Anyone know what happens if you ignore GDPR? (The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union law regulating the data privacy of EU citizens. (https://www.eugdpr.org))
I am currently using HeyZap and they state the following:
This seems like a much easier and smoother solution than asking for consent every time you run the app, which is suggested by Admob.
All this “BS” is incredibly demotivating to me. I am spending my time spinning my wheels trying to find out what I have to do, for each ad platform. Anyone else feel this way?
Only in theory. We’re starting to see lawsuits but there hasn’t been enough time to see how they progress.
https://threatpost.com/icann-launches-gdpr-lawsuit-to-clarify-the-future-of-whois/132427/
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/gdpr-starts-with-a-bang-noyb-sues-53908/
Screw yew GDRP!
Looking at Appodeal mediation as they seem to have a good grasp on the GDRP. Heyzap seems to have fallen behind in this regard (I have a support request outstanding, so will give them a few days to respond). Appodeal also have a decent looking example at:
https://blog.appodeal.com/blog/2018/05/08/appodeal-gdpr-guide/
Credit to @IvyKun for posting the link here:
[Unity Analytics and GDPR]( Unity Analytics and GDPR page-3#post-3508257)
Hi! I use Heyzap too for mediation and they have an updated sdk, so you pass the consent to the sdk and they pass it along to other networks you use.
They still need to update because is not working on all networks but for now it’s fine and easy to do too. Just one line of code.
What I did was just update my best games, or the ones that are really doing money in Europe, and for the rest I just un-publish them from Europe because it’s easier than update.
Offtopic: Heyzap it’s really falling behind in this kind of things yes. They’re very slow to update, very slow to respond to support etc, but I really love the dashboard (the most usefull, everything you need in just one screen) so I keep using them.
If you are outside of the UK, I imagine you won’t be able to operate in the UK until you abide by the GDPR. I must say it’s a huge inconvenience but on the other hand I am all for protecting privacy information. So I guess it’s a necessary step we must take, even if I absolutely dislike having to spend more money to keep track of privacy requests. 
ironically you can use GDPR as an email marketing campaign to target your customers asking them if they want to opt out of any further contact/records you have, whilst promoting lol
Bureaucracy solves everything, dontchyaknow!
Frankly, as annoying as GDPR is, I am more concerned with Article 13, which is downright Orwellian. It effectively kills the concept of “fair use”, among other things. I think many internet businesses will simply be fleeing the EU and blocking their content so that they don’t run afoul of the broad loads that allow for selective enforcement and massive, onerous fines.
There is a healthy way to protect people’s rights, while allowing businesses to thrive. But it seems like governments generally do nowhere near enough, or go way too far. They seem incapable of finding the sweet spot.
Companies that flee from a +500 million “customer” region due lack of knowledge, skill or the willpower to fulfill the privacy rules is a not really a loss to us EU people. All the leaks with little to no consequences from past years and full data mining that has been going on it’s just good to get rid of such weak links. With the global competition happening almost in every sector there will always be someone to take their place.
Isolating can also be a terrible move if other regions implement similar regulations and laws, ie. China already has their effective/WIP(?) and US senate was clearly interested/referring to GDPR in the Facebook hearings. At that point those fled companies have burned their bridges and have to restart from scratch with their “relaunch” in the EU.
Also for companies that have been rolling on the EU markets the GDPR should have not been a surprise since it’s been known about for a long time. What’s even more surprising is that even Unity as largely EU based left everything to the last days making it hard for the devs. Some could even say that they still do not fulfill everything or the execution of their implementation was rushed.
These regulations alone do not pose a huge problem, but they are one package of many that make it harder to do business. It’s death by a thousand cuts. A few cuts, you can say, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. But too many in a short time, and it most definitely will.
The more red tape you put on conducting business, the harder it becomes to conduct business. Especially for smaller businesses. It costs a statistically significant amount of resources to guarantee one’s operations are working within the law. The more laws you have, the more resources it takes to guarantee that. The more resources it takes from the very start, the harder it is for small and medium-sized businesses in particular.
Big businesses will not only be fine in spite of these regulations; after they handle the initial hurdles. But in fact, they may ultimately benefit from them. Because of what I mentioned above, there will be fewer small startups to compete with them. They will already be established and have less competition, resulting in less need to make their operations more customer friendly to stay competitive.
From a far more pessimistic train of thought - these large businesses will also see opportunities to skirt these regulations through bribes. It will become, undoubtedly, cheaper to bribe individuals with power to avoid fines, and be given favorable treatment when investigating these potential breaches of law. The more regulations you add in this manner, the more opportunities for corruption are available - this is objective. Now, if all politicians were trustworthy, this wouldn’t be a problem, but we know that this isn’t the case anywhere, including in the EU.
So you have to think of these things from several angles. This is how capitalism works, for better or for worse. There is a happy medium of regulations that will keep companies of all sizes competitive, making the process of running a business relatively easy, keep the barrier of entry low, and protect the consumers - all at the same time. GDPR may be that, or it may be a case of the EU’s reach exceeding its grasp. That remains to be seen. But it has clearly caused some frustrations.
I was actually considering restricting my game to exclude EU countries as I have less than 1% of my downloads from these regions, including GB (English word game). You however make a good point in that this type of consent might move to other regions, so I might as well do the grunt work now.
On a side not, iOS makes it easy to remove EU, however Android seems to be rather cumbersome.
I have also decided to remove HayZap as my ad mediation, and move over to Appodeal, as their understanding and Unity example for GDPR has proven to be quite useful.
The only thing I am really stuck on, is restriction this annoying consent to EU players, as I dont want to bother other players with this nag. It seems to be a bit cumbersome to do this, so I might just skip it for now.
@tsibiski Just read you response, and agree with you. If your game does make income from EU, you will however have no choice that is financially viable.
@tsibiski It’s true that it can be a lot of hassle, but I think that’s mainly because it’s forcing what should have been happening from the beginning (and would then have been a lot less trouble to implement) to finally happen with no more delay. Which ultimately is probably inevitable - if you give businesses the option to operate responsibly or not, many of them will choose “not”, and the ones that try to stay responsible will be at a competitive disadvantage.
For example, if businesses were in the habit of having skeleton keys to everyone’s houses, and installers/repairmen/deliveries used those keys, then switching over to “you have to get the owner to let you in” would be a huge, painful, hassle to implement. But a necessary hassle when not every company can be trusted.
This is certainly true. So my point isn’t necessarily to knock on GDPR for the things it is trying to accomplish - consumer rights are critical. My point is to try to explain it from all sides. Every action has a reaction.
There is an old saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. We often intend the best. Consumer rights is certainly “intending the best”. But what you get is not always what you intended.
Take the “Fight for $15” in many cities across the US, to make the minimum wage higher. The intent is to make it so that that people can earn a livable wage, no matter what they do. That is a great intent. Nobody wants people to be miserable and poor. The problem is that the intent simply does not always work out the way people expect. Now, these entry level positions that were fighting for $15 dollars are being replaced with kiosks. Because kiosks do not need to be paid a salary, do not have benefits, and do not complain (Not to mention, fewer hours, fewer jobs - those that remain at full time most definitely benefit, but the others are left worse off than before).
Economists tried to explain this to proponents of these initiatives. People in support of that example initiative framed the opposition as simply hating poor people and wanting them to remain poor, when they were trying to explain that the good intentions would not result in what they expected.
So the real question is not so much the intent of what GDPR is doing, but how it is doing it. And depending on how it is trying to accomplish increasing consumer protection, it may be hurting business more than it needs to, which might drive away some business.
As an American I had just assumed (because I’m currently avoiding news as much as possible due to my distaste for sentient cheetos) that the EU is basically saying that if America (or anywhere else) is going to let its corporations pull this crap without consequence then we’re going to put policies in place that at least protect any citizens of ours that use these services. If that is the case then I applaud the EU for taking strides in the right direction; they are not destroying net neutrality by any means, something we over here did without blinking thanks to said cheeto entrusting the sanctity of the internet to a guy who owns a giant orange (running theme with these guys) coffee mug and thinks it’s absolutely hilarious.
Again, I’m likely misinformed and I am not from the EU, but that was my take anyway.
This post iabove s politically charged and I don’t care they use code words. It is obvious they are lobbing potshots at the President of The United States. They want a debate i will stuff them with one…good and hard. I prefer not to and mods enforce the no political speech provisions and stop the spread of subterfuge styled propaganda or I will get banned again when it was another initiating a sh*tstorm and my straightening out some crookedness that lifted its ugly head on a public forum not dedicated to such…
On the topic at hand. I like to be able to opt out from some clowns looking for an advertising buck or some guv agency wanting to track my every move and interest to make a profile of me which I guarantee you will meet no metrics for slotting categories. How it works in practice down the road remains to be seen. I try to keep this in mind. Remember that kiss arse fool in high school who was the big suck up but even the teachers thought reprehensible? That is the idiot via the Peter Principle in charge of your data and what to do with it at the ad agency/google/facebook or the country’s regulatory agency. I certainly do not want such incompetent fools to have any metric that they think they can make a decision on with their rather poor sets of social understandings of the better qualities inherent in our species. Catering to the debased seems to be what this clique of control freaks is about.
However, the instituters of this gambit are aiming at something other than what they proclaim… which for public consumption is all goody two shoes. I posit that the underlying structures will allow them to disarm the meme army…the most effective counter attack to their entrenched for centuries pretended seriousness of concern for the public commons square of activities…and shut down aggregate news sites…keeping the dying MSM in cashflow. Psychopaths cannot withstand an onslaught of raw human wit and sarcasm without buckling to pure frustration, failure of psychological gambits and responding with physical threats. These new privacy laws will make memes illegal if I get the gist sitting in its undercurrents. Though culturally it is much more than just that. Disarmament is always the goal. Removal of the oppositions strengths and befudlding their intelligence ops ensures victory when battle is undertaken.
I have been away from the forums and I guess I didn’t realize everyone here was so sensitive. I’ll be sure to walk on eggshells from this point on and my apologies for offending you by mocking someone you obviously hold near and dear. But I’ll take you up on that debate; I, for one, support one man’s right to stuff another good and hard.
Yer still doing it. Don’t play these games junior. You will lose. It is not sensitivity but that one side thinks it can shoot its mouth off and outright lie of with impunity and the rules of common decency do not apply to them because they are “righteous”. The other side plays polite and gets taken advantage of allowing all kinds of foolishness to be iterated in the public square with no punching back. Never liked that kind of gambit from kindergarten through the many phases of adulthood I have survived intact. Seems like bully tactics to me. The EU privacy policy will ultimately work for the side of lies and obfuscation…as always. You would make a great bureaucrat for these types It seems to me. So sure your wrongness is right. Have a good day.
For further information on GDPR you can check this forum: Unity Services - Unity Discussions