Payments

As I worked through starting my networking code, it quickly became apparent that my authentication bit was also going to have to take payments into account unless I wanted to tear it all down at a later date.  At first, I had thought I would use Playfab, as it seems to be the most straightforward way for a game dev to monetize without spending too much time on it, right?

Wrong.

As I actually started trying to code a solution, I was immediately struck by how awful the Playfab codebase is. It's not just me, they actually apologize for the mess in some of their documentation! Now I understand why Microsoft bought it out. They saw the awful codebase and felt right at home!

Regardless, I was intent on pushing through it and making it work, until something happened.

I realized that Playfab had intentionally made it difficult for a developer to login, authenticate, and deal with users unless the players logged in with Facebook, Google, Kongregate, Steam, etc, etc. To add salt to the wound, one document then went on to lecture me about how paying users had to give their email address to get started, or else you should consider that as lost revenue.

To say I have strong feelings about privacy is a huge understatement.  I've been tracked before in ways that adversely affected my life in very tangible ways, and I am NEVER going to give any company the benefit of the doubt again when it comes to letting them have information about myself or my players.

Once it became clear that Playfab was intentionally steering me towards giving up as much information about my players as possible (I guess they found some revenue stream by doing that), that's when I gave the Playfab website my middle finger and closed those tabs with extreme prejudice.

Let me make it very clear that Spacemind is not just another company out to get your data/info. I have a strong moral compass, and I have to look myself in the mirror every morning. I have suffered through privacy nightmares, so I cannot tell myself white lies about doing anything with your personal information, because most companies have zero ethics and have zero respect for your information, and Spacemind will end up having to work with other companies, so here's the deal...

I am not comfortable with Spacemind having your personal information.  Not now, not ever.  Spacemind may end up logging some of your personal tells/whispers/in-game emails, but if it does, I am going to encrypt the hell out of it so that NO ONE, including me, can ever figure out what it means except you and your intended recipient.  I don't want your credit card information, and I don't want to know who you are, what ads you've clicked on, what you've bought recently, etc.  I only want to know those things if you find me in-game and decide to tell me all of that stuff in person (so to speak).  Otherwise, it's not my business to know any of that.

All I want is for you to enjoy Spacemind as a virtual life you never knew you wanted and to buy a few items/things to support the game that will also enhance your enjoyment of Spacemind. Some of you might want me to store credit card information so that your purchases will be faster/easier, but I really don't want to do that.

To top it off, I'm also not ok with requiring an email address for someone to have a Spacemind account. Spacemind should stand on its own, and it can't do that if I'm forcing you to tie your virtual self to some real-life baggage.  Why can't your Spacemind character have their own email address in the game?  Shouldn't that be more than enough?

Spacemind needs to feel (and BE) private, safe, and secure for everyone. How else are you ever going to feel at home there?

Suffice it to say, I'm having trouble finding a well-programmed payment processor that I'm happy with after I realized that my goals aren't in alignment with financial entities that have coded some middleware for taking your money.  I have considered so many now that I'm going cross-eyed. None of them seem good, so I guess I'll have to continue working on it as Spacemind evolves.

For the moment, I'm going to integrate Paypal payments directly into the game (which is definitely not the easy/quick solution, but it's the least morally disgusting one), and then we'll see what to do from there. I was thinking Xsolla, but too many gamers have had shady issues with them. Maybe Bitcoin will be good enough for players who can't access Paypal in their country/situation.

We'll see.  This is definitely a topic that Spacemind's community is going to have to address (and change) more than once.  For the things in Spacemind that have some moral grey area, we are *always* going to have the community decide how to proceed.  I am just one person with a vision, and I live to serve you, the players.  Not the other way around!