Ethics is such an interesting thing. Wonder how many here are using hardware made by little kids in china, or appalling working conditions in such country.
But as long as we can get cheap electronics, is fine right?
Hcs voice packs altering other apps code?
- Thread starter Lordxenu
- Start date
Ethics is such an interesting thing. Wonder how many here are using hardware made by little kids in china, or appalling working conditions in such country.
But as long as we can get cheap electronics, is fine right?
Absolutely! But when those companies get caught doing it and people go around flashing photos of mistreated children, the company involved usually takes action.
There was some pretty conclusive videos on reddit today/yesterday.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
Apple only allowing apple products is no problem - it's UI is locked, but all that information is out there for anyone who wants to read it, so there's no hidden going on.
I think you underestimate the significance of this, there is no "public relations going forward" HCS is finished. Paul Watson has shown to have the business ethics of a rattlesnake in a community that is largely fed by people who make plugin content for the pleasure and added functionality. He's also shown a total disregard for the laws of dozens of countries, not just the UK's, and displayed an arrogance that defies beleif.
He had just ONE chance to show that it was all unintentional, that his coder had misinterpreted his request, and that he was truly sorry for affecting all the GMP users and he had no knowledge of what was going on.
He would have acheived that by (just to repeat myself) releasing an update to HCS that reverted the code back to a GMP compliant state, offering anyone who wanted one a refund on what they had bought or a credit in his store as a goodwill gesture for the months that his plugins were interfering with GMP users.
Even if it WAS intentional, he could have sown enough doubt by the above actions, that the fallout from this would have been drastically reduced. Instead he chose to change the method of delivery, but not the result, and ensured users were still unable to run HCS and GMP side by side.
The singularity profile that had this code embedded was released in october last year. That's 5 months, 5 months that GMP users couldn't use GMP - 5 months that it was reported that if you had a HCS pack, buying GMP was not an option because it wouldn't run alongside.
Someone said "you need to prove losses to sue" - I don't think it'll be hard for GMP to show a falloff in sales since October last year.
I know some people might think "it's all just so much butthurt, and QQ salty tears, but nothing will come of it", but personally I think a great many people have a vested interest in ensuring this case gets prosecuted, because people are writing apps and plugins and allsorts for 3rd party software ALL THE TIME, and such a blatent disregard for the laws that protect those individuals creating such things, NEEDS to be PUBLICLY dealt with, HCS needs to be prosecuted, or those laws are meaningless.
Anything less will make a lot of people nervous about producing such content in the future, when such an obvious and proven breach of those laws has ocurred, and the perpetrator isn't prosecuted.
I'm not out on a witch hunt - or about to burst an artery (lol) - but I am concerned that so far it doesn't look like HCS and Paul Watson is taking this very seriously, going by his first and so far only official reply to the userbase.
It doesn't matter that HCS have changed thier method in the updated version, there's enough proof out there to show they did it, and deliberately. Laws were broken, and as I've said the new method still prevents HCS and GMP working side by side, thus removing that option for the user, that up until a month or so ago was present.
HCS are saying "it's them or us" which is as blatent a breach of anti-competition laws as I've ever seen. The worst part of all this, is HCS doesn't even own VA - so to go back to the Car / bike / garage analogy it's as though you drive into a public car park and park up. HCS drives in with a Hummer and all the other cars won't start as a result, until they drive away.
The arrogance is astounding - and HCS have issued no official apologies other than forcing that coder to take the fall. I'm not even sure that coder even understands he can still be held liable for breaking those laws regardless of who gave the order. Ignorance of the law won't help, he says he was told "make that other program stop working when ours is running", and he didn't question that order but simply complied. Even soldiers in the military who are trained to "follow orders no matter what" get prosecuted when an order comes down that just seems wrong, but they do it anyway, the "Nuremburg Defense" doesn't work, never has, because people have brains.
(mostly).
Likewise, I'd suggest that you are over-estimating the significance of this.
It's a problem. HCS haven't acted well, and have been caught out. We'll have to see what happens going forward.
By contrast, look how Apple has handled the scandal of deliberately slowing down the old-model i-Phones "to preserve battery life." That has been managed very professionally (cleverly, in a devious way) so that nobody sought to join the dots to old model i-Pads also slowing down.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
I understand your viewpoint, but the consumers can't be the police for everything - at best you can make choices based on information, and frankly Apple are just as much to blame for what was going on even if they claim they had no idea - because Apple CHOSE to use a chinese manufacturer instead of say - a german one. If you tried to claim the chinese are the "best at electronics in the world" no-one with even a modicum of understanding would believe you. There's a reason why £50,000 hand crafted music systems come from Germany.
MONEY was the factor with Apple (and everyone else) choosing to use chinese manufacturing and nothing else. If you want to bang that drum, go stand outside any Apple store.
I know someone who does try to buy "ethically" and she will take the time to check, 99% of the time it costs her more money to do so, but she's a millionaire, so that's ok. Most of the rest of us don't have that choice.
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Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
LOL. Everyone has a choice.
All that matters is where you draw your personal line in the sand, it's just that most people's lines aren't straight.
I run VMX just fine without anything HCS installed. I guess that means VMX does not need any HCS resources to operate normally.
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The section that makes it not play nice is actually in their plugin and not their VoiceAttack script.
Or that, yes
And the car company claiming that there are "licensing issues" that make them unable to not screw with either your car, or the motorbike.
I'm gonna go ahead and say that I'm not super amazed by the VMX music as a whole. The compositions are very generic and IMHO not at all on the same level as, say, the standard ingame music. Still, people should not have to deal with competing products disabling VMX out of what I can only assume to be malicious intent.
Wow, do you actually own VMX or are you basing this on some demonstration videos?
What's with Apple? I certainly didn't brought them up. You seem to have an axe to grind with them, but don't bring me into your issues mate. Not my business
My comment was on every company, not a specific one (although started by the fact that someone mentioned FDev should cut ties with HCS - which in that case they should stop making games altogether, as chances are the hardware they use to write code had some "cheap labour" involved).I don't have an issue with companies having to deal, somewhere between manufacturing a product and me purchasing it, with dealing with less ethical companies. I'm not an hypocrite. We don't live in a world where you can guarantee 100% of everything you interact with has been ethically made.
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I agree.
But that's punishing yourself for the failures of others (imo). I'm certainly going to use the voicepacks I've paid for. I just won't buy any more.
Jenner
I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
In a way it was punishing myself, but I also felt like I wanted to do something other than simply not give them any more money. Besides, I've been using and enjoying gamemusicpacks for awhile now and since I cannot use them in tandem any longer I have to chose one or the other anyway.
I'm tempted to try get money back but ultimately I've got joy and use of the packs as Jenner said this just means hcs get no more of my money either through voice packs or covas.
I personally want to see an fdev response to this after getting on board with hcs I feel they need to give us some reassurances
I personally want to see an fdev response to this after getting on board with hcs I feel they need to give us some reassurances
Well, that makes sense.
If I had bought GameMusicPacks, then I would also be using their add-ins rather than HCS. I don't have to make that choice, though. Having said that, I may be tempted, as I did like the Explorer music pack and it all looks quite interesting (and sounds great).It's "interesting" that this thread was moved to an inappropriate category without even the usual "Moved" marker left in the original category. Some sweeping under the carpet, perhaps?
I agree with this statement, the new voices from FDEV will not be installed on my PC until they distance themselves from HCS.
The shadiness can only be tolerated by so much.