NeoEdge, EULAs, and Morality

You'd be amazed how brazen some companies can be in the process of invading other people's privacy. Two weeks ago, my editor forwarded me an e-mail from NeoEdge Networks, an advertising company that's working on developing software to integrate in-game ads into both casual and mainstream games. He wasn't really interested in doing anything with their blatant PR pitch, but he knew that I'm a pretty avid gamer, so he passed it along, and I greedily accepted the company's request for an interview during which they could "brief [me] on trends in optimized distribution of integrated game and in-context ad content."

What with SIGGRAPH taking up most of my time last week, I got pretty busy, so I wasn't able to do anything until this past Friday, when I finally got the chance to read up a bit on NeoEdge about an hour before the interview was scheduled. What I read on their website, laid out for anyone to peruse, positively shocked me: "NeoEdge's powerful reporting capabilities provide unsurpassed insight into your consumer's usage patterns. Information about each user's playing and downloading patterns are stored locally. This information is aggregated and sent back so that games providers can see the usage patterns for their games periodically."

Pardon me? My playing and downloading patterns? Not only is NeoEdge's software a phone-home program like Microsoft's WGA, it actually tracks personal information and download habits and sends it back? I'm sorry, but I can't quite see the difference between that and common spyware. Is it just me?

Well, needless to say, I was pretty excited about the coming interview, though I was sure to play it cool as it started up. I got on the phone with Srikanth Desikan, VP of Product Marketing over at NeoEdge, and we started off on the basics. Srikanth explained that his company was going to be releasing a beta version of NeoZone soon, a program that, aside from providing a framework around which ads could be shown and games could be downloaded (using a proprietary, secure peer-to-peer technology), will also allow game publishers to monitor download and playing habits. What time of day a game is played; how long it's being run; what sequence games are played in; the list went on.

So I asked: "How would you respond to accusations that your program is malignant?"

"Well, we don't have to collect any information about the consumer," Srikanth said.

"Who determines whether or not information is collected?" I pointedly responded.

"The publishers, typically," he replied.

"Okay, so it falls to the publisher," I asked, "whether or not they're going to install software that could be viewed as malignant?"

"Well, our software can do a lot of things," Srikanth said.

The conversation got pretty circular pretty fast after that; I kept asking how NeoEdge could justify installing what amounts to spyware on a consumer's system, and Srikanth kept saying that they were just providing the option -- it was up to the publisher to use it. "One of the key things we do," Srikanth mentioned at one point, "is before any of our software is downloaded, we're explicit on what we do. The terms of service, the end user license agreements -- if we collect information, we say we collect information." As if shoving a string of text deep down in an EULA that no-one will read makes invasion of privacy okay.

And yet, unfortunately, doing so does make it okay. Or, at least, legal. It's an issue that's been tackled since time immemorial: is it morally right for a company to place text in an EULA allowing said company to do whatever it wants, safe with the knowledge that consumers aren't likely to even start reading it? I would think the answer to be obvious, but apparently moral grounding isn't exactly woven into the fabric of certain companies yet. No surprise, I know, but it's disappointing.

Of course, Srikanth doesn't see it as an invasion of privacy. "We can provide incentives for consumers to share information. To the extent that consumers feel that they are getting some value out of the product, they will share. We really don't coerce, go behind the scenes, capture information and ship it off to a server for analysis."

Pardon me, Mr. Desikan, but that's exactly what you do. If you're providing "incentives" for people to share personal information, you're "coercing" them into doing so. If you're hiding fine print in EULAs where someone cannot easily access it (I don't think anyone can argue that rummaging through pages and pages of legalese can be described as easy), you're keeping it hidden -- as in, not in full view. And yes, you do capture information and ship it off to servers for analysis, and you say so on your website.

The conversation eventually wound down and ended, but the thought remained in my head: even if its intentions were not malicious, how could a company like NeoEdge so blindly believe itself to be doing nothing wrong?

The answer is, obviously, money. NeoEdge even admitted it to me (without realizing it, of course) in their initial e-mail: "According to industry analysts," the e-mail said, "the market for in-game advertising is set to jump by 500 percent to reach $732 million in revenue by 2010." NeoEdge wants a piece of the pie, and they're just fine with brazenly ditching morality to get at it.