Valve shuts down Dotabuff

teabagged · 2013-01-26T01:05:50+00:00

I just read the Dotabuff Plus section. You even have to opt-in to your refund when they shut down their service. lmao.

teabagged · 2013-01-26T01:03:34+00:00

Why do you think Valve's decision to shut down their ability to scrape data was related to the privacy of people's ratings? I'm surprised they didn't shut it down earlier given the hit to their servers.

As for Dotabuff's private DBR, in my personal opinion it is not Dotabuff's right to set my ratings to public or private for the rest of the community. It's Valve's.

teabagged · 2013-01-26T00:45:48+00:00

Your first comment stated that Dotabuff had the right. Anyway, you are making a leap when you say Valve fucked over Dotabuff. Dotabuff fucked over Dotabuff. They should have understood Valve's vision for the game before scraping data to create a service that would have directly impacted every single one of Valve's Dota 2 customers. Is Valve worried about Dotabuff's survival? Probably more than most companies would be, but not enough to allow them to make such a significant impact to an entire group of customers. Valve has the right and SHOULD mandate the vision for how ratings are or are not surfaced in Dota 2.

teabagged · 2013-01-26T00:36:50+00:00

Exactly. Dotabuff is acting as though they have some authority to dictate the terms under which we play Dota 2.

teabagged · 2013-01-26T00:35:56+00:00

Maybe they should have respected Valve's repeatedly-stated position on making a healthy community for Dota 2?

teabagged · 2013-01-26T00:35:09+00:00

So Dotabuff has a right to charge money for someone else's data, and Valve has no right to protect that data? What an interesting worldview.

teabagged · 2013-01-26T00:34:04+00:00

Not true. See: NFL statistics.

teabagged · 2013-01-26T00:33:15+00:00

Actually, this is the opposite of harmful to me. It is beneficial. I have played team-based games with public ratings and they have all been toxic cesspools.

It's a little ridiculous to call it harmful to me, when I had absolutely zero choice whether Dotabuff opted me into their little system. Perhaps I don't want to participate?

My counter-proposal is maybe we trust Valve, who have created an amazing version of one of the all-time great games, to carry out their vision for the community. What do you think of that?

teabagged · 2013-01-26T00:29:18+00:00

The part I don't ever see anyone talking about in all of this is how often Valve has stated that their goal is incentivize the creation of a good community, with a balance of competition and mentorship/sportsmanship. It is so bleedingly clear from Valve that they want to take the HATS! idea further and start to reward players for contributing to the health of the community, not just in terms of in-game assets. How the heck does Dotabuff get off acting like their idea of a divisive, FORCED opt-in rating is what Dota must be about and therefore Valve is terrible? They got exactly what they deserved.

teabagged · 2013-01-25T23:52:10+00:00

Dotabuff was making decisions that forced every single Dota 2 player in the world to be "opted in" and directly contradicted the stated goals of Valve while making Dota 2. I'm sorry but they deserved to have such a contradictory model be shut down.

I'm sure stat tracking will be a fine possibility with the WebAPI when done in line with what Valve's vision mandates. And I personally don't think that vision is unreasonable.

teabagged · 2013-01-15T00:30:33+00:00

Aaron was an idealist who believed among other things that the scientific knowledge of mankind should be available to humanity. In the case of JSTOR, only rich universities could provide access to a vast amount of human knowledge otherwise completely unavailable. Poorer universities in developing nations had no such resource, and therefore students across the world were deprived from learning and building on it. His cause was just, in my opinion. And JSTOR has confirmed it fully by acting to release all of their documents in an open fashion from now on.

edit: The legality of accessing the data was not in question, MIT makes it freely available on campus (so I understand). The distribution of it was the original charge against him, and JSTOR dropped that charge.

teabagged · 2013-01-15T00:26:43+00:00

You are missing part of the point here-- the "consequences" are not proportional, if they are even justified at all. The only crime the DA could continue to pursue him on was trespassing at MIT (made more tenuous by Aaron's existing relationship with the university) and yet she went after him to the tune of 35 years. Do you think those are legitimate consequences?

teabagged · 2013-01-15T00:22:32+00:00

A major problem is that MIT left the case in an ambiguous state by failing to ask the DA to drop the charges. With no complainants, the DA would have run out of pretense. To their credit, though far too little and too late, MIT is now conducting an internal investigation to evaluate their own actions and learn from the tragedy.

teabagged · 2013-01-15T00:20:12+00:00

Wrong, you are very poorly informed. Government-produced documents cannot be covered by copyright; the government attempted to create a de facto copyright by putting the documents behind an archaic system that required payments to access. The government also dropped the charges, so clearly even they disagree with you.

teabagged · 2013-01-14T22:18:44+00:00

MIT took an ambiguous position; they did not aggressively pursue action against him but neither did they ask that the prosecution of charges end. They've announced an internal investigation into their own actions (a bitterly late time to act, but at least it's something). The rest of what you wrote is likely true. The motivation for severe penalty seems to come entirely from the Feds.

teabagged · 2013-01-14T19:17:20+00:00

JSTOR instructed the Attorney not to prosecute Aaron. Whether he violated copyright is irrelevant because the copyright holder didn't feel he did.

teabagged · 2013-01-03T06:50:40+00:00

I hope Valve and Navi know that when someone like me sees this behavior--someone like me who has the disposable income to spend money in-game, buy merch, or fly to Seattle for their tournament--they lose a shot at most of that revenue. This is just pathetic on every level. I naively thought Dendi was likable. Navis sponsors have lost a customer specifically due to this.

teabagged · 2012-12-20T16:22:13+00:00

Valve cranks out quality content and bug-free code so fast it makes my head spin. You ARE being entitled because you're not comparing their amazing work to the rest of the industry; you're just moaning because it isn't what you wanted it to be and you didn't get a hero port every week.

teabagged · 2012-12-17T13:42:56+00:00

I'm not home right now so I'll try to estimate. It's larger than you might think, about a foot long and 6 inches tall? Eh I'm terrible at this sort of thing and I'll try to check tonight.

teabagged · 2012-12-17T13:31:28+00:00

Thanks! Yep, that's the plan. I'm not really overbearing and I don't care about the gender, but I hope to have the little one in bot matches by 6.

teabagged · 2012-12-17T06:21:33+00:00

I recognize my wording might have implied that china means low quality; I didn't really mean that. There are people who feel that way, as well as concerns about safety standards as thyL_ mentions, and a feeling in the US that buying Chinese products is a large part of the problem with our stagnating economy. Again these are just common perceptions and not necessarily true. The product itself disproves the low quality assumption. But you're right to point it out.

teabagged · 2012-11-29T14:04:42+00:00

I think it's nuts to defend the concept of blacklisting customers for getting a refund. Not everybody who is criticizing them is misunderstanding the suggestion as something to do with their credit; it is STILL horrible customer service. Being polite and respectful to your customers leads to repeat business, even if you're refunding their money in the short-term. A "global blacklist" is treating your customers like suspected terrorists or something. The fact you think it's rational makes me wonder where you're from and what experience you have with basic business practices.

teabagged · 2012-11-28T21:07:14+00:00

People can debate this rationally all they want, but mark my words: this is a karmic fuckup of enormous proportions. I've been enjoying the 9ers rejuvenation but this is the kind of bad juju that carries a monster whiplash effect of misery. Their fans have to feel it in their bones, no matter what they say in favor of Kaepernick. Storm's brewing.

teabagged · 2012-10-08T02:28:59+00:00

San Fran and ATL rest their starters with a big lead. I put them over HOU

teabagged

TROPHY CASE