Article on games phoning home… July 12, 2008 cliffski And why it isn’t all bad. Written by a talented indie developer: http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2008/07/13/game-phone-home/1 And apparently you can ‘digg’ it here: http://digg.com/pc_games/Why_you_should_let_games_phone_home
Nice article. Hmm, I’m wondering if a large scale closed beta where testers give their consent to mass data-harvesting is a good idea…
I say just do it. Add it into your games, tell people it’s there and get on with it. If having that data really is that valuable to you and your long term success as a developer then losing a few customers over it isn’t a big deal. Change happens as a result of someone taking that inital risk of trying something new; and hell, if it all goes wrong just don’t include it in your next game, or remove it and rerelease the game it was included with.