#0 - July 9, 2010, 8:23 p.m.
I think what they're doing is wrong, but what's more important is how they did it. I've read a lot of discussions and blogs, and apparently we signed over the right to distribute out personal information to Activision months ago with an updated Terms of Use[Citation Needed], long before we had any clue of what they were going to do with it. That's dirty business. Its trickery and a misuse of our trust in a company that many have been loyal to for over a decade. But then again, Blizzard might not be calling the shots, which brings me to...
How they are handling it now. Is this really the best way Activision Blizzard can think of dealing with the forum community's responses? I have only seen a handfull of Blue responses to the uproar and none of them have really addressed the issues at hand. Why? Why aren't they responding? From the "This is terribad!!!" side of the fight, the reason is clear: Any rational commentary from Blizzard would reveal that they have marginalized our privacy for some grandiose image of social networking within their online games (and possibly personal profit from Facebook). I don't want to degrade my perception of what Blizzard stands for, but things are starting to look bleak from their absence of follow-up posts. I can't even find their few responses through the Blizz Tracker (although I'm not sure if that's due to my lack of experience with the feature), so I must resort to fansites linking the threads through blogs.
So finally, what gives? Why are they doing it this way? Is Activision forcing them to stay tight-lipped and let the protesters blow their steam/quit? Why are threads being locked and deleted all over the place instead of receiving much-deserved responses? Why are they justifying this implementation of Real ID as a means to reduce trolling? And why have their proposed policies devolved into apathetic mandates of "if you don't like it, shut up or leave" ?
