BGA yesterday, now and tomorrow

[fiomtec]

Congrats to you, guys. Hope you got a big payday from Asmodee, you deserve it.

However, I despise Asmodee and everything they are doing in the hobby, so it is very unlikely that I will renew my Premium subscription when it expires this year. As someone else has said, they are indeed the EA of board games.

[Lymon Flowers]

I would have been happy to support a community financially too. But I'm not going to do any free work for an American megacorporation.

FWIW, Asmodée is not Américan but French. That does not make it more of a likeable entity anyway.

[zenmasterliu]

RIP BGA GG NO RE

[yoyote]

Merci pour votre transparence, je vous fait confiance.

[towehaal]

I replied earlier, and now continuing to read the thread I'm more bummed.

I think this site offers Asmodee a huge data opportunity. The statistics that this site generate are huge for a company like that. I don't know that this affects users, just something I have thought about.

I worry about this site having micro transactions, loot boxes or premium currency.

Behind in terra mystica? Spend $10 in BGABucks to gain workers!

[intelekt]

Greg and Emmanuel sold the BGA user data and product of volunteer efforts to a megacorp.

They still have only posted about it on this thread. They have not announced it on the main page, twitter, facebook, or anywhere other than here. They are most certainly trying to hide their unethical actions from the users. Post this on the FRONT PAGE please.

Users deserve to know about their data being sold, volunteer developers deserve to know their efforts were for your personal financial gain, and publishers need to know that you've made money off of royalty-free handshake agreements that were based on the framing that you all weren't making much money and provided this site as a community, not a profit generator.

I agree with all of the users here who say they should have been given a warning with ample amounts of time to cancel or refund subscriptions. You also should have given us the opportunity (ESPECIALLY PAID SUBSCIBERS) to opt out and not have our data purchased. This was a grossly unethical action and you two should be ashamed of yourselves.

[MoiMagnus]

I think this site offers Asmodee a huge data opportunity. The statistics that this site generate are huge for a company like that. I don't know that this affects users, just something I have thought about.

The most important infos that Asmodée would want are currently publicly available since ... well ... almost everything you do on BGA is publicly accessible. Though I will admit don't know how legal it would be for them to gather game statistics from BGA without BGA's agreement (I'm not a lawyer).

The main change on that front is that if BGA finally decides to adds some more advanced privacy settings (which they will likely do now that they have the support from a parent company), those informations would go from "publicly available" to "owned by Asmodée" (restricted by GDPR).

[L Messi]

Greg and Emmanuel sold the BGA user data and product of volunteer efforts to a megacorp.

They still have only posted about it on this thread. They have not announced it on the main page, twitter, facebook, or anywhere other than here. They are most certainly trying to hide their unethical actions from the users. Post this on the FRONT PAGE please.

Users deserve to know about their data being sold, volunteer developers deserve to know their efforts were for your personal financial gain, and publishers need to know that you've made money off of royalty-free handshake agreements that were based on the framing that you all weren't making much money and provided this site as a community, not a profit generator.

I agree with all of the users here who say they should have been given a warning with ample amounts of time to cancel or refund subscriptions. You also should have given us the opportunity (ESPECIALLY PAID SUBSCIBERS) to opt out and not have our data purchased. This was a grossly unethical action and you two should be ashamed of yourselves.

They write:

Dear all,

For the first time in 11 years, we are unfortunately forced to removed a game (temporarily) at our own initiative.

We totally understand that some people may disagree with BGA decisions, and especially the last one concerning the alliance with Asmodee group. We don't ask every publisher to be happy or to support our decision: this is how businesses work, and sometimes you just have to conclude that you disagree as a gentleman.

Unfortunately, the publisher of Stir Fry 18 decided to attack our persons and to spread lies about our exchanges. We offer him to move the game to Premium so he can get money from it, and he agreed to do it, but continue to attack us and to lie about what we offer.

In such condition, we took the sad decision to temporarily hold our partnership. We hope that this situation will be sorted out quickly so we can make this wonderful game available again.

I hope you understand that we've no choice here.



Would you like to respond to that here?

[intelekt]

What’s to respond to? I’ve told the truth about their exploitation and they’ve decided to remove our game. It should be noted that we’ve said we would remove the game if they plan on continuing to exploit free labor while owned by a 1.3 billion dollar entity.

I think it’s pretty clear they don’t like us pointing out that this behavior is unethical. Our emails are a string of deflection and they refuse to admit this is wrong.

I’m not surprised to see this, as our game is only a very small part of BGA, and they’ve already taken their money (and meantioned they plan to leave in the future in their announcement).

Sad to see this community abused in this way. It’s been a good 4 years.

[RTKWI]

Congratulations. Looking forward to the future.