Stadia is back on the spotlight and not for their overhype, new games or stopping first-party games, in fact it's due to Terraria now being cancelled due to Google locking the accounts of a developer. This isn't just any developer either, this is coming from Terraria developer Andrew Spinks, who is the founder of Re-Logic.
Spinks wrote a thread on Twitter, highlighting the issue after being locked out of a Google account now for three weeks. That means access has been lost to anything purchased on Google Play, all the data on Google Drive, even the official YouTube account for Terraria cannot be accessed due to all this.
In a follow-up tweet Spinks mentioned that the bridge has been burned and so Terraria for Google Stadia is officially done and cancelled and that Re-Logic will "no longer support any of your platforms moving forward" and in another "I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little. Doing business with you is a liability."
You would think, that if it was coming to Stadia and it was already rated for it by PEGI, that Google would be keeping a close eye on it. Enough to ensure the developer can actually access anything. Apparently not.
A time where Google could really use some good news for Stadia, treating developers like this is clearly not going to go over well with anyone. This will likely put off other developers too, the damage of this happening with such a hugely popular game can't be understated.
It's a shocking reminder that many of us (myself included) rely too heavily one on single provider for multiple things. Personally, I have begun moving from Gmail wherever possible to ProtonMail and might I suggest you try it too. The trouble with Google is they are almost everywhere, I couldn't imagine losing so much and never getting an answer.
Apparently, one of the reasons it's so hard for Google to fix things is quite funny : they rely too much on their own technology. Most of the support is handled by robots. And when you've passed through several layers of useless robots, the human you think you're talking is probably an AI. It talks like a human being, but is as bad as any bot at solving things if your problem is not something that happened a million times before.
Three weeks is probaly the time it takes to reach an actual human being able to understand and solve your problem...
Quoting: ArehandoroEmail: https://www.posteo.deNice list, here is mine:
Nextcloud: https://www.thegood.cloud
Article vault: https://www.wallabag.it
Password manager: https://bitwarden.com
Comms: https://www.matrix.org (Any client will do, the official is https://element.io/get-started)
Video-conferencing: https://meet.jit.si
External Backups: https://backblaze.com
Email (incl basic webhosting): https://fastmail.com (excellent service)
Password manager: https://keepassxc.org/ (offline)
Messaging: https://signal.org/en/
External Backups: https://spideroak.com/
Maps: https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Phone Maps: https://osmand.net/
Phone Authenticator: https://freeotp.github.io/
I still end up using a few google services (maps, youtube) occasionally, but generally not as a logged-in customer.
Quoting: no_information_hereI learned not to trust Google quite a while ago, but it is certainly hard for regular people to avoid its services.
Quoting: ArehandoroEmail: https://www.posteo.deNice list, here is mine:
Nextcloud: https://www.thegood.cloud
Article vault: https://www.wallabag.it
Password manager: https://bitwarden.com
Comms: https://www.matrix.org (Any client will do, the official is https://element.io/get-started)
Video-conferencing: https://meet.jit.si
External Backups: https://backblaze.com
Email (incl basic webhosting): https://fastmail.com (excellent service)
Password manager: https://keepassxc.org/ (offline)
Messaging: https://signal.org/en/
External Backups: https://spideroak.com/
Maps: https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Phone Maps: https://osmand.net/
Phone Authenticator: https://freeotp.github.io/
I still end up using a few google services (maps, youtube) occasionally, but generally not as a logged-in customer.
Yeah, the hardest for me is definitely maps. I use openstreetmaps a lot, but the commodity to search by postcode in the UK, having updated bars/restaurants (pre-Covid19) and so on makes it a must in comparison. For bike touring and hiking though, and offline maps, osmandMaps is much, much better.
Quoting: kerossinGoogle is great at coming up with new tech solutions and running systems at a global scale but boy do they suck at supporting their customers. We've seen this countless on YouTube with dubious DMCA claims taking down channels and only after a big enough uproar do things get looked at by someone at Google.
At this rate Google will make the owner of https://killedbygoogle.com/ bankrupt because of constantly having to upgrade the hosting plan to accommodate all the dead Google projects lol.
Also, Liam makes a good point about relying on one provider for a lot of things. While it is convenient having one account but the risk of losing everything is too high. At the very least moving your email to a different provider might be good enough since email is used as a recovery method for most services so you could also lose access to other non-Google accounts if Google decides to terminate your account.
Not trying to defend Google here (I have no love for them) but the problem on Youtube is the DMCA itself and not Google/YouTube. As a provider you are not allowed to judge if a DMCA request is valid or fraudulent, you have to obey the request at all times.
Quoting: ArehandoroStill a long way ahead, at least another year for proper delivery, but people willing to get off Google in their smartphones could look into the Librem 5, or PinePhone if someone isn't a heavy phone user because the performance is still under par. Real Linux smartphones are around the corner, and we all know they're the future.
Just saying: I'm posting from a Sony XPeria XA2, running Sailfish OS. If that's not "real Linux", then I don't know what else.
Quoting: F.UltraNot trying to defend Google here (I have no love for them) but the problem on Youtube is the DMCA itself and not Google/YouTube. As a provider you are not allowed to judge if a DMCA request is valid or fraudulent, you have to obey the request at all times.Yes and no.
YouTube only has to enable such tools for the industry because they are reliant on ad revenue from the industry. Other services that function without ad revenue are much friendlier towards content creators and not so much towards others.
Of course, there are some legal concerns about copyright here, but those would not have to be ruled in favor of the plaintiff by default as is the case on Google. It is absurdly easy to file a DMCA request, but next to impossible to fight it, even if it is nonsense - every content creator can sing you a song about this.
It should be exactly the other way around.
That anyone can just file such a claim and the video gets taken down immediately is totally bonkers.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 8 February 2021 at 7:22 pm UTC
Quoting: soulsourceQuoting: ArehandoroStill a long way ahead, at least another year for proper delivery, but people willing to get off Google in their smartphones could look into the Librem 5, or PinePhone if someone isn't a heavy phone user because the performance is still under par. Real Linux smartphones are around the corner, and we all know they're the future.
Just saying: I'm posting from a Sony XPeria XA2, running Sailfish OS. If that's not "real Linux", then I don't know what else.
It is, but you had to purchase the device with Android, or from someone that installed Sailfish OS on it, and it's not supported by the vendor ;)
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