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Mafia Wars CEO Brags About Scamming Users
jamie writes with a follow-up to our recent discussion of social gaming scams:
"Mark Pincus, CEO of the company that brought us Mafia Wars, says: 'I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues right away. I mean, we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar, which was like, I don't know... I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it.'"
TechCrunch also ran a interesting tell-all from the CEO of a company specializing in Facebook advertisements, who provided some details on similarly shady operations at the popular social networking site.
Exactly. However, people like you and me are not the ones who are targetted. It's kids who play it and don't have (yet) the self-restraint and knowledge to avoid those scams. Of course, it's the parents who will have to fit the bill.
But most of the games require you to have a certain number of "crew" to unlock certain parts of the game.....so you just need to friend other "Saturday Night Slashdot Special" accounts (at least 501 so you can max your Mafia) and go from there.
For that you can sign up a bunch of people who want to be your "friend". I don't know about Mafia Wars, but I know Mobsters has a board for finding Mobster friends. This allows you to get the crew you need and not infect your real friends. It's like sleeping with a prostitute using someone elses junk.
If you are using Firefox, Safari, Opera or Chrome, get Greasemonkey and install the Facebook Purity script (http://steeev.freehostia.com/wp/2009/03/19/facebook_purity_cleans_up_the_facebook_homepage/).
It blocks Mafia Wars, Farmville, quizzes and more. Basically you just see stuff your friends actually write.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.