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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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It was all downhill after the Cuecat

Sometime in 2001, I walked into a Radio Shack on San Francisco’s Market Street and asked for a Cuecat: a handheld barcode scanner that looked a bit like a cat and a bit like a sex toy. The clerk handed one over to me and I left, feeling a little giddy. I didn’t have to pay a cent.

The Cuecat was a good idea and a terrible idea. The good idea was to widely distribute barcode scanners to computer owners, along with software that could read and decode barcodes; the company’s marketing plan called for magazines and newspapers to print barcodes alongside ads and articles, so readers could scan them and be taken to the digital edition. To get the Cuecat into widespread use, the company raised millions in the capital markets, then mass-manufactured these things and gave them away for free at Radio Shacks around the country. Every Wired and Forbes subscriber got one in the mail!

That was the good idea (it’s basically a prototype for today’s QR-codes). The terrible idea was that this gadget would spy on you. Also, it would only work with special barcodes that had to be licensed from the manufacturer. Also, it would only work on Windows.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001017162623/http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2000/nf20000928_029.htm

But the manufacturer didn’t have the last word! Not at all. A couple of enterprising hardware hackers — Pierre-Philippe Coupard and Michael Rothwell — tore down a Cuecat, dumped its ROM, and produced their own driver for it — a surveillance-free driver that worked with any barcode. You could use it to scan the UPCs on your books or CDs or DVDs to create a catalog of your media; you could use it to scan UPCs on your groceries to make a shopping list. You could do any and every one of these things, because the Cuecat was yours.

Cuecat’s manufacturer, Digital Convergence, did not like this at all. They sent out legal demand letters and even shut down some of the repositories that were hosting alternative Cuecat firmware. They changed the license agreement that came with the Cuecat software CD to prohibit reverse-engineering.

http://www.cexx.org/cuecat.htm

It didn’t matter, both as a practical matter and as a matter of law. As a practical matter, the (ahem) cat was out of the bag: there were so many web-hosting companies back then, and people mirrored the code to so many of them, the company would have its hands full chasing them all down and intimidating them into removing the code.

Then there was the law: how could you impose license terms on a gift? How could someone be bound by license terms on a CD that they simply threw away without ever opening it, much less putting it in their computer?

https://slashdot.org/story/00/09/18/1129226/digital-convergence-changes-eula-and-gets-cracked

In the end, Cuecat folded and sold off its remaining inventory. The early 2000s were not a good time to be a tech company, much less a tech company whose business model required millions of people to meekly accept a bad bargain.

Back then, tech users didn’t feel any obligation to please tech companies’ shareholders: if they backed a stupid business, that was their problem, not ours. Venture capitalists were capitalists — if they wanted us give to them according to their need and take from them according to their ability, they should be venture communists.

Last August, philosopher and Centre for Technomoral Futures director Shannon Vallor tweeted, “The saddest thing for me about modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance is how it has just slowly killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech. Every product Meta or Amazon announces makes the future seem bleaker and grayer.”

https://twitter.com/ShannonVallor/status/1559659655097376768

She went on: “I don’t think it’s just my nostalgia, is it? There’s no longer anything being promised to us by tech companies that we actually need or asked for. Just more monitoring, more nudging, more draining of our data, our time, our joy.”

https://twitter.com/ShannonVallor/status/1559663985821106177

Today on Tumblr, @wilwheaton responded: “[T]here is very much no longer a feeling of ‘How can this change/improve my life?’ and a constant dread of ‘How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity in a world that demands I have this thing to operate.’”

https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/698603648058556416/cory-doctorow-if-you-see-this-and-have-thoughts

Wil finished with, “Cory Doctorow, if you see this and have thoughts, I would LOVE to hear them.”

I’ve got thoughts. I think this all comes back to the Cuecat.

When the Cuecat launched, it was a mixed bag. That’s generally true of technology — or, indeed, any product or service. No matter how many variations a corporation offers, they can never anticipate all the ways that you will want or need to use their technology. This is especially true for the users the company values the least — poor people, people in the global south, women, sex workers, etc.

That’s what makes the phrase “So easy your mom can use it” particularly awful “Moms” are the kinds of people whose priorities and difficulties are absent from the room when tech designers gather to plan their next product. The needs of “moms” are mostly met by mastering, configuring and adapting technology, because tech doesn’t work out of the box for them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/19/the-weakest-link/#moms-are-ninjas

(As an alternative, I advocate for “so easy your boss can use it,” because your boss gets to call up the IT department and shout, “I don’t care what it takes, just make it work!” Your boss can solve problems through raw exercise of authority, without recourse to ingenuity.)

Technology can’t be understood separately from technology users. This is the key insight in Donald Norman’s 2004 book Emotional Design, which argued that the ground state of all technology is broken, and the overarching task of tech users is to troubleshoot the things they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#cuckoos-egg

Troubleshooting is both an art and a science: it requires both a methodical approach and creative leaps. The great crisis of troubleshooting is that the more frustrated and angry you are, the harder it is to be methodical or creative. Anger turns attention into a narrow tunnel of brittle movements and thinking.

In Emotional Design, Norman argues that technology should be beautiful and charming, because when you like a technology that has stopped working, you are able to troubleshoot it in an expansive, creative, way. Emotional Design was not merely remarkable for what it said, but for who said it.

Donald Norman, after all, was the author of the hugely influential 1998 classic The Design of Everyday Things, which counseled engineers and designers to put function over form — to design things that work well, even if that meant stripping away ornament and sidelining aesthetics.

https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/don-norman/the-design-of-everyday-things/9780465050659/

With Emotional Design, Norman argued that aesthetics were functional, because aesthetics primed users to fix the oversights and errors and blind spots of designers. It was a manifesto for competence and humility.

And yet, as digital technology has permeated deeper into our lives, it has grown less configurable, not more. Companies today succeed where Cuecat failed. Consolidation in the online world means that if you remove a link from one search engine and four social media sites, the material in question vanishes for 99% of internet users.

It’s even worse for apps: anyone who succeeds in removing an app from two app stores essentially banishes it from the world. One mobile platform uses technological and legal countermeasures to make it virtually impossible to sideload an app; the other one relies on strong-arm tactics and deceptive warnings to do so.

That means that when a modern Coupard and Rothwell decides to unfuck some piece of technology — to excise the surveillance and proprietary media requirements, leaving behind the welcome functionality — they can only do so with the sufferance of the manufacturer. If the manufacturer doesn’t like an add-on, mod, plug-in or overlay, they can use copyright takedowns, anticircumvention law, patent threats, trademark threats, cybersecurity law, contract law and other “IP” to simply banish the offending code:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Many of these laws carry dire penalties. For example, distributing a tool that bypasses an “access control” so that you can change the software on a gadget (say, to make your printer accept third-party ink) is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a $500k fine and a 5-year prison sentence.

If Cuecat’s manufacturers had simply skinned their firmware with a thin scrim of DRM, they could have threatened Coupard and Rothwell with prison sentences. The developments in “IP” over the two decades since the Cuecat have conjured up a new body of de facto law that Jay Freeman calls “felony contempt of business model.”

Once we gave companies the power to literally criminalize the reconfiguration of their products, everything changed. In the Cuecat era, a corporate meeting to plan a product that acted against its users’ interests had to ask, “How will we sweeten the pot and/or obfuscate our code so that our users don’t remove the anti-features we’re planning to harm them with?”

But in a world of Felony Contempt of Business Model, that discussion changes to “Given that we can literally imprison anyone who helps our users get more out of this product, how can we punish users who are disloyal enough to simply quit our service or switch away from our product?”

That is, “how can we raise the switching costs of our products so that users who are angry at us keep using our products?” When Facebook was planning its photos product, they deliberately designed it to tempt users into making it the sole repository of their family photos, in order to hold those photos ransom to keep Facebook users from quitting for G+:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Companies claim that their lock-in strategies are about protecting their users: “Move into our walled garden, for it is a fortress, whose battlements bristle with fearsome warriors who will defend you from the bandits who roam the countryside”:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

But this “feudal security” offers a terrible temptation to the lords of these fortresses, because once you are inside those walls, the fortress can easily be converted to a prison: these companies can abuse you with impunity, for so long as the cost of the abuse is less than the cost of the things you must give up when you leave.

The tale that companies block you from overriding their decisions is for your own good was always dubious, because companies simply can’t anticipate all the ways their products will fail you. No design team knows as much about your moment-to-moment struggles as you do.

But even where companies are sincere in their desire to be the most benevolent of dictators, the gun on the mantelpiece in Act I is destined to go off by Act III: eventually, the temptation to profit by hurting you will overpower whatever “corporate ethics” once stayed the hand of the techno-feudalist who rules over your fortress. Under feudal security, you are one lapse in corporate leadership from your protector turning into your tormentor.

When Apple launched the Ipad 12 years ago, I published an editorial entitled “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either),” in which I predicted that app stores would inevitable be turned against users:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Today, Apple bans apps if they “use…a third-party service” unless they “are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use.” In other words, Apple specifically prohibits developers from offering tools that displease other companies’ shareholders, no matter whether this pleases Apple customers:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#intellectual-property

Note that clause 5.2.2 of Apple’s developer agreement doesn’t say “You mustn’t violate a legally enforceable term of service.” It just says, “Thou shalt not violate a EULA.” EULAs are garbage-novellas of impenetrable legalese, larded with unenforceable and unconscionable terms.

Apple sometimes will displease other companies on your behalf. For example, it instituted a one-click anti-tracking setting for Ios that cost Facebook $10 billion in a matter of months:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

But Apple also has big plans to expand its margins by growing its own advertising network. When Apple customers choose ad-blockers that block Apple’s ads, will Apple permit it?

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/

The problem with app stores isn’t whether your computing experience is “curated” — that is, whether entities you trust can produce collections of software they vouch for. The problem is when you can’t choose someone else — when leaving a platform involves high switching costs, whether that’s having to replace hardware, buy new media, or say goodbye to your friends, customers, community or family.

When a company can leverage its claims to protecting you to protect itself from you — from choices you might make that ultimately undermine its shareholders interests, even if they protect your own interests — it would be pretty goddamned naive to expect it to do otherwise.

More and more of our tools are now digital tools, whether we’re talking about social media or cars, tractors or games consoles, toothbrushes or ovens:

https://www.hln.be/economie/gentse-foodboxleverancier-mealhero-failliet-klanten-weten-van-niets~a3139f52/

And more and more, those digital tools look more like apps than Cuecats, with companies leveraging “IP” to let them control who can compete with them — and how. Indeed, browsers are becoming more app-like, rather than the other way around.

Back in 2017, the W3C took the unprecedented step of publishing a DRM standard despite this standard not having anything like the consensus that is the norm for W3C publications, and the W3C rejected a proposal to protect people who reverse-engineered that standard to add accessibility features or correct privacy defects:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

And while we’re seeing remarkable progress on Right to Repair and other policies that allow the users of technology to override the choices of vendors, there’s another strong regulatory current that embraces companies’ ability to control their users, in the hopes that these big companies will police their users to prevent bad stuff, from controversial measures like filtering for copyright infringement to more widely supported ideas like blocking child sex abuse material (CSAM, AKA “child porn”).

There are two problems with this. First, if we tell companies they must control their users (that is, block them from running plugins, mods, skins, filters, etc) then we can’t tell them that they must not control their users. It comes down to whether you want to make Mark Zuckerberg better at his job, or whether you want to abolish the job of “Mark Zuckerberg.”

https://doctorow.medium.com/unspeakable-8c7bbd4974bc

Then there’s the other problem — the gun on the mantelpiece problem. If we give big companies the power to control their users, they will face enormous internal pressure to abuse that power. This isn’t a hypothetical risk: Facebook’s top executives stand accused of accepting bribes from Onlyfans in exchange for adding performers who left Onlyfans to a terrorist watchlist, which meant they couldn’t use other platforms:

https://gizmodo.com/clegg-meta-executives-identified-in-onlyfans-bribery-su-1849649270

I’m not a fan of terrorist watchlists, for obvious reasons. But letting Facebook manage the terrorist watchlist was clearly a mistake. But Facebook’s status as a “trusted reporter” grows directly out of Facebook’s good work on moderation. The lesson is the same as the one with Apple and the ads — just because the company sometimes acts in our interests, it doesn’t follow that we should always trust them to do so.

Back to Shannon Vallor’s question about the origins of “modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance” and how that “killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech”; and Wil Wheaton’s “constant dread of ‘How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity.”

Tech leaders didn’t get stupider or crueler since those halcyon days. The tech industry was and is filled with people who made their bones building weapons of mass destruction for the military-industrial complex; IBM, the company that gave us the PC, built the tabulating machines for Nazi concentration camps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

We didn’t replace tech investors and leaders with worse people — we have the same kinds of people but we let them get away with more. We let them buy up all their competitors. We let them use the law to lock out competitors they couldn’t buy, including those who would offer their customers tools to lower their switching costs and block abusive anti-features.

We decided to create “Felony Contempt of Business Model,” and let the creators of the next Cuecat reach beyond the walls of their corporate headquarters and into the homes of their customers, the offices of their competitors, and the handful of giant tech sites that control our online discourse, to reach into those places and strangle anything that interfered with their commercial desires.

That’s why plans to impose interoperability on tech giants are so exciting — because the problem with Facebook isn’t “the people I want to speak to are all gathered in one convenient place,” no more than the problem with app stores isn’t “these companies generally have good judgment about which apps I want to use.”

The problem is that when those companies don’t have your back, you have to pay a blisteringly high price to leave their walled gardens. That’s where interop comes in. Think of how an interoperable Facebook could let you leave behind Zuckerberg’s dominion without forswearing access to the people who matter to you:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

Cuecats were cool. The people who made them were assholes. Interop meant that you could get the cool gadget and tell the assholes to fuck off. We have lost the ability to do so, little by little, for decades, and that’s why a new technology that seems cool no longer excites. That’s why we feel dread — because we know that a cool technology is just bait to lure us into a prison that masquerades as a fortress.

Image: Jerry Whiting (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CueCat_barcode_scanner.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A Cuecat scanner with a bundled cable and PS/2 adapter; it resembles a plastic cat and also, slightly, a sex toy. It is posed on a Matrix movie 'code waterfall' background and limned by a green 'supernova' light effect.]

#pluralistic

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acherrybee · 7 months

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#196 #transgender #nonbinary #r/196 #r196 #lgbtq #lgbtqia

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ithinkthiswasabadidea · 4 months

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I'm sorry but the 'End User License Agreement aka Our Cursed Pact ' pop up when you first launch BG3 is still one of the funniest fucking things I've seen from the game so far

I only skim read it, but seeing 'Pact Obligations' and 'Additional Obligations in Eldritch Law' is just ridiculously clever and on the nose

#baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #bg3 #bg3 blogging

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hollowtones · 10 months

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Disney slapped a EULA onto a 1995 DOS game

"Star Wars: Dark Forces" is a classic FPS of the DOS era.

Well, Disney owns the franchise now, and you know what that means: End User License Agreements!!!(?)

Let's read.

Live now!!

twitch_live

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fishing-lesbian-catgirl · 9 months

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Ah yes, my favorite replika, End User License Agreement

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dollsahoy · 5 months

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Talking with people about reasons not to trust Sony Corporation and the young 'uns didn't know about the rootkit scandal

The Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal concerns the copy protection measures included by Sony BMG on compact discs in 2005. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits. Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released an uninstaller for one of the programs that merely made the program's files visible while also installing additional software that could not be easily removed, collected an email address from the user and introduced further security vulnerabilities. Following public outcry, government investigations and class-action lawsuits in 2005 and 2006, Sony BMG partially addressed the scandal with consumer settlements, a recall of about 10% of the affected CDs and the suspension of CD copy-protection efforts in early 2007.

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warbyparker · 5 months

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Warby Parker “Warby Park” Merch Sweepstakes

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2. ELIGIBILITY: This Sweepstakes is open only to individual legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, at least 18 years of age (or the age of majority in his or her state of residence if greater than 18) on date of entry. Employees of Warby Parker Inc. (“Warby Parker” or “Sponsor”) and such employees’ immediate family members (parents, spouses, siblings, children, and grandparents, regardless of where they reside), and members of the same household (whether legally related or not), and their respective affiliates, subsidiaries, parent companies, and advertising and promotion agencies are not eligible to enter or to win. Parties that are under any obligation, contractual or otherwise, that would limit or impair Sponsor’s ability to use the Entry as set forth in these Official Rules, and parties that are under a merchandising or similar agreement that would restrict exploitation of any right related to the Entry, are also not eligible to enter or to win. Sweepstakes void where restricted or prohibited. By entering, you represent that you have read these Official Rules and agree to abide by and be bound by all terms of these Official Rules.

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beeple · 2 years

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END USER LICENSING AGREEMENT

#beeple #everyday

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celaenacc · 2 years

Text

My Stance on Perma-paywalls, Early Access, and EA’s “nEw PoLiCy”

I really debated even posting about this or not, but I’m seeing so much hate and vitriol in this community targeted against creators that have played by the rules for years and have treated their followers/the community with respect, that I feel I need to say “Please stop the hate”. This post feels super long, but I hope that it helps clarify the situation and my stances thoroughly and effectively.

TL;DR: There’s no new policy and early access is not retired. Your “evidence” isn’t actually evidence of what you’re claiming. Stop treating early access creators like greedy criminals for no other reason than they’re still practicing early access.

Now that I’ve clarified that I am not addressing a “new policy” or an “updated policy”, let’s move to the hate some of you are harboring for early access creators in the community. Did you feel the same way about early access in relation to the EULA and community one week ago as you do now? If the answer is yes, then this conversation doesn’t apply to you. Since we’ve established the EULA/ToS for The Sims 4 has not been changed/updated, it should be obvious where I am taking this conversation. If you felt one week ago that simgurudrake’s allowance for early access was valid, then you still should today, as nothing has changed with the EULA. If you feel that an official sim guru (at the time) could not make that allowance, then that also has not changed. I’m not here to argue on whether or not early access is allowed, because the existing EULA would have it be a “no” and the simgurudrake comment (as well as an “EA App Team” member agreeing to its validity) would have it be a “yes”. I’m instead here to argue that whatever your early access stance was a week ago, that’s what it should be now. The only real change is that EA now has an actionable method of reporting EULA-violating creators and they might follow through on reports - that’s the only change and it’s not a policy change, it’s an enforcement change, which is different.

Edit: 350pm EDT : EA Help has updated the article to reflect early access still being allowed. So to all of the people who thought I was illiterate or stupid or whatever, turns out my stance was right. Please let this post die down now.

First off, to everyone claiming that EA “updated their policy on custom content”: They haven’t. This EA Help article that has everyone either celebrating, trying to figure out how to adjust, or outright going on a tantrum (specifically referring to a post I saw earlier saying stuff like “F*ck all of you” and “I’ll still love you when you all hate me” or whatever)- yeah, it’s not an update to their policies. It is a paraphrasing of the Sims 4 EULA; they used laymen’s terms to help those that can’t understand the terminology of the EULA to understand their already existing policies towards monetization of custom content/mods/”user generated content”. Some of us (including myself) asked them to do this via a petition we signed, which stated “To EA/Maxis, you have the time to release a paragraph-long statement explaining how the EULA relates to permanently paywalling UGC and the resulting doxing and harassment that follows players redistributing UGC that these creators have no legal rights to be committing crimes over. Use specific wording that cannot be manipulated, protect your players, and get yourself some easy positive publicity.“ EA did exactly this via the EA Help article. An End User License Agreement is not updated via a help forum article meant to help you “Learn about The Sims policy towards Mods” (their words); it simply serves as a rephrasing of the EULA to help users understand that permaaywalling cc has always been against the Sims 4 EULA. Please stop calling this a new policy, or an update to the TOS- it has not changed and saying it has makes the permapaywallers of the community feel like they previously had the right to practice permapaywalling, which has never been the case.

As far as my stance on early access, I like to go off not only the aforementioned allowance, but also the fact that the EA Game Changers/Creator Network program has had and still has early access creators in it as of today (August 2nd 2022). If we’re going off what EA does or doesn’t allow as the “right” thing for our community, you need to accept the fact that EA says early access is provisionally valid. If EA comes out and tells their creator network to stop early access, then that will be an actual change and I will agree with you at that point that creators should stop early access. Until then, stop shitting all over respectful creators simply because they continue early access if a week ago you agreed with early access.

“But Celaena, we asked EA Help via chat for confirmation and they said early access isn’t allowed!” ~ Asking EA Help via chat is like asking the McDonald's cashier what McD's corporate policy is on trademark infringement of the golden arches. I’ve heard they spoke with EA Help chat supervisors: asking for a chat supervisor to rule on early access is like asking your local McD's shift manager about the corporate policies on trademark infringement. They don't have the qualification to state that it is or isn't allowed, and quite honestly, they probably would have said the same thing a month ago as they are now because they aren’t decision-makers at EA. Without giving specific details as to my personal purchases, I’m going to use the fact that Amazon chat once refused to refund me for a purchase they never even shipped and I emailed corporate with screenshots of what a chat rep stated was policy; CEO Jassy ‘s assistant made sure I got my refund and told me chat was wrong. EA Help chat reps =/= EA decision-makers. EA Help chat reps =/= confirmation that cancels out a sim guru’s statements or EA’s creator network existing practices. Once more for those who may not yet understand: Chat representatives or even chat supervisors are not qualified to confirm something as against policy when EA literally has a program that provides early access incentives to creators who practice cc early access; if EA does not want or allow early access on cc, EA will make their creator network not use early access on cc.

“But Celaena, the EA Help article says cc has to be free for all users.” ~ Absolutely correct, but it doesn’t specify when, nor does the legally enforceable EULA, just as always. Perma-paywalling = direct violation. If you’ve never heard of “Contra proferentem”, it’s essentially the legal premise of "interpretation against the draftsman" when there is ambiguity in a contract (such as an EULA). Meaning, legally speaking (and I’m not a lawyer or law expert, so for legal purposes, this is in no way advice and you should look into the relevant legality yourself before you make decisions), early access creators could very well not face any legal repercussions if EA was to pursue them, which again is unlikely because the creator network supports early access creators. Early access does not require money as the only way to use a mod/cc because you can wait 2-3 weeks at which point it becomes free for all users, as required by the EULA and the EA Help article paraphrasing said EULA.

“But Celaena, you’ve always seemed against greed and paywalling in the community.” ~ Also correct. I’m against permapaywalling as it is against the EULA, the community's best interests, and is overall fuel for classist assholes to belittle those that can’t or choose not to pay for pixel clothing from every creator that makes at least a quarter-decent piece of cc or mod. I’m against early access that is purposefully longer than 3 weeks as a habit (frequency of like once or twice over the span of years is understandable when it was completely accidental/unplanned because maybe they genuinely forgot to schedule public release once or something serious came up). I do not see early access as “paywalling” because you have the choice of waiting instead of paying, therefore you could just as soon call it “waitwalling” instead of “paywalling”. If you can’t wait 2-3 weeks, then you might be the greedy one in the situation- and the reason I say might is for exceptions like pride cc being locked till the end of June or early July, or a game saving fix that’ll be patched/not needed anyway by the time it becomes a public mod. As a friend of mine likes to say, “it’s not black and white”. But as for the greys I choose? They’re closer to the side of early access than not.

“Celaena, there are early access creators acting absolutely horrible and throwing tantrums over this; they don’t deserve to make money off the community.” ~ Completely 100% agree with you there. That type of behavior should be seen as unacceptable here and they do not deserve money if that’s how they act. I want to specify here that this is not referring to great, respectful creators who have been explaining unfair treatment against them and asking for it to stop while remaining mature over it. This is referring to posts (and I’m not going to link it because if you haven’t seen it, you don’t need to) that are just like “Fuck you, fuck EA, you’re all going to hate me but I’ll still love you anyway, screw you,” etc. If you’re that creator, listen, I understand the hate that was coming down on you over continuing early access, but that response was a) clearly going to get you more bad rep and hate sent your way (to other readers, don’t send them hate, just move on from the situation please), and b) not at all the way to show you love your followers despite using those words somewhere in there. I’ve never heard of you before the last 12 hours, but I really hope you can find a better situation for you than this community you seem to hold rage towards; seriously, I do wish you well, it is not sarcasm. That being said, I want to see creators that react this way leave our community, but not by being harassed out, please just ignore these creators till they feel staying isn’t worth it rather than tagging or messaging them with a bunch of hate and attention. If any early access creator needs a tone reader before posting, just ask me or anyone else in the community, I’m sure there’s a lot of us who won’t mind helping you say the right thing the way you mean it. If you don’t care about what you say to the community and have the mindset of “can’t make money off you, don’t care what you think”, please get the fuck out and have a nice day. To the creators who do care about the community and are just struggling with what to do in this situation, please stay and wonderful day, you deserve the opportunity for people to choose to support you financially since you see them as people rather than dollar signs.

“Celaena, you’re just going off because you want early access money.” ~ If I get this as a response, I will genuinely laugh IRL because I’ve not only been on an accidental hiatus for like almost a year, but I also stopped even trying to practice early access back in like 2020 because it just wasn’t suiting my habits/self-discipline. When and if I create for the game again, it’ll be immediately free upon release, so I have no personal benefit from some of you chilling the fuck out about early access right now.

Put the pitchforks down and take a deep breath everybody. Do you want this community to move forward on a foundation of hate and vitriol? Or do you want it to be a place of understanding and actually coming together as a community to solve problems?

Letters to Creators

To the creators who a) are remaining respectful and community-oriented this week and b) are also continuing early access until EA publicly tells you using the words “early access”, I want you to know that I still appreciate you being here and I hope this situation gets easier for you going forward. If you don’t have the energy to write this much about why you’re not sure about the early access provision, feel free to link this post as an explanation.

To the creators who are a) are remaining respectful and community-oriented this week and b) are discontinuing early access to be safe, I want you to know that I also appreciate you for being here and that I hope followers continue to pledge to you without early access. If you decide to go back to early access after reading this post, feel free to link it as the reason why rather than having to summarize this ridiculously long post.

To the creators who are a) are remaining respectful and community-oriented this week and b) have already removed your paywalls, thank you for taking the policy clarification in stride and adapting with grace. You are also appreciated for being here.

To the creators who are not remaining respectful and community-oriented, please change that or leave. This isn’t the space for you. If you don’t like that, block me because I will not be arguing with you.

#EA policy clarification not update #please put down the pitchforks #ts4 permapaywall discussion #ts4 paywall discussion #ts4 early access discussion

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