll this morning and had
backed down by late this
afternoon.
