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icehawklast Thursday at 5:48 AM2 repliesview on HN

Exactly! Everyone thought that the exchange was them doing something in the game, and Niantic was giving them the rewards in the game, and no one had any reasonable expectation that Niantic would get more outside of the game. (After all, neither Blizzard or Square get anything when one completes quest objectives in their MMO.)

So obviously, now that Niantic is getting things outside the game its reasonable the people who did the work ask for something from that.


Replies

RandomThoughts3last Thursday at 8:56 AM

> So obviously, now that Niantic is getting things outside the game its reasonable the people who did the work ask for something from that.

Absolutely not.

If you are compensated for doing something, you can’t suddenly come back for more 5 years later because it was used as part of something bigger which is now making money.

I have little sympathy for the players here. If you are voluntarily doing free work for worthless virtual things, you can’t come complaining when it dawns on you that it might have been dumb from the start (and to be fair maybe it wasn’t and they did it because it was fun which is completely ok).

I guess we could ban in game shop and game reward for real work as they are somehow predatory but that would be a bit paternalistic.

Matticus_Rexlast Thursday at 12:59 PM

Can you name any other agreement where it's considered reasonable to renegotiate the terms afterwards because you found out what the other party got was more profitable for them than you'd been aware of, through no misrepresentation on their part?