Mobile Ads - A Gems of War Tale

We’re not selling your personal information, we get paid when you watch or interact with an ad. We take all our users’ privacy and data security very seriously and in accordance to international law. You can find our privacy policy for mobile here:

https://505games.com/505-mobile-games-privacy-policy

If you are using the internet your information is already stored and used by numerous companies before you even installed Gems of War. That’s why we have rigorous data protection laws. There is no sinister conspiracy here, this is just the way of the internet.

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Why would Firrian’s IP address block him from watching ads on 7 accounts for 3 days then? Save for 3-4 ad viewings. His location shouldn’t matter at all then.
Yet if the IP address changed, then those accounts were able to watch ads.

Was his ability to watch ads a targeted block until y’all could remove the “skip” button from ads?

And evidently the length of time “we watch” an ad.
2 seconds watch time resulting in 28 seconds less pay?

or if you pay let’s say 5$ to have that add button muted for whole month :stuck_out_tongue:
i might consider paying that just to switch the thing off :wink:

Ads not being served is a known issue which is listed on our known issue article on the help center.

It is something the team are looking into with the 3rd party company who serves ads to our players.

EDIT: someone pointed out that how I use and share my own personal data has nothing to do with this so I removed my little anecdote.

If that company is the one deciding what ads are made available to Firrian’s account. Then perhaps we should be reading what their policies are on data.
@Kafka… I’m telling you. Firrian’s inability to watch ads was due to his location. 7! different accounts weren’t able to watch an ad… But 5 minutes later any one of those ads could watched on the same account if the account was accessed in a different region. (Or at the very least a different server. I have theories about different servers being based on different time zones but have never read an official statement in regards to separate servers. There has to be be more than one. It’s just a matter of how many and how are they divided.)

It was either deliberately done, to cease the work around to get rewards despite watching the whole ad. (Which should of been tested prior to release.)
Or…
Location data is tracked. The location wasn’t watching the ads fully. So that location was basically moved to the lowest possible que for ads available.

Well to that person (even if it’s Dad). This isn’t a bug report, or even a feedback Request. It’s game play chat. So if a fellow player is unable to get ads either.
Is it because of the amount of ads watched it one location?
And if Firrian was skipping ads… perhaps a few devs were as well?

Basically… Whether Firrian has one account…or 20 accounts. Shouldn’t matter at all in regards to watching ads. Nor should one location watching more than 3 ads per day. Unless that location is for sale. :man_shrugging:

Gems of War is just providing an access point for the adds, sort of like renting out a room in a building for a sales presentation. It’s your machine that retrieves the adds from wherever the add company hosts them, so the add company automatically knows your ip address and how much of the add you’ve downloaded. Gems of War wouldn’t be able to sell them your location data, they are already getting it from you for free.

The official word is contrary to the speculation. :man_shrugging:

it’s not a contrary, it’s more like a complementary opinion

One comment says they value privacy. The other says they value it so little it’s given away for free.

Sounds pretty contrary to me. :man_shrugging:

Kafka said they take care of users privacy and data security.

Fourdottwone said GoW cannot sell your locations data, as it’s public to any server you connect to and download data from it (like connecting to adds site to view the video they present).

Don’t see how these too are contrary.

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You neglected to mention where he said “giving it away for free”.
Again… Can’t value something you give away freely.

Wow, you don’t know how the internet works. Why don’t you stop harrasing Kafka with your tinfoil hat paranoia and read up on cloud computing and how content delivery networks work.

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It’s not GoW giving it away for free, it’s *you* giving it away for free. While it might appear as if you are watching adds within Gems of War, you are actually watching adds on the add company site, within the add company framework, they just happen to get displayed in the one room mentioned above GoW is renting out. The huge data trail you are personally shoving into the add company tracking database is covered by the add company privacy policy, not the GoW privacy policy, so Kafka is technically correct.

Example - every day, people freely give away their life to Facebook.

Facebook’s 2019 revenue: 70.7 billion
Facebook 2019 users: 2.4 billion

Your life is worth ~$30 to Facebook.

You’re kidding me right? Like I get that you had your feels hurt when I pointed out how ignorant you are.
But considering Kafka came to this thread on her own free will. I don’t think she needs you defending her due to me replying to her thread. I get that the world is crazy right now… It’s not a contest for you to out crazy the rest of the world.
Spoiler alert… South Park wasn’t accurate… The internet consists of various servers. Including servers managed by I+2.

Feel free to scroll up to every mention of how I mentioned I won’t be watching ads to share my data for free if all we get in return is 100 gold.

I indentified this exchange already. I read Kafkas statement as they have nothing to do with the selling of location data.

Ads being unavailable is a known issue which the team has spoken to 505 Games and the ad provider about so they’re aware of the issue, on Gems of War side we don’t decide which ads you see, we only limit how often you see them.

We are planning to add more ad networks in the next update so that hopefully this issue happens less frequently.

We do not sell your data without your permission - it’s illegal. I’ve linked to the 505 Games mobile privacy policy which covers all of this.

If you want to learn more about what data you are sharing when you use any online service or website, you can find a lot of information about this online. Unfortunately, I can only share our personal policies, and they may not be in line with another service, product, or companies.

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This 3rd party company is “taking” our location data whether it’s “free” or paid for when we watch ads. Got it. Thanks.

That’s enough for me to opt out of ads moving forward. The compensation for that data is way too low.

It became a “known issue” after this thread. I originally reported the frequency issue. I believe what Firrian experienced over the weekend has nothing to do with the “bug” I reported previously. Instead a different issue that is evidently between 505, this 3rd party and I. But since ads just won’t be watched anymore. The issue is solved. Ads being purposefully unavailable to a location is a great way to educate players on what their support means to them. Even watching 2 seconds of an ad should be better than not watching at all. But what the hell do consumers/players know about ads anyway.

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It was literally already in the known issues article on the help center.

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… You added it after this thread was created. And I was the first one to do a bug report about it. On here anyway. :man_shrugging: