It wasn’t for the game, it was supposed to be for Unreal Engine 4, which Epic has pushed to be used in industries other than entertainment.
Does it suck that the filter was set so poorly? Yes.
Does it suck that someone was discriminated against based solely on their name? Yes.
Was the problem handled quickly and with as much respect a possible (BY THE COMPANY CEO BTW, WHO COULD HAVE EASILY PUSHED THIS OFF ON A CUSTOMER SERVICE REP AND NOT SWUNG THE DOOR WIDE OPEN SO THE INTERNET COULD SHIT ALL OVER HIM.)? Yes.
Will something like this happen again? Yes.
And? That’s even worse, that’s not merely denying somebody a while of fun. That’s an attempt to deny somebody the means to create something interesting. Yet worse, in the name of silly geopolitical games that aren’t any better than arguments between kids on a sandbox about who stepped first on whose mudcake.
But that isn’t Epic’s fault. The Government are the ones stipulating who can and cannot use the engine. Epic is complying to ensure they can still be a company, and you know, not all end up in some federal jail for ignoring sanctions.
** Granted, A name filter is almost low as you can set the bar for entry, just slightly above an age gate.**
Right but most of the comments here seem to be shitting all over Epic for following the law, even in light of Tim Sweeney showing some massive balls by cutting through the bullshit, admitting it was wrong, apologizing, making sure the problem was fixed quickly, then sticking around for an extended Q&A session that the company lawyer could have handled (although there was probably one already on the phone).
The existence of the list is perfectly justifiable because some people should not be dealt with period on account of being horrible horrible people. For example, any name on the list marked “ICTY indictee” is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Other notable entries include the FLDR (from the Rawandan genocide), many names tagged “Darfur” and the Sinaloa Cartel. Perhaps the list is too long (it is probably time to take Ghadafi off), hard to enforce etc but there is no sacred right to sell machetes to Génocidaires .
They give how many damns about it? All that will be achieved is that they will buy through a proxy. How many friends not on the list, or people willing to buy-and-sell for a little profit, does any one of the bad guys have?
Meanwhile, for zero real impact, the only meaningful result is increased paperwork for innocent third parties. And a collateral damage here or there.
There is also the issue about who decides who is the Bad Guy. There are some obvious cases, but also some borderline ones that are more than open to interpretations. Is there a due process involved? How can one get off the list?
Well, indictment by a UN tribunal is due process and accounts for the most genocidey names. Presumably, they could be captured then acquitted, but that is unlikely. Many are actually officials, agencies or close allies of sanctioned foreign governments; their inclusion is a matter of national policy. Before we had policies and lists like this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust happened. Perhaps you could elaborate on these borderline cases? No one here has pointed to a particular name that they think may be on the list improperly, the story is about confusion and poor implementation.
Well, the policies in question, in a nutshell, say that the Burmese military, Robert Mugabe, people shooting protestors in Venezuela, Kim Jong Il and Russian expansionism are bad but not bad enough to shoot people over. I agree. We aren’t fighting on the playground here, we are refusing to let the playground bullies play with our ball.
The Saudis are dicks but they don’t hold a candle to Nazis or the FLDR.
The “bad guys” will get whatever they want anyway. Inconveniencing a vendor of a fucking game engine because of this crap will achieve Exactly Nothing.
I was a kid before the Revolution but I saw supercomputers being smuggled through the Iron Curtain at certain relative’s work in a certain research institute. This crap does not work, the Bad Guys get all they wish and it’s the Good Guys who suffer.
All that such bureaucrap achieves is that my brethren at the local tokamak have to do onerous paperwork when they want a new thyratron. There should be opensource thyratrons out there anyway, it’s nothing but a couple metal and ceramic parts brazed together and filled with hydrogen or deuterium. The vacuum tech is grossly underrepresented out there, and should be done better, including tricks like availability of titanium-containing active brazes for joining metals and ceramics. Todo…
A few hours once ever is not a big deal; but he will have the name Muhammed Khan for the rest of his life. And what are the chances that this sort of legislation will fade away, not grow stronger, as the totally ineffectual ‘war on terror’ wages on? This is unacceptable.
Yes, and there are many variations of his name listed (to the point of absurdity if you want to further mix and match his names), and none of them are “Muhammad Khan” much less “Muhammad Zakir Khan.” The web interface also has two warning messages, one for each name.
You haven’t met the same politicians I have. My impression is that it’s an article of faith for many of them that People Will Follow The Rules. Anyone who doesn’t is a Nasty Bad Criminal Person and the Police Will Sort It Out.
A bunch of hammers, nailing laws on to any problem that crosses their desk. You want to stop the terrorists from getting their hands on some technologies? No problem, give me a list of their names and I will make it illegal for them to buy them. There, it is a good day for freedom.
Correct. It’s a software bug, specifically a piece of code being used in the wrong context and giving the wrong output.
We don’t know the original usage so it might have been a perfectly appropriate solution to the export restrictions in the original context, but you can’t try to discern a motive in something they never intended to do.
Does nobody remember when the US version of IE was banned export because of “strong encryption”? i.e. SSL?
Because that was a thing long before the PS3. But still, IIRC the news of the day with PS3 was parts that could be re-purposed for guided missiles, which was a BS news story even then, and people said so. The hype and budget around the Cell Processor was gigantic to the point where there were somewhat credible conspiracy theories that suggested that the HDDVD/BluRay format war was conceded by Toshiba so that they could buy all of Sony’s Cell manufacturing plants.
(Which, Toshiba did sink Billions into Sony’s plants, and put the Cell chips into Laptops, TV’s, etc. until they learned that history says that special purpose rendering chips are never a good long term solution for general purpose machines, but I digress…)
The missile component nonsense–undoubtedly, Sony marketing. One of the rare times as a company they managed to pull their heads out of their asses.
oh come on, he didn’t get blocked because his name is Muslim, he got blocked because his name is identical to a known criminal. There is absolutely no problem here, other than perhaps a lack of originality when it comes to names…
The bad guys will not, in fact, always get what they want. Sanctions are one of the few ways organisations like the UN can force bad actors to the negotiating table - other than war. Proxies and stuff like that can be used for individual items but the inconvenience builds up. That’s why people and countries end up making deals. Remember that the blockade of the South more than any other factor ended slavery in the US.
