In case you didn't catch it, gaming industry leaders have recently formed the Fair Play Alliance, dedicating to combating toxicity of online players, but former team lead of Blizzard's World of Warcraft has now called it a "bad idea".
Kern recent tweet reflects on the Alliance, pointing at inherent sinister nature of "creating a network of companies to share data on you". With the recent ruckus around Facebook's mishandled data, Kern's concerns indeed hold water.
The FPA's members, as you may know, are top names from the gaming industry, including the likes of Epic, Riot Games and even Kern's former employer, Blizzard. We, on the other hand, can't seem to come to grips with the irony of Blizzard, Riot and CCP pretending as if they actually care.
FPA
He pointed out that the initiative can only result in an "industry wide blacklist of customers", which does seem like the only realistic thing the Alliance can do, other than talk themselves to death.
The tweet also touches on the fact that being offended over anything and everything seems to be the norm these days, which further makes the need for Alliance questionable. In fact, Kern says that attempting to police people's behaviour outside of their own games is a downright bad idea, and we'd agree.
Kern is indeed on the right track here, because anyone with half a mind knows that toxicity of online players is a much broader issue, which couldn't be fixed by all the companies in the world, no matter their intentions.
We'd normally not fault them for trying, but with such capacity for misuse and making the problem even worse, we just don't see the point of the FPA. Well, other than these companies using it as proof of their heroic efforts in combating toxicity as they continue to ignore their share of responsibility in the matter.
After all, it most certainly wasn't us who have been choosing to turn a blind eye to the issue, for fear of hurting their profit margins. And we all know you cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
