So, if you play Crossy Road, you may be excited to learn that the new (UK) update is here... with new characters!! Yay! Well, not really. The novelty is wearing off for me. I've got nearly all the characters and I'll be damned if I'm paying for any. However, there's something that made me cancel the installation of the update - the new permissions. Let's look at them: Well, no surprise seeing location - games often use ad providers that want to know where you are for targeted ads. Why the hell would a game need access to my calendar, though?! It's a game where you tap to go across the road and swipe to change direction... why does it want access to my microphone? I contacted Yodo 1, the Android publisher. They quickly gave the following reply: Whether this happens remains to be seen. I wonder if Hipster Whale would have any comment on the situation. I was always unhappy with Google's permission system on Android - everything was too grouped. "We need this permission so we can pause your game when you receive a call... but we'll also take your IMEI number, phone number and the number of the person calling you - thanks!" Google then decided that people were confused by permissions, so the answer was to group them even more simply, pushing even more permissions under one umbrella! When I warned my friends of this, I had an interesting reply from a friend who works in the industry, pointing me to this company: www.ogury.co He described them as: I understand that advertising makes money, and mobile games developers often make far more from ad revenue than sales, but this is getting scary!
I have never had that problem on public transport. I even once battled a guy in Pokemon on the bus. My OG 3DS locks pretty well and I never ever use the 3D. Honestly I wish you could disable certain permissions for Android apps. I don't want every app using my GPS when I turn it on for Maps.
The only games I play on android are emus (just in case a game ever goes bust or something and when I'm on the move) and Fnaf (because I don't have a 1GB video card (like its just pre-rendered stuff Jesus!)) Its one of the odd things about android TBH...
I don't get why people spend so much money on phone games when they can get a 3DS or Vita, my Sony Experia came loaded with Pac-Man wanted real money for credits for PAC-MAN of all games, like I can't play it for free already on 1,000,000 other devices.
That is the most stupidest thing I've ever heard. My avatar's face fits w/ that statement LOL. Anyway, its like a pay toilet or something.
I try to avoid mobile gaming apps at all cost. While others are certainly entitled to their opinion, I think the majority of them blow. Developers are too busy cloning already trite, tired game concepts from equally unoriginal developers. Then there are the lame in-game purchases and aforementioned personal information permissions. Agreed. Rather positive it drains the phone's battery faster as well when all of these applications are utilizing GPS.
So many games and apps in general request permissions they have no need to be accessing on Android, as much as I like Android I do think its pretty bad by default you cant say "no i don't want you to have this permission" Luckily on custom roms such as Cyanogenmod you have a Privacy Guard feature which stops any apps from accessing personal information on your device, I usually just enable this on games, as those seem to be the apps which want to know everything about you and really have no business to be using half the permissions they request: You can even see exactly what is requesting access to certain things such as GPS location, personal information and so on: You can then dig down deeper and fine tune the permissions each installed app has: Also if you haven't disabled it you might be interested to know Google logs and uploads your location history to their servers: Google Location History If you sign in to your Google account and view that link you might be surprised at just how accurate the logging for each day is.
