Danger Removing Games From Sidekick

gad_zuki! writes "Danger, the maker of the slightly-revolutionary Hiptop/Sidekick 'all-in-one' phone/browser/camera/etc., is now remotely removing the built-in games with the newest Color Sidekick software update, allegedly because of licensing concerns. This is why vendor lock-in and a thin-client system can be a very risky gamble." Another reader points out that Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has some heated comments on the very same subject.

Comments

Buying set of features, getting less

[icemax]

I am very confused as to how it is legal to promise directly, or indirectly through expectations of what a device should do (IE SideKick), features, then remove them after users have paid a premium for these very features. What would happen if your new TV with built in TV-guide (that cost an extra 200 bux on top) had that feature removed for whatever reason? Technically, its legal, but its very disturbing. See excerpt from last link:

"T-Mobile has announced that they are "no longer supporting" the video games they bundled with the color Sidekick. Normally, this would be pretty straightforward -- you could use 'em unsupported, you could find someone else to support 'em, whatever. But because the Sidekick is a phone first and a computing device second (not a technology decision, but rather a marketing/operations one), "no longer supported" has a much more sinister meaning: when T-Mobile withdraws its "support" of the games on the color Sidekick, it wil remotely erase the games from the color Sidekicks of all of their customers. Hard to say why they're withdrawing the games. Some say that it's because they don't want to incur the ongoing licensing costs, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. The fact is that the Sidekick's promise has been sucked dry by T-Mobile's phone-company shenanigans. You may remember that earlier this year, the long-awaited, long-overdue SDK shipped, along with the news that only that code which had been approved by T-Mobile would be installable on any device. They still haven't delivered a synch tool that lets you download your PIM data (calendar, contacts, to-do) from your Sidekick to your PC, and what's more, this latest move shows very clearly what you can expect to happen when you stop being a T-Mobile customer: they will "withdraw their support" from your handset, erasing your personal info."

Re:Buying set of features, getting less

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I care about T-Mobile's business practices, but why the hell should they support software they didn't put on the device? And how could they be responsible for the development of the SDK and the synchronization software? Those are things that should be handled by the manufacturer, not by the service provider.

This should be illegal

[bc8o8]

This should be illegal.... I understand that there are lic. issues, but once a product is sold, it should be too late for them to do anything about it.

The product was purchased with certain product specs, which included the applications/games installed, if Danger decides to remove anything from the default installation without your concent you should be intitled to a full refund.

No questions asked

If Danger screwed up the licenses, they should settle the lawsuits and move on.

Re:This should be illegal

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

This type of behavior is illegal - if and only if - the right for the company to control the software on the phone is expressly taken in the contract. When one gets a cell phone, the customer signs a contract. Within this contract there is, with almost certain probability, that the company reserves the right to discontinue services and/or update and change the functionality of the phone. Lawyers are very good at writing contracts that cover all possible contingency plans and, even if Danger never mentioned the possibility of having to remove the games, a clause would be included in the contract that would give the company a leg to stand on in court. So, long story short - I don't think it's going to allow people to sue nor do I think it should be illegal to have this type of contract.

There are certain laws that supercede any contract. For instance, you can't enter into a contract with me to murder me and avoid criminal prosecution for the crime. But in this case, are you suggesting a law that states that in a contract, a company may not reserve the right to modify the software on the client's end without their express consent? That might be feasible but in 9 out of 10 cases, what is going to happen because of that is end users of software are going to have unpatched and insecure software which leads to Internet worms that affect everyone's use. With a lot of software, automatic updating is a very good thing. It's a complicated issue and I worry about just slapping a law into the books as you suggest. Please expound on what you think needs to be illegal about this situation.

Question

[Daetrin]

Is it possible for people to refuse the upgrade? Doesn't look like they're offering much to entice people to go along with the game removal, so if it's not an automatic update, i expect a lot of people might "forget" to download it.

Re:Question

[KILNA]

The updates are automatic and don't bother you for any user input. I thought this was a feature until last night.

Re:Question

[KILNA]

Actually, I'm mistaken... I saw a screen pop up, and after checking the FAQ it appears I could have refused the update. I was in the middle of playing one of the games they ripped from me and I was maddly clicking the wheel at the time, so I inadvertently (sp?) accepted.

Re:Question

[Kalzus]

It is possible to refuse the update, but it is not possible for the sidekick to bother you less often than every day.

Not to whinge, but this sucks.

[KILNA]

I purchased a B&W sidekick in November of last year, and all of the puzzle games were marginally playable due to the underpowered processor of the SK (or the inefficiency of the game depending on your perspective). But I loved the SK, having all of your stuff synced to the network was great and it was a handy gadget. On wednesday of this week my local T-Mobile store finally had the Color SK in. Wow. It looks great and the web and the camera functions are both much more usable now.

Last night, I was playing Rat Maze at the very time they performed the update. I hated the game up until that point, and I actually discovered I liked it with the new speed. Likewise, the Shuffle game was mediocre on the B&W but the Color was much snappier. 4 games on it, and now I had only one... well, one and a quarter. The 'Snobored' easter egg game they consoled me with in the notification email was essentially the same thing as one I'd programmed in AppleSoft Basic on my Franklin Ace 1200 back in the day. Grrrr.

Inexplicably, my old B&W SK still has the games.

I sent them a couple of emails chewing them out for removing them.

This is why I didn't get a Sidekick

[metamatic]

I love the idea of a Sidekick, but the fact that it was locked to T-Mobile, and its functionality was totally at their whim, was the main reason why I didn't buy one. I also noticed the small print saying that they could jack up the fees arbitrarily high after the first year.

If they were giving the Sidekick away for a nominal fee, it might be acceptable to lock it down... but there's no way in hell I'm going to pay $200 for a device which turns into a paperweight if I leave T-Mobile's network, and which may change its functionality and price without warning.

So I got an unlocked t68i instead.

Seems to me Danger's whole design is flawed, in that it's impossible to make the device non-network-locked because of all the server-side processing that's done. Oh well, another great idea doomed.

T-Mobile did it, not Danger

[britrock]

Danger did not remove the games. T-Mobile did. The games where licensed from a third part to T-Mobile to be included with the b&w sidekick. T-Mobile never paid to have them included on the colour units. They realized their slipup and are fixing it. I have a feeling that the reason they opted to remove them rather than to pay for them is that they where not worth the money. Really loosing these games is nothing to cry about.

Not *ALL* of the games

[rit]

They are removing the 'Arcade' application that came with the t-mobile build of the sidekick.

Rocks & Rockets will remain on device.

Note also that this is ONLY for Color SideKick users - B&W SideKick was properly licensed for the Arcade application and will continue to have it. T-Mobile neglected to license Arcade for the new Color units and violated their license. Likely they'll renegotiate and we'll see it back on device sooner rather than later.

Also, I see some confusion on how this is being done. HiptopOS has the ability to do an OTA (Over The Air) update; you'll receive a popup saying "A new software patch is available, would you like to install?" or something along those lines. You *can* decline it, but I get the feeling sooner or later you'll be forced to be running latest OS.

-rit
(aka z_ on efnet #hiptop)

Danger's Business Model

[kremvax]

I talked to a friend who designed part of the Danger's software, and the closed nature of the system is pretty much how Danger makes money, unfortunately.

Danger's real business is the online PIM / account mmangement software fees ( it recieved mostly from t-mobile. ) The phone hardware was only designed as a reference platform to sell the online services.

So, bad news, but not that surprising. It was envisioned as a closed platform from the beginning. Now the market share is too small to support lotsa nifty pay services.

Here's to hoping someone learns from their mistakes!

Kremvax

Good

[jafuser]

Maybe this will make room for some sensible applications, like maybe a plain calculator? Or how about increasing the limit to more than 20 notes?

Does it matter who did it at this point?

[gad_zuki!]

> Danger did not remove the games. T-Mobile did.
If this is true then why do I have to hear it third-hard from someone not on the official hiptop.com site?

The problem here is communication. The OTA text was very terse and actually used the words "You may notice the arcade icon is missing," like its a cosmetic fix.

Danger made no attempt to pacify their customers or defend their actions, they just sent the OTA update and took the heat. Perhaps they couldn't due to some NDA, but that seems doubtful. I can't imagine a situation where there would be an NDA regarding whether or not someone has a license to run a videogame on a PDA. Danger is notorious for being secrative and largely ignoring its customers complaints.

Obviously, someone was caught with their pants down and I was hoping to get more information when I submitted this story, but everything still seems up in the air regarding why this happened.

Regardless, in the end you have a situation of bad faith. The color SK is $300 with a 12 month contract and no one at either company seems to understand PR. No explanation, no option to pay for the games, no "sugar with the medicine" e.g. giving users something else to make up for it, etc.

Tmobile/Danger are too hush-hush about the device and Danger has a vested interest in not allowing us to buy software from third-parties. We can only buy from pre-approved vendors and Danger decides who and when. This is the ultimate vendor lock-in nightmare scenario. This is why open development is a good thing and why this device has been called the new Newton more times than I care to remember.

Maybe all this will change when they start hand-picking what developer projects they *might* consider selling or supporting and product has had another year to "break in". But one thing is clear: the client/server relationship can easily be abused into a master/slave relationship when the clients own nothing but licenses that can be revoked at any time.

Reload old version through USB

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears you can reflash the unit with the previous version thru the USB port (FirstAidTool-Turner.exe in this case). It immediately started whining about doing the update again, I'll see how long I can put it off :)

Seriously though, its nice to know that (for now at least) one can have a backup that can be reloaded if needed. I'm not too worried about the games (more irked) but I'm thinking if I have a real application with real data in it (say a spreadsheet) and they have some legal issue and nuke it at least I'll be able to get back in and get my data.

Of course I suppose they could pretty easily make the next 'update' tool not downgrade a unit, so we'd have to find a way to corrupt the flash, etc... (could be an arms race).