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Former Microsoft employee criticizes Vista controls

The world is still absorbing all the added features and security of Windows Vista, game developers and casual gamers may have something to be unhappy about when it comes to the Microsoft’s operating system.

According to game developer WildTangent, a developer that makes small online games for casual gamers, Windows Vista breaks compatibility with games on MSN, RealArcade, Yahoo Games and AOL Games.

“Vista's incompatibility with most downloadable casual games, including those on Microsoft's own gaming portal demonstrates the enormous challenges facing many small game developers with getting their games to work with the new OS,” read a WildTangent statement.

In addition to breaking existing games, the security restrictions of the new operating system will rely heavily on ESRB ratings to block children from accessing inappropriate games. Alex St. John, CEO and co-Founder of WildTangent, and once evangelist for Microsoft’s DirectX API, believes that this represents an additional hurdle for the smaller games developers since most of these games are family appropriate but lack expensive ESRB ratings.

“Parents who choose to use Vista's parental controls are likely to accidentally block access to hundreds of very popular family friendly games that happen not to have ESRB ratings," said St. John.

St. John was eager to boast that WildTangent's new Vista-ready console includes a parental control solution that ensures parental control over downloaded content without blocking access to family appropriate content that happens to lack an ESRB rating.

 “WildTangent has spent the last year preparing for Vista. We worked with nearly every major casual game developer to get their games tested and compatible with Vista in our network in anticipation of these problems,” he said.

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Bla bla bla
By five40 on 1/30/2007 6:10:03 PM , Rating: 4
This guy needs to STFU. Since when are people supposed to care about spyware developers? What's next....is he going to cry about MS not installing his spyware by default in vista?




RE: Bla bla bla
By TomZ on 1/30/2007 6:18:15 PM , Rating: 1
I agree - he needs to get over it. If he wants to continue to be successful, he will find a way to adapt to the new OS, it strengths, it limitations, etc. Otherwise, someone else will take their place.


RE: Bla bla bla
By Bluestealth on 1/30/2007 7:30:06 PM , Rating: 2
I thought this article might have a point when I clicked on it, little did I know it was someone's rant... which I had already read about months earlier.


RE: Bla bla bla
By rippleyaliens on 1/30/2007 7:45:42 PM , Rating: 2
My thoughts are, that the company had over a YEAR, to prepare for this. via Toms hardware, his words were on a tone that microsoft blundered the vista, with security set tooo high.
I expected complaints, and rants, but a complaint about being too secure?????


RE: Bla bla bla
By rockyct on 1/31/2007 7:56:41 AM , Rating: 2
lol, yeah, Microsoft can never make "too secure" a product.


RE: Bla bla bla
By Pythias on 1/31/2007 11:16:15 AM , Rating: 3
Apparently, Symantec and MaCafee disagree with you.


RE: Bla bla bla
By scrapsma54 on 1/31/2007 7:44:10 PM , Rating: 2
Pshah I think all those companies had time to stop going off on tangents on how the 32-bit api wont make things secure laudy daudy daaa and all and WHoops...then finally vista comes out and the utterances (probably exactly as I say it)"wow I forgot that microsoft wasn't shitting us while we were off trying to change their f&*Ing minds. I hope Microsoft denies wild tangent usage or at least wild-tangent spyware. Wild Tangent has no right in all of this.


RE: Bla bla bla
By Christopher1 on 1/30/07, Rating: 0
RE: Bla bla bla
By feelingshorter on 1/30/2007 8:15:00 PM , Rating: 2
Obviously you work for Wildtangent. My little sister uses my dad's laptop to play their games. They force you to install EVERY time you start up the computer. Clicking cancel will bring up the popup again. Clicking install freezes the computer, and it wont install. It broke the computer. Again, have YOU tried their s!hitw@re recently? It would be an insult to programmers to call it software.


RE: Bla bla bla
By Christopher1 on 1/31/2007 6:29:39 PM , Rating: 2
I'm sorry, but I do not work for Wildtangent. In fact, I am UNEMPLOYED/SELF-EMPLOYED right now.

I have WildTangent's Game Console and games installed on my parent's computer (some of the games like FATE are too intensive for my own computer in my bedroom).

It has asked me to install exactly ONCE, period. There are updates everynow and again that it wants me to install, and I do, but they are optional (I know this because I clicked on one to cancel it once, and it didn't install).

If you guys are getting multiple installation prompts with WildTangent games, you either have not downloaded them off WildTangent's own site or you are blaming the problems on the wrong software application.


RE: Bla bla bla
By glennpratt on 1/30/2007 8:41:56 PM , Rating: 5
Christopher, WildTangent is adware, spyware and foistware. There is no if, and or but about it.

Adware: WildTangent comes bundled or is installed with a million different things that are unrelated. Once installed, it's waiting in your Start menu to sell you shitty games that no one wants.

Spyware: WildTangent specifies a unique identifier to your machine and doesn't let you control the use of it. Advertisers and publishers can and will monitor what you do with it (even if they don't know my name, this is the sort of bullshit I depend on Spybot to find.)

If software ends up on my machine that I didn't ask for, its a f'ing virus in my book. I don't care if you have the best intentions, I didn't ask for that shit, and your company wont please me until it files for bankruptcy.


RE: Bla bla bla
By cochy on 1/31/2007 1:25:00 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
If software ends up on my machine that I didn't ask for, its a f'ing virus in my book.


Technical definition would be a Trojan. Whatever the case it's malware and it's wrong. People who develop software with hidden "treats" like these should be beaten into the the earth with giant sledgehammers.


RE: Bla bla bla
By cocoman on 1/31/2007 8:47:50 AM , Rating: 2
I think a trojan is software that leaves a door open on your computer so they can get in it from outside. Spyware does not allow access to your computer, but it sends information from within.


RE: Bla bla bla
By glennpratt on 1/31/2007 12:06:39 PM , Rating: 2
Umm, no, it wouldn't necessarily. But that's not the point, I said it was a virus in MY book. ALL Trojans are virii in my book as well (and most others I'd assume).


RE: Bla bla bla
By cochy on 2/1/2007 12:46:22 AM , Rating: 2
lol I'm just giving the technical definition. Cause I'm a big loser I guess. Technically a virus, like it's biological counterpart is not a stand-alone software, just like a bio-virus is not a living organism. A computer virus attaches itself to a piece of code and uses that code to execute itself and replicate (just like a real virus, the comparison is quite cool). A Trojan on the other hand is a broad definition of a stand-alone software, here's the key, pretending to be one thing but actually doing something totally different. These softwares are stand-alone application pretending to be games but actually installing all manner of spyware and adware on your system. So in this case these programs fit the definition of Trojans perfectly. And to respond to the above reply, yes a Trojan can leave backdoors open, it can do all sorts of malicious activities that the user is unaware of.


RE: Bla bla bla
By Pythias on 1/31/2007 11:18:02 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
If software ends up on my machine that I didn't ask for, its a f'ing virus in my book. I don't care if you have the best intentions, I didn't ask for that shit, and your company wont please me until it files for bankruptcy.


If I could vote you higher than 5, I would.


RE: Bla bla bla
By mark2ft on 1/31/2007 2:25:45 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
If software ends up on my machine that I didn't ask for, its a f'ing virus in my book. I don't care if you have the best intentions, I didn't ask for that shit, and your company wont please me until it files for bankruptcy.


LOL, I can't agree with you more. Well, maybe instead of bankruptcy they could just get fined or something (at least this way less people will lose jobs, =p).

Anyway, all this talk about unwanted software reminds me of AOL Instant Messenger. I don't use AIM any more (I switched to Miranda a while ago), so I don't know the specifics of how it installs... but I remember how I always had to manually remove the embedded FREE AOL INTERNET ACCESS links from my start menu and IE toolbar (I never used IE, but the links with the yellow and red colors annoyed the sh*t out of me). I wonder if AIM has gotten any less intrusive recently...

OH and I love how when you install RealPlayer you have to unclick each and individual file association for like 30 different file types during the install process...


RE: Bla bla bla
By AncientPC on 1/31/2007 4:41:55 PM , Rating: 2
You can install the codec seperately:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati...


RE: Bla bla bla
By PrezWeezy on 2/1/2007 5:10:14 PM , Rating: 2
Nope, AIM is still just as crappy. It installs more stuff now, and I always spend about 20 minutes just cleaning it out then installing the latest removal tools to keep the stupid popups from comming up every time I move my mouse over the top of the window. The nice thing is the 5.9 I believe didn't play nice with Vista and it could only install the chat part. The rest of it just couldn't figure out where to put it's files and so they never got there. That was nice with my RC1. They have since fixed it, and I haven't upgraded to the new one...


RE: Bla bla bla
By Zelvek on 1/31/2007 1:36:05 AM , Rating: 2
I beg to differ, in the last month alone I have had 3 PC's come into my shop that were suffering from problems caused by wildtangent. The only reason that many of the anti-spyware companies removed wildtangent from their list is that wildtangent threatened a few of them with defamation. Even if it were not spyware as you claim it losses more points in my books for being bloatware; why the heck should a simple casual gaming service have so many processes wasting system resources?


RE: Bla bla bla
By Christopher1 on 1/31/2007 6:32:56 PM , Rating: 2
Sorry, but I don't think so. I am VERY selective about what I put on my computer (almost PARANOID about viruses and spyware), and WildTangent hasn't done anything to my machine.

I would like to to tell me exactly how Wildtangent is F***ing up these machines you have seen, and if you even looked for other programs or just said "WildTangent! There's your problem!"

I'm sorry, but WildTangent has been installed on all the computers I service when someone has asked me to install free games on them, and I have NEVER had a complaint about them in the three, almost 4, years since they got in trouble with bundling and stopped that.


RE: Bla bla bla
By dgingeri on 1/31/2007 3:12:37 PM , Rating: 2
WildTangent's web drive also opens a security vulnerability where software that cannot be verified as coming from Wildtangent can install itself without interaction from the user. More importantly, the spyware that is trying to install raises no flags if the wildtangent addon is not available, so you can't even tell where it's coming from. That is reason enough for me to hate them for it.

They open a big barn door for spyware to install itself undetected, and to avoid detection if it can't install itself, then claim that they aren't a spyware company. they may not make it themselves, but they certainly make it so that others can install spyware, and that is what we call an enabler.


RE: Bla bla bla
By fbxcore on 1/31/2007 6:04:49 PM , Rating: 2
Get off WildTangent's nuts.

Their software is nearly seizure-inducing.


Complaining
By Phynaz on 1/30/2007 5:52:46 PM , Rating: 4
Considering the number of machines Wildtangents software has broken in the last five years, St. John should just STFU.




RE: Complaining
By gamefoo21 on 1/30/2007 5:56:09 PM , Rating: 2
Quoted for truth in every sense...


RE: Complaining
By deeznuts on 1/30/2007 6:03:02 PM , Rating: 2
not related but I always thought QFT meant quite f'in true, now I realize it doesn't lol.


RE: Complaining
By NotAok on 1/31/2007 9:09:50 AM , Rating: 2
holy crap so did i

i guess i learned something today :)


RE: Complaining
By matthewpapa on 1/30/2007 5:59:01 PM , Rating: 4
wildtangent = malware


RE: Complaining
By Dactyl on 1/30/2007 6:54:26 PM , Rating: 4
That's certainly their reputation.

I think they've actually stopped putting out malware for a few years now. I don't know why they haven't changed their company's name.

Perhaps, while you and me hear "WildTangeant" and think "vomit" there is a group of people who associate positive things with the name. I'm guessing that group of people are the corporate lackeys who paid WildTangeant to put adware on our machines to begin with... or maybe they figure bad name recognition is better than no name recognition...


RE: Complaining
By Christopher1 on 1/30/07, Rating: 0
RE: Complaining
By EarthsDM on 1/30/2007 8:30:39 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
Wildtangent is no longer spyware, and hasn't been for a long time. Anyone who says it is, I will be happy when they get hit with a 'defamation' suit.


WildTangent has no one to blame but themselves for their terrible reputation. If they wanted peoples' trust, they shouldn't have put out spy/mal/adware.


RE: Complaining
By Christopher1 on 1/31/2007 6:39:34 PM , Rating: 2
Then you should also get on Microsoft's case, Yahoo's case, AOL's case.... I could keep on going on for a few hundred lines with organizations that have been suckered by malmare/spyware people.

WildTangent has cleaned up their act dramatically, their software is installed on all new HP, Dell, Compaq, Alienware and Falcon NW machines when you get them.

If something was spyware do you REALLY think Tier-1 makers would put them on their machines from the factory? I don't think so.

People need to stop talking about what WildTangent was like 4 years ago. Yes, 4 years ago their Web Driver was spyware/malware. Now, it isn't at all.

Look at what the major Spyware watchers say about WildTangent NOW! All of them except Spybot, as I said, have delisted the new version of the WildTangent Web Driver as spyware/malware.


RE: Complaining
By Micronite on 1/30/2007 10:50:51 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Wrong. Wildtangent stopped putting out the version of it's Web Driver years ago that was considered 'malware' (Even then, it was mainly monitoring your web traffic. Big whoop!).


Hey, since this apparently doesn't matter to you, why don't you install this fine piece of software I have here. It just monitors your web traffic. Big whoop!
<FinePrint>If I don't like where you're browsing, I'll send your history to your mom, the authorities, or whoever else I feel might make your life more miserable.</FinePrint>

Enjoy your "really fun" game.


RE: Complaining
By Nekrik on 1/31/2007 12:42:40 AM , Rating: 2
"(Even then, it was mainly monitoring your web traffic. Big whoop!). "
Holly crap I died laughing when I read that. Did you happen to be a beta tester for Sony?


RE: Complaining
By Araemo on 1/31/2007 9:20:56 AM , Rating: 2
"Even then, it was mainly monitoring your web traffic. Big whoop!"
Big whoop, you say? I think having my banking sessions monitored by someone other than my bank is a big whoop.

Besides that, it caused system instability and was relatively hard to remove (Not as bad as some, mind you, but add/remove programs and clicking remove was not enough.)

I have not installed any of their games in 10 years precisely because of the shady business practices they employed the last time I dealt with them. I don't need to play a random bejeweled clone badly enough to deal with a company that showed a complete disdain for the privacy of their customers. You say they've changed, big deal, they lost my business a long time ago, and there are plenty of competitors who treat me better than they did.

Real Networks is in a similar position with me. Yes, they really do seem to have changed, but there are technically superior competitors who never treated me as badly as they did, so their competitors get my business.


Are be back in Year 1999 facnig Year 2000?
By cheetah2k on 1/30/2007 9:26:32 PM , Rating: 1
Ah come on Microsoft! Why are we facing compatibility issues again, and forcing the little guys to step up to the plate.

Lets face it, this OS is going to cost the small developers hard earned $$ to get their games/programmes to work with Vista. The average joe in 2009 is going to have to spend his hard earned $$ to upgrade their computer too, when XP home support is ditched.....

Why didnt M$ with its huge budget, ensure FULL backward compatibility????

I compare this to the Sony PS3 and the upscaler/downscaler issue. Total BS if you ask me..




RE: Are be back in Year 1999 facnig Year 2000?
By TomZ on 1/30/2007 9:54:20 PM , Rating: 2
I call bullshit. My company is a "small developer," and we have absolutely no problem developing software on and for Vista. No problem at all.


RE: Are be back in Year 1999 facnig Year 2000?
By Nekrik on 1/31/2007 12:37:31 AM , Rating: 3
I agree and call BS too. A huge part of the security problems everyone bitches about are due to running as an admin. A lot of the 'small developers' developed apps that only run for admin users. You'd have similar problems with a lot of the apps if you log out of your admin account on XP and log in with lower credentials, a lot of companies don't even test outside of the admin accounts. MS made the change and all the developers have the same fair shake to bring their apps up to par. It's all the exceptions that everyone wants for their 'special case' that cause problems. Symantec can't develop without kernel access, small deveopers can't write code that runs under limited user accounts, bullshit, just gotta learn how to do it differently.


RE: Are be back in Year 1999 facnig Year 2000?
By Araemo on 1/31/2007 9:30:34 AM , Rating: 2
"Small Developers"?

So, IBM, Microsoft, HP, AutoDesk, and Adobe are "small developers"?

(They're all guilty of the admin requirement for some of their software) (Yes, even microsoft. At least MS has the corporate overlords who realized this and are forcing all their current software teams to fix that issue, but not everyone can afford to update to the latest and greatest of every app all the time.)

The other advantage MS has is they know about it, and XP includes some application compatibility hacks(I believe they're included in vista too) that allow a given program(identified by filename, or exe hash, or various other unique-ID methods) to access certain registry keys or system calls that have low security risk, even though the current normal user would not normally have access to them. This allows many programs to run without admin rights and still be able to function. It's a very powerful tool, and helps the transition period be much less painful, but of course MS knows about those problems with almost all of their own software, but not necessarily more obscure versions of autocad LT or photoshop or printer/scanner drivers... I'd say the best use of UAC is to force programmers to run in 'most annoyance' mode when they're testing their own apps, so they can see what parts of their program they need to change. ;)

Beside that, I'd prefer to see UAC move to a more Gnome/KDE/OSX-like 'enable admin' button in the control panel applet that prompts for your password once, and allows you to keep doing things until you close it, or your admin session times out.

If you're going to force me to switch to 'admin mode' every time I want to do something, at least allow me to do multiple things at once.


By TomZ on 1/31/2007 11:10:27 AM , Rating: 1
The thing you may not be aware of is that, in the developer community, transitioning end users to LUA has been a known feature of Vista for several years. In addition, this feature has been part of the Vista betas for at least 2 years. So software development companies cannot claim they are shocked and amazed by this "new development." They are just victims of their own poor planning or execution.

We are a small company with limited resources, mainly just MSDN subscriptions, and it was very clear to us where things were going. Our current apps that were designed for Win2K and WinXP run just fine on Vista without having to run as admin. That's mainly because our apps are not highly invasive, and they follow good programming practices, e.g., don't write data into C:\Program Files, don't write to certain areas of the registry, etc.


By Pythias on 1/31/2007 11:22:20 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Beside that, I'd prefer to see UAC move to a more Gnome/KDE/OSX-like 'enable admin' button in the control panel applet that prompts for your password once, and allows you to keep doing things until you close it, or your admin session times out


Then perhaps you should use gnome/kde/osx.


WildTangent is spyware
By RW on 1/31/2007 5:32:29 AM , Rating: 2
First of all Dailytech just change the title in "Mallware developer says 9 of 10 online games are spyware so why they cannot be intalled in Vista"

This is the same thing as Symantec and McAfee sued Microsoft for the fact that Vista is so secure that they encounter dificuties in producing new viruses and infecting the new operating system so that everyone infected with their viruses to buy their shity Antiviruses.

Now it seems that spyware developers do the same thing acusing Windows Vista that their spyware doesn't install on it.


Could just anybody sue this virus/spyware makers so we wouldn't hear their name again.




RE: WildTangent is spyware
By Christopher1 on 1/31/2007 6:50:20 PM , Rating: 2
If they are spyware then why doesn't Ad-Aware, CounterSpy or most other reputable anti-spyware apps list them as such?

Care to explain that?

People, get off the "WildTangent is spyware" crap. 4 years ago, they were spyware. Now, they aren't, unless you have an awesomely wide definition of spyware to account for EVERY piece of software that monitors the websites you go to.

Hmm....... Let's put MSWorks in that category, RealArcade in that category, and a bunch of others in that category because THEY monitor the websites you go to.


RE: WildTangent is spyware
By Pythias on 2/2/2007 4:06:31 AM , Rating: 2
WildTangent is crap. It still collects and sends data about user activities. You can keep repeating the same arguments ad nauseam , Its not going to change my opinion. I dont believed in "reformed" spyware makers.

Personally, I think you're some sort of viral marketing.


ESRB is a bad idea I agree with that.
By rudy on 1/31/2007 1:55:41 AM , Rating: 1
It is like that stupid Microsoft digital signature, Which gives you errors on just about every product you try to install that is not made by a major corp. In the end everyone learns to ignore it and then the whole system turns out to be a complete waste of time and money on M$ part.




By Araemo on 1/31/2007 9:32:08 AM , Rating: 2
What does the ESRB have to do with this?


By glennpratt on 1/31/2007 12:12:09 PM , Rating: 2
It is dumbfoundingly easy to sign your apps. Most companies should do it, and the fact that they don't is just lame.


maybe it works on wine in Linux
By mforce on 1/31/2007 10:51:15 AM , Rating: 2
I installed one of these small games in Linux using Wine but I don't think it was made by these wild guys. Anyway to my surprise running under Wine in Linux it worked just fine.
I do have a question though. What's the problem ? Don't the games work or is it just the spyware that doesn't ? :D




By EarthsDM on 1/31/2007 1:06:29 PM , Rating: 1
Nice that it works under WINE. I find it interesting that many Windows compatibility problems caused by upgrades throughout the ages were mostly the result of programmers using bugs or security glitches as features. Once the glitches were fixed, the apps broke. What else is there to say but, 'using good programming practices helps ensure good programs?'
WINE has never had problems like that because they created their APIs to do what they were supposed to do, not what they did under Windows. In fact, /. had an article recently about how some of the features in IE7 that don't work on XP work under WINE. In a perfect world (or if I ran the anti-trust arm of the government,) Microsoft would sell only four products:

-MS Office
-An API package for UNIX systems to allow them to run Windows programs
-An API package/compiler for UNIX systems to allow them to run DirectX applications
-License server protocol packages to replace their own (rarely used and often maligned) Windows servers.

Instead of ‘Windows’ there would be a Windows skin for SUSE. The quality of the user experience would improve, and MS would only have to work a tenth as hard as it does now, and probably make about as much money as it used to.
I know that many hard core users (like my girlfriend, who learned on Gentoo) call SUSE ‘pussy Linux,’ but using it as their main desktop would be a workable strategy for MS, in my opinion.


By Christopher1 on 1/31/2007 6:46:54 PM , Rating: 2
There isn't any spyware with the latest version of the WildTangent games. Period, there isn't.

There MIGHT be some monitoring of "You're going to this website, you're going to that website...." but I haven't really seen that since almost 4 years ago.

4 years ago, yes, WildTangent was a BAAAAAAAD idea to put on your machine. It monitored EVERYTHING from bank accesses to the websites you went to, to the keystrokes you used.

Now, they don't do that anymore at all.

People keep on getting on WildTangent's case about what they did years ago, and it's past time for that to stop. Time to get with the times, re-evaluate their NEW software (the old software isn't even AVAILABLE anymore except on grey sites), and judge based on that.


Garbage
By viperpa on 1/31/2007 12:56:16 PM , Rating: 2
I have 2 HP computers and they came with wildtangent preinstalled. The first thing I did was delete the garbage. There is plenty of other sites you can get games from that aren't malware. The guy is just crying cause he can't infect peoples computers like he was able to do before.




RE: Garbage
By Christopher1 on 1/31/2007 6:51:57 PM , Rating: 2
Tell me, did you uninstall it because of the flak 4 years ago, or because their new software was called 'spyware/malware'?

Answer: Most likely number one.


By JonathanYoung on 1/30/2007 10:54:07 PM , Rating: 2
The world is still absorbing all the added features and security of Windows Vista , game developers and casual gamers may have something to be unhappy about when it comes to the Microsoft’s operating system.

Sentence 1 , Sentence 2.




Get over it St John
By Chaser on 1/31/2007 4:53:13 PM , Rating: 2
St John used to be a Microsoft employee in the Direct X team. He either walked on the company or was fired. Now he's a nobody that wrote a few articles for Maximum PC ranting over Direct X after he "fell from grace".

Get over it John. Vista is new and its going to take a while. Whooptie.




zzz
By knowom on 1/31/2007 12:39:40 AM , Rating: 1
What a waste of a article no one cares about wild tangent and their awful spyware/adware/malware disguised as "games" and another thing he has no right to complain about what microsoft is or isn't doing since he's no longer a part of that company based on his software I'm sure he got canned anyways.




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