Originally posted by Hinkle2K:

We have removed Red Shell from Civilization VI with update ver. 1.0.0.262 (362541) released today.

Thank you for FINALLY addressing the issue.

That said, the tone of the post does not exactly give me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

No apology, no admission of a mistake and no explaination.

Now I can't help but wonder if 2K will next try incorporating some other sort of "data analytics" directly into the game. 

I remain skeptical and vigilant.

Regards

Originally posted by BadKarma:

Originally posted by Hinkle2K:

We have removed Red Shell from Civilization VI with update ver. 1.0.0.262 (362541) released today.

Thank you for FINALLY addressing the issue.

That said, the tone of the post does not exactly give me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

No apology, no admission of a mistake and no explaination.

Now I can't help but wonder if 2K will next try incorporating some other sort of "data analytics" directly into the game. 

I remain skeptical and vigilant.

Regards

this was the "july" update. and not the "summer" update, should 2k/firaxis stay in concert to the theme of how their updates are presented. a seasonal update that usually includes bug fixes some dev chatter and content should there be any.

there is no promise that a summer update will happen btw. but i would bet there would be something to address possible bugs with r&f. and it is summer. every update so far has been related to the season it was released.

or maybe this is all we get. like being scolded for making a ruckus. lol. perfectly fine with that btw. red shell removal is a win as far as i am concerned.

i would imagine that if there is a seasonal update coming for summer, perhaps there will be a little more talk on the subject of red shell. or maybe even an apology, but i would bet 2k feels they did nothing wrong to apologize for. we shall see.

all the best.

Originally posted by Hinkle2K:

We have removed Red Shell from Civilization VI with update ver. 1.0.0.262 (362541) released today.

Not good enough: no apology, no assurance that other Firaxis titles are not using it, no assurance that no manner of spyware will be used in the future. I guess it means I can play Civ6 again for now, but it doesn't remove my concerns about giving Firaxis money in the future and potentially getting spyware in return.

Originally posted by SamBC:

I mean that it's useless to anyone who you might try to sell it to. It's a load of pseudonymised identifier (and possible, for devs that haven't updated to follow Redshell's latest advice, some less than pseudonymous bits) and the fact that you interacted with a given ad (identified only by an ID code) at a given time, and reached a certain point in game at a given time.

Selling what site's ads worked best is definitely useful, although it's not exactly your data anymore I guess, just an aggregate.

But - if you can link a visitor to your website to that dataset, and their entry contains an ad that worked, that could help you pick what ad is best to show them. And you only need the browser fingerprint and whether it was linked to a game (the game's actual data is irrelevant).

Originally posted by Hinkle2K:

We have removed Red Shell from Civilization VI with update ver. 1.0.0.262 (362541) released today.

Thankyou, and I do hope we'll hear a statement from you fairly soon .

Originally posted by SamBC:

However, as the FAQ makes clear, all of the data is anonymised/pseudonymised, which may remove the need for disclosure depending on the quality of the pseudonymisation.

Just a note -- any hashing is done server-side, not on the client, at least from what I can see. The params are sent to the remote API unhashed. It is via https.

I haven't really scrutinized the terms, but I will later. One common thing many of these companies that are in business collecting data on users, they will have legalease that says ... essentially ... that they store things in a particular way for privacy. At the same time, they are not explicitly stating they don't store the data in *other* ways. As RedShell is receiving the unhashed data, it's entirely possible the data is being stored multiple ways.

Also as I mentioned earlier, it's increasingly easy to associate hashed data in one DB with PII-data in another DB by stitching logs together via timestamps and other means. The more data points all businesses have on you, the easier it gets.

Originally posted by Lady Crimson:

Is Red Shell going to be a new civ? Negative Happiness in exchange for lots of spies that can't be captured?

It would be funny if they made it an information era wonder now.
It would be a fun little for those who were around when it happen will get the reference, like ghandi's war mongering in civ 5 was an ode to a small glitch in civ 2 that made ghandi turn into a warmonger when he choose democracy.
It would be a fun easter egg for those in the know.

I called it the July 2018 update, purely for the purposes of thread titling, because I wanted to be able to tell at a glance when it was posted. It's the update that happened in July 2018.

The devs/publisher didn't call it anything. Just an update.

If there isn't any further update this summer, it won't be a piqued reaction to the community reaction to Redshell. These things are planned more in advance than that, in my experience.

Originally posted by Vladimir Putin:

Wrong. Activism only works if there's money involved. In this case, 2K was in jeopardy of losing customers.

lol - that is what activism does, it affects lost sales.
Like it did here, it works! :D

For those who are saying removing red shell isn't good enough and they need to apologize.
I'm not saying I liked red shell, the removal was a win win for all of us for sure:)

However, Firaxis doesn't OWE us any sort of apology for marketing, if anything we owe them a thanks for doing what we wanted, this is like when you ask your parents for some money to go to the movies, and they say no. So you take the trash out and come back holding your hand out like well now I Deserve that cash because I did something for it.
We bought the game and gave them money, they showed us an EULA telling us about redshell along with other things, we all passed it up and jumped into game, thats not on Firaxis, thats on us for not reading and clicking no, then asking for a refund, which steam would of given happily.

Firaxis removed it. They clearly listened to us and though I would think feel that we blew up something that they didn't think was a major ordeal but yet they listened to us and did what was required to make us happy.

So lets take this win, and enjoy a beautiful game, not start bashing them requesting more and more because we are not entitled little brats, When you get a win celebrate, don't stab them when they are down.

Gone! Wow

...and Firaxis beat my estimate of this thread getting to 2500 posts before!

Originally posted by BLACKcOPstRIPPa:

For those who are saying removing red shell isn't good enough and they need to apologize.

However, Firaxis doesn't OWE us any sort of apology for marketing, if anything we owe them a thanks for doing what we wanted, this is like when you ask your parents for some money to go to the movies, and they say no. So you take the trash out and come back holding your hand out like well now I Deserve that cash because I did something for it.

That is certainly your opinion.
If you think 2K/Firaxis is analogous with your parents I certainly have alot of questions that I won't ask here.

Originally posted by BLACKcOPstRIPPa:

So lets take this win, and enjoy a beautiful game, not start bashing them requesting more and more because we are not entitled little brats, When you get a win celebrate, don't stab them when they are down.

I did not see your involvement during this debacle, so I am guessing have not contacted 2K or Firaxis concerning this issue, or that you have sent letter of complaint to the authorities because of possible breach of local laws.

Some of us are heavily invested in this and awaiting fallout and possible legal action.

Something like this is important to make sure businesses do not behave like this in the future.
They are not down, they simply caved due to lost sales and uproar - this is the least they could have done.

We are not brats, we are people that care about accountability and privacy.

I am certainly glad Red Shell was removed, but not exactly happy. I feel like instead of being treated right as a loyal customer, a wrong was removed. Still no real statement or apolagy, which would be a further step in the right direction. But most importantly I am not left with a feeling that they care about their long-time fans, or that they won't just try something different once they figure out how to work around new laws.

So while I am glad they did the right thing, it just feels shallow until they make me believe they respect the concerns of their supporters. For me this would mean a statement of intent that our privacy is important to them, and a re-working of their EULA/Privacy policy.

Redownload the game!

Play it again!

is it?

Originally posted by rivetm4n:

We will never forget, damage has been done.

The bad word will forever live with 2K/Firaxis.
Not to be trusted.
No apology.

At least the removal is proof activism works - we will never stop fighting for what is right.

Damn right.