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PayPal's new policies are more crowdfunding friendly
Last year, PayPal promised to overhaul its policies after getting flak for freezing huge amounts of crowdfunding funds, and today it's announced those changes. By the looks of it, PayPal has been working closely with crowdfunding websites to verify each campaign that wants to use its services. If it determines that a campaign is a true crowdfunding project (as opposed to a pre-order vehicle) with no guarantees of a final product, PayPal requires it to plaster a disclaimer on its campaign page. Owners have to explicitly state that backers may not get their rewards in the end if they don't want PayPal to get on their case. That's not all, though: in some cases, it will require owners to disclose personal info or submit copies of their TIN/SS numbers and government IDs for verification.
RIFT willing to ban players for toxic forum behavior
Official game forums have a reputation for being hopelessly toxic. It makes a certain amount of sense, too; being an utter jerk in the forums usually means that at worst you'll be banned from those forums. So RIFT is taking things up to the next level. If you choose to be persistently awful in the forums, you can eventually have your ability to play the game suspended. Readers with a long memory will note that Sony Online Entertainment has discussed similar possibilities in the past, hoping to encourage a more positive and engaging atmosphere all around. The Carnival of the Ascended is rolling back into the game and helping create a more positive atmosphere as well, giving players a plethora of minigames to enjoy. RIFT Junkies has a full guide to the event available now, walking players through the steps necessary to unlock mounts, pets, and fun cosmetic pieces. So enjoy the addition... assuming you haven't run afoul of the more aggressive behavior policies. [Thanks to Cederhill for the tip!]
Microsoft temporarily mutes users for 'excessive swearing' in uploaded Xbox One clips
The next generation of consoles are in the wild, and now that the general public has access, they're bumping up against some new restrictions with the way they work. While Twitch is clamping down on its live streams, on the Xbox One side some users have run afoul of XBL policies against foul language in their Upload Studio clips. Microsoft hasn't been specific about what constitutes a violation, but in a statement to TechCrunch it says "excessive swearing" (in Upload Studio, peer to peer communications like Skype are reportedly unmonitored) can lead to some or all Xbox Live privileges disappearing. In this case, it appears to usually manifest as a 24 hour ban on voice communication, which some of those affected first noticed when they tried to use a different app like Skype. We'll see if these policies or the way they're enforced evolve over time (if not, you may be in for some very quiet gaming sessions with your favorite Engadget editors), but for now you might want to tell the world what you think of campers after liberating an uploaded clip from SkyDrive.
PayPal adjusting policies to be more crowdfunding-friendly
PayPal recently announced plans to "overhaul" its policies to become more crowdfunding-friendly. This comes after a number of startups had their funds frozen by PayPal after successful crowdfunding initiatives. Examples of such issues include the momentary pause in the release of Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm's funds earned during its Indiegogo campaign, as well as that of Lab Zero Games when it crowdfunded DLC characters for Skullgirls in April. PayPal VP Risk Management Tomer Barel wrote in an update on PayPal's site that while there are no policy changes to announce today, "in the meantime, we will ensure that each crowdfunding campaign is reviewed by a senior member of my team before any action is taken."
Officers' Quarters: A runaway success
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Many guilds struggle to find recruits. The guild in the email below is not one of them. In fact, if you're looking for someone to blame about your recruiting difficulties, you might want to look at these guys. With seven raid teams and chapters across multiple games, this guild leader's problem isn't too few players, but too many. Dear Scott! I am longtime WoW-player (since patch 2.4) and reader of WoW Insider. This site is my favorite place to read news and articles about a game. Most important is that audience of readers is quite nice and constructive. It is always nice to read. This is one of the reason, why I ask for advice here. Currently I am leader of WoW-wing in middle size MMO-community, there are 250+ members. Half of our members play Guild Wars 2, another half plays WoW. Now we experience some growth problem... Initially it was planned to create PvE-oriented guild with at two raid teams at the best. We were recruiting mostly via our blogs. First raid team managed to clear MSV in three weeks in February and started to progress further. More progress, more people came to us. We were not hardcore or even semi hardcore raiders. We raid two nights a week, six hours in total. It is quite casual from my point of view, but seemed like we attracted an attention. Number of members started to increase pretty fast. Before the end of the April we had four raid teams and plenty of socials, who did want to raid, but anyway had a good time in game.
Comixology claims responsibility for banning Saga #12, rescinds ban
Yesterday, we posted about Apple reportedly banning issue 12 of a comic book called Saga, due to a couple of graphic sex scenes included in it. The book's creator, Brian K. Vaughan, had posted that Apple wasn't allowing his book to be sold on the App Store, though it was available through a number of other channels. But today it turns out that Apple isn't to blame -- instead, the book's digital publisher, Comixology, has confessed that they made the decision not to sell the book. Comixology runs the very popular Comics app on iOS, and they publish the digital versions of books from a number of different publishers, including Image Comics, who publishes the Saga series. The company's CEO, David Steinberger, has posted on the company blog that Comixology made its own decision to not publish the book, based on its assumption of Apple's policies. Of course, after the news yesterday, Apple says it would not have a problem with the book being published in Comixology's app, and Steinberger says the issue will be available soon, and apologizes to Vaughan and Image Comics for the confusion. So there's both good news and bad news here. The good news is that this decision did not come from Apple -- instead, it was Comixology that jumped the gun and decided to not publish the book on the App Store. But the bad news is that while Comixology did make the mistake, I can't really blame them for being concerned about Apple's retribution. Just yesterday, the company did threaten an App Store developer with removal over some adult content, and we've seen examples before of Apple being overly concerned about content that was already labeled for users 17-plus. That's why we here at TUAW jumped on this story and took the comic's creator, Vaughan, at his word -- because it's not hard to believe, given Apple's unclear and inconsistent polices on this matter, that they would have a problem with this book. Fortunately, they don't, and all credit to them for confirming that. Macworld followed up with Apple to confirm the supposed ban, and in hindsight, we should have done the same. But as long as Apple's policies and their enforcement on what's OK and not OK for the App Store remain unclear, we may see more issues like this pop up, either driven by developers dependent on the App Store for revenue, or by Apple itself.
Officers' Quarters: Guild raiding identity
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. In past columns, I've talked about how most drama is the result of expectations that differ from reality. In this week's email, we have a perfect example of that. Good morning, afternoon, evening Scott, We've recently run into a unique problem in our guild. I've previously been a guild leader and officer elsewhere, and have taken up the chief raid leader position in my current guild, and this problem is unlike anything I've encountered before. We're a relatively new startup guild (only 5 months old), comprised mostly of people who are just returning to the game after trying out a few other failed "WoW killers." I met most of the current leadership in these other games, so when they asked me to be the raid leader for them in WoW, I jumped at the chance to return. The structure was set up so that I would lead a progressive-minded raiding core of 25 raiders, while more casual raiders would have both a weekend and weekday 10-man option. We even built in a casual officer who organizes other games, old-school raiding, fishing contests, etc. The idea was for everyone to have something to do if they wanted, while all contributing in some way to each others' successes.
Storyboard: Police state
Sometimes, column topics get away from you. When I sat down to write last week's Storyboard, I realized at the halfway mark that I had spent a lot of time not really hitting the core of the issue, and the overall article wound up being much weaker as a result. So I went back, started fresh, and instead delivered a column aimed squarely at the central question of whether or not it's important to have a flagged roleplaying server. But there is an issue that I didn't really address in that column but still remains relevant. If you're going to talk about having an RP server exist even if it's not policed, you do need to address what policing a roleplaying server actually entails. A lot of it is just plain speculative at the moment, given the overall track record of the industry, but that doesn't mean it's not worth discussing.
Best Buy boosts return window from 14 days to 30
That adage of "less is more" definitely doesn't apply to retailer return policies, so we have no complaints here. Best Buy is reportedly going to offer a more lenient 30-day window for device returns, up from the company's current 14-day policy. Naturally, this also covers price matches, and applies to all products, including those from Apple, where two weeks is the norm. You'll find the full details over at our sister site TUAW, when you hit up the source link just below.
Ask Massively: Big questions deserve big answers edition
Some questions are just too good to leave to my sole discretion. I like to think that I can provide a reasonable response to a number of questions, but I also think there are some questions that merit more opinions. Case in point: a question last week from potaco about whether or not it's harder to focus on a single game instead of several games as a Massively employee. So I'm consolidating responses from the whole team right now, and we'll have an answer to that question this week. This week's Ask Massively is still packed, however, with questions about getting a new computer for World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic as well as whether or not Guild Wars 2 will provide credible competition for other games when it launches. If you've got a question you would like to see answered in a future installment of the column, mail it along to ask@massively.com or leave it in the comments below. Questions may be edited slightly for brevity and/or clarity.
Ask Massively: Elephant facts are astonishing edition
Elephants, according to Wikipedia, are large land mammals that broadcast Christian contemporary music in the Colorado region. They were first sighted at the 1997 X-Games, at which point they served as architects for Philadelphia's school buildings from 1920 to 1937 with liberal use of a time machine. After winning the 2009 Romanian Figure Skating Championships, these gentle insectoid robots used a collection of treasury notes to finance the filming of several short crime dramas. All of these facts are well-known about elephants, or possibly about several unrelated topics that were viewed via Wikipedia's random article button. Now that I've answered all of the questions you didn't have about elephants, it's time for this week's installment of Ask Massively, in which I address an entirely different sort of elephant. If you have a question for a future installment of the column, you can leave it in the comments or mail it along to ask@massively.com.
Twidroyd and UberTwitter (now called UberSocial) back online
We know you had a rough weekend, managing your micro-bloggin' and social networkin' with a web interface of all things, so we'll keep this one short and sweet: the kids at UberMedia have their once-banned apps back online! That includes Twidroyd and UberTwitter -- the latter being renamed UberSocial, but one of a few changes that the company made to ensure that it wasn't violating Twitter's usage policies. If only everything could be resolved this quickly, right?
Twitter suspends UberTwitter and Twidroyd for 'violating' its policies (update: apps are fixed, should be live soon)
Without elaborating, Twitter has just posted a help document titled "I'm Having Problems Logging In to UberTwitter or twidroyd" that gives little hope for an immediate fix: turns out the company has outright suspended both apps -- among the most popular Twitter apps for the BlackBerry / iPhone and Android platforms, respectively -- for "violating [its] policies." They go on to say that they suspend "hundreds" of apps on a daily basis for policy violations, but decided to call out these two in particular because of the high number of users potentially affected. Considering the popularity factor, we imagine this'll be solved one way or another before too long -- but in the meantime, you might want to fall back to the official apps for all three platforms. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Update: We've received a statement on the issue from Twitter, which says that the violations here "include, but aren't limited to, a privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users' Tweets in order to make money." Follow the break for the full text. Update 2: Pocket-lint says that Echofon is also suspended. Things are getting pretty serious here. Update 3: UberMedia -- which owns UberTwitter, Twidroyd, and Echofon -- has said that it has "completed the changes, and new apps are currently being posted to their respective stores." They've apparently gotten an assurance from Twitter that the apps will be flipped back on as soon as the changes are live. Oh, also: UberTwitter will become UberSocial, which must be the "trademark infringement" Twitter was referring to.
Mac App Store launching in January sans Game Center and in-app purchases?
"Less" and "later" are some of our least favorite words, but they may apply to the Mac App Store, as one source claims it will miss Christmas, and another says the marketplace will have fewer features than its iOS counterpart. First off, The Loop's Jim Dalrymple believes that December 13th isn't the magic date, claiming that his inside sources say the store will actually arrive in January -- which, we must admit, would still be within the window of Apple's October promise to launch within 90 days. Second and perhaps more importantly, 9to5 Mac reports that App Store developers are being told that their Mac endeavors will have a number of substantial limitations, namely no Game Center support, no in-app purchases, and no ability to offer demos, trials or betas. Sounds like those high-denomination iTunes gift cards you've been stockpiling in your basement will finally come in handy.
Blizzard and how they deal with ninjas
Wojtek sent us this thread in which he posted a long series of emails between him and Blizzard about the ninja of an Onyxia Drake. There's a lot of back and forth, but eventually, the bottom line is that Blizzard was not able to help him, whether that's because he didn't have the information right, they couldn't find what they needed in the chat logs, or they just didn't want to. Later on, the thread is locked, and Wojtek is given the usual feedback address for the GM actions. So what does all this mean? We've heard in the past that Blizzard will occasionally help with ninjas, and we've even heard unofficially that if you get the main looter in a PuG raid to state the looting conditions ahead of time, Blizzard can go back, look that up, and then reward loot based on who really deserves it. But of course, all of that is unofficial, and there are so many variations and issues in situations like these that there can't really be a hard and fast rule -- sometimes Blizzard can help, sometimes they can't.
Officers' Quarters: An exclusive party
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.I get a lot of e-mails, many more than I could ever cover in this column. I hear about a lot of drama, drama of all different kinds, for all different reasons. So it always piques my interest when I read an e-mail like the one below, with an entirely new kind of guild drama. This one sounds more suited to a middle school class than a guild, but here it is: secret party drama. Read on for the details!I am a member of a fairly progressed raiding guild. I am a member of the main raid. I am not an officer, but almost all the regular raiders are officers. In many ways the guild is good. Raiding rules and loot are fair. However, it has become clear that the guild is dominated by a clique and that promotions to officer and most raid invites are largely based upon becoming part of the in group. Recently it was announced during raid that we would be taking a week off as many would be out of town. After the week off, during Vent chat, it became clear that the many out of town were all out of town together. That is, the guild officers were invited to an in person party (some traveled to go to it, others didn't but all were invited). I also learned that the officers intentionally tried to keep the party a secret beforehand.
Yeah, there's an app for that. But for how long, and at what cost?
With the recent kerfuffle surrounding the removal and rejection of Google Voice apps from the App Store, many developers are beginning to question the trust they have placed in Apple to provide them with a reliable system for developing and distributing applications.Generally, the major hurdle associated with iPhone development is getting approved by Apple. It's no secret that this process is often quite frustrating, and sometimes downright arduous. Developers often wait several weeks without any response before they are suddenly rejected, and then they must make the requested changes (if possible), resubmit their application, and again wait for a response. But once they have put your app through the paces, and presumably have double and triple checked to ensure that you have complied with the terms, you're safe, right? Your hard work has paid off, Apple has accepted your app, and now you can move on.Wrong. As the developers of GV Mobile and VoiceCentral recently discovered, Apple can take an app that was previously given the all-clear, decide that it now duplicates native functionality of the iPhone, and yank it from the App Store in a matter of minutes. Needless to say, there are some serious flaws in this process. First, the functionality provided by both of these apps isn't actually provided by the iPhone, so there's really nothing to duplicate, unless Apple is going to start expecting developers to predict future features and avoid duplicating those too. Then you have the fact that the feature sets provided by the apps and the iPhone itself have not changed since Apple approved them in the first place, so if they truly are duplicating native functionality, they should have been rejected from the start, not months after they were approved.Now one might also argue that some features offered by Google Voice do overlap with the iPhone, such as the SMS and voicemail functions, although contrary to popular belief, Google Voice is not a VoIP service and doesn't really compete against AT&T. But even if you concede that point to Apple, couldn't they just ask the developers to remove those features and resubmit? What about the other apps -- like Skype, TextFree, or iCall -- that offer similar feature sets, are they going to disappear too? And if AT&T is really responsible for this, as has been suggested previously, why was the app pulled from the App Stores of other countries? Why not just honestly tell the developer that the app is being pulled at the request of the carrier?
Gamestop manager busts retail myths
Over at the Consumerist, a Gamestop shift manager going by the mysterious moniker of G has posted an interesting look at the store's lesser-known policies and procedures. Among the tips for savvy shoppers: Cashiers will sometimes give a 10% "shopworn discount" for gutted games if you complain about it. Also, unopened gutted games can be returned just as new games. Used games you don't like can be exchanged for others within seven days (just don't abuse the policy or it'll be taken away) Pre-orders are fully refundable at any time (don't let a fearful employee tell you otherwise) First-party accessories have more resale value (and are much more reliable than off-brand) To get a Wii, ask when a store gets weekday shipments, call daily around that time, then hightail it over there before they're sold out again. The post also includes some pleas to be patient with the pre-order pushers who are forced by their corporate overlords to sell those reservations and discount cards. They're just trying to keep their jobs, after all. Why can't we all just get along?
Insure your iPhone, because AT&T won't
Since I've owned a variety of regular mobile phones and smartphones over the last couple of years, I wasn't surprised to see fine print during the iPhone activation process which warns users that AT&T won't offer their insurance policy on Apple's darling new gadget. I've been on nearly every major mobile phone network in the US - Cingular, T-Mobile (and VoiceStream), Verizon and Sprint - and not one of them covered smartphones with their policies. In fact, if you were upgrading an existing AT&T account and swapping out your old phone that had an AT&T insurance policy on it, you too were warned that the policy would be automatically removed from your account. Gee, you'd think these companies don't trust us with small, easy-to-drop expensive electronics. Who knew?To help remedy this lack of a contingency plan for the iPhone, I decided to call a few insurance companies in the Colorado area to see if they could cover it. What many people might not know is that these companies typically cover electronics like mobile phones and even notebook computers, often at prices far cheaper than extended warranty plans from manufacturers and retail stores. While I'm not entirely familiar with how fast actin' or comprehensive this kind of coverage is from every provider, I do know that mine - State Farm - will cover both hardware failure and accidental damage (though accidental damage will cause my premiums to increase, while an incident like theft will not).Back to getting coverage for your shiny new phone, however, the summarized rundown I got from calling three of the big general insurance providers (Allstate, Geico and State Farm) is that attaching a clause to a renter or homeowner insurance policy specifically for covering an iPhone would add only $5-20/year to a policy. Keep in mind these were estimates based on a $600 iPhone, and it appears that you can't simply ask these guys to insure a phone; you need to have some kind of a primary policy with them first, then attach this specific clause. Surprisingly, every representative I spoke with knew exactly what an iPhone was, and a couple of them asked me whether I was happy with mine.As far as coverage through companies like specialized electronics or computer insurance providers is concerned, I had a much harder time finding anything substantial. Most of the companies I spoke with didn't have policies in place, and only Safeware confirmed that they were "seriously considering" introducing iPhone coverage. They do, however, cover other smartphones, and a quote for a BlackBerry Curve (a $400 smartphone) was $65 for a year, covering accidental damage, loss and theft. A downside, however, is that repairs for damage have a turnaround time of 7-10 days, with no loaner options available. If being without a phone is a primary concern, the loner option included in AppleCare for iPhone might be a good 'plan b' to consider in combination with one of these insurance policies.Ultimately it's a good thing to at least have insurance options in addition to AppleCare, since Apple doesn't cover any sort of accidental damage. Since insuring an iPhone through one of the larger companies seems to be so cheap, it's basically a no-brainer to pick up at least some kind of a policy. If y'all have other ideas or options for insuring your shiny new iPhone, please enlighten the rest of the class with a comment.
On Apple, blogging and policies
For some time now, Apple's hush-hush policy on public communication has been the focus of much debate. The discussion escalated, however, with the debut of the Masked Blogger, an Apple employee blogging under the radar (or directly in the middle of it, depending on your perspective). Today, John Gruber linked a couple of interesting posts on the subject, one from Chuq Von Rospach (a recent ex-Apple employee), and another from Dave Winer. The more interesting of the two is Chuq's post, where he discusses at length Apple's policies on communication, the fact that the company and its employees actually *do* communicate and blog (though without affiliation), and why Apple's lack of a blogging-specific policy doesn't matter in the grander scheme of things. Chuq's essential point is that Apple's employees do a lot to communicate and interact with the public - they just do it over traditional systems (like email lists) for the purposes of helping and solving problems. Further, 'blogging' is just one more way of communicating (albeit a new and hyped one); it isn't an end-all solution for these purposes. While I think Chuq makes some great points about the focus of blogging and the importance of considering it as a tool for a company like Apple, I still think the company could use one, especially in light of one of its many facets as being closely involved with creative media (see: iLife, which they even brag about on TV). While blogging doesn't have to become a public focus for the company, it certainly wouldn't be difficult to fire one up, and having a blog or two for anything from pimping new products (see: the Google Blog) to offering an easily accessible forum for discussion couldn't hurt (after all, not everyone likes checking in on forums or having one more email list to organize), and they could capitalize on a popular and buzzing new medium. The blog(s) could be treated with a formal touch (like many company-focused promotional blogs) or have a more personal touch from a company-sanctioned individual, like the Scobelizer. Of course, being powered by iWeb, or having a corporate Photocast (or podcast!) couldn't hurt either. Ultimately though, I think one of the good points Chuq makes about how well (yet quietly) Apple's employees actually are communicating is the true Achilles' heel of the idea of an Apple blog to begin with: most of the communication efforts of Apple's employees are quiet or under the radar - right where the company wants them to be. Apple, like most of its products, has a very shiny, polished exterior, which is exactly the kind that does not lend itself to opening the holes and flaws that blogging would puncture, no matter how personal or cute they may seem. One only needs to glance at the company's quiet handling of problems like battery recalls and MacBook RSS to see what I mean. Apple may be a purveyor of some of our favorite creative and communication tools, but donning a more personal side by *using* them just doesn't seem to be in the cards.
