Rant Time: Google’s Lie
I’ve already written an article or two about YouTube giving content creators the finger. I didn’t really put that information into this article’s context so that everyone can really understand what’s actually going on at YouTube, with the FTC and with Google. Let’s explore.
Lies and Fiction
Google has asserted and maintained, since at least 2000 when COPPA came into effect, that it didn’t allow children under age 13 on its platforms. Well, Google was caught with its proverbial pants down and suffered a $170 million fine at the hand of the FTC based on COPPA. Clearly, Google lied. To maintain that lie, it has had to do a number of things:
- For YouTube content creators, YouTube has hidden its metrics for anyone under the age of 13 from viewer stats on YouTube. What that means to creators is that the viewer metrics you see on your stats page is completely inaccurate for those under the age of 13. If Google had disclosed the under 13 age group of stats on this page, Google’s lie would have unraveled far faster than it did. For Google to maintain its lie, it had to hide any possible trail that could lead to uncovering this lie.
- For other Google platforms (Stadia, Chromebook, Android phones, etc), they likely also kept these statistics secret for the same reasons. Disclosure that the 12 and under age group existed on Google meant disclosing to the FTC that they had lied about this age group using its services all along.
- For Android phones, we’ll let’s just say that many a kid 12 and under have owned Android phones. Parents have bought them and handed them over to their children. For the FTC to remain so oblivious to this fact for years is a testament to how badly operated this portion of the government is.
- Google / YouTube had to instruct engineers to design software systems around this “we don’t display under age 13 metrics” lie.
Anyway, so lie Google did. They lied from 2000 all of the way to 2019. That’s almost 20 years of lying to the government… and to the public.
YouTube’s Lie
Considering that even just one COPPA infraction found to be “valid” could leave a YouTube channel owner destitute. After all, Google’s fine was $170 million. Because a single violation could cost a whopping $42,530, it’s a major risk simply to maintain a YouTube channel.
Because of the problem of Google perpetuating its lie about 12 and under for so long, this lie has become ingrained in Google’s corporate culture (and software systems). What this means is that for Google to maintain this lie, it had to direct its engineers to write software to avoid showing any statistic information anywhere that could disclose to anyone that Google allows 12 and under onto any of its platforms, let alone YouTube.
This also means that YouTube content creators are entirely left in the dark when it comes to viewer statistics of ages 12 and under. Because Google had intended to continue maintaining its “we don’t serve 12 and under here” lie, it meant that its systems were designed around this lie. This meant that any place where 12 and under could have been disclosed, this data was specifically culled and redacted from view. No one, specifically not YouTube content creators, could see viewer metrics for anyone 12 and under. By intentionally redacting this information from its statistics interfaces, no one could see that 12 and under were actually viewing YouTube videos or even buying products. As a creator, you really have no idea how many 12 and under viewers you have. The FTC will have access into YouTube’s systems to see this information, even if you as a content creator do not.
This means that content creators are actually in the dark for this viewer age group. There’s no way to really know if this age group is being accurately counted. Actually, Google is likely collecting this information, but they’re simply not disclosing it over public interfaces. Though, to be fully safe and to fully protect Google’s lie, they might have been purging this data more often than 13 and older data. If they don’t have the data on the system, they can’t be easily caught with it. Still, that didn’t help when Google finally did get caught and were fined $170 million.
Unfortunately, because Google’s systems were intentionally designed around a lie and because they are now already in place, undoing that intentional design lie could be a challenge for Google. They’ve had 19 years worth of engineering effort build code upon code avoiding disclosure of 12 and under using Google’s platforms. Undoing 19 years of coding might be a problem.
Swinging back around to that huge fine, this leaves YouTube in a quandary. It means that content creators have no way to know if the metrics that are being served to content creators are in any way accurate. After all, Google has been maintaining this lie for 19 years. They’ve built and maintained their systems around this lie. But now, Google must undo 19 years of lies built into their systems to allow content creators to see what we already knew… that 12 and under have been using the platform probably since 2000.
For content creators, you need to think twice when considering setting up a channel on YouTube. It doesn’t matter what your content is. If that content attracts children under 13, you’re at risk. The only type of channel content that cannot at all be seen as “for kids” is content that kids would never watch. There is really only a handful of content type I can name that wouldn’t appeal to children (not an exhaustive list):
- Legal advice from lawyers
- Court room video
- Horror programs
- Political programs
- Frank sex topics
It would probably be easier to state those types of programs that do appeal to children:
- Pretty much everything else
What that means is topics like music videos, video game footage, cartoons, pet videos, singing competitions, beauty channels, fashion channels, technology channels and toy reviews could appeal to children… and the list goes on. You name it and pretty much every other content type has the possibility of attracting children 12 and under… some content more than others. There’s literally very little that a child 12 and under might not consider watching.
The thing is, when someone decides to create a channel on YouTube, you must now consider if the content you intend to create might appeal to children 12 and under. If it’s generalized information without the use of explicit information, children could potentially tune in. Though, YouTube doesn’t allow true adult content on its platform.
Google’s lie has really put would-be channel creators into a huge bind with YouTube, plummeting the value of YouTube as a platform. For monetization, not only is there now the 1,000 subscriber hurdle you must get past and you must also have 14,000 views in a month, but now you must also be cognizant of the audience your content might attract. Even seemingly child-unfriendly content might draw in children unintentionally. If you interview the wrong person on your channel, you might find that you now have a huge child audience. Operating a YouTube Channel is a huge risk.
YouTube’s Value as a Platform
With this recent Google change, compounded by Google’s lie, the value of YouTube as a video sharing platform has significantly dropped. Not only did Google drop a bomb on its content creators, it has lied to not only the government, but to the public for years. With the FTC’s hand watching what you’re doing on YouTube, YouTube really IS moving towards “big government watching” as described in George Orwell’s book 1984. Why Google would allow such a deep level of governmental interference over its platform is a major problem, not just for Google, but for the computer industry as a whole. It’s incredibly chilling.
$42,530 per COPPA violation is not just small change you can pull out of your pocket. That’s significant bank. So much bank, in fact, that a single violation could bankrupt nearly any less than 100,000 subscriber channel on YouTube.
Not only do you have to overcome YouTube’s silly monetization hurdles, you must attempt to stay far away from the COPPA hurdle that YouTube has now foisted on you.
Google’s Mistake
Google did have a way to rectify and remediate this situation early. It’s called honesty. They could have simply fixed their platform to accurately protect and steer 12 and under away from its properties where they don’t belong. It could have stated that it did (and does) allow 12 and under to sign up.
If Google had simply been honest about 12 and under and allowed 12 and under to sign up, Google could have set up the correct processes from the beginning that would have allowed not only Google to become COPPA compliant, but by extension allow YouTube creators to remain compliant through Google’s tools. Google should have always remained in the business of protecting its creators from governmental interference. Yet, here we are.
In fact, the COPPA legislation allows for parental permission and consent and it’s not actually that hard to set up, particularly for a large organization like Google. For Google, in fact, it already has mechanisms it could leverage to attempt to obtain verifiable parental consent. If Google had chosen to setup and maintain a 12 and under verifiable parental consent program all along, YouTube content creators could have been left off of the hook. Instead, YouTube has given content creators the finger.
If YouTube content creators must share in Google’s lack of COPPA compliance, then content creators should equally share in a Google created parental consent system. Parental consent isn’t that hard to implement. Google could have spent its time building such a system instead of lying.
Trust and Lies
When companies as big as Google participate in lies of this magnitude, you should seriously question any business you do with such a company. Companies are supposed to be ethically bound to do the right thing. When companies don’t do the right ethical thing and perpetuate lies for years, everyone must consider how much you trust that company.
What else are they lying about? It’s difficult to trust someone who lies. Why is it any different when a company chooses to lie?
When that lie can cost you $42,530 per violation, that’s what comes out of lying. Google not only didn’t protect its content creators, it perpetuated a lie that has now left its content creators hanging out to dry.
This is why YouTube as a content creator platform is about as worthless as it can possibly be… not only for the lie and COPPA, but also the monetization clampdown from 2017-2018. Every year has brought another downside to YouTube and for 2019, it’s Google’s lie.
For large creators who have an entrenched large audience and who are making ad revenue bank from their audience (at least for the moment), I understand the dilemma to ditch YouTube. But, for those content creators who make maybe $5 a month, is it worth that $5 a month to risk $42,530 every time you upload a video? Worse, the FTC can go back through your back video catalog and fine you for every single video they find! That’s a lot of $42,530 fines, potentially at least one per video. Now that’s risky!
Solutions
There are solutions. The biggest solution, ditch YouTube for other video platforms such as Facebook, SnapChat, Vimeo or DailyMotion. If you’re live streaming, there’s YouNow, Twitch and Mixer. You’re not beholden to YouTube to gain an audience and following. In fact, with the huge black COPPA cloud now permanently hanging over YouTube, it’s only a matter of time before the FTC starts its tirade and cements what I’m saying here in this article. For small and medium sized creators, particularly brand new creators, it’s officially time to give YouTube the 
(just as Google has given us the ). It’s long past time to ditch YouTube and to find an alternative video sharing platform. You might as well make that one a 2020 New Year’s resolution. Let’s all agree that YouTube is officially dead and move on.
Just be sure to read the fine print of whatever service you are considering using. For example, Twitch’s terms and conditions are very explicit with regards to age… no one under 13 is permitted on Twitch. If only Google had been able to actually maintain that reality instead of lying about it for nearly 20 years.
↩︎
Why Rotten Tomatoes is rotten
When you visit a site like Rotten Tomatoes to get information about a film, you need to ask yourself one very important question, “Is Rotten Tomatoes trustworthy?”
Rotten Tomatoes as a movie review service has come under fire many times for revitew bombing and manipulation. That is, Rotten Tomatoes seem to allow shills to join the service to review bomb a movie to either raise or lower its various scores by manipulating the Rotten Tomatoes review system. In the past, these claims couldn’t be verified. Today, they can.
As of a change in May 2019, Rotten Tomatoes has made it exceedingly easy for both movie studios and Rotten Tomatoes itself to game and manipulate the “Audience Score” ratings. Let’s explore.
Rotten Tomatoes as a Service
Originally, Rotten Tomatoes began its life as an independent movie review service such that both critics and audience members can have a voice in what they think of a film. So long as Rotten Tomatoes remained an independent and separate service from movie studio influence and corruption, it could make that claim. Its reviews were fair and for the most part accurate.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. In February of 2016, Fandango purchased Rotten Tomatoes. Let’s understand the ramifications of this purchase. Because Fandango is wholly owned by Comcast and in which Warner Brothers also holds an ownership stake in Fandango, this firmly plants Rotten Tomatoes well out of the possibility of remaining neutral in film reviews. Keep in mind that Comcast also owns NBC as well as Universal Studios.
Fandango doesn’t own a stake in Disney as far as I can tell, but that won’t matter based on what I describe next about the Rotten Tomatoes review system.
Review Bombing
As stated in the opening, Rotten Tomatoes has come under fire for several notable recent movies as having scores which have been manipulated. Rotten Tomatoes has then later debunked those claims by stating that their system was not manipulated, but then really offering no proof of that fact. We simply have to take them at their word. One of these allegedly review bombed films was Star Wars: The Last Jedi… where the scores inexplicably dropped dramatically in about a 1 month period of time. Rotten Tomatoes apparently validated the drop as “legitimate”.
Unfortunately, Rotten Tomatoes has become a bit more untrustworthy as of late. Let’s understand why.
As of May of 2019, Rotten Tomatoes introduced a new feature known as “verified reviews”. For a review’s score to be counted towards the “Audience Score”, the reviewer must have purchased a ticket from a verifiable source. Unfortunately, the only source from which Rotten Tomatoes can verify ticket purchases is from its parent company, Fandango. All other ticket purchases don’t count… thus, if you choose to review a film after purchasing your ticket from the theater’s box office, from MovieTickets.com or via any other means, your ticket won’t count as “verified” should you review or rate the movie. Only Fandango ticket purchases count towards “verified” reviews, thus altering the audience score. This change is BAD. Very, very bad.
Here’s what Rotten Tomatoes has to say from the linked article just above:
Rotten Tomatoes now features an Audience Score made up of ratings from users we’ve confirmed bought tickets to the movie – we’re calling them “Verified Ratings.” We’re also tagging written reviews from users we can confirm purchased tickets to a movie as “Verified” reviews.
While this might sound like a great idea in theory, it’s ripe for manipulation problems. Fandango also states that “IF” they can determine “other” reviews as confirmed ticket purchases, they will mark them as “verified”. Yeah, but that’s a manual process and is impossibly difficult to determine. We can pretty much forget that this option even exists. Let’s list the problems coming out of this change:
- Fandango only sells a small percentage of overall ticket sales for a film. If the “Audience Score” is calculated primarily and solely from Fandango ticket sales alone, then this metric is a horribly inaccurate metric to rely on.
- Fandango CAN handpick “other” non-Fandango ticket purchased reviews to be included. Not likely to happen often, but this also means they can pick their favorites (and favorable) reviews to include. This opens Rotten Tomatoes up to Payola or “pay for inclusion”.
- By specifying exactly how this process works, this change opens the Rotten Tomatoes system to being gamed and manipulated, even by Rotten Tomatoes staff themselves. Movie studios can also ask their employees, families and friends to exclusively purchase their tickets from Fandango and request these same people to write “glowing, positive reviews” or submit “high ratings” or face job consequences. Studios might even be willing to pay for these positive reviews.
- Studios can even hire outside people (sometime known as shills) to go see a movie by buying tickets from Fandango and then rate their films highly… because they were paid to do so. As I said, manipulation.
Trust in Reviews
It’s clear that while Rotten Tomatoes is trying to fix its ills, it is incredibly naive at it. It gets worse. Not only is Rotten Tomatoes incredibly naive, this company is also not at all tech savvy. Its system is so ripe for being gamed, the “Audience Score” is a nearly pointless metric. For example, 38,000 verified reviews based on millions of people who watched it? Yeah, if that “Audience Score” number isn’t now skewed, I don’t know what is.
Case in point. The “Audience Score” for The Rise of Skywalker is 86%. The difficulty with this number is the vast majority of the reviews I’ve seen from people on chat forums don’t rate the film anywhere close to 86%. What that means is that the new way that Rotten Tomatoes is calculating scores is effectively a form of manipulation itself BY Rotten Tomatoes.
To have the most fair and accurate metric, ALL reviews must be counted and included in all ratings. You can’t just toss out the vast majority of reviews simply because you can’t verify them has holding a ticket. Even still, holding a ticket doesn’t mean someone has actually watched the film. Buying a ticket and actually attending a showing of the film are two entirely separate things.
While you may have verified a ticket purchase, did you verify that the person actually watched the film? Are you withholding brand new Rotten Tomatoes account reviewers out of the audience score? How trustworthy can someone be if this is their first and only review on Rotten Tomatoes? What about people who downloaded the app just to buy a ticket for that film? Simply buying a ticket from Fandango doesn’t make the rating or reviewer trustworthy.
Rethinking Rotten Tomatoes
Someone at Rotten Tomatoes needs to drastically reconsider this change and they need to do it fast. If Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t guilty of manipulation of review scores before this late spring change in 2019, they are now. Rotten Tomatoes is definitely guilty of manipulating the “Audience Score” by the sheer lack of reviews covered under this “verified review” change. Nothing can be considered valid when the sampling size is so small as to be useless. Verifying a ticket holder also doesn’t validate a review author’s sincerity, intent or, indeed, legitimacy. It also severely limits who can be counted under their ratings, thus reducing the trustworthiness of “Audience Score”.
In fact, only by looking at past reviews can someone determine if a review author has trustworthy opinions.
Worse, Fandango holds a very small portion of all ticket sales made for theaters (see below). By showing all (or primarily) scores tabulated by people who bought tickets from Fandango, this definitely eliminates well over half of the written reviews on Rotten Tomatoes as valid. Worse, because of the way the metric is calculated, nefarious entities can game the system to their own benefit and manipulate the score quickly.
This has a chilling effect on Rotten Tomatoes. The staff at Rotten Tomatoes needs roll back this change pronto. For Rotten Tomatoes to return it being a trustworthy neutral entity in the art of movie reviews, it needs a far better way to determine trustworthiness of its reviews and of its reviewers. Trust comes from well written, consistent reviews. Ratings come from trusted sources. Trust is earned. The sole act of buying a ticket from Fandango doesn’t earn trust. It earns bankroll.
Why then are ticket buyers from Fandango any more trustworthy than people purchasing tickets elsewhere? They aren’t… and here’s where Rotten Tomatoes has failed. Rotten Tomatoes incorrectly assumes that by “verifying” a sale of a ticket via Fandango alone, that that somehow makes a review or rating more trustworthy. It doesn’t.
It gets worse because while Fandango represents at least 70% of online sales, it STILL only represents a tiny fraction of overall ticket sales, at just 5-6% (as of 2012).
“Online ticketing still just represents five to six percent of the box office, so there’s tremendous potential for growth right here.” –TheWrap in 2012
Granted, this TheWrap article is from 2012. Even if Fandango had managed to grab 50% of the overall ticket sales in the subsequent 7 years since that article, that would leave out 50% of the remaining ticket holder’s voices, which will not be tallied into Rotten Tomatoes current “Audience Score” metric. I seriously doubt that Fandango has managed to achieve anywhere close to 50% of total movie ticket sales. If it held 5-6% overall sales in 2012, in 7 years Fandango might account for growth between 10-15% at most by 2019. That’s still 85% of all reviews excluded from Rotten Tomatoes’s “Audience Score” metric. In fact, it behooves Fandango to keep this overall ticket sales number as low as possible so as to influence its “Audience Score” number with more ease and precision.
To put this in a little more perspective, a movie theater might have 200 seats. 10% of that is 20. That means that for every 200 people who might fill a theater, just less than 20 people have bought their ticket from Fandango and are eligible for their review to count towards “Audience Score”. Considering that only a small percentage of that 20 will actually take the time to write a review, that could mean out of every 200 people who’ve seen the film legitimately, between 1 and 5 people might be counted towards the Audience Score. Calculating that up, for very 1 million people who see a blockbuster film, somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000’s reviews may contribute to the Rotten Tomatoes “Audience Score”… even if there are hundreds of thousands of reviews on the site.
The fewer the reviews contributing to that score, the easier it is to manipulate that score by adding just a handful of reviews to the mix… and that’s where Rotten Tomatoes “handpicked reviews” come into play (and with it, the potential for Payola). Rotten Tomatoes can then handpick positive reviews for inclusion. The problem is that while Rotten Tomatoes understands all of this this, so do the studios. Which means that studios can, like I said above, “invite” employees to buy tickets via Fandango before writing a review on Rotten Tomatoes. They can even contact Rotten Tomatoes and pay for “special treatment”. This situation can allow movie studios to unduly influence the “Audience Score” for a current release… this is compounded because there are so few reviews that count to create the “Audience Score”.
Where Rotten Tomatoes likely counted every review towards this score before this change, after they implemented the new “verified score” methodology, this change greatly drops the number of reviews which contribute to tallying this score. This lower number of reviews means that it is now much easier to manipulate its Audience Score number either by gaming the system or by Rotten Tomatoes handpicking reviews to include.
Fading Trust
While Rotten Tomatoes was once a trustworthy site for movie reviews, it has greatly reduced its trust levels by instituting such backwards and easily manipulable systems.
Whenever you visit a site like Rotten Tomatoes, you must always question everything you see. When you see something like an “Audience Score”, you must question how that number is calculated and what is included in that number. Rotten Tomatoes isn’t forthcoming.
In the case of Rotten Tomatoes, they have drastically reduced the number of included reviews in that metric because of their “verified purchase” mechanism. Unfortunately, the introduction of that mechanism at once destroys Rotten Tomatoes trust and trashes the concept of their site.
It Gets Worse
What’s even more of a problem is the following two images:
From the above two images, it is claimed Rotten Tomatoes has 37,956 “Verified Ratings”, yet they only have 3,342 “Verified Audience” reviews. That’s a huge discrepancy. Where are those other 34,614 “Verified” reviews? You need to calculate the Audience Score not solely on a phone device using a simplistic “rate this movie” alone. It must be calculated in combination with an author writing a review. Of course, there are 5,240 reviews that didn’t at all contribute to any score at all on Rotten Tomatoes. Those audience reviews are just “there”, taking up space.
Single number ratings are pointless without at least some text validation information. Worse, we know that these “Verified Ratings” likely have nothing to do with “Verified Audience” as shown in the images above. Even if those 3,342 audience reviews are actually calculated into the “Verified Ratings” (they probably aren’t), that’s still such a limited number when considered with the rest of the “Verified Ratings” so as to be skewed by people who may not have even attended the film.
You can only determine if someone has actually attended a film by asking them to WRITE even the smallest of a review. Simply pressing “five star” on the app without even caring is pointless. It’s possible the reviews weren’t even tabulated correctly via the App. The App itself may even submit star data after a period of time without the owner’s knowledge or consent. The App can even word its rating question in such a way as to manipulate the response in a positive direction. Can we say, “Skewed”?
None of this leads to trust. Without knowing exactly how that data was collected, the method(s) used and how it was presented on the site and on the app, how can you trust any of it? It’s easy to see professional critic reviews because Rotten Tomatoes must cite back to the source of the review. However, with audience metrics, it’s all nebulous and easily falsified… particularly when Rotten Tomatoes is intentionally obtuse and opaque for exactly how it collects this data and how it is presents it.
Even still, with over one million people attending and viewing The Rise of Skywalker, yet Rotten Tomatoes has only counted just under verified 38,000 people, something doesn’t add up. Yeah, Rotten Tomatoes is so very trustworthy (yeah right), particularly after this “verified” change. Maybe it’s time for those Rotten Tomatoes to finally be tossed into the garbage?
↩︎
What went wrong with Disney’s Star Wars
This article is not intended to review The Rise of Skywalker, even though it is in the theaters as I write this. I will write a lengthy review of this final film later. No, this article is intended to explain what went wrong at Disney with Disney’s not-so-recently acquired Star Wars property. Let’s explore.
Star Wars as a Serial
When George Lucas envisioned Star Wars, he envisioned it as a new take on the Saturday morning “Damsel in Distress” story. In fact, he held true to that vision throughout the Star Wars Original Trilogy (Episodes 4, 5 and 6) and even into the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (Episodes 1, 2 and 3). I’ll deep dive into how these two separate trilogies manifested this “Damsel in Distress” Saturday morning serial ideal.
Prequels
While George’s Prequel trilogy story idea was, for the most part, a snoozefest, George maintained and held true to his Saturday morning serial idea of the female heroine coming under constant distress. If you review Padmé Amadala’s role in films 1, 2 and 3, this idea is readily apparent. In the first film, Padmé’s planet of Naboo comes under fire requiring help… and she, with the help of two Jedi, makes her way to Coruscant to plead her case. Along the way, she runs into all sorts of treacherous situations where her new found Jedi colleagues have to bail her out. These situations are not necessarily of her own making, but they are situations that require rescuing her. In The Phantom Menace, however, there weren’t a lot of occasions where Padmé needed rescuing personally, but there were global situations that warranted her protection by the Jedi.
However, this constant motif of peril and rescue is an important story element in George’s Star Wars universe no matter the form it takes. This situation happens with more and more regularity as the prequels progress, putting Padmé in ever more and more perilous situations requiring rescue by someone… someone like Obi-Wan on Geonosis and again someone like Anakin. Further we see Anakin rescue her again and again once he becomes her lover. This peril and rescue story element sets up incredible tensions and keeps the story narrative flowing properly. It also breeds another story motif which I’ll describe shortly.
Even as much as the acting was stilted and wooden, this “Damsel in Distress” motif comes through clear as day.
Midquels
During Episodes 4, 5 and 6, Princess Leia is the damsel. In these films, once again, Leia is set into ever more and more perilous and precarious situations requiring rescue by Luke, Han, Chewy and on occasion, even Lando. It’s a never ending motif that lends credence to the story and helps the audience keep its eye on the ball.
I’ll point out a few of these. Leia’s rescue by Luke during the swing across in A New Hope. Leia’s rescue by Han from Hoth Base in The Empire Strikes Back. Leia’s rescue by Han at the end of Return of the Jedi after being injured. Leia’s rescue from being Jabba’s slave. There’s nothing more motivating to another character and satisfying from the audience than getting the damsel out of harm’s way. Such a situation allows a character to overcome insurmountable odds to achieve success to save the damsel. This one is yet another motif that is common in Star Wars… “Overcoming Insurmountable Odds”. This motif is in all of the films, even Disney’s versions. But, the two concepts of “Damsel in Distress” and “Overcoming Insurmountable Odds” go hand-in-hand. The characters need motivation to put themselves in very dangerous situations (and for the audience to believe it — eye on the ball). Thus, rescuing the a lead character, male or female, is just the motivation the character needs.
After all, Luke’s motivation for defeating the Death Star in Star Wars was predicated on saving Princess Leia (and the rest of the rebellion, of course). Luke, however, had personal stakes in this fight. Even Han’s last minute rescue of Luke was born out of both vying for Leia’s attentions. Both Luke and Han knew what they stood to lose (or gain). Luke then was able to overcome insurmountable odds by leveraging the force.
Disney’s Sequels
Here’s were things begin to go awry, but not right from the start. The Force Awakens manages to keep both the “Damsel in Distress” and the “Overcoming Insurmountable Odds” motifs mostly in-check throughout most of the film. In fact, The Force Awakens uses Finn as the agent to carry this motif along throughout most of this first Sequel film. Unfortunately, this motif remained relatively paper thin and Finn is unable to “save” Rey most of the time simply because Rey is not in danger. However, JJ is very good at copying ideas, but not at implementing them properly. For this first film in the final trilogy, these two important story motifs manage to maintain their place mostly within The Force Awakens, but only weakly. Although, by the end of The Force Awakens, these motifs begin to fail by seeing Rey become far too powerful and far too independent way before she should have. In fact, by the end of the film, Rey was so capable of managing to save herself, no other characters really needed to be there to help her.
By the second film, The Last Jedi, the “Damsel in Distress” motif was entirely tossed aside. No more saving Rey. It just wouldn’t be a motif in the film at all. Rey was such an independent and powerful “Mary Sue” that she could handle any situation with ease. No need to have Finn, Poe or any other character feel the need to “save Rey”. For as far as they were concerned, she didn’t need saving. The removal of the “Damsel in Distress” motif yanked out one of the core themes of this “Saturday Morning Serial”. It also left many fans disenchanted by this change in direction of Star Wars.
By The Rise of Skywalker, not only does the series entirely abandon the idea of “Damsel in Distress”, it throws the idea in the face of audience as entirely unnecessary. It states definitively that Rey is a “Mary Sue” of the highest order and is fully capable of rescuing herself without need of anyone else. No longer is Star Wars about being a team effort, it’s about a single person’s rise to power… something which the Jedi order actually forbid.
…. And here is where Disney’s Star Wars falters ….
By The Last Jedi, Rey is so capable of saving herself that there’s no need for anyone to “come save her”, not even when strapped into an interrogation chair when Kylo is laying the figurative thumbscrews to her.
When Leia is trapped in a cell on the Death Star in A New Hope, Luke and Han hatch a plan to save her against impossible odds… and they succeed, even if not for the garbage shoot. When Rey is trapped in a cell on Kylo’s carrier, no one hatches any plans to save Rey. She has to save herself. In The Rise of Skywalker, it goes way beyond that. Rey has become so powerful and self-sufficient, anyone trying to “save” her would look like an idiot. This is the reason why Disney’s Star Wars has more in common with fan fiction than it does actual canon. Disney has effectively turned Star Wars into a series about wish fulfillment.
Star Wars was not and has never been about empowering the female lead to become entirely self-sufficient and “save the galaxy” by herself (like Holdo). Star Wars was also not about wish fulfillment. Star Wars is about having a team of people save each other, but specifically still managing to afford the “Damsel in Distress” motif at times. Even still, it wasn’t always the damsel who always needs saving in Episodes 1 through 6, but Leia did need help relatively frequently. After all, Leia did have to rescue Han after being frozen in Carbonite and sent to Tattoine… an alternate form of “Damsel in Distress”. This motif is not always about rescuing a female. It’s about a team effort of rescuing each other against great odds.
While the “Damsel in Distress” motif may be considered a bit antiquated in these more female empowering times, it still has a place in storytelling… and in particular, it is a key element of Star Wars that simply can’t be discarded. Star Wars is, for better or worse, stories about the female ending up in situations needing assistance by her male cohorts. Though, setting up the reverse in today’s times might be perfectly acceptable.
Unfortunately, Disney has lost its way in this franchise. It sacrificed the core “Damsel in Distress” motif to its own sociopolitical ideals of “female independence and empowerment”. Female independence is not a central theme in the Star Wars cinematic universe and never has been. Star Wars is a story about working together as a “team” (male or female) to create a positive end result.
Listening to Leia’s speech on Hoth to her pilots right before battle sums up what Star Wars is about. I can hear some people saying, “Well it should be about female independence”. I counter with, look at how that turned out for both The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker… hint: not well. Even trying such shtick as “Role Reversal” (aka 2016’s Ghostbusters) is so obvious as to what it is, it’s almost impossible to avoid the backlash. The Star Wars universe has already overcome such petty squabbles such as “female” versus “male”. In Star Wars, the characters live in a universe where the most important thing is SURVIVAL, not which gender is most important.
While a Star Wars TV series may be able to expand on many different motifs, including delving into female empowerment, due its lengthy episodic nature, theatrical releases have only a few precious minutes to unfold a story that makes sense using the existing Star Wars motifs. Holding true to the Star Wars original story methodologies and ideals would have fared far better for Disney than what we were handed in Disney’s trilogy.
I liken this problem to the idea of “tossing out the baby with the bathwater”. It may solve a certain problem, but it creates more problems than it solves (aka JJ’s 2009’s Star Trek reboot). With Disney, that’s where we are… and that’s why Disney’s Star Wars films consistently draw fan ire, contempt and criticism.
This article is not intended to describe everything wrong with Disney’s Star Wars. Instead, it is intended to draw attention where Disney first went astray from what Star Wars is fundamentally designed to be. Clearly, there are many, many more story and situational problems within Episodes 7, 8 and 9. However, all of these other problems stemmed directly or indirectly from the primary problem described above.
↩︎
Rant Time: Flickr is running out of time & money?
I received a rather questionable email about Flickr allegedly from Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug.
Unfortunately, his email is also wrapped in the guise of email marketing and arrived through the same marketing channel as all other email marketing from Flickr.
Don, if you want us to take this situation seriously, you shouldn’t use email marketing platforms to do it. These emails need to come personally from you using a SmugMug or Flickr address. They also shouldn’t contain several email marketing links. An email from the CEO should contain only ONE link and it should be at the very bottom of the email.
The information contained in this letter is not a surprise in general, but the way it arrived and the tone it takes is a surprise coming from a CEO, particularly when it takes the format of generic email marketing. Let’s explore.
Flickr Pro
I will place the letter at the bottom so you can it read in full. The gist of the letter is, “We’re running out of money, so sign up right away!”
I want to take the time to discuss the above “running out of money” point. Here’s an excerpt from Don’s email:
We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data. We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing.
Let’s start by saying, why on Earth would I ever sign up for a money losing service that is in danger of closing? Seriously, Flickr? Are you mad? Don’t give me assurances that *I* can save your business with my single conversion. It’s going to take MANY someones to keep Flickr afloat if it’s running out of money. Worse, sending this email to former Pro members trying to get us to convert again is a losing proposition. Send it to someone who cares, assuming there is anyone like that.
A single conversion isn’t likely to do a damned thing to stem the tide of your money hemorrhaging, Flickr. Are you insane to send out a letter like this in this generic email marketing way? If anything, a letter like this may see even MORE of your existing members run for the hills by cancelling their memberships, instead of trying to save Flickr from certain doom. But, let’s ignore this letter’s asinine message and focus on why I decided to write this article.
Flickr is Dead to Me
I had an email exchange in November of 2018 with Flickr’s team. I make my stance exceedingly clear exactly why I cancelled my Pro membership and why their inexplicable price increase is pointless. And yes, it is a rant. This exchange goes as follows:
Susan from Flickr states:
When we re-introduced the annual Flickr Pro at $49.99 more than 3 years ago, we promised all grandfathered Pros (including the bi-annual and 3-month plans) a 2-year protected price period. We have kept this promise, but in order to continue providing our best service to all of our customers, we are now updating the pricing for grandfathered Pros. We started this process on August 16, 2018.
With this being the case, bi-annual Pros pay $99.98 every 2 years, annual Pros pay $49.99 every year, and 3-month Pros pay $17.97 every 3 months. Notifications including the price increase have been sent out to our users starting from August 16.
I then write back the following rant:
Hi Susan,
Yes, and that means you’ve had more than ample time to make that $50 a year worth it for Pro subscribers. You haven’t and you’ve failed. It’s still the same Flickr it was when I was paying $22.48 a year. Why should I now pay over double the price for no added benefits? Now that SmugMug has bought it, here we are now being forced to pay the $50 a year toll when there’s nothing new that’s worth paying $50 for. Pro users have been given ZERO tools to sell our photos on the platform as stock photos. Being given these tools is what ‘Pro’ means, Susan. We additionally can’t in any way monetize our content to recoup the cost of our Pro membership fees. Worse, you’re displaying ads over the top our photos and we’re not seeing a dime from that revenue.
Again, what have you given that makes $50 a year worth it? You’re really expecting us to PAY you $50 a year to show ads to free users over the top of our content? No! I was barely willing to do that with $22.48 a year. Of course, this will all fall on deaf ears because these words mean nothing to you. It’s your management team pushing stupid efforts that don’t make sense in a world where Flickr is practically obsolete. Well, I’m done with using a 14 year old decrepit platform that has degraded rather than improved. Sorry Susan, I’ve removed over 2500 photos, cancelled my Pro membership and will move back to the free tier. If SmugMug ever comes to its senses and actually produces a Pro platform worth using (i.e., actually offers monetization tools or even a storefront), I might consider paying. As it is now, Flickr is an antiquated 14 year old platform firmly rooted in a 2004 world. Wake up, it’s 2018! The iStockphotos of the world are overtaking you and offering better Pro tools.
Bye.
Flickr and SmugMug
When Flickr was purchased by SmugMug, I wasn’t expecting much from Flickr. But, I also didn’t expect Flickr to double its prices while also providing nothing in return. The platform has literally added nothing to improve the “Pro” aspect of its service. You’re simply paying more for the privilege of having ads placed over the top of your photos. Though, what SmugMug might claim you’re paying for is entirely the privilege of the tiniest bit more storage space to store a few more photos.
Back when storage costs were immense, that pricing might have made sense. In an age where storage costs are impossibly low, that extra per month pricing is way out of line. SmugMug and Flickr should have spent their time adding actual “Pro” tools so that photographers can, you know, make money from their photos by selling them, leasing them, producing framed physical wall hangings, mugs, t-shirts, mouse pads, and so on. Let us monetize our one and only one product… you know, like Deviant Art does. Instead, SmugMug has decided to charge more, then place ads over the top of our photos and not provide even a fraction of what Deviant Art does for free.
As a photographer, why should I spend $50 a year on Flickr only to gain nothing when I can move my photos to Deviant Art and pay nothing a year AND get many more tools which help me monetize my images? I can also submit them to stock photo services and make money off of leasing them to publications, something still not possible at Flickr.
Don’s plea is completely disingenuous. You can’t call something “Pro” when there’s nothing professional about it. But then, Don feels compelled to call out where they have actually hosted Flickr and accidentally explains why Flickr is losing money.
We moved the platform and every photo to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing, and modernized its technology along the way.
What modernization? Hosting a service on AWS doesn’t “modernize” anything. It’s a hosting platform. Worse, this hosting decision is entirely the cause of SmugMug’s central money woes with Flickr. AWS is THE most expensive cloud hosting platform available. There is nothing whatsoever cheap about using AWS’s storage and compute platforms. Yes, AWS works well, but the bill at the end of the month sucks. To keep the lights on when hosting at AWS, plan to spend a mint.
If SmugMug wanted to save on costs of hosting Flickr, they should have migrated it to a much lower cost hosting platform instead of sending empty marketing promises asking people to “help save the platform”. Changing hosting platforms might require more hands on effort for SmugMug’s technical staff, but SmugMug can likely half the costs of hosting this platform by moving it to lower cost hosting providers… providers that will work just as well as AWS.
Trying to urge past subscribers to re-up into Pro again simply to “save its AWS hosting decision”, not gonna happen. Those of us who’ve gotten no added benefit by paying money to Flickr in the past are not eager to return. Either give us a legitimate reason to pay money to you (add a storefront or monetization tools) or spend your time moving Flickr to a lower cost hosting service, one where Flickr can make money.
Don, why not use your supposed CEO prowess to have your team come up with lower cost solutions? I just did. It’s just a thought. You shouldn’t rely on such tactless and generic email marketing practices to solve the ills of Flickr and SmugMug. You bought it, you have to live with it. If that means Flickr must shutdown because you can’t figure out a way to save it, then so be it.
Below is Don MacAskill’s email in all of its unnecessary email marketing glory (links redacted):
Dear friends,Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help. Two years ago, Flickr was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Our company, SmugMug, stepped in to rescue it from being shut down and to save tens of billions of your precious photos from being erased. Why? We’ve spent 17 years lovingly building our company into a thriving, family-owned and -operated business that cares deeply about photographers. SmugMug has always been the place for photographers to showcase their photography, and we’ve long admired how Flickr has been the community where they connect with each other. We couldn’t stand by and watch Flickr vanish. So we took a big risk, stepped in, and saved Flickr. Together, we created the world’s largest photographer-focused community: a place where photographers can stand out and fit in. We’ve been hard at work improving Flickr. We hired an excellent, large staff of Support Heroes who now deliver support with an average customer satisfaction rating of above 90%. We got rid of Yahoo’s login. We moved the platform and every photo to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing, and modernized its technology along the way. As a result, pages are already 20% faster and photos load 30% more quickly. Platform outages, including Pandas, are way down. Flickr continues to get faster and more stable, and important new features are being built once again. Our work is never done, but we’ve made tremendous progress. Now Flickr needs your help. It’s still losing money. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members stepped up and joined Flickr Pro, for which we are eternally grateful. It’s losing a lot less money than it was. But it’s not yet making enough. We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive. We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data. We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing. Flickr is the world’s largest photographer-focused community. It’s the world’s best way to find great photography and connect with amazing photographers. Flickr hosts some of the world’s most iconic, most priceless photos, freely available to the entire world. This community is home to more than 100 million accounts and tens of billions of photos. It serves billions of photos every single day. It’s huge. It’s a priceless treasure for the whole world. And it costs money to operate. Lots of money. Flickr is not a charity, and we’re not asking you for a donation. Flickr is the best value in photo sharing anywhere in the world. Flickr Pro members get ad-free browsing for themselves and their visitors, advanced stats, unlimited full-quality storage for all their photos, plus premium features and access to the world’s largest photographer-focused community for less than $5 per month. You likely pay services such as Netflix and Spotify at least $9 per month. I love services like these, and I’m a happy paying customer, but they don’t keep your priceless photos safe and let you share them with the most important people in your world. Flickr does, and a Flickr Pro membership costs less than $1 per week. Please, help us make Flickr thrive. Help us ensure it has a bright future. Every Flickr Pro subscription goes directly to keeping Flickr alive and creating great new experiences for photographers like you. We are building lots of great things for the Flickr community, but we need your help. We can do this together. We’re launching our end-of-year Pro subscription campaign on Thursday, December 26, but I want to invite you to subscribe to Flickr Pro today for the same 25% discount. We’ve gone to great lengths to optimize Flickr for cost savings wherever possible, but the increasing cost of operating this enormous community and continuing to invest in its future will require a small price increase early in the new year, so this is truly the very best time to upgrade your membership to Pro. If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community. With gratitude, Don MacAskill |
|
|
↩︎
Am I impacted by the FTC’s YouTube agreement?
This question is currently a hot debate among YouTubers. The answer to this question is complex and depends on many factors. This is a long read as there’s a lot to say (~10000 words = ~35-50 minutes). Grab a cup of your favorite Joe and let’s explore.
COPPA, YouTube and the FTC
I’ve written a previous article on this topic entitled Rant Time: Google doesn’t understand COPPA. You’ll want to read that article to gain a bit more insight around this topic. Today’s article is geared more towards YouTube content creators and parents looking for answers. It is also geared towards anyone with a passing interest in the goings on at YouTube.
Before I start, let me write this disclaimer by saying I’m not a lawyer. Therefore, this article is not intended in any way to be construed as legal advice. If you need legal advice, there are many lawyers available who may be able to help you with regards to being a YouTube content creator and your specific channel’s circumstances. If you ARE HERE looking for legal advice, please go speak to a lawyer instead. The information provided in this article is strictly for information purposes only and IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.
For Kids or Not For Kids?
With that out of the way, let’s talk a little about what’s going on at YouTube for the uninitiated. YouTube has recently rolled out a new channel creator feature. This feature requires that you mark your channel “for kids” or “not for kids”. Individual videos can also be marked this way (which becomes important a little later in the article). Note, this “heading” is not the actual text on the screen in the settings area (see the image), but this is what you are doing when you change this YouTube creator setting. This setting is a binary setting. Your content is either directed at kids or it is not directed at kids. Let’s understand this reasoning around COPPA. Also, “kids” or “child” is defined in COPPA any person 12 or younger.
When you set the “for kids” setting on a YouTube channel, a number of things will happen to your channel, including comments being disabled, monetization will be severely limited or eliminated and how your content is promoted by YouTube will drastically change. There may also be other subtle changes that are as yet unclear. The reason for all of these restrictions is that COPPA prevents the collection of personal information from children 12 and under… or at least, if it is collected that it is deleted if parental consent cannot be obtained. In the 2013 update, COPPA added cookie tracking to the list of items that cannot be collected.
By disabling all of these features under ‘For Kids’, YouTube is attempting to reduce or eliminate its data collection vectors that could violate COPPA… to thwart future liabilities for Google / YouTube as a company.
On the other hand, setting your channel as ‘Not For Kids’, YouTube maintains your channel as it has always been with comments enabled, full monetization possible, etc. Seems simple, right? Wrong.
Not as Simple as it Seems
You’re a creator thinking, “Ok, then I’ll just set my channel to ‘Not for Kids’ and everything will be fine.” Not so fast there, partner. It’s not quite as simple as that. COPPA applies to your channel if even one child visits and Google collects any data from that child. But, there’s more to it.
YouTube will also be rolling out a tool that attempts to identify the primary audience of video content. If YouTube’s new tool identifies a video as content primarily targeting “kids”, that video’s “Not for Kids” setting may be overridden by YouTube and set as “For Kids”. Yes, this can be done by YouTube’s tool, thus overriding your channel-wide settings. It’s not enough to set this setting on your channel, you must make sure your content is not being watched by kids and the content is not overly kid friendly. How exactly YouTube’s scanner will work is entirely unknown as of now.
And here is where we get to the crux of this whole matter.
What is “Kid Friendly” Content?
Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this question. Your content could be you reviewing toys, it could be drawing pictures by hand on the screen, it could be reviewing comic books, you might ride skateboards, you might play video games, you might even assemble Legos into large sculptures. These are all video topics that could go either way… and it all depends on which audience your video tends draw in.
It also depends on your existing subscriber base. If a vast majority of your current active subscribers are children 12 and under, this fact can unfairly influence your content even if your curent content is most definitely not for kids. The fact that ‘kids’ are watching your channel is a problem for ANY content that you upload.
But you say, “My viewer statistics don’t show me 12 and under category.” No, it doesn’t and there’s a good reason why it doesn’t. Google has always professed that it doesn’t allow 12 and under on its platform. But clearly, that was a lie. Google does, in fact, allow 12 and under onto its platform. That’s crystal clear for two reasons: 1) The FTC fined Google $170 million for violating COPPA (meaning, FTC found kids 12 and under are using the platform) and 2) YouTube has rolled out this “for kids / not for kids” setting confirming by Google that 12 and under do, in fact, watch YouTube and have active Google Account IDs.
I hear someone else saying, “I’m a parent and I let my 11 year old son use YouTube.” Yeah, that’s perfectly fine and legal, so long as you have given “verifiable consent” to the company that is collecting data from your 11 year old child. As long as a parent gives ‘verifiable consent’ for their child under 12 to Google or YouTube or even to the channel owner directly, it’s perfectly legal for your child to be on the platform watching and participating and for Google and YouTube to collect data from your child.
Unfortunately, verifiable consent is difficult to manage digitally. See the DIY method of parental consent below. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer any “verifiable consent” mechanism for itself or for YouTube content creators. This means that even if you as a parent are okay with your child being on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or even Snapchat, if you haven’t provided explicit and verifiable parental consent to that online service for your child 12 and under, that service is in violation of COPPA by handling data that your child may input into that service. Data can include name, telephone number, email address or even sharing photos or videos of themselves. It also includes cookies placed onto their devices.
COPPA was written to penalize the “web site” or “online services” that collect a child’s information. It doesn’t penalize the family. Without “verifiable consent” from a parent or legal guardian, to the “web site” or “online service” it’s the same as no consent at all. Implicit consent isn’t valid for COPPA. It must be explicitly given and verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian given to the service being used by the child.
The Murky Waters of Google
If only YouTube were Google’s only property to consider. It isn’t. Google has many, many properties. I’ll make a somewhat short-ish list here:
- Google Search
- Google Games
- Google Music
- Google Play Store (App)
- Google Play Games (App)
- Google Stadia
- Google Hangouts
- Google Docs
- Google’s G Suite
- Google Voice
- Google Chrome (browser)
- Google Chromebook (device)
- Google Earth (App)
- Google Movies and TV
- Google Photos
- Google’s Gmail
- Google Books
- Google Drive
- Google Home (the smart speaker device)
- Google Chromecast (TV device)
- Android OS on Phones
- … and the list goes on …
To drive all of these properties and devices, Google relies on the creation of a Google Account ID. To create an account, you must supply Google with certain specific identifying information including email address, first and last name and various other required information. Google will then grant you a login identifier and a password in the form of credentials which allows you to log into and use any of the above Google properties, including (you guessed it) YouTube.
Without “verifiable consent” supplied to Google for a child 12 and under, what data Google has collected from your child during the Google Account signup process (or any of the above apps) has violated COPPA, a ruleset tasked for enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Yes, this whole situation gets even murkier.
Data Collection and Manipulation
The whole point to COPPA is to protect data collected from any child aged 12 and under. More specifically, it rules that this data cannot be collected / processed from the child unless a parent or legal guardian supplies “verifiable consent” to the “web site” or “online service” within a reasonable time of the child having supplied their data to the site.
As of 2013, data collection and manipulation isn’t defined just by what the child personally uploads and types, though this data is included. This Act was expanded to include cookies placed onto a child’s computer device to track and target that child with ads. These cookies are also considered protected data by COPPA as these cookies could be used to personally identify the child. If a service does not have “verifiable consent” on file for that child from a parent or guardian, the “online service” or “web site” is considered by the FTC in violation of COPPA.
The difficulty with Google’s situation is that Google actually stores a child’s data within the child’s Google Account ID. This account ID being entirely separate from YouTube. For example, if you buy your child a Samsung Note 10 Phone running Android and you as a parent create a Google Account for your 12 or under child to use that device, you have just helped Google violate COPPA. This is part of the reason the FTC fined Google $170 million for violations to COPPA. Perhaps not this specific scenario, but the fact that Google doesn’t offer a “verifiable consent” system to verify a child’s access to its services and devices prior to collecting data or granting access to services led the FTC to its ruling. The FTC’s focus, however, is currently YouTube… even though Google is violating COPPA everywhere all over its properties as a result of the use of a Google Account ID.
YouTube’s and COPPA Fallout
Google wholly owns YouTube. Google purchased the YouTube property in 2006. In 2009, Google retired YouTube’s original login credential system and began requiring YouTube to use Google Accounts to gain access to the YouTube property by viewers. This change is important.
It also seems that YouTube is still operating itself mostly as a self-autonomous entity within Google’s larger corporate structure. What all of this means more specifically is that YouTube now uses Google Accounts, a separately controlled and operated system within Google, to manage credentials and gain access into not only the YouTube property, but every other property that Google has (see the short-ish list above).
In 2009, the YouTube developers deprecated their own home grown credentials system and began using the Google Accounts system of credential storage. This change to YouTube very likely means that YouTube itself no longer stores or controls any credential or identifying data. That data is now contained within the Google Accounts system. YouTube likely now only manages the videos that get uploaded, comments, supplying ads on videos (which the tracking and manage is probably controlled by Google also), content ID matching and anything else that appears in the YouTube UI interface. Everything else is likely out of the YouTube team’s control (or even access). In fact, I’d suspect that the YouTube team likely has entirely zero access to the data and information stored within the Google Accounts system (with the exception of that specific data which is authorized by the account holder to be publicly shown).
Why is this Google Accounts information important?
So long as Google Accounts remains a separate entity from YouTube (even though YouTube is owned by the same company), this means that YouTube can’t be in violation of COPPA (at least not where storage of credentials are concerned). There is one exception which YouTube does control… its comment system.
The comment system on YouTube is one of the earliest “modern” social networks ever created. Only Facebook and MySpace were slightly earlier, though all three were generally created within 1 year of one another. It is also the only free form place left in the present 2019 YouTube interface that allows a 12 or under child to incidentally type some form of personally identifying information into a public forum for YouTube to store (in violation of COPPA).
This is the reason that the “for kids” setting disables comments. YouTube formerly had a private messaging service, but it was retired as of September of 2019. It is no longer possible to use YouTube to have private conversations between other YouTube users. If you want to converse with another YouTube viewer, you must do it in a public comment. This change was likely also fallout from Google’s COPPA woes.
Google and Cookies
For the same reason as Google Accounts, YouTube likely doesn’t even manage its own site cookies. It might, but it likely relies on a centralized internal Google service to create, manage and handle cookies. The reason for this is obvious. Were YouTube’s developers to create and manage their own separate cookie, it would be a cookie that holds no use for other Google services. However, if YouTube developers were to rely on a centralized Google controlled service to manage their site’s cookies, it would allow the cookie to be created in a standardized way that all Google services can consume and use. For this reason, this author supposes a centralized system is used at YouTube rather than something “homegrown” and specific to YouTube.
While it is possible that YouTube might create its own cookies, it’s doubtful that YouTube does this for one important reason: ad monetization. For YouTube to participate in Google Advertising (yet another service under the Google umbrella of services), YouTube would need to use tracking cookies that the Google Advertising service can read, parse and update while someone is watching a video on YouTube.
This situation remains murky because YouTube can manage its own internal cookies. I’m supposing that YouTube doesn’t because of a larger corporate platform strategy. But, it is still entirely possible that YouTube does manage its own browser cookies. Only a YouTube employee would know for certain which way this one goes.
Because of the ambiguity in how cookies are managed within Google and YouTube, this is another area where YouTube has erred on the side of caution by disabling ads and ad tracking if a channel is marked as ‘for kids’. This prevents placing ad tracking cookies on any computers from ‘for kids’ marked channels and videos, again avoiding violations of COPPA.
The FTC’s position
Unfortunately, the FTC has put themselves into a constitutionally precarious position. The United States Constitution has a very important provision within its First Amendment.
Let me cite a quote from the US Constitution’s First Amendment (highlighting and italics added by author to call out importance):
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The constitutional difficulty that the FTC has placed themselves in is that YouTube, by its very nature, offers a journalistic platform which is constitutionally protected from tortious interference by the United States government. The government (or more specifically, Congress) cannot make law that in any way abridges freedom of speech or of the press.
A video on YouTube is not only a form of journalism, it is a form of free speech. As long as YouTube and Google remain operating within the borders of the United States, United States residents must be able to use this platform unfettered without government tortious interference.
How does this imply to the FTC? It applies because the FTC is a governmental entity created by an act of the US Congress and, therefore, acts on behalf of the US Congress. This means that the FTC must uphold all provisions of the United States Constitution when dealing with matters of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.
How is does this problem manifest for the FTC? The FTC has repeatedly stated that it will use “tools” to determine if a YouTube channel’s content is intended for and is primarily intended to target children 12 and under. Here’s the critical part. If a channel’s content is determined to be targeting children 12 and under, the channel owner may be fined up to $43,530 per video as it will have been deemed in violation of COPPA.
There are two problems with the above statements the FTC has made. Let’s examine text from this FTC provided page about YouTube (italics provided by the FTC):
So how does COPPA apply to channel owners who upload their content to YouTube or another third-party platform? COPPA applies in the same way it would if the channel owner had its own website or app. If a channel owner uploads content to a platform like YouTube, the channel might meet the definition of a “website or online service” covered by COPPA, depending on the nature of the content and the information collected. If the content is directed to children and if the channel owner, or someone on its behalf (for example, an ad network), collects personal information from viewers of that content (for example, through a persistent identifier that tracks a user to serve interest-based ads), the channel is covered by COPPA. Once COPPA applies, the operator must provide notice, obtain verifiable parental consent, and meet COPPA’s other requirements.
and there’s more, which contains the most critical part of the FTC’s article:
Under COPPA, there is no one-size-fits-all answer about what makes a site directed to children, but we can offer some guidance. To be clear, your content isn’t considered “directed to children” just because some children may see it. However, if your intended audience is kids under 13, you’re covered by COPPA and have to honor the Rule’s requirements.
The Rule sets out additional factors the FTC will consider in determining whether your content is child-directed:
- the subject matter,
- visual content,
- the use of animated characters or child-oriented activities and incentives,
- the kind of music or other audio content,
- the age of models,
- the presence of child celebrities or celebrities who appeal to children,
- language or other characteristics of the site,
- whether advertising that promotes or appears on the site is directed to children, and
- competent and reliable empirical evidence about the age of the audience.
Content, Content and more Content
The above quotes discuss YouTube Content becoming “covered by COPPA”. This is a ruse. Content is protected speech by the United States Constitution and is defined within the First Amendment (see above). Nothing in any YouTube visual content when published by a United State Citizen can be “covered by COPPA”. The First Amendment sees to that.
Let’s understand why. First, COPPA is a data collections Act. It has nothing whatever to do with content ratings, content age appropriateness or, indeed, does not discuss anything else related visual content targeted towards children of ANY age. Indeed, there is no verbiage within the COPPA provisions that discuss YouTube, visual content, audio content or anything else to do with Freedom of Speech matters.
It gets worse… at least for the FTC. Targeting channels for disruption by fining them strictly over content uploaded onto the channel is less about protecting children’s data and more about content censorship on YouTube. Indeed, fining a channel $42,530 is tantamount to censorship as it is likely to see that content removed from YouTube… which is, indeed, censorship in its most basic form. Any censorship of Freedom of Speech is firmly against First Amendment rights.
Since the FTC is using fines based on COPPA as leverage against content creators, the implication is that the FTC will use this legal leverage to have YouTube take down content it feels is inappropriate targeting 12 and under children, rather than upholding COPPA’s actual data protection provisions. Indeed, the FTC will actually be making new law by fining channels based on content, not on whether data was actually collected in violation of COPPA’s data collection provisions. Though, the first paragraph may claim “data collection” as a metric, the second paragraph is solely about “offending content”… which is entirely about censorship. Why is that? Let’s continue.
COPPA vs “Freedom of Speech”
The FTC has effectively hung themselves out to dry. In fact, if the FTC does fine even ONE YouTube channel for “inappropriate content”, the FTC will be firmly in the business of censorship of journalism. Or, more specifically, the FTC will have violated the First Amendment rights of U.S. Citizens’ freedom of speech protections.
This means that in order for the FTC to enforce COPPA against YouTube creators, it has now firmly put itself into the precarious position of violating the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. In fact, the FTC cannot even fine even one channel owner without violating the First Amendment.
In truth, they can fine under only the following circumstance:
- The FTC proves that the YouTube channel actually collected and currently possesses inappropriate data from a child 12 and under.
- The FTC leaves the channel entirely untouched. The channel and content must remain online and active.
Number 2 is actually quite a bit more difficult for the FTC than it sounds. Because YouTube and the FTC have made an agreement, that means that YouTube can be seen as an agent of the FTC by doing the FTC’s bidding. This means that even if YouTube takes down the channel after a fine for TOS reasons, the FTC’s fining action can still be construed as in violation of First Amendment rights because YouTube acted as an agent to take down the “offending content”.
It gets even more precarious for the FTC. Even the simple the act of levying a fine against a YouTube channel could be seen as a violation of First Amendment rights. This action by the FTC seems less about protecting children’s data and more about going after YouTube content creators “targeting children with certain types of content” (see above). Because the latter quote from the FTC article explicitly calls out types of content as “directed at children”, this intentionally shows that it’s not about COPPA, but about visual content rules. Visual content rules DO NOT exist in COPPA.
Channel Owners and Content
If you are a YouTube channel owner, all of the above should greatly concern you for the following reasons:
- You don’t want to become a Guinea Pig to test First Amendment legal waters of the FTC + COPPA
- The FTC’s content rules above effectively state, “We’ll know it when we see it.” This is constitutionally BAD. This heavily implies content censorship intent. This means that the FTC can simply call out any content as being inappropriate and then fine a channel owner for uploading that content.
- It doesn’t specify state if the rule applies retroactively. Does previously uploaded content become subject to the FTC’s whim?
- The agreement takes effect beginning January 1, 2020
- YouTube can “accidentally” reclassify content as “for kids” when it clearly isn’t… which can trigger an FTC action.
- The FTC will apparently have direct access to the YouTube platform scanning tools. To what degree it has access is unknown. If it has direct access to take videos or channels offline, it has direct access to violate the First Amendment. Even if it must ask YouTube to do this takedown work, the FTC will still have violated the First Amendment.
The Fallacy
The difficulty I have with this entire situation is that the FTC now appears to be holding content creators to blame for heavy deficiencies within YouTube’s and Google’s platforms. Because Google failed to properly police its own platform for 12 and under users, it now seeks to pass that blame down onto YouTube creators simply because they create and upload video content. Content, I might add, that is completely protected under the United State Constitution’s First Amendment as “Freedom of Speech”. Pre-shot video content is a one-way passive form of communication.
Just like broadcast and cable TV, YouTube is a video sharing platform. It is designed to allow creators to impart one-way passive communication using pre-made videos, just like broadcast TV. If these FTC actions apply to YouTube, then they equally apply to broadcast and cable television providers…. particularly now that CBS, ABC, NBC, Netflix, Disney+ (especially Disney+), Hulu, Vudu, Amazon, Apple and cable TV providers now also offer “web sites” and “online services” where their respective video content can (and will) be viewed by children 12 and under via a computer device or web browser and where a child may is able to input COPPA protected data. For example, is Disney+ requiring verifiable parental consent to comply with COPPA?
Live Streaming
However, YouTube now also offers live streaming which changes the game a little for COPPA. Live streaming offers two-way live communication and in somewhat real-time. Live streaming is a situation where a channel creator might be able to collect inappropriate data from a child simply by asking pointed questions during a live stream event. A child might even feel compelled to write into live chat information that they shouldn’t be giving out. Live streaming may be more likely to collect COPPA protected data than pre-made video content simply because of the live interactivity between the host and the viewers. You don’t get that level of interaction when using pre-made video content.
Live streaming or not, there is absolutely no way a content creator can in any way be construed as an “Operator” of Google or of YouTube. The FTC is simply playing a game of “Guilty by Association”. They are using this flawed logic… “You own a YouTube channel, therefore you are automatically responsible for YouTube’s infractions.” It’s simply Google’s way of passing down its own legal burdens by your channel’s association with YouTube. Worse, the FTC seems to have bought into this Google shenanigan. It’s great for Google, though. They won’t be held liable for any more infractions against COPPA so long as YouTube creators end up shouldering that legal burden for Google.
The FTC seems to have conveniently forgotten this next part. In order to have collected data from a child, you must still possess a copy of that data to prove that you actually did collect it and that you are STILL in violation of COPPA. If you don’t have a copy of the alleged violating data, then you either didn’t collect it, the child didn’t provide it, you never had it to begin with or you have since deleted it. As for cookie violations, it’s entirely a stretch to say that YouTube creators had anything to do with how Google / YouTube manages cookies. The COPPA verbiage states of deletion under Parental Consent:
§312.4(c)(1). If the operator has not obtained parental consent after a reasonable time from the date of the information collection, the operator must delete such information from its records;
If an “operator” deletes such records, then the “operator” is not in violation of COPPA. If an “operator” obtains parental consent, then the “operator” is also not in violation of COPPA. Nothing, though, states definitively that a YouTube creator assumes the role of “operator”.
This is important because Google is and remains the “operator”. Until or unless Google extends access to its Google Accounts collected data to ALL YouTube creators so that a creator can take possession of said data, a creator cannot be considered an “operator”. The YouTube creator doesn’t have (and never has had) access to the Google Account personal data (other than what is publicly published on Google). Only Google has access to this account data which has been collected as part of creating a new Google Account. Even the YouTube property and its employees likely don’t even have access to Google Account personal data as mentioned. This means that, by extension, a YouTube creator doesn’t have a copy of any personal data that a Google Accounts signup may have collected… and therefore the YouTube content creator is NOT in violation of COPPA, though that doesn’t take Google off of the hook for it.
A YouTube content creator must actually POSSESS the data to be in violation. The FTC’s burden of proof is to show that the YouTube content creator actually has possession of that data. Who possesses that data? Google. Who doesn’t possess that data? The YouTube content creator. Though, there may be some limited edge cases where a YouTube creator might have requested personal information from a child in violation of COPPA. Even if a YouTube creator did request such data, so long as it has since been deleted fully, it is not in violation of COPPA. You must still be in possession of said data to be in violation of COPPA, at least according to how the act seems to read. If you have questions about this section, you should contact a lawyer for definitive confirmation and advice. Remember, I’m not a lawyer.
There is only ONE situation where a YouTube content creator may be in direct violation of COPPA. That is for live streaming. If a live streamer prompts for personal data to be written into the live chat area from its viewers and one of those viewers is 12 or under, the creator will have access to COPPA violating personal data. Additionally, comments on videos might be construed as in violation of COPPA if a 12 and under child writes something personally identifying into a comment. Though, I don’t know of many content creators who would intentionally request their viewers to reveal personally information in a comment on YouTube. Most people (including content creators) know the dangers all too well of posting such personally identifying information in a YouTube comment. A child might not, though. I can’t recall having watched one single YouTube channel where the host requests personally identifying information be placed into a YouTube comment. Ignoring COPPA for a second, such a request would be completely irresponsible. Let’s continue…
COPPA does state this about collecting data under its ‘Definitions’ section:
Collects or collection means the gathering of any personal information from a child by any means, including but not limited to:
(1) Requesting, prompting, or encouraging a child to submit personal information online;
(2) Enabling a child to make personal information publicly available in identifiable form. An operator shall not be considered to have collected personal information under this paragraph if it takes reasonable measures to delete all or virtually all personal information from a child’s postings before they are made public and also to delete such information from its records; or
(3) Passive tracking of a child online.
The “Enabling a child” section above is the reason for the removal of comments when the “for kids” setting is defined. Having comments enabled on a video when a child 12 and under could be watching enables the child to be able to write in personal information if they so choose. Simply by having a comment system available to someone 12 and under appears to be an infraction of COPPA. YouTube creators DO have access to enable or disable comments. What YouTube Creators don’t have access to is the age of the viewer. Google hides that information from YouTube content creators. YouTube content creators, in good faith, do not know the ages of anyone watching their channel.
Tracking a child’s activities is not possible by a YouTube content creator. A content creator has no direct or even incidental access to Google’s systems which perform any tracking activities. Only Google Does. Therefore, number 3 does not apply to YouTube content creators. The only way number 3 would ever apply to a creator is if Google / YouTube offered direct access to its cookie tracking systems to its YouTube content creators. Therefore, only numbers 1 and 2 could potentially apply to YouTube content creators.
In fact, because Google Accounts hides its personal data from YouTube content creators (including the ages of its viewers), content creators don’t know anything personal about any of its viewers. Which means, how are YouTube content creators supposed to know if a child 12 and under is even watching?
Google’s Failures
The reality is, Google has failed to control its data collection under Google Accounts. It is Google Accounts that needs to have COPPA applied to it, not YouTube. In fact, this action by the FTC will actually solve NOTHING at Google.
Google’s entire system is tainted. Because of the number of services that Google owns and controls, placing COPPA controls on only ONE of these services (YouTube) is the absolute bare minimum for an FTC action against COPPA. It’s clear that the FTC simply doesn’t understand the breadth and scope of Google’s COPPA failures within its systems. Placing these controls on YouTube will do NOTHING to fix COPPA’s greater violations which continue unabated within the rest of Google’s Services, including its brand new video gaming streaming service, Google Stadia. Google Stadia is likely to draw in just as many children 12 and under as YouTube. Probably more. If Stadia has even one sharing or voice chat service active or uses cookies to track its users, Stadia is in violation for the same exact reasons YouTube is… Google’s failure of compliance within Google Accounts.
Worse, there’s Android. Many parents are now handing brand new Android phones to their children 12 and under. Android has MANY tracking features enabled on its phones. From the GPS on board, to cookies, to apps, to the cell towers, to the OS itself. Talk about COPPA violations.
What about Google Home? You know, that seemingly innocuous smart speaker? Yeah, that thing is going to track not only each individual’s voice, it may even store recordings of those voices. It probably even tracks what things you request and then, based on your Google Account, will target ads on your Android phone or on Google Chrome based on things you’ve asked Google Home to provide. What’s more personally identifying than your own voice being recorded and stored after asking something personal?
Yeah, YouTube is merely the tippiest tip of a much, much, MUCH larger corporate iceberg that is continually in violation of COPPA within Google. The FTC just doesn’t get that its $170 million fine and First Amendment violating censorship efforts on YouTube isn’t the right course of action. Not only does the FTC’s involvement in censorship on YouTube lead to First Amendment violations, it won’t solve the rest of the COPPA violations at Google.
Here’s where the main body of this article ends.
Because there are still more questions, thoughts and ideas around this issue, let’s explore a some deeper ideas which might answer a few more of your questions as a creator or as a parent. Each question is prefaced by a ➡️ symbol. At this point, you may want to skim the rest of this article for specific thoughts which may be relevant to you.
➡️ “Should I Continue with my YouTube Channel?”
This is a great question and one that I can’t answer for you. Since I don’t know your channel or your channel’s content, there’s no way for me to give advice to you. Even if you do tell me your channel and its content, the FTC explicitly states that it will be at the FTC’s own discretion if a channel’s content “is covered by COPPA”. This means you need to review your own channel content to determine if your video content drives kids 12 and under to watch. Even then, it’s a crap shoot.
Are there ways you can begin to protect your channel? Yes. The first way is to post a video requesting that all subscribers who are 12 and under either unsubscribe from the channel or alternatively ask their parents to provide verifiable consent to you to allow that child to continue watching. This consent must come from a parent or guardian, not the child. Obtaining verifiable consent is not as easy as it sounds. Though, after you have received verifiable parental consent from every “child” subscriber on your channel, you can easily produce this consent documentation to the FTC if they claim your channel is in violation.
The next option is to apply for TRUSTe’s Children’s Privacy Certification. This affords your YouTube channel “Safe Harbor” protections against the FTC. This one is likely most helpful for large YouTube channels which tend to target children and which make significant income through ad monetization. TRUSTe’s certification is not likely to come cheap. This is the reason this avenue would only be helpful for the largest channels receiving significant monetization enough to pay for such a service.
Note, if you go through the “Safe Harbor” process or obtain consent for every subscriber, you won’t need to set your channel as ‘for kids’. Also note that “Safe Harbor” may not be possible due to Google owning all of the equipment that operates YouTube. Certification programs usually require you to have direct access to systems to ensure they continue to comply with the terms of the certification. Certifications usually also require direct auditing of systems to ensure the systems comply with the certification requirements. It’s very doubtful that Google will allow an auditing firm to audit YouTube’s servers on behalf of a content creator for certification compliance… and even if they did allow such an audit, YouTube’s servers would likely fail the certification audit.
The final option is to suspend your channel. Simply hide all of your content and walk away from YouTube. If you decide to use another video service like DailyMotion, Vimeo, or Twitch, the FTC may show up there as well. If they can make the biggest video sharing service in the world bow down to the FTC, then the rest of these video sharing services are likely not far behind.
➡️ “I don’t monetize my channel”
This won’t protect you. It’s not about monetization. It’s about data collection. The FTC is holding channel owners responsible for Google irresponsible data collection practices. Because Google can’t seem to police its own data collection to shield its end users from COPPA, Google/YouTube has decided to skip trying to fix their broken system and, instead, YouTube has chosen pass their violations down onto their end users… the YouTube creators.
This “passing off liability” action is fairly unheard of in most businesses. Most businesses attempt to shield their end users from legal liabilities by the use of its services as much as possible. Not Google or YouTube. They’re more than willing to hang their end users out to dry and let their end users take the burden of Google’s continued COPPA violations.
➡️ “My content isn’t for kids”
That doesn’t matter. What matters is whether the FTC thinks it is. If your content is animated, video game related, toy related, art related, craft related or in any way might draw in children as viewers, that’s all that matters. Even one child 12 and under is enough to shift Google’s COPPA data collection liabilities down onto your shoulders.
➡️ “I’ve set my channel as ‘not for kids'”
This won’t protect you. Google has a tool in the works that will scan the visual content of a video and potentially reclassify a video as “for kids” in defiance of the channel-wide setting of “not for kids”. Don’t expect that the channel-wide setting will hold up for every single video you post. YouTube can reclassify videos as it sees fit. Whether there will be a way to appeal this is as yet unknown. To get rid of that reclassification of a video, you may have to delete the video and reupload. Though, if you do this and the content remains the same, it will likely be scanned and marked “for kids” again by YouTube’s scanner. Be cautious.
➡️ “I’ll set my channel ‘for kids'”
Do this only if you’re willing to live with the restrictions AND only if your content really is for kids (or is content that could easily be construed as for kids). While this channel setting may seem to protect your channel from COPPA violations, it actually doesn’t. On the other hand, if your content truly isn’t for children and you set it ‘for kids’ that may open your channel up to other problems. I wouldn’t recommend setting content as ‘for kids’ if the content you post is not for kids. Though, there’s more to this issue… keep reading.
Marking your content “for kids” won’t actually protect you from COPPA. In fact, it makes your channel even more liable to COPPA violations. If you mark your content as “for kids”, you are then firmly under the obligation of providing proof that your channel absolutely DID NOT collect data from children under the age of 13. Since the FTC is making creators liable for Google’s problematic data collection practices, you could be held liable for Google’s broken data collection system simply by marking your content as ‘for kids’.
This setting is very perilous. I definitely don’t recommend ANY channel use this setting… not even if your channel is targeted at kids. By setting ‘for kids’ on any channel or content, your channel WILL become liable under COPPA’s data collection provisions. Worse, you will be held liable for Google’s data collections practices… meaning the FTC can come after you with fines. This is where you will have to fight to prove that you presently don’t have access to any child’s collected data, that you never did and that it was solely Google who stored and maintained that data. If you don’t possess any of this alleged data, it may be difficult for the FTC to uphold fines against channel owners. But, unfortunately, it may cost you significant attorney fees to prove that your channel is in the clear.
Finally, it’s entirely possible that YouTube may change this ‘for kids’ setting so that it becomes a one-way transition. This means that you may be unable to undo this change in the future. If it becomes one way, then a channel that is marked ‘for kids’ may never be able to go back to ‘not for kids’. You may have to create an entirely new channel and start over. If you have a large channel following, that could be a big problem. Don’t set your channel ‘for kids’ thinking you are protecting your channel. Do it because you’re okay with the outcome and because your content really is targeted for kids. But, keep in mind that setting ‘for kids’ will immediately allow the FTC to target your channel for COPPA violations.
➡️ “I’m a parent and I wish to give verifiable parental consent”
That’s great. Unfortunately, doing so is complicated. Because it’s easy for a child to fabricate such information using friends or parents of friends, giving verifiable consent to a provider is more difficult for parents than it sounds. It requires first verifying your identity as a parent, then it requires the provider to collect consent documentation from you.
It seems that Google / YouTube have chosen not yet set up a mechanism to collect verifiable consent themselves, let alone for YouTube content creators. What that means is that there’s no easy way for you as a parent to give (or a channel to get) verifiable consent easily. On the flip side as a content creator, it is left to you to handle contacting parents and collecting verifiable consent for child subscribers. You can use a service that will cost you money or you can do it yourself. As a parent, you can do your part by contacting a channel owner and giving them explicit verifiable consent. Keep reading to understand how to go about giving consent.
Content Creators and Parental Consent
Signing up for a service that provides a verifiable consent is something that larger YouTube channels may be able to afford, But, for a small YouTube channel, collecting such information from every new subscriber will be difficult. Google / YouTube could set up such an internal verification service for its creators, but YouTube doesn’t care about that or complying with COPPA. If Google cared about complying with COPPA, they would already have a properly working age verification system in Google Accounts that forces children to set their real age and which requires verifiable consent from the parent of a child 12 and under. If a child 12 and under is identified, Google can then block access to all services that might allow the child to violate COPPA until such consent is given.
It gets even more complicated. Because YouTube no longer maintains a private messaging service, there’s no way for a channel owner to contact subscribers directly on the YouTube platform other than posting a one-way communication video to your channel showing an email address or other means to contact you. This is why it’s important for each parent to reach out to each YouTube channel owner where the child subscribes and offer verifiable consent to the channel owner.
As a creator, this means you will need to post a video stating that ALL subscribers who are under the age of 13 must have have parental consent to watch your channel. This child will need to request their parent contact you using a COPPA authorized mechanism to provide consent. This will allow you to begin the collection of verifiable consent from parents of any children watching or subscribed to your content. Additionally, with every video you post, you must also have an intro on every video stating that all new subscribers 12 and under must have their parent contact the channel owner to provide consent. This shows to the FTC that your channel is serious about collecting verifiable parental consent.
So what is involved in Do It Yourself consent? Not gonna lie. It’s going to be very time consuming. However, the easiest way to obtain verifiable consent is setting up and using a two-way video conferencing service like Google Hangouts, Discord or Skype. You can do this yourself, but it’s better if you hire a third party to do it. It’s also better to use a service like Hangouts which shows all party faces together on the screen at once. This way, when you record the call for your records, both yours and the parent+child’s faces are readily shown. This shows you didn’t fabricate the exchange.
To be valid consent, both the parent and the child must be present and visible in the video while conferencing with the channel owner. The channel owner should also be present in the call and visible on camera if possible. Before beginning, the channel owner must notify the parent that the call will be recorded by the channel owner for the sole purposes of obtaining and storing verifiable consent. You may want to ensure the parent understands that the call will only and ever be used for this purpose (and hold to that). It is off limits to post these videos as a montage on YouTube as content. Then, you may record the conference call and keep it in the channel owners records. As a parent, you need to be willing to offer a video recorded statement to the channel owner stating something similar to the following:
“I, [parent or guardian full name], am 18 years of age or older and give permission to [your channel name] for my child / my ward [child’s YouTube public profile name] to continue watching [your channel name]. I additionally give permission to [your channel name] to collect any necessary data from my child / my ward while watching your channel named [your channel name].”
If possible, the parent should hold up the computer, tablet, phone or device that the child will use to the camera so that it clearly shows the child account’s profile name is logged into YouTube on your channel. This will verify that it is, indeed, the parent or legal guardian of that child’s profile. You may want to additionally request the parent hold up a valid form of picture ID (driver’s license or passport) obscuring any addresses or identifiers with paper or similar to verify the picture and name against the person performing consent. You don’t need to know where they live, you just need to verify the name and photo on the ID matched the person you are speaking to.
Record this video statement for your records and store this video recording in a safe place in case you need to recall this video for the FTC. There should be no posting of these videos to YouTube or any other place. These are solely to be filed for consent purposes. Be sure to also notice if the person with the child is old enough to be an adult, that the ID seems legit and the person is not that child’s sibling or someone falsifying this verification process. If this is a legal guardian situation, this is more difficult to validate legal guardianship. Just do your best and hope that the guardian is being truthful. If in doubt, thank the people on the call for their time and then block the subscriber from your channel.
If your channel is owned by a corporation, the statement should include the name of the business as well as the channel. Such a statement over a video offers verifiable parental consent for data collection from that child by that corporation and/or the channel. This means that the child may participate in comment systems related to your videos (and any other data collection as necessary). Yes, this is a lot of work if you have a lot of under 13 subscribers, but it is the work that the U.S. Government requires to remain compliant with COPPA. The more difficult part is knowing which subscribers are 12 and under. Google and YouTube don’t provide any place to determine this. Instead, you will need to ask your child subscribers to submit parental consent.
If the DIY effort is too much work, then the alternative is to post a video requesting 12 and under subscribers contact you via email stating their YouTube public subscriber identifier. Offer up an email address for this purpose. It doesn’t have to be your primary address. It can be a ‘throw away’ address solely for this purpose. For any account that emails you their account information, block it. This is the simplest way to avoid 12 and under children who may already be in your subscriber pool. Additionally, be sure to state in every future video that any 12 and under watching this channel must have their parental consent or risk being blocked.
Note, you may be thinking that requesting any information from a child 12 and under is in violation of COPPA, but it isn’t. COPPA allows for a reasonable period of time to collect personal data while in the process of obtaining parental consent before that data needs to be irrevocably deleted. After you block 12 and under subscribers, be sure to delete all correspondence via that email address. Make sure that the email correspondence isn’t sitting in a trashcan. Also make sure that not only are the emails are fully deleted, but any collected contact information is fully purged from that email system. You want to make sure that not only are all emails deleted, but any collected email addresses are also purged. Many email services automatically collect and store email addresses into an automatic address list. Make sure that these automatic lists are also purged. As long as all contact data has been irrevocably deleted, you aren’t violating COPPA.
COPPA recognizes the need to collect personal information to obtain parental consent:
(c) Exceptions to prior parental consent. Verifiable parental consent is required prior to any collection, use, or disclosure of personal information from a child except as set forth in this paragraph:
(1) Where the sole purpose of collecting the name or online contact information of the parent or child is to provide notice and obtain parental consent under §312.4(c)(1). If the operator has not obtained parental consent after a reasonable time from the date of the information collection, the operator must delete such information from its records;
This means you CAN collect a child’s or parent’s name or contact information in an effort to obtain parental consent and that data may be retained for a period of “reasonable time” to gain that consent. If consent is not obtained in that time, then the channel owner must “delete such information from its records”.
➡️ “How can I protect myself?”
As long as your channel remains on YouTube with published content, your channel is at risk. As mentioned above, there are several steps you can take to reduce your risks. I’ll list them here:
- Apply for Safe Harbor with TrustArc’s TRUSTe certification. It will cost you money, but once certified, your channel will be safe from the FTC so long as you remain certified under the Safe Harbor provisions.
- Remove your channel from YouTube. So long as no content remains online, the FTC can’t review your content and potentially mark it as “covered by COPPA.”
- Wait and see. This is the most risky option. The FTC makes some claims that it intends proving you had access to, stored and maintained protected data from children. However, there are just as many statements that indicate they will take action first, then request proof later. Collecting data will be difficult burden of proof for most channels. It also means a court battle.
- Use DYI or locate a service to obtain verifiable parental consent for every subscriber 12 and under.
➡️ “What went wrong?”
A whole lot failed on Google and YouTube’s side. Let’s get started with bulleted points of Google’s failures.
- Google has failed to identify children 12 and under to YouTube content creators.
- Google has failed to offer mechanisms to creators to prevent children 12 and under from viewing content on YouTube.
- Google has failed to prevent children 12 and under from creating a Google Account.
- Google has failed to offer a system to allow parents to give consent for children 12 and under to Google. If Google had collected parental consent for 12 and under, that consent should automatically apply to content creators… at least for data input using Google’s platforms.
- Google has failed to warn parents that they will need to provide verifiable consent for children 12 and under using Google’s platform(s). Even the FTC has failed to warn parents of this fact.
- YouTube has failed to provide an unsubscribe tool to creators to easily remove any subscribers from a channel. See question below.
- YouTube has failed to provide a blocking mechanism that prevents a Google Account from searching, finding or watching a YouTube channel.
- YouTube has failed to identify accounts that may be operated by a child 12 and under and warn content creators of this fact thus allow the creator to block any such accounts.
- YouTube has failed to offer a tool to allow creators to block specific (or all) content from viewers 12 and under.
- YouTube has failed to institute a full ratings system, such as the TV Parental Guidelines that sets a rating on the video and provides a video rating identifier within the first 2 minutes, thus stating that a video may contain content inappropriate for certain age groups. Such a full ratings system would allow parents to block specific ratings of content from their child using parental controls. This would allow parents to prevent not only children 12 and under from viewing more mature rated YouTube content, it lets parents block content for all age groups handled by the TV Parental Guidelines.
➡️ “I’m a creator. Can I unsubscribe a subscriber from my channel?”
No, you cannot. But, you can “Block” the user and/or you can “Hide user from channel” depending on where you are in the YouTube interface. Neither of these functions are available as features directly under the Subscriber area of YouTube Creator. Both of these features require digging into separate public Google areas. These mechanisms don’t prevent a Google Account from searching your channel and watching your public content, however.
To block a subscriber, enter the Subscribers area of your channel using Creator Studio Classic to view a list of your subscribers. A full list of subscribers is NOT available under the newest YouTube Studio. You can also see your subscribers (while logged into your account) by navigating to https://www.youtube.com/subscribers. From here, click on the username of the subscriber. This will take you to that subscriber’s YouTube page. From this user page, locate a small grey flag in the upper portion of the screen. I won’t snapshot the flag or give its exact location because YouTube is continually moving this stuff around and changing the flag image shape. Simply look for a small flag icon and click on it, which will drop down a menu. This menu will allow you to block this user.
Blocking a user prevents all interactions between that user and your channel(s). They will no longer be able to post comments on your videos, but they will still be able to view your public content and they will remain subscribed if they already are.
The second method is to use “Hide user from channel”. You do this by finding a comment on the video from that user and selecting “Hide user from channel” using the 3 vertical dot drop down menu to the right of the comment. You must be logged into your channel and viewing one of your video pages for this to work.
Hiding a user and blocking a user are effectively the same thing, according to YouTube. The difference is only in the method of performing the block. Again, none of the above allows you to unsubscribe users manually from your channel. Blocking or hiding a user still allows the user to remain subscribed to your channel as stated above. It also allows them to continue watching any public content that you post. However, a blocked or hidden user will no longer receive notifications about your channel.
This “remaining subscribed” distinction is important because the FTC appears to be using audience viewer demographics as part of its method to determine if a channel is directing its content towards children 12 and under. It may even use subscriber demographics. Even if you do manage to block an account of a child 12 and under who has subscribed to your channel, that child remains a subscriber and can continue to search for your channel and watch any content you post. That child’s subscription to your channel may, in fact, continue to impact your channel’s demographics, thus leading to possible action by the FTC. By blocking 12 and under children, you may be able to use this fact to your advantage by proving that you are taking action to prevent 12 and under users from posting inappropriate data to your channel.
➡️ “What about using Twitch or Mixer?”
Any video sharing or live streaming platforms outside of and not owned by Google aren’t subject to Google’s / YouTube’s FTC agreement.
Twitch
Twitch isn’t owned or operated by Google. They aren’t nearly as big as YouTube, either. Monetization on Twitch may be less than can be had on YouTube (at least before this COPPA change).
Additionally, Twitch’s terms of service are fairly explicit regarding age requirements, which should prevent COPPA issues. Twitch’s terms state as follows of minors using Twitch:
2. Use of Twitch by Minors and Blocked Persons
The Twitch Services are not available to persons under the age of 13. If you are between the ages of 13 and 18 (or between 13 and the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction of residence), you may only use the Twitch Services under the supervision of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to be bound by these Terms of Service.
This statement is more than Google provided for its creators. This statement by Twitch explicitly means Twitch intends to protect its creators from COPPA and any other legal requirements associated with minors or “children” using the Twitch service. For creators, this piece of mind is important.
Unfortunately, Google has no such creator piece of mind. In fact, the whole way YouTube has handled COPPA is sloppy at best. If you are a creator on YouTube, you should seriously consider this a huge breech of trust between Google and you, the creator.
Mixer
Mixer is presently owned by Microsoft. I’d recommend caution using Mixer. Because Microsoft allows 12 and under onto its ID system, it may end up in the same boat as YouTube. It’s probably a matter of time before the FTC targets Microsoft and Mixer with similar actions.
Here’s what Mixer’s terms of service say about age requirements:
User Age Requirements
- Users age 12 years and younger cannot have a channel of their own. The account must be owned by the parent, and the parent or guardian MUST be on camera at all times. CAT should not have to guess whether a parent is present or not. If such a user does not appear to have a guardian present, they can be reported, so CAT can investigate further.
- Users aged 13-16 can have a channel, with parental consent. They do not require an adult present on camera. If they are reported, CAT will take steps to ensure that the parent is aware, and has given consent.
This looks great and all, but within the same terms of service area it also states:
Users Discussing Age In Chat
We do NOT have any rule against discussing or stating age. Only users who claim to be (or are suspected to be) under 13 will be banned from the service. If someone says they are under 13, it is your choice to report it or not; if you do report it, CAT will ban them, pending proof of age and/or proof of parental consent.
If someone is streaming and appears to be under 16 without a parent present, CAT may suspend the channel, pending proof of parental consent and age. Streamers under 13 have a special exception, noted [above].
If you’re wondering what “CAT” is, it stands for Community Action Team (AKA moderators) for Mixer. The above is effectively a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. It also means Mixer has no one to actively police the service for underage users, not even its CAT team. It also means that Mixer is aware that persons 12 and under are using Mixer’s services. By making the above statement, it opens Mixer up to auditing by the FTC for COPPA compliance. If you’re considering using Mixer, this platform could also end up in the same boat as YouTube sooner rather than later considering the size of Microsoft as a company.
Basically, Twitch’s Terms of Service are a better written for creator piece of mind.
➡️ “What is ‘burden of proof’?”
When faced with civil legal circumstances, you are either the plaintiff or the defendant. The plaintiff is the party levying the charges against the other party (the defendant). Depending on the type of case, burden of proof must be established by the plaintiff to show that the defendant did (or didn’t) do the act(s) alleged. The type of burden of proof is slightly different when the action is a civil suit versus a criminal suit.
Some cases requires the plaintiff to take on the burden of proof to show the act(s) occurred. But, it’s not that simple for the defendant. The defendant may be required to bring both character witnesses and actual witnesses which may, in fact, establish a form of burden of proof that the acts could not have occurred. Even though burden of proof is not explicitly required of a defendant, that doesn’t mean you won’t need to provide evidence to exonerate yourself. In the case of a civil FTC action, the FTC is the plaintiff and your channel will be the defendant.
The FTC itself can only bring civil actions against another party. The FTC will be required to handle the burden of proof to prove that your channel not only collected the alleged COPPA protected data, but that you have access to and remain in possession of such data.
However the FTC can hand its findings over to the United States Department of Justice which has the authority to file both civil and criminal lawsuits. Depending on where the suit is filed and by whom, you could face either civil penalties or criminal penalties. It is assumed that the FTC will directly file its legal actions against COPPA as civil suits… but that’s just an assumption. The FTC does have the freedom to request the Department of Justice handle the complaint.
One more time, this article is not legal advice. It is simply information. If you need actual legal advice, you are advised to contact an attorney who can understand your specific circumstances and offer you legal advice for your specific circumstances.
↩︎
Holiday Shopping Tip: GameStop Closures
Beware of shopping at GameStop during the 2019 holiday season. Like the Toys R Us closure shopping tips I wrote during the 2018 Toys R Us closure, this same set of rules now applies to GameStop. GameStop presently plans to close at least 200 stores this year alone, and who knows how many more stores will close in 2020? *shrug* They could end up closing all stores under bankruptcy. You should proceed with your holiday shopping as if GameStop is completely closing every store. After all, they very likely will completely close based on how quickly these closures have been coming. You also don’t know if they will close the store where you plan to purchase your items. As a consumer shopping tip, let this be a warning to not shop stores under imminent closure. Let’s explore.
Store Closures
GameStop is now proceeding with many store closures during this 2019 holiday season. Why is this important to you? Because if you’re a regular customer there, you will need to reconsider ANY holiday shopping at this chain. Let’s highlight a few problems with shopping at stores where threat of closure is imminent.
Even if your local GameStop doesn’t yet know about its own closure, that doesn’t mean that that store won’t be closed just a week or two later. Let’s understand the very real dangers of buying from a chain under imminent threat of closure… particularly during the ever important holiday shopping season. Don’t get duped by this company. There are also too many other stores where this holiday video game shopping problem doesn’t exist.
- Returns — Buying even a week before the store puts up a “Store Liquidation” banner may invalidate your ability to return a purchased item to that (or any) store if your item is defective. GameStop isn’t a store known for its ethical business practices already. Because you purchased that item from a store targeted for closure, any sales you made there may end up becoming “All Sales Final”. Will other stores honor that closed store’s receipt? That’s questionable. Again, GameStop isn’t the most ethical store chain out there. Corporate could tell all other stores which remain open to reject returns from stores which are in the process of closing or have already closed.
- Game Reserves — GameStop allows consumers to place “money down” as a deposit to hold a game (or other merchandise) until it finally arrives for sale. If you have any money reserved for any upcoming games or any other items, you will need to head over to the store and ask for a refund of that money as quickly as you possibly can. You should insist on having that money returned in the form of cash or as a refund to your credit card. Do not fall for allowing the staff to place the money onto a gift card. I’ll discuss the reasons why Gift Cards are a bad idea next. If you have any $5, $10 or $25 reserves left standing, you will lose that money when the store closes. They will not transfer that money to another store or refund it to you after closure. Even still, you DO NOT want to request a transfer of your reserves to another store as that other store could also close. Request your reserve deposits to be returned to you in cash, never on a store card.
- Store Gift Cards — Proceed here as if the whole GameStop chain is closing. DO NOT purchase any gift cards from GameStop at this time. When stores begin closing, they tend to no longer honor ANY locally purchased gift cards or indeed honor any money left on gift cards. Laws in some states may still require GameStop to honor cards as long as even 1 outlet remains open. However, that may mean you might need to travel hundreds of miles to redeem it. Though, you may or may not be able to redeem it on GameStop.com. If you have any remaining store gift card credit for GameStop, you need to run, don’t walk, to your nearest GameStop which is still open and use it up on purchasing anything in that store, assuming they haven’t yet invalidated gift cards. This is a situation of use-it-or-lose it. Note that store credit can also be placed onto GameStop’s PowerUp loyalty card. So be sure to double check that no credit remains on that card either. Again, proceed here as if the chain is closing. Don’t risk your money on GameStop store gift cards.
- Gift Purchases — Don’t consider purchasing any merchandise from GameStop which will be used as a gift unless you are absolutely certain that you fully understand that neither you nor the gift receiver WILL be able to return that item to GameStop once that local store closes (and it probably will). When purchasing a gift for someone else, you’ll want to ensure they can return that gift to a retailer for replacement or refund. Choose a retailer that still plans on being in business January 1 of next year.
- GameStop Rewards Points — As with any store that starts store closure proceedings (a precursor to bankruptcy), one of the first things that is dumped is loyalty cards and point programs. As of now, GameStop has not yet fully disbanded or dumped its loyalty card program, but they have recently reduced it. If you have any remaining points, you will need to use them up pronto by using the Rewards app to convert points into store credit and using that store credit as fast as you can. You can’t ask for rewards points be converted to cash, but you can use these points towards in-store merchandise. Again, this is a use-it-or-lose it situation. Proceed as if ALL of GameStop is closing and use up any remaining rewards points you have outstanding in your rewards account. It’s very likely this rewards program will be cancelled soon, so do this as fast as you read this article. As of this article, GameStop’s rewards system is still functioning (Dec 8, 2019).
- In-Store Warranties — Do not purchase ANY GameStop store warranties (or any other store chain’s store warranty) when under threat of closure. If you presently own an in-store warranty with GameStop, you may want to call your local GameStop to inquire how future service will be handled if your store closes. But, be fully prepared to have the manager not give you all the information you need. If the warranty you’ve purchased is through a third party, like SquareTrade, these warranties should remain in effect until they expire. However, any warranties sold and honored solely by GameStop are likely to become null-and-void after closure. You shouldn’t rely on what a manager tells you about its current store warranty programs as they may not have all information about GameStop’s full store closure plans.
- Disc Replacement Plan — This is GameStop’s own in-store disc warranty plan. They allow one replacement per plan. If you have any games under this plan, you should take advantage of this plan and replace your discs. This plan is very likely to not be honored after the store closes… not even by stores that remain open. You may also find that stores that remain open are too far away to take advantage. If you buy a game from GameStop and are offered this in-store plan, refuse it. It’s a waste of money for a store chain under threat of closure.
- Defective Items — If you have any purchases you’ve already made with GameStop and you intend to return defective items, do it now. Don’t wait. You should also call the store where you plan to return to make sure they are not already in liquidation closure. If they are already liquidating, they have likely suspended returns. You will then need to locate another store location that isn’t presently under closure to return your item. Be quick, though. That store might get the word to close down at any time.
Store Liquidations
In concert with the above, you may be able to pick up a marked-down deal or two in your local store if it is closing. However, proceed with caution here. Know that whatever you purchase is likely “All Sales Final”. It may even say that on the receipt. If it does, you WILL NOT be able to return any purchased items to this or any other store that remains open.
If you intend shopping for holiday gift giving during a liquidation sale, I strongly recommend not. Unless you know the person receiving the gift never returns items, it is never a smart choice to shop store liquidations for holiday gift giving. The person receiving the gift will likely not be able to return the item to the store. However, if it’s a video game system, you may be able to get warranty work performed through the manufacturer (or SquareTrade if you bought such a plan).
Clothing and apparel items, while also not returnable, are likely safe choices during a liquidation if these items are for your own personal use. However, again, when purchasing for gift giving, you need to make sure that the person you’re planning on gifting the item to understands that they cannot return the item to a store which has since closed. I’ve said this several times throughout this article, but it’s always worth saying again. Choose gift giving items carefully and from stores that plan to remain in business.
GameStop Closing
It is as yet unknown how many stores will ultimately close. It is also unknown if GameStop will honor returns in any stores that remain open on behalf of the closed stores that sold that merchandise. As I said, GameStop’s ethics and business practices have always been questionable at best. GameStop is not required to honor receipts for merchandise sold in now closed stores. Be cautious when doing business with GameStop throughout the holiday season for this reason alone.
You should proceed with your holiday purchases as if the entirety of GameStop is closing. Better, don’t even shop there. However, if you have store credit, gift cards or rewards coming to you, you will want to use that store credit up as fast as possible. Know, though, that anything you purchase may not be returnable.
If you want to give a gift card to someone that could be used at GameStop, you should buy a Visa, MasterCard or American Express branded card where that credit can be used at any store that accepts these credit cards. Do not buy a GameStop store gift card as the store may not exist by the time the person gets around to using the card and other stores may not honor that gift card’s credit.
GameStop Exclusive Items
Here’s the one and only one place where I recommend purchasing items from stores which are closing. GameStop has exclusive controllers and toys. Because these exclusives only exist at GameStop, you’ll want to quickly get there and buy those exclusives. Once this chain closes, it may be difficult to locate these exclusives again. You won’t be able to return these items, but you also won’t be able to find them after the stores are closed. GameStop exclusives are really the only investments that are worth the purchase during store liquidation sales.
Laws and Closures
While there are laws about how retail business must act while in business, once a business begins closing locations, some of these laws become murky. For example, one such murky situation is Gift Cards. When you buy a store gift card and a store goes bankrupt, you become an unsecured creditor to the company’s bankruptcy proceedings behind shareholders. This means that if any money is forthcoming from bankruptcy liquidation, it will be distributed to those ahead of unsecured creditors first. What that ultimately means is that gift card holders likely won’t see any money back.
Instead, if you have a gift card to a store in imminent danger of closure or bankruptcy, you should immediately head to the store and use that gift card while they still honor them. Don’t wait on this one.
GameStop hasn’t announced any bankruptcy proceedings as yet, but that could still be just a matter of time. Right now, GameStop is performing self-closures in hope of righting their financially listing ship. That doesn’t mean that closing these stores will ultimately succeed in this goal, but that’s their hope. Cutting out stores immediately cuts their losses, but may cost them money in paying out long term leases for stores which close. These lease payouts may push the chain over the top towards full bankruptcy.
Duping Holiday Shoppers
It is rumored that GameStop’s holiday store closure game plan is to rope in as many unsuspecting holiday sales while the remaining stores remain open. Yet, when January 1 rolls around, it seems this chain plans to have a massive set of store closures. This action alone will thwart holiday returns. This means that you may literally be left holding your holiday bag from GameStop. Once stores close for good on December 31st, it typically means that this chain was simply in it to dupe consumers out of their holiday money without any possibility for returns.
Don’t get suckered in by GameStop’s less than ethical business practices. Choose to shop for your gaming needs at stores without imminent closures, such as Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Amazon. At least with these latter stores, they will remain in business come January 1 allowing you to return any items that are defective or were simply awful holiday gifts.
Best Judgement
When a store chain begins closing down stores, it’s always worth using your best judgement. Most of what I have written above is pretty much shopping common sense, IF you know that stores are closing. For those oblivious to the woes of a chain not in the best of financial condition, this may be a wake-up call and warning.
When a store chain is under threat of closure, you should always heed this same exact advice as above. Avoid buying from the chain, if at all possible. During the holiday season, it can be tempting to visit any store because you may be having trouble finding a video gaming item. Don’t be temped. Choose Best Buy, Amazon, Target or Walmart before heading to a GameStop. Nothing is more disheartening than gifting an item to someone only to realize that it was the wrong item and it can’t be returned.
While heeding this consumer advice won’t help GameStop turn itself around, they brought this situation on themselves (which is a rant for another day). When stores begin to close, you lose your ability to exercise certain fundamental store rights (like store returns, gift cards, loyalty programs and so on). Once a chain begins to have financial troubles, it’s usually a downward spiral that doesn’t end. Not shopping there helps them fail faster, but it’s better to be safe with your holiday dollars than throw it away on a store where you have no recourse and no returns.
Good Luck and Happy and Safe Holiday Shopping!
↩︎
Top 10 gripes for Fallout 76
You’re thinking of buying Fallout 76? You’ve rationalized, “It’s only a game, how bad can it be?” Let’s explore the top 10 gripes for why Fallout 76 may not be the best game purchase in 2019.
Number 10 — It’s not a new game
This game was released over a year ago in October of 2018. It’s over a year old already. Games typically have a 1 year lifespan of relevance before losing steam. The useful lifetime of this game is already waning and the clock is now ticking down on this game. Bethesda knows it, the industry knows it and gamers know this. You could invest your money into this game and find in 5 months that Bethesda has decided to pull the plug. For this reason alone, I’d be cautious in investing time in building a character.
Bethesda RPG-like games usually take months to fully play through. You might not even see all of the endgame content before Bethesda pulls the plug. Though, you can most certainly get through the main quest line before then, as short as the main quest is. Keep in mind, however, that because it’s an online game, there’s no local save file on your computer. If Bethesda pulls the plug, all of your characters and the work you’ve spent building them will disappear.
Number 9 — Multiplayer Game Modes
If you’re solely looking at the purchase of Fallout 76 for its multiplayer player-vs-player (PVP) game modes, you might want to think again. There are only three multiplayer modes in Fallout 76:
- Native (Workshop and Adventure)
- Hunter / Hunted Radio
- Battle Royale
Native PVP
None of the 3 PVP modes are particularly well designed and none of them fit into the Fallout universe and actually make sense. This first mode, “Native”, requires two people to initiate this mode through a handshaking process. One person fires on another. The second person must fire back to complete the PVP handshaking and launch into PVP mode. The problem is, there’s no fun to be had in this PVP mode and it’s rarely, if ever, used. Most players in adventure mode are there to explore and play PVE, not to get into PVP battles. So, be cautious when trying to elicit a PVP action from another player.
The second half of the PVP mode is at Workshops. If you claim a workshop, the handshaking mode is disabled and the entirety of the workshop area becomes an active PVP zone. Once you own a workshop, anyone can come into the workshop and begin PVP with you or your team. It’s the same PVP as the version that requires handshaking, except there is no handshaking.
Speaking of teams, be cautious when teaming up with other players. It only takes one player in a team to begin PVP with another player. Once that happens, the entire team becomes vulnerable to PVP with that player (and anyone on a team with that player). No warnings are issued by the game to other team players when one team member begins PVP activities with another player.
Hunter / Hunted Radio
The second game mode, “Hunter / Hunted Radio” requires you open a radio station on the in-game Pip boy (heads up display giving access to your inventory, weapons, armor, etc). This “radio station” links you into a matchmaking mode that allows up to 4-5 players in a given radius to begin PVP activities. As the name suggest, it’s about hunting for other players all while being hunted yourself. It’s also a sort of ‘Last Man Standing’ mode in that whichever player ends up with the most kills gets the most rewards.
Both of the above listed game modes are effectively “death match” style PVP. That means that it’s solely about player characters killing one another… which then comes down to which player has the best and strongest armor and weapons. Both of these styles rapidly elicit boredom because “death match” is the oldest and weakest type of PVP mode there is and is simply about killing other player characters.
This PVP also makes no sense within Fallout 76 where all of the people who lived in Vault 76 were supposed to remain civil and friendly towards one another. Not even the game setup or later found holotapes reveal any story aspect of people in Vault 76 turning on one another before “Reclamation Day”. If that had been a story element, then perhaps the PVP might have made some sense. But, no. The holotapes found almost ALL tie into the Scorched threat or other similar environmental survival threats (bad water, radiation, etc). None of the holotapes discuss bad blood between the residents within Vault 76. If that had been true, the “Reclamation Day Party” the night before would have ended in bloodshed before the vault even opened.
Nuclear Winter — Battle Royale
The third PVP activity is separated from the above because it arrived much later in 2019. At the same time it is a merely a weak copy of other better implemented Battle Royale games, which are currently “trending” in the game industry. Bethesda added this game mode, not because it made sense to Fallout 76 (or the Fallout universe), but because it is so popular in other popular game franchises, such as Fortnite and Apex Legends. It’s simply Bethesda’s attempt at a cash grab in an industry being inundated by other better Battle Royale based games.
Battle Royale is nothing new. It is a game mode that has been around since the early days of PVP. However, games like Fortnite and Apex Legends have turned this mode into hugely successful franchises. This mode is another “Last Man Standing” mode which is simply an alternative version of “Death Match.” In this death match style game, instead of people picking off one another and continually respawning until the clock runs out, you only get one try to win. This means that once your character has been killed, you can only watch the action unfold for the remaining active players. The point of any Battle Royale mode is to survive as long as you can and possibly become the “last man standing”.
With Fortnite and Apex Legends, it’s not so much about being Battle Royale, it’s more about the game makers crafting the game using interesting characters using gimmicks (building forts) with interesting attack modes. It’s about finding a character who has the “best” attack in the game. This means you can bring in experience earned and weapons owned back into the game to use over and over.
Why is all of this important to Bethesda’s “Battle Royal”? Because Bethesda chooses to allow nothing into its Battle Royale mode. All experience earned is earned explicitly within this game mode. But, even that experience doesn’t matter. Any weapons you may have used or armor you may have found cannot be used in subsequent plays. You must ALWAYS find weapons and armor in the game once it begins. Even then, it’s all random what you find. The chests generate random weapons, armor and loot. It could be good loot or it could be bad. Since you have no idea what you might or might not find, you’re at the mercy of the game to outfit you while you’re in the game. All the while, the clock is ticking.
You’re never given enough time to really outfit your character in a useful fashion. You end up spending inordinate amounts of time hiding from other players and, hopefully, finding decent armor and weapons in the loot chests. Some Battle Royale games offer this “loot chest” idea, like Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Unfortunately this game concept fails to work in a game like Fallout 76 where the entire point of playing Fallout 76 is to gain experience, weapons and armor over time. Having to “start over fresh” every time you play is, unfortunately, tedious.
Ignoring the nonsensical nature of this game mode even being IN Fallout 76, Nuclear Winter is boring. Even after one playthrough, it’s the same every time. Hide, search, outfit, stay alive. In fact, in this game mode, if you actively attempt to go looking for other players to kill, your character is more likely to be killed. To survive in this game mode, you need to remain hidden until the ever enclosing “ring of fire” gets too small to ignore any other players.
Additionally, any earned experience in “Nuclear Winter” is not carried into the “Adventure Mode” of Fallout 76. Everything in Nuclear Winter is for Nuclear Winter and vice versa. These modes are mutually exclusive.
Considering that Apex Legends and Fortnite are free-to-play, buying Fallout 76 solely to play Bethesda’s Nuclear Winter game mode is a waste of money. Go get the free Fortnite or Apex Legends or buy into Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds which do Battle Royale mode much, MUCH better. Bethesda would have done better to separate Nuclear Winter into a separate, standalone, free-to-play game… not tied to Fallout 76. I might even suggest retheming it either as its own franchise or theme it under a franchise more known for multiplayer games, such as Doom or Wolfenstein.
But… don’t run out and buy Fallout 76 strictly for Nuclear Winter. It’s too expensive for as weak as this game mode’s design is. If you already own the game, then it’s worth trying.
Number 8 — Holotape Hunt
This game has categorically been chastised for its lack of NPCs. And… that criticism is rightly justified. All previous Fallout games have been HEAVILY centered around NPCs and their dilemmas. To yank a mainstay out of a Fallout game means to yank out its very heart-and-soul and its reason to exist. The reason players play Fallout and Skyrim is because of the sometimes heart wrenching stories of its human NPC inhabitants.
In Fallout 76, because there are no human NPCs, save Super Mutants and a bunch of robots, the game is devoid of ANY interactivity with other NPCs. Instead, the game’s primary story sees you hunt down a trail of pre-recorded holotapes to “listen” to a bunch of canned messages and read random text on computer terminals. Worse, many of these holotapes open up quests that you are required to complete, yet the holotapes are way too short to really give the player any sense of urgency. Indeed, the holotape has likely been sitting by a dead body for months, if not years already. How can there be any sense of urgency around listening to something that’s been sitting there that long? In fact, whatever that dead person may have been doing to prompt that tape is likely long over and done.
Worse, sitting around listening to holotapes as a matter of story course, then reading text on a bunch of terminals is entirely boring. Storytelling, particularly in video games, should be done by interactive characters, not by text on a screen or pre-recorded audio tapes. In fact, such a storytelling tactic thwarts the point of even using a video game to tell a story. This isn’t the early 80s when Zork was the best that computers could achieve, it’s the days of Call of Duty when it’s all about realistic cinematic 3D character storytelling. Yet, the best Bethesda can come up with is effectively what we got in a game from the 80s?
Number 7 — Shorter Than Expected
While there are a wide number of side quests, events and tertiary activities, the main quests total 22. Considering that previous Fallout installments had way more than this number for its main quests, this is a sad number for Fallout 76. In fact, if you solely focus on just these 22 quests, you can probably get through all of them within a week or two at most. Note, most of this time is spent grinding up levels and gaining resources to ensure you can complete some of the quests properly and, of course, survive.
Number 6 — Eating, Drinking, Diseases & Weapon and Armor Breakage
To extend the amount of time you play Fallout 76, Bethesda has implemented some, at least they think, clever time extending mechanisms. Mechanisms such as eating, drinking, diseases and then there’s weapon and armor breaking frequently. The point to adding these mechanisms is less about realism and more about making you grind, grind, grind to keep your character from dying. Sure, in real life we do have to eat and drink. We’ll also have to repair armor.
These mechanisms in Fallout 76 are implemented poorly. For example, water consumption is entirely too frequent. You will find you have to consume water and food at least once per hour of play. No one eats food that frequently. You might sip water over the course of the day, but you don’t drink the amount of water they force your character to drink at every interval.
Worse, if water consumption drops too low, the penalty is reduced action points. Action points aren’t even a concept in real life. This is where the realism ultimately ends. It is also where it becomes apparent that the point to why Bethesda added these unnecessary additions comes into play. It’s not about realism, it’s about extending the time it takes you to play the game. Indeed, it can and does slow you down. Instead of actual, you know, questing, you’re not forced to forage for food, water and resources to keep your weapons and armor repaired and keep your character from dying. That’s not survival, that’s stupidity.
Worse, it’s all manual. To eat and drink, you are forced to stop and perform a manual task. There is no perk card that automatically consumes marked favorite foods whenever it gets too low. No, it’s all manual. In the middle of a fight? Too bad, now you have to open a menu and consume some food. Forgot to mark it as a favorite? Now you have deep dive into a bunch of slow menus in the middle of a battle. Yeah, not fun.
Number 5 — Menu System / Lack of Pause
As was discussed immediately above, the menu system is clumsy, cumbersome and dated. As I was talking about Zork from the 80s, that’s how this game feels. Like it was designed in the 80s for an 80s audience. Fallout 76 doesn’t in any way feel modern.
When you’re in the heat of battle (and because this is a multiplayer game that doesn’t allow for pausing), if you want to change weapons or swap armor, it’s a laborious process involving a convoluted set of menus.
Sure, there’s a wheel you can plant your favorites, but that’s limited and must be used for ALL items in the game. This means this small menu wheel is overloaded with food, clothing, aid, armor and weapons. You don’t have separate wheels for weapons, armor and food… which this game desperately needs.
While the PipBoy seems like a great idea, in practice and for a game UI, it really sucks for quick access when in a multiplayer non-pausable environment. For Fallout 4 where pause was a mainstay, thus allowing you time to think and swap, in Fallout 76 the PipBoy’s UI system entirely fails the player and Fallout 76.
Number 4 — Scorched and Broken Canon
With Fallout 76, Bethesda introduces a new enemy into the Fallout universe. The Scorched. However, this enemy addition doesn’t really make any sense at all. Fallout 76 is a prequel to Fallout 4. If the Scorched existed in Fallout 76, they very likely made their way to from Virginia to Boston in Fallout 4. After all, Scorchbeasts fly. This is where Bethesda breaks its own canon and lore simply to create new games.
There are a number of places where Bethesda has broken canon in the Fallout universe, the biggest faux pas being the Scorched. So, let’s focus on the Scorched. Even after you complete the game’s main quest (which is supposed rid Appalachia of the Scorched), the game remains status quo and unchanged with regards to Scorchbeast Queens, Scorchbeasts and even Scorched… which continue to reappear. The player following the Scorched quest line does nothing to resolve the Scorched plague… which doubly means that the Scorched should have made their way to Boston to appear in Fallout 4. Yet, they inexplicably don’t. And, it’s not like Bethesda couldn’t have rolled a Fallout 4 update to apply retroactively continuity to add the Scorched information into Fallout 4 and make the universe consistent. Nope, Bethesda didn’t do this.
So, now we have Fallout 76 which remains with story incongruities by introducing enemies, clothing, items and concepts which have not appeared in games that have chronologically come after Fallout 76.
Number 3 — Grind Grind Grind
While some people might think this is the number 1 problem in the game, it is not. In fact, we will come to the biggest problem in just a few, but let’s grind on with number 3.
While this one is somewhat tied to the number 1 problem, it is separate and unique. But, it is not at all unique to this genre of game. Developers seem to think that grind, grind, grinding your way through the game is somehow fun. It’s a mistaken thought rationale. While grinding does extend the length of time it takes to play the game, we gamers can see right through that charade. We know when game developers have added grinding for the sake of grinding and not for the purposes of general game exploration.
There’s a fine line between grinding to complete a quest and grinding because you have to play the subgame of surprise grab bag to locate the best weapons, armor and loot in the game.
Purveyor Murmrgh is the poster child of everything wrong with not only grinding within Fallout 76, it also bookends and highlights this major industry problem across the RPG genre, but also of video gaming in general.
Slogging through the same pointless battles over and over just to gain “currency” to play the Loot Bag Lottery is not in any way fun. That’s exactly what Purveyor Murmrgh is to Fallout 76. It is the icing on the grinding cake… but it’s more like Salmonella.
Oh, and believe me, most of the junk given out by Murmrgh is just that, junk. It’s a Junkie’s Meathook dealing 25 damage. It’s a Vampire’s Knuckles dealng 20 damage. It’s an Instigating Shovel dealing 5 damage. It’s a Vanguard’s Pipe Pistol dealing 10 damage. It’s literal junk. The only thing you can do when you’re issued this junk is turn it back in and get at least some Scrip back. Yes, you might get super lucky and get a Two Shot Gauss or a Instigating or Furious Pump Action Shotgun, but it might also take you hundreds of tries (100 Scrip per try) to get it.
Let’s understand exactly how much grinding is needed to gain the 100 Scrip required to “buy” a 3-star randomly generated legendary weapon from Murmrgh. Each 3-star legendary traded in offers 40 scrip. That means it takes three 3-star legendary weapons to gain 120 scrip and top the 100 Scrip mark. That means that it takes at least 3 Scorchbeast Queen kills to gain three 3-star legendary weapons… and that assumes she will even drop a 3-star legendary weapon every time. Hint, she doesn’t. Many 3-star legendary enemies rarely drop 3-star weapons. In fact, most drop 1 or 2 star weapons most commonly.. which you can trade in at a lesser Scrip value (see chart below). Ultimately, this means even more and more grinding just to find those ever elusive 3-star legendary weapons to turn in and gain Scrip.
You also can’t get Scrip in any other way than grinding for and “selling” Legendary loot. You can’t buy Scrip with Caps. You can’t buy Scrip with actual money (although that would be an even bigger problem for Bethesda). You can’t buy Scrip with Atom (because you can buy Atom with real money). You must grind, grind, grind your way into getting Scrip.
Here’s a table of how it all breaks down for Legendary Scrip:
What this table means to a gamer is that you should expect to grind, grind, grind to find 3-star legendary weapons (which you can trade toward Scrip), versus any other type when you’re looking to get a 3 star legendary weapon out of Murmrgh any time soon. That doesn’t mean you won’t happen upon a great 1, 2 or 3-Star legendary weapon or armor along the way while grinding. But, it also means that if you want to play the Scrip Loot Box Lottery game at Murmrgh, you’re going to need to grind your way through a lot of legendary weapon drops before you get enough to visit Murmrgh. Even then, because it’s a Surprise Loot Box, you’re at the mercy of whatever crap it decides to roll the dice and give you.
Ultimately, Fallout 76 is about grinding and Bethesda’s understanding and design of its game constructs are intended for gamers to spend inordinate more amounts of time grinding than questing. Bethesda’s rationale around this is having people grinding on the game is better than not playing it at all. To some degree this may be valid, but only because there are some gamers that actually LIKE grinding. I’m not one of them. Doing forever repetitive tasks over and over is not something I want to do in an RPG, let alone in Fallout. Let’s grind on.
Number 2 — Bugs, bugs and More Bugs
This one goes without saying for Bethesda. The game industry has been in a tailspin in this area for the last 3-5 years. When the N64 was a mainstay in the home gaming, game developers did their level best to provide solid, reliable, robust, well crafted gaming experiences. Literally, these games were incredibly stable. I can’t recall a single N64 game that would randomly crash in the middle of the game. While there were logic problems that might have made games unintentionally unbeatable, the games were still rock stable.
Since then when the N64 console was popular, games have moved more and more towards hardware being driven by Microsoft’s operating systems (and also adopting Microsoft’s idea of stability), the former push towards gaming excellence has severely waned. No longer are developers interested in providing a high quality stable gaming experiences. Today, game developers are more interested in getting product out the door as fast as possible than in making sure the product is actually stable (or even finished). What this has meant to the gaming industry is that gamers have now become unwitting pawns by paying retail prices to become “Beta Testers”. Yes, you now must pay $60 to actually beta test game developer software today. Let’s bring it back to Fallout 76.
Bethesda has never been known for providing particularly stable software products in its past gaming products. Even Fallout 3 had fairly substantial bugs in its questing engine. Obsidian muddied the already murky waters of Fallout with its Fallout New Vegas installment. Obsidian is much more attuned to producing high quality stable products. This meant that many gamers probably conflate the stability imparted by Obsidian’s Fallout New Vegas with Bethesda’s much buggier Fallout 3 as both games were released during a similar time frame. Fallout 4, however, can’t rely on this conflation. Fallout 4 stands on its own, for better or worse, and its bugs were (and are) readily apparent. Fallout 4 even regularly crashes back to the dashboard hard. By extension, so does Fallout 76. Fallout 76 was also born out of Fallout 4 and many bugs in Fallout 4 made their way unfixed into Fallout 76. Some of those Fallout 4 bugs are even still there!
Fallout 76 has, yet again, become an unwitting poster child for this newest trend towards cutting corners. Even though Bethesda has always provided buggy experiences, Fallout 76 is by far Bethesda’s worst. Even The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) at its worst never fared this bad, even though it was not completely bug free when it first arrived and was still considered fairly beta. Fallout 76, however, was released entirely unfinished and chock full of serious bugs.
Worse, the whole lack of NPCs feels more like cutting corners than it does an active design decision. It’s like they simply couldn’t get the NPCs working day one. So, they cut them out of the mix and quickly threw together a bunch of voiceovers for holotapes and wrote a bunch of terminal entries. The bugginess and being unfinished for Fallout 76 is readily apparent, but what may not be apparent is this lack of design forethought for the (lack of) NPCs. There are even areas of the game that seem as though they were designed to have functional quests on day one, but never had anything attached. For example, Vaults 94, 51, 63 and 96.
Recently, however, Bethesda released add-ons that fill in Vault 94 and Vault 51 (sort of). Vault 51 is still unfinished in the Adventure server portion of Fallout 76, but it exists as Battle Royale (a completely separate game mode). Vault 94 is a raiding vault intended for multiplayer group play. Unfortunately, Vault 94 is entirely a disaster. Not only is the interior one of the worst designed vault interiors I’ve seen, the actual gameplay is so overloaded with unnecessary amounts enemies, it’s a chore to go in there. By ‘chore’, I mean literally. There’s so much stuff being thrown at you, the game engine can’t even properly handle it. It ends up a completely stuttery, herky-jerky gaming mess. If you can even fire your weapon timely, you’re lucky. Most times, you’re so inundated by swarms of enemies, you can’t even properly aim or fire. VATs barely even works in this “dungeon” simply due to the enemy overload.
As for vaults, 63 and 96, there’s still nothing associated with them in Adventure. It is assumed that, like Vault 94, both will become part of later group raids.
Still, there are many, many unfinished quest lines throughout Fallout 76. Not only are there many presidential ballot systems all over the wasteland, including in Harper’s Ferry and Watoga, there is also a locked presidential suite in the Whitespring Enclave bunker. Also, while there are several hand scan locked rooms in the Whitespring villas, there are also many more hand scan locked rooms in the Whitespring Hotel proper. This almost entirely indicates that being General in the Enclave may not have been the end of the road for the Enclave quest line. Instead, it seems the quest may have led the player to becoming President over the Wasteland. With all of the random ballot systems, it seems that you may have had to repair enough of these systems to allow vault residents to vote for you to become President using those ballot systems, thus giving you access to the Enclave’s Presidential suite. It seems Bethesda abandoned this quest idea somewhere along the way. This, in fact, may have been dependent on NPCs which were summarily stripped from the game. Without NPCs to help vote you in as President, there’s no way to actually play this quest… probably the reason it was left out of the game.
In addition to this abandoned quest line, there are the upper floors in the Whitespring hotel. The front desk Assaultron specifically says the hotel is still under refurbishment. This is, yet another, unfinished quest. You don’t build a hotel like Whitespring and then lock off half of the building as “unfinished”. These are self-autonomous robots. They can easily finish this refurbishment process… and should have finished it by now. This Whitespring Hotel part is simply more on top of the vaults that still remain locked. There are likely even more than this in the Wasteland (crashed Space Station with no explanation), but these are the ones that stand out.
And now…
Number 1 — Revisionism of Fallout 76
Here we come to the biggest foible of Fallout 76. Instead of fixing bugs, Bethesda has focused solely on revising Fallout 76. Instead of releasing a complete and functional game, the developers got to about a 45% finished state and Bethesda pushed it out the door. Unfortunately, when something is pushed out unfinished, it never does get finished.
What that means is that like what’s described in #2, too many long standing bugs remain. Instead of Bethesda focusing on knocking out the remaining bugs, they have instead diverted to “value added content”. More specifically, designing shit they can sell in the Atom shop… that and the addition of mostly pointless short term events that haven’t even dropped loot that they should have dropped. Because of all of this, this game hit the game market hard, garnered intensely negative criticism (and still does) and ended up as a huge miss with many Fallout fans. Bethesda, however, has been riding this storm of negativity in hopes they can somehow succeed.
Unfortunately, all of what Bethesda believes to be “better” for Fallout 76 has been merely temporary bandaids, without actually fixing much of the basic underlying problems. There are so many bugs in Fallout 76 from day one that remain unfixed, it’s a surprise the game actually even functions (and in many cases, it doesn’t).
Bethesda has even spent time towards targeting “fixes” for things which haven’t even been problems. For example, Bethesda has reduced the damage output of weapons that in previous Fallout installments have been some of the most powerful weapons in the game. What that means to Fallout 76 is that the game is so heavily nerfed (reduced) that it’s almost no fun to play. You go into Fallout to spend time looking for the best weapons and armor in the game. Since all of these “best” have been so heavily reduced in damage, they are no longer the best. They are, in fact, now some of the worst weapons in the game. For example, they have reduced the Two Shot Gauss rifle’s output damage to no better than a non-legendary shotgun.
This has forced the remaining gamers to perform even more rounds of grind, grind, grinding. Because now you blow through even more armor and ammo… meaning you now have to go repair everything every few plays (yes, even when you have the perk cards equipped).
And here’s even more unnecessary meddling… Bethesda has mucked with how well the perk cards work. Many cards claim up 60%-90% reduction of “whatever”. Yet, if you really do the math, it’s way, way less than that percentage. Sometimes, it’s more likely 10-15%. The cards lie on their face. Many perk cards don’t even function.. AT ALL. You can buy into a perk card stack, but some cards literally do nothing. When the cards do function, they function at much less than what the face value of the card says. The perk cards nearly all lie in some way. They are merely there as “feel good” helpers. Many of them don’t function as intended, if they function at all.
Much of this reduced functionality is because of Bethesda’s revisionism. Instead of leaving well enough alone with the cards, Bethesda has continually felt the need to tweak these cards silently without informing gamers of the changes they are making. The cards are not the only place where they have done this. Silently screwing with VATs seems to be yet another pastime of the Bethesda devs. Yes, Bethesda is sneaking in changes without letting anyone know. But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Simply equip your Perk cards and see if they actually perform at the level they state. This all assumes that you really want to invest in this way less than mediocre game title. It’s these unnecessary changes that make this game less than stellar. It is also why this is the #1 gripe for this game.
The only thing that Bethesda’s revisionism has done for Fallout 76 is turn it into even more of a disaster than it already was. Yes, Fallout 76 is actually worse now than it was when it launched (when most of the game actually functioned as intended). Only after Bethesda began its revisionism has the game turned into junk heap. And, junk heap it is.
Bethesda continues with its revisionism in Fallout 1st (pronounced “first”), Bethesda’s monthly / yearly subscription service. You should be careful investing into this service. Considering the state of Fallout 76 today, it may not have a year of life left before Bethesda cans this game. If you’re considering purchasing a year of 1st, you may find that in 6 months, the game is shut down. How you get half of your $99 back is as yet unknown. If Fallout 76 remains in service for one more year, I’d be surprised.
Bethesda also doesn’t want to listen to what the gamers want. Instead of adding things gamers have actually requested, Bethesda has had its own agenda of questionable add-ons. Add-ons that no one has actually requested or even wanted (Distillery?). Add-ons that have added limited value back to the gamers. For example, Purveyor Murmrgh. No one wants surprise loot-crates. We want to BUY our legendary rifles already outfitted and ready to go. We want to buy legendary module add-ons so we can add legendary effects to our existing weapons and armor. We also want to be able to level our weapons up along with our player. None of this has been provided by Bethesda. All of these requests have gone unfulfilled and unanswered.
As another example of incompleteness in the game, there are 5 star slots on legendary armor and weapons. Yet, the highest amount of stars is still 3? So what gives with that? If you’re only planning to ever have 3 star weapons and armor, then remove the extra 2 unused stars as we’ll never see any 5 star weapons or armor. So many misses in this game, yet Bethesda keeps going without addressing or fixing all of these simple little problems… instead Bethesda has focused on breaking, breaking and more breaking.
The big takeaway here is be cautious with purchasing this game and be doubly cautious if you decide to purchase a 1st subscription. This game is already skating on thin ice as it is. If it lasts another year, call me surprised.
↩︎
Rant Time: Google doesn’t understand COPPA
We all know what Google is, but what is COPPA? COPPA stands for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and is legislation designed to incidentally protect children by protecting their personal data given to web site operators. YouTube has recently made a platform change allegedly around COPPA, but it is entirely misguided. It also shows that Google doesn’t fundamentally understand the COPPA legislation. Let’s explore.
COPPA — What it isn’t
The COPPA body of legislation is intended to protect how and when a child’s personal data may be collected, stored, used and processed by web site operators. It has very specific verbiage describing how and when such data can be collected and used. It is, by its very nature, a data protection and privacy act. It protects the data itself… and, by extension, the protection of that data hopes to protect the child. This Act isn’t intended to protect the child directly and it is misguided to assume that it does. COPPA protects personal private data of children.
By the above, that means that the child is incidentally protected by how their collected data can (or cannot) be used. For the purposes of COPPA, a “child” is defined to be any person under the age of 13. Let’s look at a small portion of the body of this text.
General requirements. It shall be unlawful for any operator of a Web site or online service directed to children, or any operator that has actual knowledge that it is collecting or maintaining personal information from a child, to collect personal information from a child in a manner that violates the regulations prescribed under this part. Generally, under this part, an operator must:
(a) Provide notice on the Web site or online service of what information it collects from children, how it uses such information, and its disclosure practices for such information (§312.4(b));
(b) Obtain verifiable parental consent prior to any collection, use, and/or disclosure of personal information from children (§312.5);
(c) Provide a reasonable means for a parent to review the personal information collected from a child and to refuse to permit its further use or maintenance (§312.6);
(d) Not condition a child’s participation in a game, the offering of a prize, or another activity on the child disclosing more personal information than is reasonably necessary to participate in such activity (§312.7); and
(e) Establish and maintain reasonable procedures to protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of personal information collected from children (§312.8).
This pretty much sums up the tone for what follows in the body text of this legislation. What it essentially states is all about “data collection” and what you (as a web site operator) must do specifically if you intend to collect specific data from someone under the age of 13… and, more specifically, what data you can and cannot collect.
YouTube and Google’s Misunderstanding of COPPA
YouTube’s parent company is Google. That means that I may essentially interchange “Google” for “YouTube” because both are one-in-the-same company. With that said, let’s understand how Google / YouTube fundamentally does not understand the COPPA body of legislation.
Google has recently rolled out a new feature to its YouTube content creators. It is a checkbox both as a channel wide setting and as an individual video setting. This setting sets a flag whether the video is targeted towards children or not (see image below for this setting’s details). Let’s understand Google’s misunderstanding of COPPA.
COPPA is a data protection act. It is not a child protection act. Sure, it incidentally protects children because of what is allowed to be collected, stored and processed, but make no mistake, it protects collected data directly, not children. With that said, checking a box on a video whether it is appropriate for children has nothing whatever to do with data collection. Let’s understand why.
Google has, many years ago in fact, already implemented a system to prevent “children” (as defined by COPPA) to sign up for and use Google’s platforms. What that means is when someone signs up for a Google account, that person is asked questions to ascertain the person’s age. If that age is identified as under 13, that account is classified by Google as in use by a “child”. Once Google identifies a child, it is then obligated to uphold ALL laws governed by COPPA (and other applicable child privacy laws) … that includes all data collection practices required by COPPA and other applicable laws. It can also then further apply Google related children protections against that account (i.e. to prevent the child from viewing inappropriate content on YouTube). Google would have needed to uphold these data privacy laws since the year 2000, when COPPA was enacted. If Google has failed to protect a child’s collected data or failed to uphold COPPA’s other provisions, then that’s on Google. It is also a situation firmly between Google and the FTC … the governmental body tasked with enforcing the COPPA legislation. Google solely collects the data. Therefore, it is exclusively on Google if that data is used or collected in inappropriate ways, counter to COPPA’s requirements.
YouTube’s newest “not appropriate for children” flag
As of November 2019, YouTube has implemented a new flag for YouTube content creators. The channel-wide setting looks like so:
This setting, for all intents and purposes, isn’t related to COPPA. COPPA doesn’t care whether video content is targeted towards children. COPPA cares about how data is collected from children and how that data is then used by web sites. COPPA is, as I said above, all about data collection practices, not about whether content is targeted towards children.
Let’s understand that in the visual entertainment area, there are already ratings systems which apply. Systems such as the ESRB ratings system founded in 1994. This system specifically sets ratings for video games depending on the types of content contained within. For TV shows, there is the TV Parental Guidelines which began in 1996 and was proposed between the US Congress, the TV industry and FCC. These guidelines rate TV shows such as TV-Y, TV-14 or TV-MA depending, again, on the content within. This was mandated in 1997 by the US Government due to its stranglehold on TV broadcast licenses. For theatrical films, there’s the MPAA’s movie ratings system which began in 1968. So, it’s not as if there aren’t already effective content ratings systems available. These voluntary systems have been in place for many years already.
For YouTube, marking your channel or video content as “made for kids” has nothing whatever to do with COPPA legislated data collection practices.
YouTube Creators
Here is exactly where we see Google and YouTube’s fundamental misunderstanding of COPPA. COPPA is about the protection and collection of data from children. Google collects, stores and uses this and all data it collects. YouTube creators have very, very limited access to any of this Google-collected data. YouTube creators have no hand in its collection or its use. Google controls all of the data collection on YouTube. With the exception of comments and the list of subscribers of a channel, the majority of the data collected and supplied by Google to the creators is almost exclusively limited to aggregate unpersonalized statistical data. Even then, this data can be inaccurate depending on what the Google account ID stated when they signed up. Still, the limited personal subscriber data it does supply to content creators is limited to the subscriber’s ID only. Google offers its content creators no access to deeper personal data, not even the age of its subscribers.
Further, Google (and pretty much every other web site) relies on truthfulness when people sign up for services. Google does not in any way verify the information given to Google during the signup process or that this information is in any way accurate or truthful. Indeed, Google doesn’t even verify the identity of the person using the account or even require the use of real names. The only time Google does ANY level of identity verification is when using Google Wallet. Even then, it’s only as a result of needing identity verification due to possible credit card fraud issues. Google Wallet is a pointless service that many other payment systems do better, such as Apple Pay, Amazon Checkout and, yes, PayPal. I digress.
With that said, Google is solely responsible for all data collection practices associated with YouTube (and its other properties) including storing, processing and managing of that data. YouTube creators have no control over what YouTube (or Google) chooses to collect, store or disseminate. Indeed, YouTube creators have no control over YouTube’s data collection or storage practices whatsoever.
This new alleged “COPPA mechanism” that YouTube has implemented has nothing whatever to do with data collection practices and everything to do with content which might be targeted towards “children”. Right now, this limited mechanism is pretty much a binary system (a very limited system). The channel either does or it doesn’t target content towards children (either channel as a whole or video by video). It’s entirely unclear what happens when you do or don’t via YouTube, though some creators have had seeming bad luck with their content, which has been manually reviewed by YouTube staff and misclassified as “for children” when the content clearly is not. These manual overrides have even run counter to the global channel settings, which have been set to “No, set this channel as not made for kids.”
Clearly, this new mechanism has nothing to do with data collection and everything to do with classifying which content is suitable for children and which isn’t. This defines a …
Ratings System
Ratings systems in entertainment content are nothing new. TV has had a content rating systems since the mid 90s. Movies have had ratings systems since the late 60s. Video games have had them since the mid 90s. COPPA, on the other hand, has entirely nothing to do with ratings or content. It is legislation that protects children by protecting their data. It’s pretty straightforward what COPPA covers, but one thing it does not cover is whether video content is appropriate to be viewed by children. Indeed, COPPA isn’t a ratings system. It is child data protection legislation.
How YouTube got this law’s interpretation so entirely wrong is anyone’s guess. I can’t even fathom how Google could have been led this astray. Perhaps Google’s very own lawyers are simply inept and not at all versed in COPPA? I have no idea… but whatever led YouTube’s developers to thinking the above mechanism in any way relates to COPPA is entirely wrong thinking. No where does COPPA legislate YouTube video content appropriateness. Categorizing content is entirely up to a ratings system to handle.
Indeed, YouTube is trudging on very thin ice with the FTC. Not only did they interpret the COPPA legislation completely wrong, they have implemented “a fix” even more wrongly. What Google and YouTube has done is shoot themselves in the foot… not once, but twice. The second time is that Google has fully admitted that they don’t even have a functional working ratings system. Indeed, it doesn’t… and now everyone knows it.
Google has now additionally admitted that children under the age of 13 use YouTube by the addition of this “new” mechanism. With this one mechanism, Google has admitted to many things about children using its platform… which means YouTube and Google are both now in the hot seat with regards to COPPA. They must now completely ensure that YouTube (and Google by extension) is fully and solely complying with the letter of COPPA’s verbiage by collecting children’s data.
YouTube Creators Part II
YouTube creators have no control over what Google collects from its users, that’s crystal clear. YouTube creators also don’t have access to view most of this data or access to modify anything related to this data collection system. Only Google has that level of access. Because Google controls its own data collection practices, it is on Google to protect any personal information it may have received by children using its platform.
That also means that content creators should be entirely immune from prosecution over such data collection practices… after all, the creators don’t own or control Google’s data collection systems.
This new YouTube mechanism seems to imply that creators have some level of liability and/or culpability for Google’s collection practices, when creators simply and clearly do not. Even the FTC made a striking statement that they may try to “go after” content creators. I’m not even sure how that’s possible under COPPA. Content creators don’t collect, store or manage data about children, regardless of the content that they create. The only thing content creators control is appropriateness of the content towards children… and that has nothing to do with COPPA and everything to do with a ratings system… a system that Google does not even have in place within YouTube.
Content creators, however, can voluntarily label their content as TV-MA or whatever they deem is appropriate based on the TV Parental Guidelines. After all, YouTube is more like TV than it is like a video game. Therefore, YouTube should offer and have in place the same ratings system as is listed in the TV Parental Guidelines. This recent COPPA-attributed change is actually YouTube’s efforts at enacting a content ratings system, albeit an extremely poor attempt at one. As I said, creators can only specify the age appropriateness of the content that they create. YouTube is simply the platform where it is shown.
FTC going after YouTube Creators?
Google controls its data collections systems, not its content creators (though YouTube does hold leverage over whether content is or remains monetized). What that means is that it makes absolutely no sense for the FTC to legally go after content creators based on violations of COPPA. There may be other legislation they can lean on, but COPPA isn’t it. COPPA also isn’t intended to be a “catch all” piece of legislation to protect children’s behaviors on the Internet. It is intended to protect how data is collected and used by children under 13 years of age… that’s it. COPPA isn’t intended to be used as a “ratings system” for appropriateness by video sharing platforms like YouTube.
I can’t see even one judge accepting, let alone prosecuting such a clear cut case of legal abuse of the justice system. Going after Google for COPPA violations? Sure. They stored and collected that data. Going after the YouTube content creators? No, I don’t think so. They created a video and uploaded it, but that had nothing whatever to do with how Google controls, manages or collects data from children.
If the US Federal Government wants to create law to manage appropriateness of Internet content, then they need to draft it up and pass it. COPPA isn’t intended for that purpose. Voluntary ratings systems have been in place for years including within motion pictures, TV and now video games. So then why is YouTube immune from such rating systems? Indeed, it’s time YouTube was forced to implement a proper ratings system instead of this haphazard binary system under the false guise of COPPA.
Content Creator Advice
If you are a YouTube content creator (or create on any other online platform), you should take advantage of the thumbnail and describe the audience your content targets. The easiest way to do this is to use the same ratings system implemented by the TV Parental Guidance system… such as TV-Y, TV-14 and TV-MA. Placing this information firmly on the thumbnail and also placing it onto the video at the beginning of your video explicitly states towards which age group and audience your content is targeted. By voluntarily rating not only the thumbnail, but also the content itself in the first 5 minutes of the video opening, your video cannot be misconstrued for any other group or audience. This means that even though your video is not intended for children, placing the TV Parental Guidance rating literally onto the video intentionally states that fact in plain sight.
If a YouTube employee manually reclassifies your video as being “for children” even when it isn’t, labeling your content in the video’s opening as TV-MA explicitly states that the program is not suitable for children. You might even create an additional disclaimer as some TV programs do stating:
This content is not suitable for all audiences. Some content may be considered disturbing or controversial. Viewer or parental discretion is advised.
Labeling your video means that even the FTC can’t argue that your video somehow inappropriately targeted children… even though this new YouTube system has nothing to do with COPPA. Be cautious, use common sense and use best practices when creating and uploading videos to YouTube. YouTube isn’t there to protect you, the creator. The site is there to protect YouTube and Google. In this case, this new creator feature is entirely misguided as a COPPA helper, when it is clearly intended to be a ratings system.
Before you go…
One last thing… Google controls everything about the YouTube platform including the “recommended” lists of videos. If, for whatever reason, Google chooses to promote a specific video towards an unintended audience, the YouTube creator has no control over this fact. In point of fact, the content creator has almost no control over any promotion or placement of their video within YouTube. The only exception is if YouTube allows for paid promotion of video content (and they probably do). After all, YouTube is in it for the $$$. If you’re willing to throw some of your money at Google, I’m quite sure they’d be willing to help you out. Short of paying Google for video placement, however, all non-paid placement is entirely at the sole discretion of Google. The YouTube creator has no control over their video’s placement within “recommended” lists or anywhere else on YouTube.
↩︎
Rant Time: What is a Public Safety Power Shutoff?
Here’s where jurisprudence meets our every day lives (and safety) and here is also where PG&E is severely deluded and fast becoming a menace. There is actually no hope for this company. Let’s explore.
California Fire Danger Forecasting
“Officials” in California (not sure exactly to which specific organization is referred here) predicted the possibility of high winds, which could spark wildfires. This happened earlier the week of October 7 (or possibly earlier). As I said, these are “predictions”. Yet, as far as I can see, no strong winds have come to pass… a completely separate issue, but it is heavily tied to this story.
Yet, PG&E has taken it upon themselves to begin powering off areas of Northern California in “preparation” for these “predictions”… not because of an actual wind event. If the high winds had begun to materialize, then yes, perhaps mobilize and begin the power shut offs. Did PG&E wait for this? No, they did it anyway.
What exactly is Public Safety?
In the context of modern society, pretty much everything today relies on electric power generation to operate our public safety infrastructure. This infrastructure includes the likes of traffic lights to street lights to hospitals to medical equipment to refrigeration. All of these need power to function and keep the public safe. To date, we have come to rely on monopoly services like PG&E to provide these energy delivery services. Yet, what happens when the one and only one thing that PG&E is supposed to do and they can’t even do it?
Granted, what PG&E has done is intentional, but the argument is, “Are the PG&E power outages in the best interest of public safety?” Let’s explore this even further.
PG&E claims that these power outages will reduce the possibility of a wildfire. Well, that might be true from a self-centered perspective of PG&E as a corporation. After all, they’ve been tapped several times for legal liability over recent wildfire events. They’ve even had to declare bankruptcy to cover those costs incurred as a result. We’ll come to the reason behind this issue a little bit later. However, let’s stay focused on the Public Safety aspect for the moment.
PG&E claims it is in the best public safety interest to shut down its power grid. Yet, let’s explore that thought rationale. Sure, this outage action might reduce the possibility of sparking from a power line, but what it doesn’t take into account is the reduction in and lack of public safety from all of the other normal-everyday-public-safety mechanisms which have also had their power cut. As I said, street lights, traffic lights, hospitals, medical equipment, 911 services, airports and refrigeration.
The short term effect of shutting the power off might save some lives (based on a fire prediction that might not even come true), but then there are other lives which might be lost as a result of the power being shut off for days. Keep in mind that PG&E claims it might take up to 5 days to restore power after this scheduled power off event. That’s a long time to be without standard regular public safety mechanisms (simply ignoring the high wind advisory).
If PG&E has been found responsible for wildfires, then why aren’t they responsible for these incidental deaths that wouldn’t have occurred if the power had remained on. Worse, what about medical equipment and refrigeration? For people who rely on medical equipment to sustain their lives, what about these folks? How many of these could die from this outage? If it truly takes 5 days to get the power back on, what about the foods being sold at restaurants and grocery stores? If you do trust it, you might get sick… very, very sick… as in food poisoning sick. Who is responsible for that? The retailer or the restaurant?
Sure, I guess to some degree it is the retailer / restaurant. They should have thrown the food out and replaced it with fresh foods. Even then, perhaps the distributors were also affected by the outage. We can’t really know how far the food spoilage chain might go. At the root of all of this, though, it is PG&E who chose to cut the power. How many people might die as a result of PG&E force shutting off the power grid versus how many might potentially die if a wildfire ignites?
I’ve already heard there have been a number of traffic accidents because the power has been cut to traffic lights. It’s not a common occurrence to have the power out on intersections. When it does happen, many motorists don’t know the rules… and worse, they simply don’t pay attention to follow them. They just blast on through the intersection. Again, who is responsible for this? The city? No. In this case, it is truly PG&E’s responsibility. The same for food poisoning as a result of the lack of refrigeration. What about the death of someone because their medicine spoiled without refrigeration?
Trading One Evil For Another
Truly, PG&E is playing with fire. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The reality is, either way, shutting off electricity or leaving it on, PG&E risks the public’s safety. They are simply trading one set of public safety for another. Basically, they are “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.” By trying to thwart the possibility of setting an accidental wildfire, the outage can cause traffic accidents, deaths in hospitals, create food poisoning circumstances and this list goes on and on. When there is no power, this is real danger. Sometimes immediate danger, sometimes latent danger (food poisoning) which may present weeks later.
The reality is, it is PG&E who is responsible for this. PG&E “thinks” (and this is the key word here) that they are being proactive to prevent forest fires. In reality, they’re creating even more public safety issues by cutting the power off indiscriminately.
Cutting Power Off Sanely?
The first problem was in warning the public. PG&E came up with this plan with too short of a notice. The public was not properly notified in advance. If this outage scenario were on the table of options for PG&E to pursue during the wildfire season, this information should have been disseminated early in the summer. People could have had several months to prepare for this eventuality. Instead of notifying months ahead, they chose to notify at a moment’s notice forcing a cram situation when everyone floods the stores and gas stations trying to keep their homes in power and prepare. At the bare minimum, PG&E should be held responsible for inciting public frenzy. Instead, with proper planning and notification, people could have had several months notice to buy generators, stock up on water, buy a propane fridge, buy a propane stove, prep their fridges and freezers, and so on.
With a propane fridge, many people can still have refrigeration in their home during an extended (up to 7 day) power outage. This prevents both spoilage of foods and of medicines. Unfortunately, when it comes to crunch time notices, supplies and products run out quick. Manufacturers don’t build products for crunch time. They build for limited people to buy over a short period of time. Over several months, these manufacturers could have ramped up production for such a situation, but that can’t happen overnight. PG&E was entirely remiss with this notification. For such drastic knee-jerk actions to public safety, it needs to notify the public months in advance of this possibility. This is public menace situation #1.
Indiscriminate Power Outages
Here’s a second big problem with PG&E’s outage strategy. PG&E can’t pick and choose its outages. Instead, its substations cover whole swatches of areas which may include such major public safety issues as traffic lights and hospitals, let alone restaurants and grocery stores whose food is likely to spoil.
If PG&E could sanely turn off power to only specific businesses and residences without risking the power to hospitals, cell phone infrastructure, 911 and traffic infrastructure, then perhaps PG&E’s plan might be in a better shape. Unfortunately, PG&E’s outage strategy is a sledgehammer approach. “Let’s just shut it all down.”, I can almost hear them say. Dangerous! Perhaps even more long term dangerous than the possibility of not setting a wildfire. Who’s to say? This creates public menace situation #2.
Sad Infrastructure
Unfortunately, this whole situation seems less about public safety and more about CYA. PG&E has been burned (literally) several times over the last few wildfire seasons. In fact, they were both literally and monetarily burned so hard that this is less about actual public safety and more about covering PG&E’s legal butt. Even then, as I said above, PG&E isn’t without legal liability simply because they decided to cut the power to thwart a wildfire. In fact, while the legal liability might not be for causing a wildfire, instead it might be for incidental deaths created by outages at intersections, by deaths created in hospitals and in homes due to medical equipment failure, by deaths created via food spoilage in restaurants and grocery stores… and even food spoilage or lack of medical care in the home.
The reality behind PG&E’s woes is not tied to its supposedly proactive power outage measures, it is actually tied to its aging infrastructure. Instead of being proactive and replacing its wires to be less prone to sparking (what it should have been doing for the last 10 years or more), it has done almost nothing in this area. Instead of cutting back brush around its equipment, it has resorted to turning the power off. Its liability in wildfires is almost directly attributable to relying on infrastructure created and installed decades ago by the likes of Hetch Hetchy (and other early electric infrastructure builders) back in the early 1900s. I’m not saying that every piece of this infrastructure is nearly 100 years old, but some of it is. That’s something to think about right there.
PG&E does carry power from Hetch Hetchy to its end users via Hetch Hetchy generation facilities, but more importantly, through PG&E’s monopoly electric lines to its end users. PG&E also generates its own electricity from its own facilities. It also carries power from other generation providers like SVCE. The difficulty with PG&E is its monopoly in end user delivery. No other company is able to deliver power to PG&E’s end user territory, leaving consumers with only ONE commercial choice to power their home. End users can opt to install their own in-home energy generation systems such as solar, wind or even diesel generators (when the city allows), but that’s not a “commercial” provider like PG&E.
Because PG&E has the market sewn up, everyone who uses PG&E is at their mercy to provide solid continuous power… that is, until they don’t. This is public menace situation #3.
Legal Troubles
I’m surprised that PG&E has even decided to use this strategy considering its risky nature. To me, this forced power outage strategy seems as big a liability in and of itself as it does against wildfires.
PG&E is assigned one task: Deliver Power. If it can’t do this, then PG&E needs to step aside and let another company more experienced in to replace PG&E’s dominance in power delivery. If PG&E can’t even be bothered to update its aging equipment, which is at the heart of this entire problem, then it definitely needs to step aside and let a new company start over. Sure, a new company will take time to set it all up, but once it’s going, PG&E can quietly wind down and go away… which may happen anyway considering both its current legal troubles and its bankruptcy.
The state should, likewise, allow parties significantly impacted by this forced power outage (i.e., death or injury) to bring lawsuits against PG&E for its improperly planned and indiscriminately executed power outage. Except, because PG&E is still in bankruptcy court, consumers who are wronged by this outage must stand in line behind all of those who are already in line at PG&E’s bankruptcy court. I’m not even sure why the bankruptcy judge would have even allowed this action by PG&E while still in bankruptcy. Considering the possibility of significant additional legal liabilities incurred by this forced outage, the bankruptcy judge should have foreseen this and denied its action. It’s almost like PG&E execs are all, “F-it, we’ll just turn it all off and if they want to sue us, they’ll have to get in line.” This malicious level of callous disregard for public safety needs much more state and legal scrutiny. The bankruptcy judge should have had a say over this action by PG&E. That they didn’t, this makes public menace situation number 4, thus truly making PG&E an official public safety menace and a nuisance.
Updated 10/11/2019 — Clarification
I’ve realized that while one point was made in the article, it wasn’t explicitly called out. To clarify this point, let’s explore. Because PG&E acted solely on a predicted forecast and didn’t wait for the wind event to actually begin, PG&E’s actions egregiously disregarded public safety. As I said in the main body of the article above, PG&E traded one “predicted” public safety event for actual real incurred public safety events. By proceeding to shut down the power WITHOUT the predicted wind event manifesting, PG&E acted recklessly towards public safety. As a power company, their sole reason to exist is to provide power and maintain that public safety. By summarily shutting down power, not only did they fail to provide the one thing they are in business to do, they shut the power down for reasons other than for fire safety. As I stated above, this point is the entire reason that PG&E is now an official menace to the public.
↩︎
One Year Later: Has Fallout 76 improved?
Seeing that Fallout 76 is an online multiplayer game and that Bethesda heavily enjoys its revisionist tendencies, this question arises about not only this game, but about revisionism in video games in general. It’s ironic then that this simple brown paper bag has come to represent everything wrong with Fallout 76. Has Fallout 76 gotten any better in nearly one year since its release? Let’s explore.
Revisionism in Entertainment
There’s something to be said for revisionism. As many entertainment products today are delivered digitally and are now also being created digitally these days, this opens the door to revisionism. The difficulty with changing stuff is that what we initially purchased is not what that thing is today. Whether it be a movie, a book, TV series or even a video game. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t happened in the music industry so far.
Throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, visual and literary entertainment was always set in stone. Heck, this idea goes back into the renaissance with such works as the Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Though, even then there were controversies with some clergy deciding that fig leaves needed to be added to certain artworks, thus forcing a revision. These instances were rare and usually happened while the work was in progress. However, sometimes a second artist might be commissioned later to paint fig leaves. What that usually meant was, what you saw when it first arrived is the same thing you’ll still see today. Unfortunately, too many entertainment makers see revisionism as something to make their product better, but does it? Can changing the content of a book, movie or video game a year or two later actually make it better?
This is up for debate. What it does is make the entertainment become a cloudy and murky experience. What you fondly remember about the product and experience could be completely invalidated because a creator later decides to completely rework large portions and change what you remembered most.
In fact, many people remember works for certain specific things that happened within. If revisionist changes remove or alter those specific sections so that they are no longer in the work, you may have modified what people remembered about your product. And this is the fundamental problem. Such revisionism can actually make a product worse. Fallout 76 is a poster child for this problem.
Editing for Correction
Now, I’m not against basic editing. In a written work, if you misspell a word, need to correct grammatical errors or word omissions, these are perfectly acceptable changes. If the dialog in a film is misspoken or acted in a less than professional and convincing way, I’m fine with a reshoot and reedit so long as the dialog and scene remains functionally equivalent. These are all edits that make sense in the context of a body of work. They don’t substantially alter the work, they simply polish it. Polishing a work to make at work the most professional it can be is perfectly acceptable.
However, changing a work by adding substantial content, altering the story, changing the outcome, changing the setups, changing the rules and so on, these are not simple corrections. These change the fundamental story outcome. These substantial changes are considered revisionism and are way outside the bounds of simple corrections. That would be like someone deciding to change the Mona Lisa’s smile on the original painting simply because they think it is too vague. You just don’t do this to the original work. Sure, you can create a derivation of that work and publish it separately, but you should never alter the original work by substantially changing its content.
For this reason in the art community, there’s a lot of controversy about “cleaning up” historical works of art that have layers of dirt, dust and debris on the surface. The “clean up” process could amount to changing the fundamental work rather than being a simple cleanup. The chemicals used might even long term damage the work. It means someone has to take liquids to the work, clean off the “dirty” layers and expose the “clean fresh” layers. The difficulty is, by doing this it may remove original content intended to be there by the original artist. With older works where the artist is no longer living, we cannot consult them for how to best “clean” their works. It’s all best guess. Modifying and cleaning these works may make them look better, but does it fundamentally alter the content? This is the contentious and controversial part… and it is exactly this controversial part that applies to ALL works when they are revised.
Reuse of Assets in Video Games
Video games are both entertainment and works of art. In fact, it takes a lot of graphical art content created by teams of artists to release a video game. Such art includes texture maps which get layered onto 3D objects. These maps make the objects appear naturalistic and real. Granted, some of the art is scanned from actual nature… such as tree leaves scanned in from real trees to create realistic trees in a 3D landscape. Even skin surfaces are likely scanned from actual human skin. However, some texture maps are hand crafted, stylistic art. These are the truest art in every sense of the word.
Revisionism in texture map art isn’t really a big problem in the video game world. In fact, once these “assets” have been created, it’s more likely a video game publisher will overuse these assets rather than modify them. By ‘overuse’ I mean reuse them not only in the original game, but future games also. I’m sure the devs think, “Why recreate the wheel with every new game?” Instead, reusing assets that already exist makes sense in some limited cases. Reuse also costs less development money.
On the other hand, reusing too many assets from a previous work makes your current work seem less than original. That would be tantamount to an author taking whole passages from a novel and copying and pasting them into a new novel. After all, if they worked in the old novel, why wouldn’t they work in the new novel? At least, that’s the thinking. The problem that creators overlook is that consumers can easily spot these reuses. Consumers can overlook small reuses of words and phrases in a novel, particularly if a specific character has a peculiar speech idiosyncrasy when using those words and phrases. In this specific case, it adds to character development. However, there’s a fine line between reusing words and phrases to make a character development point and plagiarizing your own past works. Consumers do recognize large plagiaristic reuses and judge the work’s merit accordingly.
Fallout 76
Here is where we come to the crux of this article and Fallout 76. Fallout 76 is a completely hosted, online video game world. It is also a world almost entirely derived from Fallout 4 with only the terrain, cities and landscape being different, but at the same time entirely reusing nearly every Fallout 4 asset and even the game engine itself.
Fallout 76 is also a world where nothing except assets and visual and audio data exists on your computer device. It is a game where only the rendering occurs on your device. The actual game world itself resides remotely on servers that Bethesda owns and operates. Even your character and saved game exists not on your computer, but on Bethesda’s server. If Bethesda shuts down the Fallout 76 service, so too does your character disappear along with all of the time you spent creating that character. Unlike Fallout 4 where your saved games live on your device and you can reload and play the game years later, Fallout 76 is beholden to Bethesda to remain in business for this game service to continue to exist. If Bethesda were to fold or shut the game down, Fallout 76 would cease to exist along with all of the work and time you spent with your character. All you’ll have left is a bulky game client on your device with no where to connect. Only videos or screen shots you may have of your game progress saved on your local device will be there to remember what that game was. I should point out that in Fallout 4, if you use mods, you should also make sure you have a saved game without mods. If Bethesda shuts down entirely, so too does Bethesda.net. This means that you will not be able to unload or remove mods as long as Bethesda.net remains down. So, make sure you have a vanilla save of your character without any mods loaded in case this eventuality occurs (side note). While Fallout 4 is playable without Internet, Fallout 76 is entirely dependent on it.
What that also means is that because the Fallout 76 engine runs remotely, it means Bethesda can roll out wholesale changes to the product at will and at any time. And, unfortunately, they perform this revisionism regularly. However, they’re not performing this revisionism in a way that makes ‘editing’ sense.
Earlier I discussed simple editing that allows for polishing a product. Unfortunately, that’s not what Bethesda is doing with its Fallout 76 revisionism. Instead of polishing Fallout 76 to fix basic bugs, glitches and improve the basic performance and fundamental user experience, Bethesda is adding large new sections of content and changing the rules of the game. The added content is over and above (and outside) of the context of the original game story as it was released. In fact, most of the additional content that Bethesda has so far added has not impacted the base original game. Even though this is still a form of revisionism, it revises the work by adding new stuff, but at the expense of not correcting basic problems within the original game… and not expanding the game in actually meaningful Fallout-themed ways.
“Where is the game today?”, you ask. Great question. Fallout 76’s original “Adventure Mode’s” fundamental game experience is still the same as it was when it launched (as lackluster as it is), bugs and all. Unfortunately, to add many of the new additions to the game, Bethesda has had to tinker with some of the fundamental game mechanics and rules that operate the base game. What that has meant to the game is broken, changed and altered base game playability. This means that for Bethesda to add these inconsequential new features, it has broken even more pieces of a game which where formerly fully working… in addition to the broken features that have not yet been fixed. They’ve even introduced newly broken features.
And here is where Fallout 76 is today. Instead of Bethesda focusing on simple basic editing to correct fundamental and original game flaws to make the original gaming experience better, it has decided to focus almost solely on adding new content to the game in an attempt to attract new consumers. In that process it has broken even more of the game rather than fixing original broken functionality. It is an entirely flawed rationale.
While Bethesda’s changes may seem to bring in new players for the short term, the difficulty is that these newly added game additions have severely limited play value. In fact, these additions have such limited play value, I’d expect gamers to get tired of playing them within 1-2 weeks at most. Most give up on them in only a few days. The original game might take you a month or two to get through. Yet, these newest additions might hold someone’s interest for a week (usually less) if you’re lucky! Yeah, that’s a lot of work for such a tiny payoff. Worse, these additions do not extend or modify the original story. These are effectively “mods” that add something new, but add no value to the original game’s story or content or, indeed, expand Fallout in consequential ways. These additions are effectively end-game content. They’re tiny and almost entirely inconsequential.
Backpack
I won’t go into discussing every addition, but I will discuss this one because it offers us insight into Bethesda’s thinking. This add-on item gives the player a backpack that offers a little more carry weight based on the character’s level. A level 10 character, for example, would get fractionally more carry weight (10 points). For each 10 levels, your character will get maybe 10 more carry weight, but you’re required to toss the old backpack and recreate a new one to get the updated carry weight, thus applying all new mods again to get your new backpack back to look like your old backpack’s setup.
It’s a lot of work doing this at each 10 levels. This is one of the fundamental design problems with this game. Instead of directly allowing leveling up of existing armor and weapons, you must scrap it and recreate it anew… or find it again. If it’s Legendary, then it is stuck at whatever level it is. Most weapons and armor top out at level 50 and the perk benefits stop there. This effectively means that even if your character is level 150 or 300, you’re still wearing level 50 armor…. which effectively caps the player’s level at 50. The level cap is not based on what your character’s level is, but the maximum of your armor and your weapons. When these max out at level 50, being a level 300 player doesn’t really in any way help you. The only thing it does is means you’ve been playing the game for a long time. But, effectively your level is capped by the highest level armor and weapons you have on you.
The small backpack, I believe, tops out also at level 50 with a maximum of 60 carry weight. You can’t infinitely keep leveling up the backpack. Though, there is a large backpack that doubles this carry weight, but requires even more grinding to achieve. This means that once you reach level 50 and can craft a level 50 backpack, that’s as far as the small backpack perk goes. Sure, you can add on additions like the cooler and other perks, but all of that is still capped at the maximum level of that backpack.
Unfortunately, for the backpack, the situation gets worse. When it was first introduced, the way to get the small backpack was through a series of convoluted quest lines involving a “Boy Scout” badge-like approach. You had to get “badges”. To get these badges, you had to perform any number of varying activities. You only had to have three of a larger number of badges. Once you had three badges, you then presented yourself with your badges and a successfully completed test and you were issued the small backpack plans. So then you graduated to the Possum rank only to start this whole process all over again for a second series of grinds to get the large backpack plans.
However, later, Bethesda in its infinite revisionist tendencies decided that you could simply go find the small backpack plans in a container. No longer did you need to jump through all of the convoluted lengthy tadpole badge hoop quests. Quests, I might add that could be difficult to accomplish without a teammate. For example, to complete one of the quests, you had to “revive an ally”. What that meant is staging it with a teammate. It’s not super easy to die in Fallout 76. Even then, there are two death types. One type is an incapacitated death where a player can stimpak and revive you. The other death type offers no hope of revival. The player simply has to respawn somewhere and start over.
Staging an incapacitated death can be difficult at the best of times. Getting this specific badge meant either grinding until you ‘accidentally’ found someone in that state or staging it to get it done sooner. Staging this is harder than you might think. I’m not even sure why this was required for the badge, yet there we are. Like using liquid flux to create fusion cores, reviving an ally is a questionable requirement for this quest line. I’m not even sure what Bethesda was thinking. Some of these requirements make no sense.
The point is, Bethesda invalidated the need to go to through the long “Boy Scout” quest line allowing you to bypass all of that by simply grabbing the plans, as long as you know where the container is (which is incidentally located in Morgantown Airport in the Overseer’s Cache). Though, if you wanted the backpack extras, you still had to go through the badge quests to earn scout credits to buy these additions (yet another currency type in the game)… as if caps, scrip and atom were not yet enough.
Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs
I’m not talking about the flying kind here. Worse, because Bethesda has chosen to prioritize the addition of new content over pretty much everything else, it likewise means Bethesda’s team has completely ignored fixing even the most basic of flaws in the original base game.
For example, in a video game that relies on shooting mechanics and melee attacks to function, you’d think a AAA developer could at least make these mechanics sound and “just work”. Unfortunately, even in the base game which was released a year ago, these fundamental basics have never functioned correctly. You can literally shoot directly at enemies and the bullets simply won’t connect. Not just once, but many times in a row. Even button presses on the controller aren’t reliable. Press, press, press… and nothing. It might take 5 successive presses for even one press to be registered by the game. This is a actually first in the video game industry. No other game have I ever played where a game’s control is this unresponsive and unreliable. If, as a video game developer, you can’t even register a button press from a controller, perhaps you shouldn’t be in the video game business?
Anyway, while the game consumes the ammo and shows the animation of the gun doing its thing, the game doesn’t recognize the collision on the enemy, even when you’re standing less than arm’s-length next to the enemy.
Oh, but it gets worse. When you spawn into a game world, there’s a huge time delay between the time when your character appears in the game world and when the visual part of the game releases control to you to begin playing. This time discrepancy is not insignificant. It could be upwards of 1-2 minutes before your game is handed control and the world is fully rendered. What that means is that if you spawn into a “hot zone” of enemies, your character could be dead before the loading screen has even disappeared.
Fallout 76 has even more basic problems. For example, when you spawn into a new game world, your character can spawn into a “blast zone”. A blast zone is a zone where another player has set off a nuke and irradiated the area. Irradiated areas in Fallout 76 last for at least 30 minutes to an hour real time, maybe longer. Because you’re spawned into the “last place” where your character formerly was and because you’re not given a choice where to spawn on load in, you could load into an irradiated zone unprepared. This, of course once again, means your player is dead upon spawning in. Worse, because the game force drops all of your junk upon character death, you’ve lost all of the junk you were carrying with little hope of getting it back. If your character does not have the preparation to handle a nuke zone (Hazmat suit or similar), you can’t venture in and get your stuff back. If you choose to hop servers to get out of that blast zone, you definitely can’t get your junk back. Junk drops exist in only one server. If your character dies in one game world and you are forced to hop game servers, your junk is forever gone. One of Todd Howard’s promises of Fallout 76 was that we shouldn’t need worry about ‘servers’. Yet, in this case, we very much do.
These are bugs that shouldn’t exist. These are bugs that should have been solved before the game was ever released. Yet, here we are a year later and they still exist. These are, by no means, the only problems / bugs in this game. In fact, there are so many bugs, I could write a book and still miss some. Anyway, let’s make a small-ish list:
- Looping “stuck” audio out of one or both audio channels
- Random server disconnects
- Random inventory lost
- Random character deaths
- Getting stuck in power armor
- The “wendigo” character problem (character has stretched elongated limbs)
- Getting stuck on scenery (forced to fast travel)
- Spawning inside of objects (stuck)
- VATs doesn’t calculate accuracy correctly
- VATs not working correctly
- Perk cards not working (Storm Chaser almost never works when it’s raining)
- Lack of perk cards for certain basic features (no weight reduction for rifle class?)
- Too many perk cards for some functions (how many rifleman cards do we need?)
- The Scorchbeast Queen event only appears IF another player decides to nuke that area. If not, the event never appears… and it’s the biggest multiplayer event in the game! … and yes, I do consider this a bug.
- Losing junk after character death because of “server disconnect”
- Stupid crafting recipes:
- Fusion Cores — Crafting a fusion core requires only every single version of stable flux? Wait..what? You’re making a nuclear battery. It should require aluminum, copper, nuclear waste, plastic and silver. You can’t make a battery from liquid flux alone! Where does the case come from? The properties of flux, while irradiated, cannot produce an electric current in its liquid form when simply combined, let alone produce a hard shell case that approximates the shape of a fusion core.
- Tick Blood Tequila — This one requires pure crimson flux. What? It’s not named Irradiated Tick Blood Tequila, it’s named Tick Blood Tequila. It shouldn’t require ANY flux.
- Stable Flux — Making stable flux requires components that are only available in nuke zones and, more specifically, only available in very specific nuked zones. And even more specifically, are only dropped from very specific killed enemies in these very specific nuked zones. To craft stable flux requires 10 “raw” flux and 1 each of glowing mass, high radiation fluids and hardened mass. You cannot find raw flux, glowing mass, high radiation fluids or hardened mass on ANY other enemy in the game, in any other containers or in any other non-irradiated locations. The additional components can only be found in irradiated zones on very specific enemies after a kill. Even then, these drops are not guaranteed.. which means you need to kill A LOT of them to find all three of these “extra” components. Stable flux is easily the rarest required item in the game… not including cosmetic outfits (Red Asylum Outfit, Witch’s Costume, White Powder Jumpsuit, etc). Not only are they rare, but they weigh a ton. Each Stable Flux weighs 1 unless you have the perk Pack Rat card which reduces the weight of all junk items.
- Raw Flux — Separate but related to the above, raw flux is only found in nuke zones. It cannot be found anywhere else in the game. This means that every player in the game is beholden to other players to “create” a nuke zone to enable obtaining of not only raw flux, but high radiation fluid, glowing mass and hardened mass. You can obtain flux from the Queen event when it closes, but only if it just happens to drop it at the end and only if the event closes successfully. Raw flux (when refined to stable) is a required component for certain quests and crafting as well (Tick Blood Tequila and Fusion Cores). Note that raw flux is considered ‘Aid’ not ‘Junk’. You’ll have to apply Thru-Hiker to reduce the weight for these.
- Why Raw Flux is Aid and Stable Flux is Junk, I’ve no idea. But, inconsistency abounds in this otherwise mediocre game… thus one big reason why it IS mediocre.
- Any other recipes that require “stable” flux
- There’s not a single recipe that requires “raw” flux. Yet, it’s a huge component in the game. Raw flux is not even worth much anymore (revisionism at its finest).
- Food Recipes — Most food recipes only provide food and nothing else. Sure, you can go find other more fancy recipes, yet they also only provide food. I’m not sure what Bethesda was thinking here, but if you spend the time to go track down a specific advanced recipe, that recipe should provide more than simple food. It should provide a perk increase, such as added luck or agility or improved health or AP regeneration. Yet, most advanced recipes offer none of this. What’s the incentive to find and craft advanced recipes when it provides nothing more than what a basic recipe provides? Sometimes even the most basic recipes offer better perks than the “advanced” recipes.
- DLC — The add-ons that Bethesda has offered beyond the base game have excluded the use of perk cards entirely. For example, the distillery added to the game during a spring DLC addition gave us the ability to craft alcohol using a newly added crafting table. The problem is, none of the existing base game perk cards apply to this new crafting table. And no new perk cards were introduced, either. For example, Super Duper is one of the most widely used base game cards. This card offers the chance to double whatever you craft on crafting tables… except, this card does not apply to the distillery crafting table. While you can sometimes double your output while crafting stimpaks or radaway or when crafting ammo, you cannot double the output when crafting beer, wine or whiskey. It makes no sense, if Super Duper applies to all other crafting tables, it should apply to the distiller crafting table. That Bethesda selectively declines to apply known perk cards to its add-ons is just a jerk move… and, in my opinion, makes the game worse.
And here we come to even more issues:
- Gun ammo is unloaded at every game load-in — Instead of the game remembering which gun was currently being held and how much ammo it has, the game unloads the gun of ammo on login. This means that if the game crashes or you quit and come back later, you must reload your weapon immediately upon login. If you fail to remember to do this MANUALLY, you will ‘click’ and nothing happens.
- Quests fail to progress for nonsensical reasons — Quests can get stuck simply because the game won’t recognize the most basic of things. Some quests requires that you be drunk to complete them. In some cases, the game simply won’t progress even though the UI shows the effect is active. The quest simply chooses to ignore it and not progress.
- Quests disappear — You can be questing along, then have the game crash only to load in and find that quest is no longer part of your quest inventory.
- Quests cannot be abandoned — In previous Bethesda games, you could quit a quest and restart it by going back to the source. That is not possible in Fallout 76. If you pick up a quest, it stays in your quest inventory forever (or until it randomly disappears on its own). This is particularly problematic for quests that reload with incredibly loud voice overs (Grafton and Rose).
- Quest markers do not always appear in the HUD — Quests put up markers in the compass HUD. Yet, at times, these markers are simply not there. Not all quest progressions are easy to locate. Perhaps it’s a specific computer terminal in a building with perhaps 20 terminals. Without a marker, you would have to run to every single terminal in the building and try them all. It’s one thing if a game is based on having no markers. It’s entirely another if the game has quest markers that fail to work reliably… and this is where Fallout 76 lives.
- Music that can’t be muted — There is certain environmental music that cannot be muted. Even though I’ve turned off music in settings, the game insists on still playing music at certain events.
- Paper Bags Drops — For a long while, dropping items into the environment was fraught with peril. You could drop something that should appear in a paper bag, yet no bag would ever appear and your item was entirely lost. While it seems that this issue may have been mostly solved, it still exists occasionally. I have dropped paper bags which never appeared even after it was claimed to have been fixed.
So now, let’s discuss C.A.M.P. bugs. I’d rather not because there’s a huge laundry list of items here, but let’s do it anyway.
- Camp Circumference — When you drop your camp down, a circle is created that outlines the border of your camp’s buildable areas. You can’t see this circle in full. You are limited by seeing this circle from a ground perspective. This mean you must guess as to exactly how this circle fits onto the ground. If you get it wrong, you must pay to move your camp again. Each time you move your camp, you lose more caps. You can’t adjust or fine tune your camp’s circle. It is where it lands. Bethesda could have raised the camera off the ground to show us the circle from above, yet nope.
- Randomly disappearing objects — I’ve had a number of camp objects that I’ve built simply disappear. Sure, someone reading might think, “Oh, it was just damaged and needs to be repaired”. Nope, I’ve checked that. The object is simply gone. I’ve had this bug happen a month after the game launched and I’ve had it happen as recently as a week before writing this article. This is a long standing bug that has basically existed since the game launched… and it still exists today. Worse, when these objects disappear, they still contribute to the camp’s budget. Even deleting everything in your camp will not free up these lost objects. Writing Bethesda support won’t lead to anything fruitful. The Bethesda support team actually does nothing other than write emails about how they can do nothing to help you.
- Camp Budget — Bethesda has increased the camp budget exactly once… when they introduced the Distiller crafting table. Even then, you can’t build much with the allotted camp budget. It’s large enough to create a small structure, but if you want to defend that structure with turrets, expect to make your camp buildings much, much smaller. Turrets still cost a whopping amount of camp budget simply to create a single turret. If you want 5 turrets, expect at least 1/4 of your camp budget gone (perhaps even more than this).
- 24 players per server — It’s crystal clear, this number of players is too many for the way they’ve built their servers. Half this number would make the servers much less laggy, much faster and overall perform much better. Yet, we’re forced to deal with 24 players on a server where even just one player can bring the server to its knees when spamming a crafting table at their camp.
- Portions of objects disappear — If you’ve ever set up a fertilizer resource (a Brahmin Pen) or the new Scavenger Bot (Atom shop item), you can find portions of the object become invisible. I’ve had the hay on the Brahmin resource vanish. I’ve had the scavenger hatch become invisible. And again, no, it wasn’t damaged. When I open the workshop, the only thing that appears is a vibrant green untextured object. It’s most definitely a bug.
These are but many of Fallout 76’s most basic fundamental mechanic flaws and these are not anywhere close to all of them. These problems have existed in the base game… long before Bethesda added their newest add-ons. These are fundamental problems that, for a AAA game title and for an AAA developer like Bethesda, shouldn’t even exist. That these basic fundamental flaws, problems and, yes, bugs, exist means that Bethesda shouldn’t even be in this business.
But, wait there are even more problems afoot.
Graphics
Not only does Fallout 76 add an annoying haze overlay effect onto bright light sources, the graphics of Fallout 76 are actually much, much worse than Fallout 4. The shadows are incredibly low res by comparison. Some images don’t resolve to high res until you’re within arm’s length of the image. You can literally see the 8 bit sized pixels. For example, the GNN poster is a lighted decoration you can put up on your camp. When you approach it from a distance, you can see a very pixelated image. When you move within arm’s length, the pixelated image stays for a moment, then loads to higher res right before your eyes. You can even see the image load in. Sometimes textures will randomly toggle between low res and high res even while standing still.
In Fallout 4, this low res image loading problem never existed. The images were loaded at high res the moment you were within gunshot range. That Fallout 76’s graphics engine is this piss poor tells me Bethesda has no idea how to run a quality MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game). Though, I’d debate that 24 players constitutes an MMORPG. Perhaps MORPG (multiplayer online role playing game) more accurately describes Fallout 76. I digress.
Worse, it’s not limited to image loading.
There are many problems with Fallout 76’s graphics including, but not limited to, seeing god rays through rocks, seeing image artifacts on trees when looking downhill, low res textures, poor quality lighting and this list goes on and on. Comparing Fallout 4’s graphics to Fallout 76, there really is no comparison. Fallout 4 looks sharp and crystal clear. Its sun and effects look realistic.
In Fallout 76, the sun disc used to have a horizontal lens flare effect. This was early when the game first released. In later releases, this lens flare effect was inexplicably removed and has never been added back. It’s still not back. The distance effects look bad and I mean really, really bad. The distance effects in Fallout 4 were fair, but looked mostly okay. There are definitely better graphics engines, like Ubisoft’s AnvilNext, but Fallout 4 did a decently respectable job for its engine.
In Fallout 76, the whole graphics system has taken a huge step backwards. The rendering is worse, overall. Some of this I get. The devs needed to reduce how much is required to download over the network. Otherwise, the network chatter would be too overloaded and the game wouldn’t function, particularly with gamers on slower networks. I get that. But, at the same time, it makes the game look amateur. This is one of those times where a AAA developer should have withheld the game and decided not to release it.
You can release junk or you can release nothing. Junk turns your brand sour. Releasing nothing increases expectation of the next product. Bethesda should stick to what they do best. Single player offline video games. Stay way from these online games where not only does Bethesda clearly have no experience, they have learned nothing since launching The Elder Scrolls online. At least use that MMORPG as a learning experience. Nope, they started over from scratch and had to relearn everything they already learned from ESO. Even then, Fallout 76 is still stumbling through mistake after mistake… mistakes that had already been corrected long ago in ESO.
Grinding and more Grinding
Grinding has always been a thing in most MMOs. Grinding is the way for the game developer to keep gamers interested in the game. Developers must ask themselves, “How much grinding is too much?” Bethesda, unfortunately, hasn’t asked itself that question and has firmly led Fallout 76 into the territory of too much grinding.
In fact, in Fallout 76, you’ll spend more time grinding for resources than doing just about any other activity in the game. Even going into final battles is less about the combat and more about grinding for XP, eating food and the loot drops. No one goes into the Queen battle to actually kill the Queen. They go into it because of what they’ll get from her in the end and what they’ll get from when the quest closes successfully. It’s not about the combat, it’s about what drops you get.
That’s not good game design. That’s crap design. You want to design a game for gamers to want to engage in the combat because of the combat, not because of loot drops. Unfortunately, because the combat in Fallout 76 is so exceedingly bad, the only thing we can look forward to at the end of a Queen event is the drops. In fact, I believe all of the loot the Queen drops should stop being dropped period. No more random queen loot drops. Instead, she should drop only caps and scrip (the newest currency you get when you sell Legendary items). This currency can then be redeemed at a vendor in the game world, such as at the legendary vendor Purveyor Murmrgh. This currency can then be obtained in other ways throughout the game. This means that if you choose not to do the Queen event, you can still get the same loot in alternative ways and using alternative means. You’re not beholden to join a combat event simply to obtain flux, legendary items or plans or whatever other things the Queen usually drops. Instead, no matter which role playing choice you choose to follow in the world, you still have equal chance of getting choice weapons, armor and loot drops. An open world RPG should allow for multiple paths to get to the same point.
Open World RPG
An open world RPG is about being able to do things in whatever way the gamer chooses. If the gamer wants to focus on crafting, they should be able to skill-tree up through a crafting system. If the gamer wants to focus on combat, there should be a combat skill-tree. No one skill-tree should become THE skill-tree. In Fallout 76, if you choose not to adopt combat as your skill-tree choice, you really can’t get much from the game. Further, loot drops in the world should not be unique to a specific triggered event. All loot drops should be equally available throughout the world to all skill-trees… perhaps, as I suggested above, by dropping currency rather than weapons and armor. The currency can then be exchanged for weapons and armor.
However, certain “main quest” quests may be required for all players and these required drops should allow all players to access and use certain fundamental items necessary for later main quests. However, all tertiary quest loot drops should be available in differing ways to all player types.
Stable Flux is a good example of this. This resource should be available in ways other than by visiting nuke zones. You should be able to buy this resource in the world from at least one in-game-world vendor. Grahm is a wandering Super Mutant vendor and is a very capable and shrewd vendor. Because he’s constantly traveling the wasteland, he’s the perfect vendor to sell stable flux. Not only does it make sense that he can wander into nuke zones and gather and refine flux, he can then sell it to us. Perhaps not in large quantities, but he should at least always have it on him to buy.
Flux shouldn’t be the one and only one needed resource in the game where the gamer is required to gather it under very limited and specific conditions that rarely occur. This part of the game was entirely a mishandled by Bethesda. Bethesda also needs to recognize that there is more than one play style that can be had in an RPG world. It needs to recognize that not all gamers go into Fallout 76 for the gun combat. Many do, but not everyone does. For those who choose not to go for the combat, the game itself penalizes this style of gamer by not allowing easy access to the rarer items in the game. In other words, you are forced into Fallout 76 for the combat if you want to gain access to the rarest items in the game. To be more balanced with all gamer types, Bethesda needs to rethink this stance.
Power Armor
One of the biggest introductions into the Fallout franchise was the addition of power armor. This is heavy armor powered by a fusion core. When you enter the armor, the character is encased entirely in a metal shell covered over by pieces of armor. These armors have specific ratings and have specific attributes.
In Fallout 4, Power Armor was considered the strongest armor in the game, particularly if you wore Legendary pieces. If you had a certain set of power armor, you were practically invincible under most conditions. However, the armor did take damage and break. In Fallout 4, power armor breaks relatively quickly… particularly the legs. While it protects you well, it also damages quickly. The legs were the weakest parts of the whole set.
Unfortunately, in Fallout 76, Power Armor has actually become a joke. It’s easily the weakest armor set in the game. It’s weaker than its corresponding sets in Fallout 4. It’s weaker than even Marine armor found in the game. For example, wearing power armor in Fallout 76 sees absolutely zero protection against a level 52 Colonel Gutsy shooting 5.56 ammo… even if your character is level 150 or 300. A single bullet from a Colonel Gutzy with 5.56 eats straight through the armor and damages at least 1/10th of the HP bar. It might even damage more than this per shot. This is entirely bugged. Certainly, in Fallout 4, 5.56 loaded Gutsy did eat through health rapidly, it’s not nearly as rapid as it is in Fallout 76. The two tertiary benefits to power armor is its radiation protection benefit and its ability to fall from any height without sustaining HP damage. Yet, its armor protection levels are exceedingly weak.
This power armor problem has only gotten worse, not better. Power Armor is now even harder to maintain. When Fusion Core generators used to offer 100% charged fusion cores, Bethesda has changed the rules of the game and they now only provide 50% charged fusion cores. This means you now have to carry double the amount of fusion cores that you formerly had to carry when they were 100% charged. Now if you want 100% charged fusion cores, you need to make them with Flux or hope that the energy power plants still provide 100% charged cores in those workshop generators. Admittedly, those power plant generators used to offer 100% charged cores every 7 minutes, but with Bethesda’s revisionist tendencies, I haven’t tested this to find out if they still do. My guess is that they now provide 50% charged fusion cores.
Worse, most fusion cores randomly found sitting around in the game outside of a generator have a 25% or less charge. I don’t even get this change. Bethesda, do you want us to use Power Armor or not? It clearly seems that by making these silly reductions that Bethesda doesn’t want us to actually use Power Armor. So then, why even include Power Armor in the game? If they want to restrict the use of power armor, simply raise the weight of the fusion cores. Leave them at 100%, but raising the weight means carrying less.
One last thing about Fallout 76 and Power Armor is the lack of legendary armor pieces. While Fallout 4 had multiple legendary pieces of Power Armor (chest, legs, arms, etc), there is not a single piece of legendary power armor in Fallout 76. Not a single piece. Yet there is every type of regular armor in a one, two and three star legendary format. Even worse, for PVP purposes, Power Armor is weaker than level 5 regular armor when the combatant has perk card Tank Killer equipped at maximum. What’s the point in having and wearing Power Armor when a card like Tank Killer is available? Talk about overpowered and needing a rebalance. Tank Killer is one card that needs to go.
It’s crystal clear, Bethesda devs don’t want us using Power Armor. It has no legendary effects, it’s weak overall and the game offers up such stupid perk cards as Tank Killer that bypass armor ratings. So then, what’s the point? Even regular armor is stronger than this. It’s okay to provide a card like Tank Killer if an equal and opposite perk card is available to counteract Tank Killer and strengthen the Power Armor. But, there is no equal and opposing card. Yet another design miss that has never been corrected. In fact, none of these power armor issues have ever been addressed in Fallout 76.
Characters, Loot and Caps and Requested Features
This is another issue that has not ever been discussed or addressed and has existed since release. Fallout 76 allows players to create up to 5 different characters to use in Fallout 76. How we choose to use those characters is up to us. If one of our players has progressed well beyond level 15, yet still has a level 15 set of power armor, it’s stuck in that character’s inventory. How about letting us share the wealth between our characters? What if I want to transfer scrip, caps or pioneer scout credit between characters. Atom is a global currency available to all characters. Why not scrip, caps and pioneer scout credit?
Bethesda has yet to address or even offer a system for transfer of caps, loot, weapons or armor between our 5 characters. Instead, we have to rely on a third party to temporarily hold and then hand back our loot, caps, armor and weapons. I mean, seriously. Why do I have to make friends with a random on Fallout 76 just to impose on them and have them hold my stuff simply to transfer between characters?
Instead of giving gamers what we want from this game, like the above suggested feature, Bethesda spends time creating Biv and Distillers (unnecessary), the backpack (pointless), Fasnacht (stupid), Meat Week (lame), Scrip (really?), Nuclear Winter (not needed), Survival mode (minimally even used) and Atom Shop items (expensive). All of these developments so far are definitely inconsequential and meaningless to the overall Fallout 76 base story.
How about overhauling the perk system and give us perk card load outs? Let us, at one click, rearrange our perk cards without having to go into the perk card system and manually, one-by-one switch them in and out. Note, this feature is heavily needed after reaching level 50 when SPECIAL points are capped. You can’t add or rearrange your SPECIAL points, but you can rearrange perk cards at will. So, why not add something we want, like 5 perk card preset load-outs? This allows us to set our character up for a bloodied build or a shotgun build or an explosives build or even eating food build with one click? Why don’t we have this feature? Why carry around a bunch of equipped random useless perk cards when they’re not needed. Only equip them when they need to be used… like equipping camp cards when in camp or crafting cards when crafting. It’s insane to expect us to spend time rearranging our cards for 5-10 minutes before we can begin an activity. You certainly cannot spend time in the middle of combat doing this. But you could easily single click a favorite perk card load out to load while in the middle of combat… particularly if a gun breaks and you need to switch weapons and combat tactics.
In fact, why aren’t there armor load outs? Why do I have to manually go and load each armor piece manually. Why can’t I create an armor load out and then favorite it? Then, when I need it, simply select the load-out favorite and that set of armor is immediately worn. It makes no sense what Bethesda is doing with this game. How about giving us requested features rather than these mostly stupid additions? How about fixing long standing bugs? How about giving us gamers some love rather than a bunch of hate (banning tons of gamers for duping without actually knowing if they did).
Rebalancing and Revisionism
A revisit to Fallout 76 a year later wouldn’t be complete without discussing Bethesda’s constant and incessant meddling with Fallout 76’s rules. With any game, be it a board game or a video game, a set of established rules must exist when a game launches. These rules govern how the game is to be played. You’ll understand why I bring up board games in just a moment.
With video games, particularly with MORPG games like Fallout 76, the game developer seems to think they can randomly change the rules like they can their hat or their clothes or shoes. It doesn’t work that way. Establishing and maintaining a set of consistent and constant rules in which a game operates is fundamental to learning how to play a game.
Yet, Bethesda has invalidated rules, changed rules, reduced rules, increased rules and mucked with the innards of the rules with each and every release under the guise of “balancing”. Let’s circle back around to board games. If Hasbro decided to rewrite Monopoly’s rules based on the way “many” play Monopoly at home, many people would be rightly angry. The official rules have been established to play the game in a specific “official” way. Sure, some people personally change the official rules for expediency. For example, following every Monopoly rule exactly to the letter could mean an extremely long drawn out game. Therefore, people have changed and simplified the rules to reduce the duration of such a long game. Some people aren’t in it for the long haul, they simply want to play the game in 20 or 30 minutes and end it. There are a number of board games that have alternative rule sets that lead to shorter play times. These alternative rule sets are not official, but they exist to allow players to enjoy the game without all of the minutiae required when using the official rules.
With Fallout 76, a video game, it’s still a game… not unlike a board game. Much of the game is automated, interactive and visual, but it’s still nonetheless a game… a game with an established set of rules. We learn these rules quickly.
However, when a game developer decides to alter the rules continually, it’s difficult to keep up with an ever changing set of new rules. This is why establishing a single set of rules and maintaining that set consistently is the answer. Modifying the rules every month means no one can know what the rules are today, tomorrow or in a month. You can’t adequately play a video game if the official rules are constantly changing. This is why revisionism in video games is ultimately detrimental to a video game and to the video game industry as a whole. Consistency in a video game is the key to success. Variability leads to failure… particularly in a role playing game where rules define what makes an RPG an RPG.
Improvements?
Has Fallout 76 improved since its release? No, it hasn’t. Certainly, Bethesda has added new, but mostly inconsequential features such as backpacks, limited duration events offering cosmetic item drops, liquor that’s worse than the original already in the game, money making cosmetics to its store and a few pay-to-win features (scrap and repair kits). But there is little here that offers solid well crafted, thoughtful additions that make that game world a more compelling play experience. These additions have been weak, shallow experiences lasting short amounts of time and, frankly, leave a bad taste in the mouth. Many of them are not even in keeping in the Fallout universe… I’m looking at you Nuclear Winter.
Slowly and at the same time, Bethesda is gutting the game of its original rules and methodically replacing them with a new rule set. These new rules are intended to slow the player’s progression down, make the game even more grindy, keep the gamer playing longer to potentially visit the Atom store and actually buy something, you know, with real money.
Unfortunately, the actual base game has not improved. It is still the same mess it was when it was released nearly one year ago. The same bugs that existed then still exist today. Sure, a few have been fixed, but far too many are still active. Worse, in Bethesda’s zeal to add new content, they have broken more mechanics than they have fixed. What this means is that while the game has added new content, it’s come with a steep price of even more bugs on top of the existing bugs. It’s a never ending bugfest compounded by even more bugs created by each add-on.
Worse, Bethesda is clearly not using standard code practices. There have been many instances where bugs fixed in one release reappear in the next release. This regression behavior isn’t possible if a company is using industry standard coding, code storage and release practices. Regression bugs are not possible when code is properly documented, when it’s checked in properly and when one person can’t overwrite a previous coder’s changes. It’s crystal clear, Bethesda’s code and release practices for Fallout 76 are an unmitigated disaster. Not only is the game itself a disaster, so are Bethesda’s coding practices. It’s clear, Bethesda hasn’t the first clue how to write and maintain a 24/7 always on service, let alone a video game… let alone software.
As an example of this horrible coding, Bethesda introduced a new bug that caused all red headlamps found in the game world to inexplicably become Atom Shop restricted items. When an in-game item is marked with the Atom Shop symbol, it cannot be dropped or sold to other players. This meant you could no longer sell red headlamps mods or helmets with a red headlamp found or created in the game because the red headlamps became restricted. This meant that you, likewise, couldn’t at all sell power armor sets containing a red headlamp that, you know, you have found in the game world while this bug was active. Bethesda was extremely slow to respond to fix this bug. It took them about 1 month before it was finally addressed… even though they roll patches weekly.
Another bug they introduced in July saw to it that gamers with a large number of power armor sets had to spend a large amount of time reassembling all of these sets of armor. In July, Bethesda separated all of the power armor pieces from their corresponding power armor frames. This meant spending not only the time to reassemble all of the power armor sets one-by-one, it meant being heavily overencumbered. For example, I had at least 10 sets of power armor on my player. Some were also in my stash. When they separated all of the power armor pieces, they all dropped all armor pieces separately into my player’s inventory… even from those that were in the stash box. This meant that my character ended up carrying about 500-600 more in carry weight after that patch. Because my character was not in camp when this occurred, I couldn’t fast travel back there. To reassemble power armor, you have two options. Deploy the power armor and reinsert all of the pieces wherever you are in the world or do it on a power armor station. The former method can be done anywhere, but you’re easily and frequently interrupted by combat. Because the power armor frame only remains out for a maximum of 60 seconds, you don’t have much time to do this… and it’s easy to run out of time. Doing it on a power armor station, there is no 60 second timer as long as you’re crafting.
Because a bunch of my frames were in the stash, I couldn’t get access to those except either at a train station or at my base. Because my base was closer than a train station, I had to spend time hoofing my overencumbered character back to the base so I could reassemble. This probably took 30 minutes because of the AP problem and enemies. Then, when I got there, I had to drop each and every frame down, reassemble and then do it over and over until all were reassembled. All told, this issue took close to 1.5 hours. All so that Bethesda could “rework” the Power Armor which, by the way, is still just as broken as it was before the patch. Whatever they did didn’t do anything to fix the underlying problems. Worse, instead of you know, actually playing the game, I was messing about with fixing up something that I shouldn’t have had to fix. When patches encroach on the user experience, you REALLY need to think long and hard about releasing these patches. Bethesda’s patch could have easily auto-reassembled all of the armors after the patch so that the users didn’t have to spend time doing this. They have access to all of this on their system internally. There’s absolutely no reason why I (and so many other players) had to spend our gaming time screwing about with reassembling power armor sets when we could have been, you know, actually questing… the reason we actually bought this game in the first place.
In short, the game has not improved. In fact, it is pretty much the same exact disaster it was when it released almost one year ago. In many ways, it’s actually worse. The base game has not improved at all.
What has been added to the game is inconsequential and, for the most part, unnecessary. The backpacks are, in fact, entirely pointless and even moreso once they released the plans into the overseer’s cache without the need to go through the convoluted Boy Scout quests. Instead of the backpack, the devs could have simply raised the carry weight on our characters. No, backpack needed. The backpack was simply an Atom shop marketing gimmick to get people to buy into their expensive ‘skins’ to make the backpack more “visually pleasing”. Does it really matter if your backpack looks like a Nuka Cola cooler or a piece of luggage? In fact, most of the Atom Shop skins that have been crafted are actually quite ugly. The basic backpack is functional looking and at least looks like a backpack. The other backpacks are horrendously ugly contraptions strapped to your back. The Nuka Cola cooler could have looked cool if it weren’t completely covered up by a bunch of horrendously ugly straps obscuring most of the Nuka Cola logo. If it had simply been a Nuka Cola branded cooler backpack with no straps at all, that would have been fine. This skin needs a major rework.
Game Modes
As of this article, there three game modes available:
- Adventure Mode — This is the original game mode that was introduced upon release. It still contains nearly all of the same bugs it did when it was released.
Survival Mode— This game mode has been retired as of October 1st, 2019. This mode was introduced early in 2019 and offers what Bethesda claimed to be a more challenging experience. Well, it wasn’t. It’s was simply an annoying experience. It was intended as a PVP environment, but was nothing more than a way for PVP players to run around shooting one another other in a Death Match style playground. In fact, if you tried to actually quest in a Survival Mode server, you wouldn’t get very far before being killed by another player. It was actually worse than that, too. In this PVP environment, there’s was no level based combat. A level 300 player can hang out in newbie territory picking off level 2 players solely for fun. At least Nuclear Winter has leveled the playing field so that level 300 users and level 5 users have similar odds of winning because it’s not about the level, it’s about the strategy.- Nuclear Winter Mode — This game mode is a Battle Royale game (aka, Last Man Standing). Ever user starts out with a new level based on this game mode. Levels, abilities and weapons from Adventure do not work in Nuclear Winter. You must find all of this stuff when playing Nuclear Winter and it only lasts as long as the tournament lasts. Nuclear Winter was introduced entirely to placate Fortnite and Apex Legends players and attempt to attract those same gamers into Fallout. It hasn’t worked. It’s a game mode that does not in any way belong in the Fallout universe. This game mode is not exactly fun, but it is tedious. It’s all about who can find the biggest weapons, best armor, kill the most and hide the best. There’s nothing really challenging here. Fallout needs to drop following industry gaming trends and innovate. Come up with new gaming ideas instead of rehashing old ideas in tired and uninspired ways. Worse, this game mode does not at all fit into the idea of Fallout. If Bethesda wants to create these derivative games, at least create them separately using a newly created franchise with new characters and abilities. Don’t tack it onto Fallout simply because you can.
Overall
Fallout 76’s play value and bugs are very much the same as they were on release day. The exception is, of course, that in Bethesda’s zeal to add a bunch of new stuff, they have broken even more in the process. In fact, I’d say Bethesda has broken at least half as much more stuff than was already broken. Worse, they have broken previously functional and working features. An example is when they added the distillery. For the distillery to work, they added a new mechanic to “spoil” the fermentable liquors to turn them into drinkable liquors. What that meant was a spoil bar on the item that timed down until the liquor was fully fermented and drinkable. Unfortunately, when the devs touched this part of the game code, they screwed up the speed of spoilage for the rest of the food items (and even fusion cores) within the game. This meant that while ‘fermentable beer’ fermented faster, it also meant that meat, veggies and even fusion cores, spoiled at a much faster rate. Whoops. Big bug.
Did Bethesda correct this problem quickly (or at all)? No. Once that bug was introduced it was here to stay. Food and drink still spoils much faster than it did before that game addition. Even fusion cores run out far, far faster than they did before that addition. Does Bethesda care? No. Do they intend fixing the problem? No.
This is why revisionism in the video game industry has no place. This is why a simple brown paper bag, a simplistic container, still barely works properly. When developers don’t care to fix even the most basic bugs let alone new bugs, then why should I (or any other consumer) care to spend money on these lackluster games? Once Bethesda begins to care about its gamer audience again, I might consider returning. Until then, Bethesda, you’re on your own without my money.
Update — Survival Mode
As of October 1st, Survival Mode Beta ironically didn’t survive. Bethesda has removed this mode from the game entirely. Clearly, its adoption rate was minimal and limited. This is an unfortunate turn of events for Adventure Mode players. What that means is that Bethesda is likely to revisit enabling even more PVP activities in Adventure Mode since the disappearance of Survival Mode. That means ganging up what was Survival mode into Adventure Mode again. This is something I’m not anxious to see return to Adventure Mode.
In fact, I wanted Bethesda to remove all PVP elements from Adventure Mode and make Survival Mode 100% PVP. However, since the introduction of Nuclear Winter, it seems they no longer want to focus on Survival Mode considering its lackluster adoption rate. Still, I’m not say to see it go as it did nothing for me. I’m not an active PVP player, so the point to Survival Mode had weak play value. Nuclear Winter is the ‘hot new thing’. If anything, what this shows is the fickleness of the demographic who currently plays Fallout 76. Once players have had their fill of the Nuclear Winter experience, I’d fully expect Bethesda to wind down that game mode also as users stop playing it.
10:50PM Oct. 1st — Updated to reflect that Bethesda has retired Survival Mode.
While this article endeavors to answer what happened to Fallout 76, it hasn’t in any way addressed why it happened. I may consider delving into this topic in the future if there’s enough reader interest. Please comment below if you’d like to see this additional topic explored.
↩︎
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
leave a comment