Submit a Story!
Votes
vote down flag
Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell
techcrunch.com - 21 days ago
Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell
—
Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with ...

Blog Reactions

Welcome to Spinksville!:  The Morality of Free to Play

Tobold's MMORPG Blog:  Getting tired of Facebook games

Cliffski's Blog:  Social games, unsocial methods

More
Comments
Blog Reactions

The Morality of Free to Play
Welcome to Spinksville! — ... Michael Arrington has an essay on TechCrunch called Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell. And he’s asking who actually pays for the massively popular social games that are taking over Facebook. You might think that games like Farmville are free to play with options for players to spend real money on buying extra assets in game if they want. And then the micropayments fund the game. You’d be right, but that’s not the whole story. ...

Getting tired of Facebook games
Tobold's MMORPG Blog — ... If I continue that for a while, I'll be able to afford a tractor, which presumably will save me some clicking. But the fuel for the tractor can apparently only be bought with "Farm Cash", which you can only get with real money, or by signing up for "free" FarmCash from advertisers. Surprise, surprise, mbp warns me that many of these "free" offers are scams, with users involuntarily signing up for some subscription they didn't want, and ending up paying more for the "free" Farm Cash than if they had just bought it. ...

Social games, unsocial methods
Cliffski's Blog — There is a current huge growth in ’social’ games and ‘free forever!’ online games. I’ve seen a lot of online discussion trying to persuade people to jump on both bandwagons. I’ve never really liked them, or their methods, and today I encountered this: (from) http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/ quote: A typical scam: users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the ...

The Future of Offer Monetization in Social Games
Inside Social Games — ... When it comes to offer quality, much of the concern is focused on offers that don’t clearly disclose their terms to users – for example, mobile content subscriptions that end up billing users monthly without clearly explaining that up front. Every offer network says they eradicate low-quality offers, and new companies entering the space say they’re doing the same. But there are still some deceptive offers out there, and an important question is how widespread they really are. Many developers are self-selecting away from these offers in order to provide a good ...

Zynga CEO Speaks On Offers, We Provide Some Context
Inside Social Games — Advertising offers have been a key way for some social games to make money. And, there have been recurring questions about them (most recently on TechCrunch), as some offers are scams. Today, Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus has published a blog post explaining his company’s position in more detail. What he says matters because Zynga is the single largest social gaming company on Facebook, and it has also been using offers for many months. In the post, Pincus defends the concept of the offer, points out that it does not make up a ...

Op Ed
Blue's News — ... themselves not to walk down the path of evil on their first time playing a game. His own game, Fable, allows players to either be good or evil, and evidence suggests that players actually prefer good. While it's a given that there are players out there who will choose to shoot as many civilians as possible for a laugh (and really, I don't think a laugh is a bad thing, even if it is in bad taste), it's totally reasonable to expect that many players will choose to do the 'right' thing. TechCrunch - Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell . In short, these games try to get ...

Scamville
Zen of Design — An excellent read: Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success. The articles at the bottom are almost as good: I finally came ...

Don’t Facebook In Anger: Gaming Scams?
Rock, Paper, Shotgun — ... , but it’s… well, it’s the sort of thing I think we should all read and talk about. It’s the techcrunch article about the propensity of iffy ways that social-game monetize themselves and is catchily entitled “Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell”. It’s incendiary stuff, arguing the whole social-gaming bubble is in a self-enforcing cycle towards the dark side. As in, companies who scam make more money than those which don’t, so they advertise more, so… well, it’s a nasty cycle. By means of balance, the annoyed ...

Blogger Says Farmville Ads are "Scams"
The Escapist : Latest News — ... is this: A significant majority of game revenues (as much as 70 percent, according to one executive) can come out of these offers and small-time studios desperate for income, not to mention the social networks themselves, which take their own hefty cut, are hesitant to bite the hands that feed them. Meanwhile, companies that refuse to take part find themselves falling further and further behind in the battle for monetization. The end result, Arrington says, is a self-perpetuating "social gaming ecosystem of hell" in which bad behavior breeds success - and more bad behavior - ...

The Scamville Debate - Arrington Vs. Social Games
Worlds In Motion — ... Social gamers are being scammed. So says Michael Arrington of TechCrunch last weekend, who wrote that the big three developers—Zynga, Playfish and Playdom—use "completely unethical" methods of making money off players who think they’re getting free in-game currency for filling out an I.Q. survey or signing up for a free CD from Video Professor. ...

Indie Games Panel in NYC Tonight (and Scamville)
Play This Thing — ... Also, there's been a bit of a todo in recent days over the Scamville post on TechCrunch, which delves into the fraudulent nature of many of the "offers" used by social network games to monetize idiots. Amusing and worth reading. ...

WoW Pandas are Nothing Compared to This
Journeys with Jaye — ... Compare that with what’s going on over in Facebook land, where blogging crusader Michael Arrington ripped the bandaid off of the seedy side of RMTs.  Facebook games like Farmville are built around a different philosophy:  hook the player in, and squeeze them for every cent you can, any way you can.  What Arrington exposed is how companies entice players into signing up for deceptively worded offers to receive virtual currency for their game.  He pointed out that companies who did not resort to scams were falling further and further behind, and he raised the question of ...

Lessons From Facebook Scams
Player Versus Developer — ... Last week, Tech Crunch managed to call some attention to these sorts of scams being run on free-to-play item-store games on Facebook. Players thought they were taking some survey in exchange for item shop currency on Farmville or Mafia Wars, and wound up with massive cell phone bills. Everyone responsible is very sorry that they got caught, which means that we're nigh certain to hear about something similar in a few months. ...

Developers Corner (Facebook Social games and fraud)
Gamers Rights Law — ... The whispering that started and turned into a roar is from an article by Techcrunch. Besides the tabloid-worthy headline, the story tells of the many complaints now being received about some applications in Facebook. From the story, “Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success.” ...

Scamville Juxtaposition
The Ancient Gaming Noob — ... ) points out that while TechCrunch was going after Zynga’s scam ad driven virtual goods business all last week, over at the New York Times they were working on a piece that ran on Saturday about ...

Zynga Removes Facebook Advertising Promotions
Edge Online - Interactive Entertainment Today — Cost-per-action advertising, which contributes up to a third of the FarmVille and Mafia Wars maker's revenues, removed until Zynga can control its implementation itself. Zynga had been under fire from web business blog TechCrunch for featuring CPA advertising for subscriptions to mobile phone information services, which contravened Facebook's terms and conditions because, masquerading as such playthings as IQ quizzes, they did not clearly state the player is required to start a $10-$20 service subscription to take part. New game FishVille , which featured CPA advertising, ...

Zynga CEO Admits to Being a Scammer
The Escapist : Latest News — ... to put way more into advertising than other, more legitimate Facebook videogame developers that have been struggling to get attention. The Zynga CEO has since vowed to removed these scams, because he got publicly caught no doubt, and indeed they seem to have been removed from at least FarmVille . In the future, if you're dying for more cash to buy a videogame item, it's probably best not to download the "zwinky toolbar." The full TechCrunch article detailing Zynga's scamming is available here . (Via: ...

Hard-a-port! Is Riccitiello’s strategy to turn the Electronic Arts supertanker working?
Games Brief — ... , the “best” developer of games on Facebook. That statement is subjective since Zynga is clearly much larger, but Playfish has lavished care and attention on its products, shunned the worst excesses of the “offer scams” and clearly aimed to create and nurture long-term, innovative, intellectual properties, something that even the most ardent supporters of its rivals could not say about them. ...

Offerpal Sets New Ad Standards As Facebook Bans Offer Providers
GameSetWatch — ... The issue came to a head several weeks ago when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington confronted Offerpal and wrote a series of scathing articles about the social gaming industry's "lead gen scams". Offerpal co-founder and former CEO Anu Shukla ...

Offerpal Sets New Ad Standards As Facebook Bans Offer Providers
Worlds In Motion — ... The issue came to a head several weeks ago when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington confronted Offerpal and wrote a series of scathing articles about the social gaming industry's "lead gen scams". Offerpal co-founder and former CEO Anu Shukla ...

Related Content
Indie Games Panel in NYC Tonight (and Scamville)
playthisthing.com 17 days ago — Those of you in New York may want to go out tonight to see Cactus , Messhof and Auntie Pixelante (aka Anna Anthropy) on a panel at NYU. 6PM, 721 Broadway near 8th Street; more here . Also, there's been a bit of a todo in recent days over the Scamville post on TechCrunch , which delves into ...
News - Social Gaming Summit: In-Depth On The State Of Social Gaming
gamasutra.com 6/26/2009 — Social gaming is in a rapid phase of growth and upheaval, with a variety of platforms and companies competing for significance. The first panel at the 2009 Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco featured several notable figures in the arena: ...
Where’d the Social Go?
nerfbat.com 7/10/2009 — I’m not a social MMO player. I prefer to play solo, and perhaps get together with a few friends to take on particularly challenging adventures. That said, where the hell did the social go in MMOs? Why do I feel like I’m playing a solo game among anonymous (N)PCs, no longer the ...