The new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) of the EU (European Union) gets in charge on 25th of May.
The regulation can be found here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679
In short you can say this regulation restricts the processing of personal data of citizens of the european union.
I already heared that some smaller game developers plan to close their titles in the EU to avoid to apply to this regulation.
My question is, does VR have this new regulation in mind and are they still planing to release Pantheon in the EU?
Hi Landbert,
To adreess the Q, we are aware of the GDPR and do not currently have plans to close our accessibility to our European brethren. We have confidence that the Union will be mindful of foreign opportunities and at this stage we intend to work within the reasonable guidelines of the regulation.
Ben Dean
Producer, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Director of Communications, Visionary Realms Inc.
That's a good point actually, well done.
Have heard it cannot be circumvented that easily; one's basically forced to have IP bans, else it's a catch 22, EU players paying you, ergo EU players' data being.. handled? Processed? Whatever's the legal jargon for this.
(someone's fondling my data!)
Would be nice if we could have a more definitive answer as time grows nearer, this could potentially be a major one. I appreciate Ben's "having confidence", but where money is involved, good will usually comes in last. And this really is about the money, end of the day. They aren't "protecting" us, they're just making sure the ones benefitting are EU taxpayers. Gotta have their cut :)
Other MMO providers must comply with the provisions of GDPR as well, so it's an industry-wide consideration. I have to imagine that by 2019 (if it doesn't exist already), there will be an industry set of "best practices" related to GDPR compliance. Basically a list of rules that say "if you have X kind of data as part of your game/service, here's what you have to do to conform to the law. Similar best practices are already being developed by companies that provide services online
It may potentially be easier for VR to stay compliant since they haven't really launched their game yet. Yes, they have some data on us as supporters, but the reality is none of us are paying a real subscription at this point. That means that VR can build protections in from the get-go to make sure they're compliant. That's a lot easier than a company like Blizzard (as an example), that already has an account system with millions of customers' data in place, and may have to go re-architect parts of that system in order to become compliant.
>For me this is great to hear, that you are still planing to release in Europe<
Let us hope so, but this is not at all what BenD said. He said they want to release in Europe but if the current proposal goes into effect as is this may not be possible.
>To adreess the Q, we are aware of the GDPR and do not currently have plans to close our accessibility to our European brethren. We have confidence that the Union will be mindful of foreign opportunities and at this stage we intend to work within the reasonable guidelines of the regulation.<
Note the word "currently". Note the phrase "at this stage". Note the confidence that the EU will be reasonable - in context the word confidence clearly means "we hope". Note the reference to the reasonable guidelines, clearly implying that some current guidelines are unreasonable and perhaps cannot be complied with.
As Nephele states this is a global issue for the MMO world not a VR or Pantheon issue, and some of the larger players are surely trying to work with the EU to let it know their issues and work towards a solution that will not cut Europeans off from American (and perhaps Asian) products.
Note that the EU is not synonymous with Europe and if the British departure goes through EU rules may be irrelevant to British players. No politics here please I am expressing no opinion whatsoever on the British exit merely mentioning the self-evident fact that it is currently planned.
As an aside, I do hope that GDPR doesn't lead to more region-locking in games in general. I have some really good gaming friends who live in EU countries, and we've done things like buy them box copies in the US and mail those to them to help them get around region-locking, all just so that they could play with us late at night/early in the morning.
That said, my understanding of GDPR is that it isn't about where data gets used, but how data gets used. So in most cases (and especially in the company I work for irl), the reaction to GDPR is to go implement those same protections for everyone, regardless of where they're located.
I certainly hope that this doesn't cause a problem. Almost any MMO that has EU servers I have spent some if not most of my time on them.
The timing works well for me since I am on EU peak hours, and on average the people seem to be nicer.
No reflection on the Americans in these forums - we are not the people I like to avoid in MMOs - but in many MMOs the U.S. servers have a far higher percentage of trolls and immature people.