Gamers forced to use real names.

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http://www.news.com.au/technology/starc ... 5889236645

This issue has been raised in another thread, but I will certainly not use Blizz forums after this, and I'm honestly considering whether this is a legal violation. If I had known that my real ID would be used, I would never have used my real name. To retroactively force me to announce it to the world if i want to use game forums seems legally dubious at best.

how can they know if the name real or fake.

They can't be entirely sure as far as I know but if you registered as "Billy Buttf*ck" or something you'd certainly think someone would catch it. I've gotten banned from a game for living at "111 Fake Street"

Although you can sign up the account with any name (including a fake one), you can't change this information without sending photocopies of legal identification. Almost all players have likely filled in their real name without questioning it (why would they? Blizzard had a good reputation regarding privacy) and can now not change it. Although theoretically they could start a new account, they would have to repurchase all their games and lose all of their (thousands of hours of) progress.

Now, legally, Blizzard can't make this retroactive. This is because they have not consented to this use of their names, so they have to explicitly consent to it so it is done from then on. The simple solution to the problem is thus to stop using Blizzard's forums, although it remains to be seen where else Blizzard will attempt such schemes.

Honestly, I think they'll either stop or reverse their decision after due to the PR-hit and likely failure.

This is why I never put any personal information into any website, no matter what it is. When I used price comparison sites to look for insurance and they asked for my name and address, I put the name as Micky Mouse and address at 666 Devil Road, which is funny because every time they send me spam e-mails, they say "Dear Mr. Micky Mouse"

lol fake street

Blizzard are smart. As the poster after you stated, they ban/suspend you if it's obviously a fake name. They make you sign up with your real name (Or a fake one that looks real if you're really thick) and tell you your name will never be given out to any 3rd party.
THEN they tell you all forum posts are being made to show your RealID.

I play WoW, not Starcraft or Warhammer or that, and I read the WoW forums quite a lot, and it's astonishing first how Blizzard would propose such a thing, and then how they will not comment.
Original WoW post by Bliz:

Needless to say, 23hours later, the thread has 526 pages consisting of 10316 posts and 78987 views, and this is just on the European board, not to mention the US board that was topping these numbers yesterday while the European board was at a couple of thousand posts.
The majority of these being negative.
When Blizzard moderators were asked if they were going to post their names too, the reply was "Yes ". One such Blizzard worker did so, and within a few minutes, WoW forum users had his Facebook, Twitter, address, phone numbers and personal data such as mother's name, brother/sisters, right down to sattelite pictures of his house in California. (I tried to link to the thread, but Blizzard have removed it.)
Another example is shown here:
http://seewhatyoudidthere.com/2010/07/0 ... ernet-age/

Blizzard's privacy policy states:
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/ab ... .html#h3l5
[quote=Blizzard Privacy Policy]We reserve the right to disclose your personal information as required by law or in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing such information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against you if you are violating the Terms of Service or Use Agreements for a Blizzard site or product, or may be causing injury to or interference (intentionally or unintentionally) with Blizzard's rights or property, other users of a Blizzard site or product, or anyone else who could be harmed by your activities. We also reserve the right to disclose your personal information if we have a good faith belief that it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal activities. [/quote]

It then goes on to state (A change that has been made in the last day or two):
[quote=Blizzard Privacy Policy]Blizzard sites may also have message boards, forums, and/or chat areas, where users can exchange ideas and communicate with one another. When posting to a message board, forum, or chat area, please be aware that the information is being made publicly available on-line and the user does so at his or her own risk. For certain forums, anyone posting or replying to a post will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their full first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character. See discussion regarding Real ID below. [/quote]

The only information given about RealID is:
[quote=Blizzard Privacy Policy]Real ID friends can see each other’s real-life name and can see each other’s characters across all Blizzard products and services. By participating in Real ID, you will also be making your real name visible to your friend’s friends, who will also be able to invite you to become friends.

When you and a friend mutually agree to become Real ID friends, you will have access to a number of additional features, including the following:

- Real Names for Friends: Your Real ID friends will appear under their real-life names on your friends list, when chatting, communicating in-game, or viewing a character's profile.
- Cross-Realm and Cross-Game Chat: With Real ID, friends can chat cross-realm, cross-faction, and cross-game using Blizzard’s products and services.
- Rich Presence: You will see additional info on your friends list about what your Real ID friends are up to in Blizzard’s products and services in real time.[/quote]

This service is NOT an opt-in/opt-out service.
Blizzard have, as yet, not stated if the change will be Retroactive.
From what I've heard, there's no need to be worried about it, as they would never be able to show people's RealID as it is against the law in europe, and probably most other countries, to do so without prior consent. They will not be allowed to make the change retroactive either, as that would be a breach of all the 11million+ contracts that were formed before the change was announced (When the policy did NOT say about RealID being used in forums).

Even though I have to say that like the other millions of players that are now angry at Blizzard, there doesn't seem much to worry about, as the pushbacks from just the World of warcraft players has been huge, let alone Starcraft and even Diablo, who have Diablo III coming out next year, that if Blizzard DO go through with it, I could predict they'll either have no posts whatsoever or they'll go bust (As lots of payers I've spoken to have said they're going to delete subscriptions to Blizzard games if this goes through, in protest).

I still think that it's a bad move though, and as someone in the WoW thread said "Vaneras, if this is a troll, not only is it the biggest in history, it's also the dumbest one by far."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8806623.stm

A U-turn worthy of GTA. Do these companies not THINK about their policies before they bring them out? How did NOBODY in a boardroom somewhere go "I don't think people are going to go for it."

How did NOBODY seem to realize it goes against their own policies?

Not to mention its a complete overreaction to trolling and flaming.

Are people that hooked on this World of Warcraft that they would reveal their real name for even stalkers to obtain? I don't think Blizzard just thought of this idea on their own.

If these people are harrassed offline, is Blizzard going to pay for it?

Than what's the use of gaming, if you can't have an alter ego. Isn't that half of the fun of gaming, right there?

Maybe for WoW/fantasyish players but when I game I am not trying intentionally to have an alter ego, though I can be more violent. I try to act like myself unless for some goal oriented reason I must modify my behavior. For instance in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic I have almost no issue playing a dark side character aside from killing a few innocent people, but I do it anyways because I want "Dark Side Mastery" which lowers the force point cost of all my attacks. Playing light side is much more difficult for me due to my greed, their lack of good offensive force powers, etc. So I don't ever really try to create an "alter ego" in the form of a light side character.

Basically people who post genuine details in an open forum/chat are leaving themselves open to all manner of attack. Its a matter of fact that this does happen. Its one thing when you do it through your own lack of discipline, but its simply unconscionable for a major company to expose all of its users to such abuse. Better that flamers and trolls have limited anonymity to hide behind than expose everyone to attack. After all, anyone with a bit of savvy could "fake" a real name to get at people. I'm still fascinated that the people at Blizzard are so internet-blind they would think this was a good idea.

Blizzard has backed off this requirement after about 50k negative responses to it on their forum. I'm sure that they'll try to sneak it back in later but for now, it's dead.