Totally not cool.

[LawLessOne]

Actually accepting an offer is optional, but when simply browsing the available offers (and not agreeing to anything in them!) transmits information and installs potential malware, there is a problem. None of that information should have been transmitted until the player presses the final "i agree to sign up for this offer" button, and a confirmation regarding what information is to be sent is displayed.

That is a good point. You should at least be warned that simply browsing the offer will transmit your personal data. This is a violation of US privacy laws and probably other countries have such laws as well.

[Khafar]

Actually accepting an offer is optional, but when simply browsing the available offers (and not agreeing to anything in them!) transmits information and installs potential malware, there is a problem.

Are you telling me that "browsing available offers" is required? If so, there's a major problem. If not, then it's not as major. And yes, they probably shouldn't be sending anything about you for simply clicking on one of these "offers". Presumably, they'll change that. But I'm not even going to look at an "Offer Wall" if I can possibly avoid it, let alone click on anything. I probably don't even click on a single web ad most years, and they're in my face everywhere.

Khafar

[FolklegendRedux]

Not surprised by this in the least.

[Cerataindisaster]

Are you telling me that "browsing available offers" is required? If so, there's a major problem. If not, then it's not as major. And yes, they probably shouldn't be sending anything about you for simply clicking on one of these "offers". Presumably, they'll change that. But I'm not even going to look at an "Offer Wall" if I can possibly avoid it, let alone click on anything. I probably don't even click on a single web ad most years, and they're in my face everywhere.

Khafar

Are you telling me that a company who aligns themselves with known distributors of malware and other questionable programs, is in the right because they are a business and need money? Its ok because its not required?? Come on Khafar. How some of you can possibly be ok with this choice by Turbine is beyond me. If they are lowering themselves to the levels of some of the shaddy f2p developers, fine by me, but Im sure their credibility will go down the drain as fast as superrewards sends out our information to the highest bidder.

The back and forth between hardened Turbine fan and some of the critical crowd is humorous most of the time, but defending this in the way the usual Turbine defenders have so far in this thread shows the lengths which they will go, and the power of the blinders that they throw on.

[MissingMinds]

Nothing is compromised unless you voluntarily email them your password, and even then it's only your FORUM account, not your game account.

Wrong, it is your game account and game email address.

And if you just read any of the threads with links to the Wall, if you use default firefox, guess what. Your browser auto clicked the link and sent your data due to the "Prefetch" feature.

I have sense turned that feature off. I have no idea if I.E, Opera, or Chrome have a similar feature, but I'd be surprised if they don't.

[LilFeet]

Wrong, it is your game account and game email address.

And if you just read any of the threads with links to the Wall, if you use default firefox, guess what. Your browser auto clicked the link and sent your data due to the "Prefetch" feature.

I have sense turned that feature off. I have no idea if I.E, Opera, or Chrome have a similar feature, but I'd be surprised if they don't.

I'm not even going to the DDO forums to check, but it would be nice to know from a BLUE what actual info was sent.

forum name and email?
or
Turbine account name and email?

2 conflicting statements about what info was sent out. Either way it doesn't look good for turbine to have allowed this to happen.

[Southpa]

Are you telling me that "browsing available offers" is required? If so, there's a major problem. If not, then it's not as major. And yes, they probably shouldn't be sending anything about you for simply clicking on one of these "offers". Presumably, they'll change that. But I'm not even going to look at an "Offer Wall" if I can possibly avoid it, let alone click on anything. I probably don't even click on a single web ad most years, and they're in my face everywhere.

Grats for you that you're smarter than the folks who may not be so wise in the ways of internet marketing.

Have you ever been against something strictly on principle? Simply because it had the capacity to do harm, even though you knew better? I'm sure you have, and that's what we're seeing here.

The affiliation. The fact that Turbine would get into bed with **** like this....when all they would have to do is offer optional content for a price - that was how I thought DDO was supposed to generate its revenue in the first place. For them to even turn to 3rd party marketing and revenue generation is unfortunate enough...but then to pull an "oops, we didn't screen the companies thoroughly enough! Sorry for the spam and malware...." Turbine's been around the block long enough to know better. For them to offer something to their customers/players that could lead to unforeseen/unknown/unwanted consequences is pretty much the icing on the cake lately. It's about trust - and it's about practicing what you preach. They failed lots of people on both accounts.

[IamAkkim]

Gildhur- when it's transmitting your forum name AND password unincrypted just for looking at the page, that's inexcusable.

Just to try to keep things accurate, you transmit your EMAIL Address and GAME ACCOUNT NAME. Not your password. It still can be utilized for some amazingly accurate phishing efforts - and probably allow some simple brute force attempts to crack easy passwords, certainly.. but the password is never sent.

--Akkim

[Jilla]

Well, if I am understanding things correctly now. If you click on a link to a site outside a Turbine website, this happens. This won't happen by just looking at any Turbine page associated with DDO (which is what I was asking about initially).

I think *if* they keep it, they should give more than the standard warning that it's an outside site and information is being transmitted to a 3rd party with an "I accept" or "I understand button."

If you go to that site, it sends your e-mail and your forum account name (not passwords for either) to third parties, some of whom may scam you.

I would recommend (if you are worried about this) setting up your Turbine e-mail address as their your e-mail addresses (if you have them). I have a freebie "junk" e-mail account that I use when buying anything online, registering for sites and forums, etc. It's a site that collects all the spam those sites send so I can *not* log in and ignore everything sent (and my real e-mail stays clean for real e-mail). The only time I might check the junk site is if I just ordered something or if Turbine puts a notice on the forums that they sent out a survey or something. Then I find the message I am looking for and delete everything else without looking at it.

I'd also make sure my game password is very, very strong (which it should be already).

To make it clear, I still think this whole thing is a bad idea and Turbine should cancel it. It ruins customer trust.

[sirwillow]

Actually accepting an offer is optional, but when simply browsing the available offers (and not agreeing to anything in them!) transmits information and installs potential malware, there is a problem. None of that information should have been transmitted until the player presses the final "i agree to sign up for this offer" button, and a confirmation regarding what information is to be sent is displayed.

Agreed. Just simply clicking on the link to browse the offer should not mean your information is compromised in any way at all. You haven't agreed to anything other than to look. That's already crossing the line as you didn't agree to anything.

Wrong, it is your game account and game email address.

And if you just read any of the threads with links to the Wall, if you use default firefox, guess what. Your browser auto clicked the link and sent your data due to the "Prefetch" feature.

And here it's even worse. You haven't even clicked or attempted to look at the "offers" and your email address and forum and/or account name and potentially forum password have been transmitted. You didn't "agree" or "look" at anything. (edit- I know some are saying it doesn't transmit the password, but if it's transmitting the account name, not just the forum name, I wouldn't put any confidence in a password being safe either)

And it's never ok for them to be grabbing your email address or account information just for looking at their offers. Sorry.

Worse- as if that wasn't bad enough- this company is known for publishing malware, spyware, spam, trojans and keyloggers and coding that into their pages, offers and games. That "look" not only could end up sending the info previously mentioned, but could also result in your computer being infected and much more of your information being compromised. That company HAS done it before and has a history of it.

It's one thing to bring advertising revenue to a game. I have no problem with them selling ads and encouraging people to click on those ads to bring money into the company. That makes complete sense. But to compromise users information as has been verified as having happened here, and to do business with and encourage users to visit pages created by a company known for stealing information and infecting computers is absolutely and completely unacceptable. As much as I love Turbine and Lotro, there is no way to justify that.

[twilight07]

Hm...

I really think a blue name needs to comment on this or Turbine needs to consider making an annoucement of some kind...

Speculation is a sure fire way to stir up fears without knowing the whole story.

[gskgsadz]

Worse- as if that wasn't bad enough- this company is known for publishing malware, spyware, spam, trojans and keyloggers and coding that into their pages, offers and games. That "look" not only could end up sending the info previously mentioned, but could also result in your computer being infected and much more of your information being compromised. That company HAS done it before and has a history of it.

If this is true I will have no choice but to quit the game, and never game with turbine again.

I am self employed and run my business from the same computer i game on. Keyloggers are potentially disastrous for me and I cannot run any risk of having one on my computer.

Suits at turbine sure don't seem to want my business anymore with the decisions they are making. Oh well, I'll spend more time making money and less on gaming.

[MissingMinds]

I'm not even going to the DDO forums to check, but it would be nice to know from a BLUE what actual info was sent.

forum name and email?
or
Turbine account name and email?

2 conflicting statements about what info was sent out. Either way it doesn't look good for turbine to have allowed this to happen.

You will have to go to the DDO forums if you want a "BLUE" response. Better known by DDO players as a Moderator response. (We don't do blue. They are yellow.)
Yes, this link is a Mod response.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=243291

Per normal in something like this though, the players, being the geeks they are, aren't afraid to dive into how things work. Details of what info and how it was sent here. Posted before Marktriod's post.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=242982

[twilight07]

You will have to go to the DDO forums if you want a "BLUE" response. Better known by DDO players as a Moderator response. (We don't do blue. They are yellow.)
Yes, this link is a Mod response.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=243291

Per normal in something like this though, the players, being the geeks they are, aren't afraid to dive into how things work. Details of what info and how it was sent here. Posted before Marktriod's post.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=242982

Does that require a login to their forums? Not all of us have DDO accounts...

[Sapience]

Marketroid has addressed the DDO Community and explained the situation.

[Kathindi]

This thread has bifurcated into two points:

(1) Is a valued principle of player/provider relations being violated by Turbine?

(2) What can players do to avoid or negate Turbine's decision to associate with problematic service-providers?

The drama and noise is being caused by posters who confabulate the two points together, or imply that #2 is a solution to #1.

Apples and oranges - #2 may have a solution, but it is not a solution to #1. Get the thread back on track.

[Cerataindisaster]

Sorry, but if this is what I pull up from my first google search, there is no way Turbine did not know what they where doing when they climbed in bed with them. I don't care what BS response they come here with to perform their damage control. They knew what they where doing from the beginning and no matter what they say or do have lost a lot of trust.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...wards&gs_rfai=

[Duryn]

Well, I saw this yesterday and was wondering how long it woud be for an 'Offer Wall' thread to show up here.

I don't always agree with everything Turbine does, but I was greatly saddened to to see the 'Offer Wall' go up. I have a DDO account and was playing a bit with that game; however, I will now be scraping DDO off my hard-drive. I know it's a choice for those offers--opt-in, but really, was it so necessary for Turbine's cash-flow, that they had to contract with one of the sleaziest third-party 'referral' companies on the net?

Even in free-to-play games, any game company should know that there is a line that should not be crossed; Turbine, unfortunately, has chosen to cross that line. The saddest part of all is that, not only does this 'episode' throw Turbine into a poor light, it puts yet another stain on the MMO gaming industry as a whole.

As another poster put it, it reeks of the 'Pay-Day Loan', 'Check-Cashing Shop' area of town; an area of town that I do not trade with.

[Cerataindisaster]

Marketroid has addressed the DDO Community and explained the situation.

LoL, there is really no confusion. Turbine got into bed with a shaddy internet business. They whys and hows are really not relevant.

[sirwillow]

For those wondering, yes you can click on DDO's forums and read them without a password, but here's what Marketroid said:

Turbine’s slogan is “Powered by Our Fans." That means more than just words to us. It’s a promise. We pride ourselves on listening closely to you, our players, and working with you to do what’s right.

Turbine is continually looking for ways to stretch the boundaries of pricing and commerce models in our games. That’s the kind of thinking that lead to Founder’s pricing in LOTRO and the launch of Free-to-Play in DDO. We’re always focused on providing the best possible value to the widest group of players, but not if it compromises our relationship with our fans.

Recently, we opened an Offer Wall with a selection of ads that got a strong negative response. There were also technical issues that raised valid questions about security. Overall it was a poor user experience that was not up to our standards, and for this we apologize.

Based on your feedback, we’re stepping away from the ‘Offer’ category for now. We’ll keep exploring alternate ways for players who want points to get them. We’ll also continue to innovate in pricing and accessibility because that’s who we are. As of today, the Offer Wall is coming down. We’ll collect all the feedback we’ve received over the last few days and will use it to guide future decisions.

Finally, there was a lot of speculation about how information such as your username or e-mail address was being used by our commerce partners. Ultimately we chose to pass the e-mail address to our commerce partners in the URL to facilitate e-mailing receipts to players. It went no further than that. Neither PlaySpan nor Super Rewards passed the information on. It was stored in the user database only and not transmitted to any of the companies who advertised via Super Rewards. Players who visited the page did not expose any new information to PlaySpan (our in-game store provider) that they did not already have.

Even though this implementation did not constitute a technical breach of our privacy policy, we certainly understand the concerns that have been communicated to us and how seriously players take their privacy. As a result, the Super Rewards team has already removed the e-mail addresses from their user database. If we decide to return to the Offer category in the future we will certainly work with our partners to implement a better system than the one we tried this week.

Thanks to everyone for your patience as we worked through this. We very much appreciate your support and candid feedback!

My thoughts:
1. Good for the wall to come down
2. Bad decision on transmitting emails
3. Worse decision to let Super Rewards be one of the companies (ummm, helloo! McFly!)
4. I don't trust Super Rewards to remove those email address for anything, and they've got a got great record to show why I don't trust them
5. Hopefully they learned their lesson and don't try this one again. And especially that pay a little more attention to who they do business with.

[erikthe10man]

A moment of clarity:

Generally, when things like this happen, it boils down to the incompetence of one or two people in a company. I know this based upon personal experience. What has happened with this whole fiasco does not reflect on Turbine as a whole. When decisions like this goes down, it always links to one person in a vice president/director/general management position who almost always thinks that he/she is twice as smart they are, but have a track record of royal screw-ups.

Some examples:

1) One company that I worked for allowed a single person to be in charge of the online marketing. When a promotion changed company-wide, this single person (who was at the meeting in which the mandate was given to change the promotion, mind you) failed to update the web offers. Keep in mind that this is the single most important function of this guy's job. When the phone calls came in challenging the fact that the online promotions state a special differently than what's in stores, the same moron who forgot to do his job suggested that we lie and tell the customer's that the store special is the only valid one. Illegal (bait and switch), and stupid.

2) Another company that I used to work for thought that the reason that their overall sales were down was because the salespeople needed a nice cart to help them put product on the floor. Never mind that the three class action lawsuits was the reason that the revenues were down - the company ordered these monstrously huge and expensive carts (2003), which at this time sit in stock rooms and usually are draped with coats. The cost of these carts were transferred to the customer in the form of fees. All at the behest of a single vice president.

3) Yet another company that I used to work for thought that product sold in a mall store should be $5 dollars higher than the same product sold in a non-mall store within the same company. When I pointed out that competitors within the mall are selling the products for less, and that the $5 extra is over the MSRP, the Regional Manager (who made this policy) stated "tell them that they're paying for superior customer service".

*note: I quit the jobs in examples 2 and 3 within four months, and got laid off from the job in example 1 after the company was sold and the department got downsized due to "company wide fiscal mismanagement".

The point is that no matter what happens negative within the framework of a business, it does not always stem from corporate policy or a company-wide accepted mandate. Usually, there are individuals who the buck stops at....and those individuals are more than happy to try to pass that buck - even though it's sticking to their hand. Give Turbine a pass on this one infraction. Realize that it only takes the action of one thoroughly stupid INDIVIDUAL to tarnish a company.

[LilFeet]

Marketroid has addressed the DDO Community and explained the situation.

Thanks Sapience!

[MissingMinds]

Does that require a login to their forums? Not all of us have DDO accounts...

Yes, you can read it. Login not required.

I just happened to beat Sapience to the punch as his link is the exact same one I posted.

[Sapience]

Yes, you can read it. Login not required.

I just happened to beat Sapience to the punch as her link is the exact same one I posted.

You can read any of our forums without logging in.

Oh and... I R DUDE (I mean there are pictures and everything!)

[MissingMinds]

You can read any of our forums without logging in.

Oh and... I R DUDE (I mean there are pictures and everything!)

doh! I have re attached the proper berries and twig. Sorry about that.