In gaming news, the demo for
Left Behind : Eternal Forces - 200mb was released today (I saw it while I was getting the demo for the next expansion of the much darker game
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War - 315mb.)
So, I downloaded it and checked, and sure enough the demo includes back-to-base spyware, which fits in nicely with it's 2002-era graphics and gameplay.
I admit I knew already that Double Fusion had done a deal to serve ads and record usage by geographic location and IP address, so I was ready for it with up to date spyware and I'd even re-activated the Windows Firewall.
Firstly, the EULA
I love companies that give you a huge EULA and a tiny window to read it in.
Lets see what's down the bottom, which is where they always hide the bad news...
The Software Product and any Updates (collectively, the "Game") may incorporate Double Fusion's ad serving technology ("Technology") and in game advertising service ("Service"), which allows for dynamic or replaceable advertisements in the Game. Through this Technology and Service, we or Double Fusion can both provide dynamic advertising ("Advertising") to you, the end user, and collect certain non-personal identifiable information about you the end user, including your non-personal identifiable IP address (collectively referred to as "Non-Personal Information") during your playing of the Game and interaction with the Advertising. The Non-Personal Information, such as the number of Advertising impressions for specific advertisements, may be shared with and used by Double Fusion, its advertisers, advertising agencies, the developer of the Game, us, the publisher of the Game, and/or distributors of the Game. By installing and/or using the Game, You shall be deemed to consent to 1) being served Advertising in conjunction with the Game; and 2) the Non-Personal Information being shared with and by the aforesaid parties. As part of this notice and consent, you shall also be deemed to consent to Double Fusion's privacy policy with respect to the use of your Non-Personal Information (which privacy policy can be viewed at http://www.doublefusion.com/privacy.htm) and Licensor's privacy policy (which can be viewed at http://www.leftbehindgames.com/pages/privacy_policy.htm). Please note: In some jurisdictions, IP addresses may be regarded as personally identifiable information. By installing and/or using the Software Product and any Updates thereto, you acknowledge and agree to Licensor's collection and use of your IP address in accordance with the above-referenced terms and conditions for non-Personal Information even though your ip address may currently be viewed as or may be held in the future to be personally identifiable information.
BY CLICKING THE "YES" BUTTON WHICH APPEARS BELOW, YOU, THE CUSTOMER, ARE PROVIDING AN INDICATION OF YOUR LEGAL SIGNATURE AND ACKNOWLEDGING AND ACCEPTING ALL OF THE PROVISIONS OF THIS EULA.
IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN (18), PLEASE HAVE A PARENT OR GUARDIAN READ THIS ENTIRE EULA PRIOR TO INSTALLING AND/OR OTHERWISE USING THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
Yes, this game phones home while playing it, and the program uses such a descriptive name when your firewall catches it.
So I continued the install, and was greeted with a laughable opening movie (no sound on youtube, couldn't be bothered re-encoding it) showing all the souls leaving the Earth which seemed to completely ignore Australia, and seems to have 10x the volume leaving America then Europe or Africa. Oh well, that's what we get for being entirely populated with Criminals.
Playing around with the file format. It looks like all the in-game ads are stored in ..\Eternal Forces Beta Demo\Data\DFRoot\cache\data and have a checksum file that stopped my ham-fisted inital attempt to replace them all with "other" images, but the demo does seem a little open to modification once the pak is opened.
I am interested in all the "Life Stories" that come up on each person explaining why they are good, neutral or evil. Drugs, Guns, Pornography seem to be the main motivator for villains here, but that's not really a surprise.
Game play will be left for another time, when compared with other games on the market it is remarkably poor graphic wise, virtually impossible to tell one unit from another without zooming in so far as to make the game unplayable, is agonizingly slow to get anywhere and has been hacked around to make it as non-violent as possible to remove any sense of fun.
I mean Compare
with
(Yeah, I know I cheated with a screenshot, but this game was just SO BORING and impossible to follow what was going on that I couldn't be bothered playing it for more then 20 minutes to get to anything dramatic)
Basically, this game just doesn't compare with anything on the market in 2006. Their game cannot succeed on it's own merits, unless, of course, their revenue model revolves around handing the game out for free and them making cash via secret advertising rather then selling the game on it's merits.
Verdict : Uninstalled.