Civilization 5 Steamworks questions/concerns for inclusion in the FAQ

[Senethro]

Look at that entitlement.

 

[nerd]

Look at that entitlement.

Well, yes I am entitled.
If they want me to give them my money, with no hope of a refund, then I am entitled to have the information asked for.
They are equally entitled not to answer our collective questions, in which case I will keep my money.
In any transaction, the buyer is not only ethically but legally entitled to reasonable and adequate information regarding the goods being offered for sale.

 

[Senethro]

I was more meaning bello telling Greg how to do his job and the high standards he expects.

 

[Commander Bello]

I was more meaning bello telling Greg how to do his job and the high standards he expects.

"High standards"? "HIGH STANDARDS"?

Get a job, and you will see that these "high standards" are nothing more than just normal work.

Back to topic:
Not only were we asked to wait for a complete month. No, meanwhile Mr. Greg already indicates that he might not meet the self-set timeline.

Sorry, but professionals work much better. I am only a small fish in the big company's pond, yet if I have to give answer to the questions of my customers, I will get these answers (which are much more complex than the ones raised in this very thread) in much less time.

People have articulated to be thankful for Greg's "support" and presence here. To me it seems that it would be time to show such "support".
Up to now, there hasn't been anything from his side which would deserve the term "answer".

If you are satisfied with the fact that those "answers" are still missing, you will have your good reasons for it.

Others are not satisfied with it.

(Sorry Greg for more or less blaming you - but the performance of your company of which you are the representative is just poor.
Get the company guys to give you the answers and transfer them to the fans who were asked to raise them and all will be good. Fail in it and take the hits - that is, what a "community manager"'s job is.)

 

[Senethro]

Bello, you will never be satisfied because you have already indicated you will boycott the game.

Also, while your company may be able to respond faster on purely internal matters, we are waiting on communication between publisher, developer and distributor. Thats a lot of inboxes the emails have to go through.

 

[Elucidus]

There are legal requirements in regards to Personally Identifiable Information, especially at the international level. It isn't exactly an open-ended definition and Valve or whoever will be held liable for not properly securing this data, and the user agreement does not forgo this requirement.

 

[2K Greg]

I said from the beginning I didn't want to give a date

 

[Hashishim]

@2K Greg, im not to sure where to put this, with regards to the leaderheads, how will a person be able to create(mod) their own leaderheads/civilizations? will it be possible? Will you guys make something where it'll be a graphical interface on the game itself to make the leaderheads creations more easier? or will it be like how civIV is a little difficult if you dont have the skill.

Can you suggest to the guys in 2k to make something like the interface in many games they have something like that well FPS, like Fallout3 and Mass Effect 2 where you can design the face and head etc (even sims to an extent) so it'l be cool if 2k can do something like that aswell! Anyways i apologize if this is not the thread for it but eish just want to know that

 

[Elucidus]

Greg, if you could define exactly the information that steam captures and uses it would help alleviate or confirm some fears. Thanks.

 

[nerd]

I said from the beginning I didn't want to give a date

Of course not.....
But how long do you expect people to wait for answers to even the simplest basic questions.
I (we?) know there are some things you don't know and can't find out, and possibly other things the company doesn't dare let you say, but PLEASE, give us what you have!
If you wait until you have all the answers, they will be doing pre-release on CIV VII.

 

[civ_king]

Many of us respect you, but respect is earned not given. You good faith respect is starting to wear a little thin.

Please post the questions you have completed, date them and release and date the currently currently unanswered questions as they come out.

 

[Nick Danger]

It'll be released here, in a new thread. It'll probably also go on the official webpage.

Whether or not it'll make my "end if June" estimate is... well, we'll just have to see

I asked the following of Elizabeth 2k back around mid-May, she apparently moved on and you're now in the hot... errr.... driver's seat, and I'mnot sure it's on your list of questions (couldn't find it here), so I'll repeat it:
What personally identifiable information does steam/steamworks collect (beyond the obvious things that are mentioned in Valve's Privacy Statement), what third parties and associates do they share it with, and to what uses is it put?

Yep, that's a tall order and given some bits change regularly (like associates?) it'd have to be a snapshot-in-time, but some things are fairly set and easy to determine (like what personally identifiable information is currently being collected -- data collection is active, and programmed, so it's easily determinable).

Thanks!

 

[Rebel44]

Many of us respect you, but respect is earned not given. You good faith respect is starting to wear a little thin.

Please post the questions you have completed, date them and release and date the currently currently unanswered questions as they come out.

I agree.

 

[White Elk]

How and what information?

Hiya Elucidus! Long time no see!

I don't expect an honest nor straightforward answer from 2k or steam.
Just the nature of contemporary marketing. Bah! So I went searching...

While listening to a recent interview of Valves CEO, he spoke of looking at the data they mined, to try and discover the reason that games crash more on PC's than on Mac's. He made a comment about looking to see if PC users are more "software promiscuous" (his phrase) than Mac users.... what software people are using and how they get it. They are intentionally unclear as to what exactly it is they are looking for. But from listening to a few interviews of Gabe Newell, it has become clear to me that they look at much more than just our hardware specs. And by reading through info that steam distributes to developers and publishers, it is obvious that one thing they are looking for is marketing data... private data relating to what products we use, and how we spend our time..


At the GDC this year, Gabe shared a little of his vision for the future.
It ties into another posters comment so....

How exactly do they collect data on gamers' brainwaves?

Biometrics.


Gabe wants to spy on our brains!

Gabe Newell at the 2010 GDC

“One of the things we’ve found is we’ve been doing some research into biometrics. We have a criminal psychologist on staff now. We’re finding that the impact of what we do – the emotional component of it – can be improved pretty dramatically by measuring people’s arousal states. By looking at how their pupils are dilated, by tracking where their gaze is, you know, doing skin galvanic response. Rather than having an experience that’s supposed to work for everybody, you can design, you can react to how the player is feeling, which is what’s driving those biometric measures.”

http://www.fearlessgamer.com/tag/gabe-newell/

Nintendo has begun with a device to read a gamers pulse. Sounds potentially fun from a gaming point of view. And tracking a gamers gaze has some interesting gameplay possibilities. But I don't want some entity like steam to be recording my responses, and then pawning that data to marketing departments (or whoever will pay). And I don't want that stuff sitting in a file somewhere waiting to be hacked or sold by some immoral employee (As both a drug store manager and a security investigator, I have caught employees saving the old credit card carbon slips to sell on the blackmarket. The wise customers were those who requested the throw away carbon. I don't trust my private data in the hands of others.)

Biometric software could be a gamers delight. And it is a marketers dream. Marketers are going to use this to get their hands into our heads. Outfits like steam, who force data mining by requiring net access for non-net applications, are not someone I would be willing to hook up a heart monitor and eye scanner to.

User profiles would be stored not only on the data miners side, but at every point for which this data is shared. Privacy concerns are security concerns. Its not just about strangers learning your deep dark secrets, or marketers driving product to the lowest common denominator. Its about bad guys getting ahold of that info and using it against you. Data banks of private user data are a threat because they expose security vulnerabilities, and they aid criminals by providing a ready source of your cased habits.

.

 

[Commander Bello]

Regarding the questions which have been raised in the closed "Steam ban"-thread:

Just to clarify, the VAC ban is for VAC secured servers only. There is plenty of provision of non-VAC secured servers for most VAC games. They will also not take away your ability to play singleplayer.

Sounds great:

This will ban you from all Vac-secured servers, which means if you want to play multi-player you need to play on un-secured servers which will be full of cheaters who have also all been banned from playing with normal people, and thier is far less un-secured servers as Vavle doesn't provide any of them,

Two statements which seem to contradict each other.
And even, if by rhetorical means both could be brought together and in compliance with each other, what about the infection with cheaters?

This has nothing to do with the Steam platform.

IMHO it's unlikely that VAC will be used for Civ5.

Now, this statements seems to indicate that less and less "advantages" of Steam have to be implemented to make it somehow meaningful for a game like Civ5.

When we agree to sign on at Steam, we can only play one game online in our family at the same time. Ok, we could have different accounts, but then we don't have access to all our games. So, Steam is not very convenient for families.

When we agree to sign on at Steam, we still don't know what will be going on with modifications, as we don't get answers from 2K.

When we agree to sign on at Steam, in the worst case (which may be valid or not - we just don't know yet) we may be forced to go to cheater-infected servers. But we will have friend lists there, isn't that something we have waited for since ever?

 

[Senethro]

Non-Vac secured servers are available for FPS games that support dedicated servers. Valve itself doesn't host them. Valve in fact does not host most dedicated servers for games on Steam. Cheater infestation of unsecured servers is what you'd expect. Thats almost what they're there for.

Civ doesn't use the same multiplayer networking as FPS, so its irrelevent anyway.

We don't know if VAC can be used. We don't know if VAC will be used. If it is we can be certain it won't be used in a stupid way that will interfere with mods.

Thats still a pretty good worst case scenario you've managed to build though.

 

[Commander Bello]

I have just brought your statement into combination with the statement of another, apparently experienced Steam user.

If that combination makes for a worst case scenario, it may be less my fault, but a problem of what both users have posted?

 

[Senethro]

There isn't a worst case scenario because I posted a clarification and an informed judgement about how likely we are to deal with negative outcomes of VAC. Schuesseled wasn't necessarily incorrect but some of his definitions were a little off.

 

[Commander Bello]

There isn't a worst case scenario because I posted a clarification and an informed judgement about how likely we are to deal with negative outcomes of VAC. Schuesseled wasn't necessarily incorrect but some of his definitions were a little off.

So, non VAC-secured servers are not cheater-infected?
Or was he wrong in his statement that there are not so many of the non-VAC servers?

Anyway, I still don't get why putting both statements together for you makes for a worst case scenario?

 

[Senethro]

Non-VAC secured servers in TF2 run the gamut from cheat endorsing servers to regular public servers that use strong admin intervention to stay cheat free. They are rare compared to VAC secured servers but there are quite enough. This is an irrelevent tangent because Civ doesn't use dedicated servers as FPS games do.

I didn't say it was a worst case scenario, you did.

When we agree to sign on at Steam, in the worst case (

When I said (and have repeated in each post since) that the worst case scenario you outlined will not exist I thought I was being clear.

So I don't understand what you're asking me