Huh, so that’s where steamspy gets the new players experimental numbers I guess? Pretty cool, hope it stays up.
I wonder if this is why I have noticed a degradation of Steams web QoS this week. I had thought they were having a good summer sale.
Update on his blog:
Really good to see Valve is taking this theft of sales & personal data seriously now. Hopefully they keep it up!
Come on, no personal data was stolen. Hell, not even sales data. Just ownership data, and it was taken from public API. And judging by most people’s reactions, it seems majority of devs liked its existence.
I am more than happy to be in the minority! I have been an advocate for developer & customer privacy and rights for a long time. I wont be changing now :) The wheel turns and privacy advocates like myself will be in the majority again at some point, I hope anyways!
Calling it theft is way of out line though.
Folks can call it “scraped” if they prefer. Steamspy is actually making money off other peoples work and data without asking permission* and without paying for it, so I think the stealing name fits there.
*actually he was specifically and repeatedly nicely asked directly by many developers including Kerbal devs who were literally afraid for their lives to stop doing so. He very rudely told everyone to fuck off and he was going to take whatever he wanted to make a buck off the stolen data regardless.
If I remember correctly at first Sergey agreed to take down Kerbal data, and few others who asked, but then as more companies asked, he reversed and put it back up because taking it all down by request would defeat the purpose of the site (site which was, for majority of devs, very useful).
The Kerbal story was a bit different than you think, it seems to me like they were more interested to hide their ownership data to be able to keep up this…
No they specifically said why. They were afraid for their safety. Sure they could lie, but why? Its a perfectly reasonable request.
And yes a lot of developers politely asked him to stop, he initially agreed but then he quickly figured out he would make less money because of it, so he reversed course and told everyone he didnt care what they thought. Lets not try and paint this guy as a friend of game developers or game players. He isnt.
Hell he even advised everyone to NOT go on Steam this year. I cant help think that contributed to Valve doing the right thing after he said it by the way…
Yes, the “safety” is a very convenient excuse to use when you want to prevent your employees, whom you are paying pittance, knowing how much money you are making. Sure there might be some truth to it but I doubt it.
You are painting Sergey as some asshole thief who is only in it for money and damn everything else, but that’s not the impression I get at all from reading interviews with him and following his twitter. I doubt someone who has been in gaming industry for as long as he has and now works for Epic on Fortnite would need it anyway (though I am sure he is glad about the fact that other devs find it so useful that they are willing to support it).
Not sure what you mean by that last paragraph, can you link it?
“Our publishing strategy at Epic Games,” he quipped, “is to not put our games on Steam.”
Again if I am in the minority thats cool, time is almost always on the pro privacy side in these matters. Its like a rule of the internet that companies & services that take data from customers and businesses without their permission end up having bad (sometimes unintended) consequences.
I dont care how useful it is to steal someones data , hell I would find it very useful to see the private emails of all the game publisher ceos out there. But its none of my damn business.
Phew, thanks for reading my rant, feels good to be righteous about a issue where its very clear to me what is right and wrong , not aimed at you :)
I mean, their publishing strategy is sound because they are Epic and can afford it, and they don’t need steam, I don’t find that statement particularly surprising or controversial.
I agree with you that stealing someones data is generally bad, I just disagree that that’s what Steamspy did. And personally I dislike how secretive the industry is about sales, considering how open other industries are without the skies falling. Hell, if steamspy proved one thing, it’s that more openness wouldn’t hurt and actually help instead.
It is not “private data” when it is publically available by consent, as the data was.
It is not theft of information when it is publically available and free.
Sergey’s only crime was having a brain and passing Basic Math. He did nothing wrong.
Valve was the owner of the data. They chose (and the users consented) to make it freely publically available.
this is fun
https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1014666423593992192
We’ve had to rely on SteamSpy numbers for our own games to use in pitches when publishing partners won’t share the real numbers with us.
Valve was the owner of the data. They chose (and the users consented) to make it freely publically available.
You mean the bit in your Steam developer agreement that specifically prohibits the sharing of sales data? Or the direct and specific NON consent that many developers, including Paradox & Kerbal gave to Steamspy?
There is also no mention to customers of “hey we are going to allow people to steal your data” . Its 2018, the tide has turned from harvesting and stealing customers data, its not widely accepted any more and rightfully so.
Even if you disagree with the above, it is indisputable that Valve is not consenting NOW. So we are all agreed right? No consent by any party, including valve.
So what does that make the guy making a buck of stealing other peoples data but whose day job paycheck comes from a company (Epic) which specifically does not share its customers & sales data?
Good post. I agree I am delighted nobody has been harmed. Personally I think it was only a matter of time before something went wrong however. But for sure I am happy its ending well with it being shut down and no harm done.
Curious about the bold though. I am not aware of any industry which is free with its sales data. Certainly books & music are VERY picky about it. It surprised me actually, I once worked with a guy in the book publishing business (he was a ghost writer) and he told me (in 2011) it was not accidental, his qoute was “you would not believe how few books you need to sell to get on the NYTimes best sellers list”
So what you are saying is that Valve broke the developer agreement by allowing users to show on their profile what games they own?
No I am saying they were too lazy and disorganised to shut down the hacking.
There was no hacking, unless you are hacking by viewing people’s profiles with a web browser.
Edit I guess google is hacking everyone’s website too by crawling them.