The Datamining Debate

This was taken from a comment by smitedatamining on the youtube video above.

"You criticize smitedatamining because we monetize:

- Hours of finding Info
- Doing effort of write / Structure the data
- Hours of programming our tools
- Hours of Creating hype, media handle

But you agree of monetize:

- Doing tournaments (People come and play a game which is not yours)
- Taking profit of a partner like razer when you worked in smitecentral
- Creating smite datamining posts (Using my posts) in smitecentral"
(this was not in the youtube quote, but an example of this can be found here)
- Writing articles about smite, yeah, you write what others do.
- Videos talking about other's work

So what's the point here? You and me waste time doing something for other people to enjoy, I get some money, I pay the servers and make some profit.

Think what you're talking about.


EDIT: You're literally charging $20 in patreon for allowing people play with you. And are you seriously criticizing my monetization? Holy ****."

So let's start off with what Zilby wants to discuss

1- I don't see the difference between uploading a datamining "excavation" and a series like " SMITE 101 " or " The day of a *blank* ", or even gameplay videos / streams. Let's look at it with a grain of salt :

1st - They're both using in-game files Hi-Rez leaves on the PTS / live servers.
2nd - They're not doing anything ilegal since they're using what Hi-Rez allows them to use.
3rd - It's not like their invading Hi-Rez's building and stealing early-concepts. They are just showing what Hi-Rez left INSIDE the game files'.

2- I take it with a grain of salt : If we think it through Krett's way of thinking, I completely Disagree. I fround this comment on reddit that pretty much sums up what I think about it.

By FelisLeo, 13h ago. "sigh That Krett video...I like Krett, but I feel like that was a reeeally weak presentation of any kind of case against datamining. Saying that datamining doesn't count as content creation because it lack production value, calling it "morally gray", saying that they shouldn't be able to monetize their work, cuz...reasons? I just don't see the case here. I'm open to the discussion that datamining might be a bad thing overall, but those were some weak arguments and it just comes across as an overly opinionated vlogger who's mad about something and wants to complain."

Let's address the main issues the guy talks about :

1st - Weak presentation, since Krett claims that "Datamining doesn't count as content creation because it lack(s) production value, calling it "morally gray", saying that they shouldn't be able to monetize their work, cuz...reasons?"

I hate to say that sometimes great community members dissapoint us, but you can't side with Krett on this one. HE PRETTY MUCH SAID THAT, if you don't have a "production value", which I believe he meant the "full product", it can't be considered as "content creation".

He is pretty much saying that he's own content is not "content creation"

The same guy continuos, on a later response :

" The reason I kind of singled out the video response by Krett is that I don't get what his stake in this is. He doesn't work for HiRez. He wasn't involved in the PTS mistake. He doesn't stand to be hurt by this spoiler in any kind of obvious way. So why is he also angrily lashing out at dataminers [...] none of what Krett presented in the video did anything to contribute to a meaningful discussion."

Another user, Davoness, responded in a way I'm feeling towards Lydia, Flareb00t, HR ppl ( Weiss and Kaostic, mostly ) and Krett himself.

"And seeing Krett in this light just destroyed all respect I could ever have for him. Honestly, as someone who's rather opinionated myself, I kinda looked up to Krett for just shoving his opinions out the community and looking at things from both sides and just being pretty objective, but the video he made about datamining is extremely ****ing biased and serves no real purpose to anybody, he doesn't even have a reason to have an opinion on this matter, let alone an opinion of someone who is offended by datamining.

It just makes no sense to me that someone who is completely unrelated to this incident would take the stance that he did. And the only explanation I have for him lashing out against datamining like this is just him being a Hi-Rez fanboy, which is unfortunate. I really thought he was better."

I do agree that monetization is wrong, not saying it's right, but it's still the way he decided to take part in it. HR doesn't do ANYTHING to either ASK POLITELY for him to HIDE some of the information. Yes, Kaostic did ask for FAERYO to hide the Mez VP, AND SO HE DID. Out. Of. Pure. RESPECT.

Another User, S1eth, says, YET AGAIN, how most of the SMITE community is feeling about this matter

"Krett, Lydia, Flareb00t, Kaostic, (Weiss.)

Not every day do I see all those respected community members behave like little children on the internet
but I guess I never expected people to act professionally on twitter..."

I'm also going to talk about PomPom's and FAERYO's conversation ON THE SAME REDDIT post, collecting the most important information WITHOUT CHANGING ANYTHING.

PomPom : " Datamining does cause harm in 2 major ways. " " Confusion/Misrepresentation of Future Content. " & " Building Hype around content is more difficult. "

FAERYO : About the Confusion : " will be adding a Warning message in every post indicating this "

About the Hype :" We said numerous times we can avoid spoiling something [...] so it ENDS by Hi-Rez trying to put more effort into hiding what they 100% want to not get leaked. "

So I still don't see why the Datamining should be blamed by all this, and I believe that HR + Pros + Community Members should feel ashamed by their reactions.

I also want to talk about Lydia's way of saying " I ****ed up but he ****ed up harder "

Lydia says :

"He was making money off of unfinished work with HiRez and promoting it in a bad light. We live in a world where people always want to be first, and I want to see it accurate before being posted.

Should I have reacted differently? Yeah. Should Faeryo have too? Yes. I don't think it's fair to only blame myself and others for it as Faeryo, under smitedatamining, was attacking every single creator in SMITE. All I wanted was for him to take some of the blame for himself - which he did not."

1st- Hi-Rez leaves this unfinished work ON IT'S LIVE AND PTS FILES OF THE GAME. If they didn't want this exposed, either they save it somewhere else and upload it WHEN IT SHOULD BE, or DEAL WITH IT.

2nd- True, FAERYO pretty much said he's not the ONE to blaim. On the start, they were doing "Shots Fired" towards DATAMINING, with HiRezKaostic tweeting this :

#SAVED.

(Link: https://twitter.com/Kaostic/status/664556272943890432 )

To conclude, I belive HR is acting like a cry-baby. The Datamining hasn't done ANYTHING WRONG for the past 6 months, IT WASN'T EVEN SMITEDATAMINING that got that T5 Skin leaked, AND IT WAS BALMED FOR IT AT THE START, AND NO ONE STATED THEIR APOLOGIES, JUST SAYING IT WAS A MISUNDERTAND.

To finish up my thoughts, yet again, This message, on the Reddit post, explains it all.

By Badass_Bunny :

" I love the hypocrisy of the replies to SmiteDatamining account. Like holly **** we consider these people "quality contributors to community" and they are borderline mentally challenged in the things they say.

EDIT: Ohh and I especially loved the comment how "Datamining ruins Hi Rez's way of hyping their stuff". Yet Hi Rez actually never bothered to hype any of their patch notes related stuff, at best they'll tweet the picture of the skin card before patch notes. Meanwhile we get news that some god is getting some skin weeks before it actually happens through datamining, and THAT is what gets people hyped, knowing that their fave god is getting a skin. "