Stadia port of Terraria canceled after co-creator is locked out of his Google accounts

[Muhvinssi]

Summary

 

Terraria port on stadia has been cancelled, Andrew Spinsk announced on Twitter, after the game's co-creator Andrew Spinks' Google account was disabled three weeks ago due ToS violation. Spinks has attempted to contact Google to only recive runarounds. Terraria youtube account was disabled earlier in january. He stated that ties between him and Google are cut and he won't be supporting Googles platforms in future. This could mean the removal of Terraria from Google Play Store. Google is yet to make official statement.

 

Quotes

Quote

Spinks claims that he has done “nothing to violate” Google’s terms of service, leading to the decision to pull Terraria from Stadia entirely. The project has been canceled, and Spinks further says that his company will “no longer support” any of Google’s platforms going forward, saying that doing business with Google is “a liability.”

 

My thoughts

Terraria is alredy well regarded game and has sold over 30 million copies across all platforms, so not being in Stadia won't hurt Re-Logic, but Google needs good games on Stadia to compete. I hope that Google and Spinks resolve thsi privately. The worst case scenario is that Terraria will also be removed from Google Play Store.

I too, think this might have not happened had Google employed people to check for possible false positives in ToS violation cases and to help in cases like this.

Sources

https://9to5google.com/2021/02/08/stadia-port-of-terraria-cancelled-after-co-creator-is-locked-out-of-his-google-accounts/

https://www.pcgamer.com/terraria-creator-cancels-stadia-port-after-being-locked-out-of-google-account/

Edited February 8, 2021 by Muhvinssi
added my comment and details to summary, also fixed some grammatical mistakes

[da na]

oof.

[Jet_ski]

Google and other big internet companies need to hire some actual humans to do things that require human intervention. They shouldn’t be allowed to let some algorithm run without any supervision or this kinda stuff keeps happening. A while back it was Bitcoin scams on YouTube that used people’s name and brands to scam people. Now this.

 

There’s nothing worse than a company that doesn’t have people you could call directly to fix an issue.

[wamred]

Wow Google that’s bad. They really need to get their mess together 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

It's almost like they want stadia to fail.

[Mling]

I remember a few years ago google docs locked out journalists who were covering ISIS coz their bots are dumb. Basically. Ever since I've kept offline copies of the few docs I have.

 

I need gmail coz other free providers dont get through spam filters as well. I guess I have to be prepared at anytime I'll have to burn my account and make a new one.

[Mling]

1 hour ago, Jet_ski said:

Google and other big internet companies need to hire some actual humans to do things that require human intervention. They shouldn’t be allowed to let some algorithm run without any supervision or this kinda stuff keeps happening. A while back it was Bitcoin scams on YouTube that used people’s name and brands to scam people. Now this.

 

There’s nothing worse than a company that doesn’t have people you could call directly to fix an issue.

I think they do a mix of humans and bots. The humans are outsourced. There was an article a while back the working conditions at a facebook contractor was bad and psychologically damaging. 

[wamred]

2 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

Google and other big internet companies need to hire some actual humans to do things that require human intervention. They shouldn’t be allowed to let some algorithm run without any supervision or this kinda stuff keeps happening. A while back it was Bitcoin scams on YouTube that used people’s name and brands to scam people. Now this.

 

There’s nothing worse than a company that doesn’t have people you could call directly to fix an issue.

Yeah but at the scale that would take way too many humans. Not saying there doesn’t need to be humans just humans and bots.

[Lurick]

I'm calling it now, they'll get the account back with an "apology" about how "internal processes blah blah blah" and that's it and Google won't give a damn. All the smaller people who've been completely wiped by Google just because they are smaller and can't make a huge stink about it will get nothing. I understand MAYBE losing access to a part of Google services but for a single TOS violation with no explanation to basically wipe access to EVERY google service is beyond insane. Just imagine having your phone number in GoogleFi and losing that too!

[Sauron]

Stadia is dead in the water, has been for some time... they're probably just cutting their losses at this point.

3 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

And this is why there needs to be a crackdown on big tech. Apple, Google and Microsoft can't get away with that kind of stuff.

While I agree these companies need to be split up this isn't really the reason why... they have a right to not do business with people if they don't want to, even if they go about it in such a rude way.

[oats_0968]

3 hours ago, Muhvinssi said:

Summary

 

Terraria port on stadia has been cancelled, Andrew Spinsk announced on Twitter, after the game's co-creator Andrew Spinks' Google account was disabled three weeks ago due ToS violation. Spinks has attempted to contact Google to only recive runarounds. Terraria youtube account was disabled earlier in january. He has stated that his ties with Google has been cut and he won't be supporting Googles platforms in future. This could mean the removal of Terraria from Google Play Store. Google is yet to make official statement.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

Terraria is alredy well regarded game and has sold over 30 million copies across all platforms, so not being in Stadia won't hurt Re-Logic, but Google needs good games on Stadia to compete. I hope that Google and Spinks resolve thsi privately. The worst case scenario is that Terraria will also be removed from Google Play Store.

Sources

https://9to5google.com/2021/02/08/stadia-port-of-terraria-cancelled-after-co-creator-is-locked-out-of-his-google-accounts/

https://www.pcgamer.com/terraria-creator-cancels-stadia-port-after-being-locked-out-of-google-account/

I don't know how to feel about this. My only experience with Terraria was through Pewdiepie, and it seemed to be a fun game. I also have heard some negative stuff about Stadia, and how, just like Google+ in the past, has been over done and then forgotten. I can't really think about a single thing Stadia has done right (apart from having MatPat at it's launch) and I think that this will be a small dent in Terraria's armour, but a giant pothole for Stadia. I think that by the end of 2021, Stadia will be bo more.

[Radium_Angel]

2 hours ago, wamred said:

Wow Google that’s bad. They really need to get their mess together 

https://killedbygoogle.com/ 

[Vishera]

Knowing how high and mighty YouTube thinks they are,the developer will probably get ignored.

And there are the bizarre cases of whatever the algorithm does to your account unjustly,stays even after a human reviews it,like the algorithm is some kind of god.

We should be making a movie about Google as a cult that believes in the stupid and evil algorithm that rules the world.

[Sauron]

14 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Now they're being questioned about violations of:
- customer rights law: here it is prohibited to discriminate clients for whatever reason, and business can be forced to do business if they have the capacity to do so

I don't know about Brazil in particular but most countries make it illegal to discriminate over inherent characteristics of a person e.g. their skin color or sexuality, not "for whatever reason". If you come into a shop and spit on the floor they're allowed to kick you out even if what you did wasn't illegal. Not that I think the Brazilian network did that, I'm just giving you an example.

18 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

- intelectual property theft: they nuked 5 years worth of news, commentary and documentaries;

That's now what IP theft means unless Brazil has drastically different copyright laws from the rest of the world.

19 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

- preventing business between viewers and channel: subscribed people are subscribed to the channel, not youtube, so they can't cancel subscriptions without explicit user permission;

Irrelevant, they are using their platform. A cinema has a right to stop showing a movie even if their customers wanted to see it there.

19 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

- constitutional right to defend yourself: they got banned due to two consecutive strikes with no specific causes, had no time or opportunity to complain and be listened, which is illegal. 

It's not illegal (again, unless Brazilian law is wildly different from most other countries). You have a right to defend yourself in a court against legal proceedings, not against a company deciding they don't want your videos on their website - unless you can prove you were banned for illegal reasons, e.g. for your skin color, which is extremely difficult in a case like this even if it were true.

 

I understand it can be annoying but this is the part of google's behavior that would be acceptable in isolation. They have a right to offer bad service so long as they aren't violating anyone's legal rights, and unfortunately having a youtube channel is not one of those rights. What isn't really acceptable is that they have a de facto monopoly on user video streaming outside of niches like p0rn (where another company has a monopoly instead ).

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

I don't know about Brazil in particular but most countries make it illegal to discriminate over inherent characteristics of a person e.g. their skin color or sexuality, not "for whatever reason". If you come into a shop and spit on the floor they're allowed to kick you out even if what you did wasn't illegal. Not that I think the Brazilian network did that, I'm just giving you an example.

That's now what IP theft means unless Brazil has drastically different copyright laws from the rest of the world.

Irrelevant, they are using their platform. A cinema has a right to stop showing a movie even if their customers wanted to see it there.

It's not illegal (again, unless Brazilian law is wildly different from most other countries). You have a right to defend yourself in a court against legal proceedings, not against a company deciding they don't want your videos on their website - unless you can prove you were banned for illegal reasons, e.g. for your skin color, which is extremely difficult in a case like this even if it were true.

 

I understand it can be annoying but this is the part of google's behavior that would be acceptable in isolation. They have a right to offer bad service so long as they aren't violating anyone's legal rights, and unfortunately having a youtube channel is not one of those rights. What isn't really acceptable is that they have a de facto monopoly on user video streaming outside of niches like p0rn (where another company has a monopoly instead ).

 

It definitely sounds like Brazil does have a bunch of different laws.

 

For that matter it sounds like where dealing with a major national news entity, a lot of countries have some very specific laws around them. On top of which, if it's that big any interference in their operations has political consequences. Countries tend not to like outside entities messing with that.

[TetraSky]

Once again, Google shows that whatever AI they use to flag accounts, is garbage.
The fact that it's near impossible to get a real person to look at your case, doesn't help either.

[sub68]

I love terraria and then google goes no brick his account lol

[wamred]

3 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

https://killedbygoogle.com/ 

Thanks. I really should have realized Google did this but you know. I can't keep up with everything lol

[Jet_ski]

6 hours ago, Mling said:

I think they do a mix of humans and bots. The humans are outsourced. There was an article a while back the working conditions at a facebook contractor was bad and psychologically damaging. 

Well, Zuck needs his billions. How is he supposed to get by?! Do you expect him to eat onions and white bread?! Sacrifices need to be made.

 

*sarcasm

[D13H4RD]

Google's artificial "intelligence" algorithms have already shown itself to be pretty dang flawed.

 

Anyone remember YouTube Kids, formed as a response to the COPPA bill? YouTube's algorithms automatically flags videos as kids' content based on what's inside the video.

 

However, it has on numerous occasions tend to flag adult content as kids' content because the bot mistakenly saw elements found on kids' content and flagged them as for kids due to it.

[Kisai]

10 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

And this is why there needs to be a crackdown on big tech. Apple, Google and Microsoft can't get away with that kind of stuff.

I think the real answer here is that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Twitter, Facebook, and so forth should not be permitted to own both a platform and a federated SSO system. Remember when MSN, AOL and Yahoo worked together to have a common messenger and then Microsoft rolled MSN into Skype, AOL was the original backend to what became Apple iMessage, and Yahoo just kinda flopped around until Yahoo started killing itself by a thousand cuts?

 

Put the federated user authentication in the hands of a non-profit and keep it that way. It worked for DNS until the land-barons came for DNS TLD's.

 

[staticpage]

Google does not deserve to have another slice of the tech pie. I know pixel users that have dumped perfectly good phones over concerns that Google is meritless in there Monopoly of power.

[poochyena]

8 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

They do have the right not do business with people they don't want, at least in the US. However, it is absolutely absurd and unfair not to give the person any time to download their data (photos, documents, mail, contacts, etc), and either retain the email address (which may be used for authentication, business, etc) or automatically forward the incoming mail to another service to let the person switch the registered email addresses.

Just recently YouTube kicked a major Brazilian news network from their service.
Now they're being questioned about violations of:
- customer rights law: here it is prohibited to discriminate clients for whatever reason, and business can be forced to do business if they have the capacity to do so;
- intelectual property theft: they nuked 5 years worth of news, commentary and documentaries;
- preventing business between viewers and channel: subscribed people are subscribed to the channel, not youtube, so they can't cancel subscriptions without explicit user permission;
- constitutional right to defend yourself: they got banned due to two consecutive strikes with no specific causes, had no time or opportunity to complain and be listened, which is illegal. 

Yep, i've thought about this a lot. Should be treated like tenants in an apartment; they can't kick you out without a ~30 day notice to get all your stuff out unless there is VERY good reason to kick you out immediately, like breaking some laws.

[Monkey Dust]

Cynical hat on; Terraria owners see the writing on the wall for Stadia, and were probably going cold on the port anyway. This gave them the perfect excuse to pull it.

[Fnige]

20 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

Well, Zuck needs his billions. How is he supposed to get by?! Do you expect him to eat onions and white bread?! Sacrifices need to be made.

 

*sarcasm

Just gotta miss out on that avocado toast