It's a free market buddy. They are providing a services and valuing it at 6$, nothing forcing you to buy it. If on the other hand you want the service but can't afford 6$ a month (a couple of beers), get out of your mothers basement and get a job you slob...
On the serious note, this is the world of freemium - 99% of the Dotabuff users get to enjoy a great free statistics site on the back of the 1% that are willing and able to pay the monthly sub. You actually gain by having them want 6$ for the Plus by getting good fast servers and nice back-end. Too bad Valve is intent to kill the community after plucking all of their success off of it (just remember where you got your most successful games from Valve).
Oh boy jams, that's just mature. Not only do you not understand what a "free market" is, but you throw in childish insults at the end of that ignorant statement. Free market doesn't mean you can just pull number out of someone else's software then turn around and sell those numbers for a profit. Especially when this is clearly stated:
SECTION 2, F
You may not, in whole or in part, copy, photocopy, reproduce, publish, distribute, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, modify, disassemble, decompile, create derivative works based on, or remove any proprietary notices or labels from the Software or any software accessed via Steam without the prior consent, in writing, of Valve.
You are not entitled to: (iii) exploit the Software or any of its parts for any commercial purpose.
http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/english/
agreed^ The probem is $$$$$$ not the private policies. don't matters if optional or no. is money from a valve game.
DotANote - and where exactly does it say in that excerpt that they can't use the publicly available data. It's only about the source code and derivative works.
Besides, that's what all analysts do, make money on someone elses data. They don't sell the data, they sell their analysis of it.
'lol 6$ to show off stats of a game. What a scam.'
lol 10$ for virtual character clothing. What a scam.
How can you idiots not understand that no one is forcing you to pay for it. The only reason you get free stats on DotaBuff, or free game of Dota 2 is because someone else can and will pay for cosmetic stuff. That's the point of freemium...
DotANote hit it on the head. The agreement spells it out, you can't derive profit from their product without their permission.
Does it suck? I'm not sure. On the one hand yes, after all it costs money to just host a site, but then again if there's money in it shouldn't it go to the dev?
I'd be mighty pissed off if someone took a picture of my painting and sold it for profit.
$6 a month sounds ridiculously high. I'm not sure how much it costs to maintain a website but if 10000 people sign up for it, which seems a reasonable number to me, thats already 60k...
I check Dotabuff from time to time, I don't really care about the plus upgrade features, But if you're trying to make money off other people's hard work then **** you.
First you try to implement a feature to a game without asking the game developers... Then you try to make money off them, Then you play the victim? Really?
Dotabuff isn't making money off of Valve's work; they've put in their own time, effort, and money to make the website they have now. As Jams said, they're the analysts to the game, and asking for money for the work that they have put isn't insane, it's good business. Publicly available data is just that; public. Anyone can view, organize, analyze it. If this was against the law, don't you think Valve would be suing Dotabuff?
Pucks, The money isn't just for the website upkeep; you're right, it's probably not that expensive if you're just hosting a website. The money is for the upkeep of the people making the website; $60,000 can pay one person's salary for a year; if the people at Dotabuff make this their full time job (which I'm guessing is likely) then yeah, perfectly reasonable. Even at a million dollars, that's around 13 salaries, and not exactly a vast sum of money. Compare that to Valve.
"Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of Valve Corporation, is one of the richest people on the planet. With an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion dollars, he ranks 854th out of 1,226 global billionaires."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/03/07/valve-gabe-newell-billionaire/
Gabe is a billionaire, for those of you who didn't know. Even a million dollars is not going to hurt him or Valve in the slightest.
I think Dotabuff is an amazing, very well-implemented idea. I enjoy seeing how I rate, and it makes me want to improve even further. The fact that Valve hasn't implemented a clear rating system into their game itself is a little ridiculous in my mind, and that Dotabuff has taken it and ran this far speaks highly of them, in my opinion.
I'd love to see Valve make a contract with Dotabuff to continue supplying this service; Dotabuff has already proposed their own privacy option for those who don't want others to see their stats. I wish the best of luck for this site, and would personally sign up for Plus if it continues.
Solid Wag all that u say is shit since you type this bullshit "Dotabuff isn't making money off of Valve's work; they've put in their own time, effort, and money to make the website"...
Again with the same bullshit If valve wants to give us an stats profile and stuff they will if they doenst want to , they would not ...why? couse they own the game and if they want to send you to fuck you out and stop stealing info to make money with they work they will... capiche?
This so called service is a joke, its the kind of information that if existing, should be available to anyone. I mean heck, with this new thing, you can expect people to maybe buy one plus account and then upload the information elsewhere where everyone can see it.
@solidwag, but the people the Valve employees (they don't just have one game mind you) and investors of Valve wouldn't agree with you in the slightest. What Argentino said is right, you have just said a pile of crap, this isn't some fancy magical rainbow pony world, there are real people on BOTH SIDES.
I'm with DotANote here, they should certainly not be asking for money for statistics they are getting from the game. But even just in comparison to other webesites, I mean come on, countless other websites did it in dota1 for free, there was even dotaholic for a while (not sure if that is still going) for dota2, and dota-academy has all the records for competitive games, much more data then you can currently get here (picks/bans/order/role/lane/synergy/counters), all for free. Sure, open the site up for donations or something.
I am not saying that Valve and DOTABUFF should not be connected, but asking for money on the user end is stupid, I've lost a lot of the respect that I once had for this site.
But they were trying to get profit from information they didn't own, they lost access to said information so they had to abort the service. Then they shut down their own website blaming it to Valve, to create a revolt so Valve would revert the change, giving them access to the data again, so that they could make profit out of it.
How can you even defend this?
Dotabuff provided algorithms for sorting the games and stats. If you are so against it- go retrieve games and manually calculate statistics, see how much time you will spend on that. People really need to understand that it is the algorithms that dotabuff developed are what they are selling, not raw valve stats.
DB puts a lot of time into giving you all the statistics accurate for this game. They make it well-organized so all of us can see it in stylish fashion.
Offcourse if you want to thank them for that, you can pay them 6$ a month (which is only like nothing, 2 beers)
Remember how just a few days before that Plus thing Dotabuff said that all their features will be free? For this, I have to agree with Valve. Trying to make money off something that is free, I do not agree with that.
@The Terrible, and you think they are the first ever site to use a rating system? You realise that sure, making it from scratch is one thing, but not when there are plenty of equations easily available for the MOBA gametype. Getting the data is one thing, deriving a rating is another. And please stop spreading your bullshit, many other sites have done what dotabuff has done, just with not as good execution. It has been done in dota 1 and in dota 2 a lot of times.
@i_Ni, and so do other sites, except they don't charge money. Just because you are completely unaware about the subject you are talking on is not an excuse to make a stupid comment like that. Unless an agreement had been made with Valve, they should not be able to charge money for this service.
@ You_Got_Fukt, they dont charge money for the data they take, they charge money for how they transform it into easy readable spreadsheets
You guys really don't understand do you?
They are not charging for stats from valve. They are providing the stats for free. They didn't take anything from free members, Plus just shows your analysis of the stats.
Think of it this way: Valve is providing dotabuff free ingredients like a garden. Dotabuff's chef takes the ingredients and cook them to make something good out of it, Then if YOU WANT TO you can buy that food. They also give away the ingredients for free (ie your winrate and dbr) if you don't want to pay them you can make a excel document and record your daily/weekly stats and make your own graphs (ie food)
I see nothing wrong here.
Also, do you think it's cheap to make a website like dotabuff? How much do you think the servers cost? 100$? I bet they cost over 2000$ per month. Not to mention the developers cost and other costs
Also, they never said they were gonna make dbr public to plus members like elobuff. Am i missing something here?
@Viruser: provoking ignorant players into making a revolt so that Valve undoes the security change just for Dotabuff's selfish reasons is wrong. Very wrong.
They can rework the site, but it's much more easy and most importatly, profitable for them to just force valve into removing the changes.
@fetus: lololol
who told you dota is in beta? Valve is making money out of dota 2 ATM. That automatically kills the whole beta thing.. Valve is just hoping to sell 30$ copies to idiot casual players by not releasing it now.
Also, we have a beta client called dota 2 test. What will you call that? beta of beta? wake up! dota was out of beta after 2012 but i don't think an ignorant like you could understand these things
Also, if valve wanted to make a statistics in game they would have done it by now, but nooooo they need their developers to make shitty clothes and chests for casual players and there is no time to make heroes/statistics/<anything goes here>
I see nothing wrong with someone seeing their own stats. I see nothing wrong with public stats either but ok, dota 2 is a casual game but please.. give me 1 just ONE reason why we can't see our own stats.
Also, if you hate DB so much why are you here at the first place? please, leave dota since if you are scared of your stats this game is not for you
@malvodion:
Read my post again, did i say anything about changing security of dota?
What i said, $6 charge for analysis is completely OK and non of these arguments are valid against it.
"DB is charging for stats' No. it is charging for analysis. You can make graphs yourself if you want to by using the free stats dotabuff is providing and VALVE DOES NOT.
'DB is making money out of stats' Dotabuff's servers are not free. they need some how get their costs back, after all this is not a charity work.
omg nobody forces you to buy dota plus if u don't want to buy it. Valve I think showed to us that they don't care about dota community by shutting down Dotabuff site.
Its Valves product and their TOS allow them to do whatever the flop they want. If someone decides to build up a business on a service that hasn't officially been provided by Valve by reverse engineering their product (further breaking the TOS) its their own damn risk. Deal with it.
Actually letting people pay/support for a probably heading downhill service isn't a smart choice either, since it will most likely upset Valve even more. Offering full refunds was a good idea.
@korky buchek: prove my point right again.
Valve didn't shut down the website. Dotabuff shut their own website, blamed it to Valve. Why, you might wonder? To motivate the players into complaining to Valve, so that Valve undoes the security change. Why? Because if Valve undoes it, Dotabuff won't have to do a single thing. They only want to make easy profit and don't want to rework the website.
Dotabuff Can work with the new webapi, but they won't be able to sell the "Analysis".
This is extremly selfish, and I can't belive people is still trying to defend it.
At this point the only defense I see is "Ignoring everything and acting as if DB were innocent victims"
They might be victims of this security change, but they are ANYTHING but Innocent.
They wouldn't give a single damn about the entire matter if it didn't prevent them from getting money.
And before anyone says anything: They lied to people to use them as war dogs for a fake cause. It Can't be defended in any way, not even with "They worked a lot on it".
@You_Got_Fukt
Is there other way for me to check my stats? No. They took a deficit - lack of public stats, put together website with good UI and created something that wasnt there before. Sure there are formulas around, but I sure won't be calculating my games, or games of other people on my own. Thats like saying we shouldnt credit engineers since they just took formulas that are freely avaliable (i.e F=ma) and made a building.
Long story short - Dotabuff offers me something (great part of this for free), Valve doesn't. Why should I support Valve then? Why should I care whos data is? Why should I care who is taking money (big company or small company)? I am customer, I want something and I can demand it. That's all.
@Fel, DB is using players for a selfish reason, and they are the ones who refused to share information to you. And don't say that's impossible to get the info with the new webapi, they can. they don't want to upgrade their website, so they tried to downgrade Valve's changes.
If you want to demand to someone, it's to Dotabuff.
@Malvodion
From what I've understood, they're already upgrading whole system to work with webapi. The thing is the old system was already working well. Also webapi doesn't allow them to collect data required for some functionalities.
Everyone has selfish reasons. Valve wants money, Dotabuff wants money, I want statistics. Using? They are just asking for support from people that want what they have to offer. It's mutual benefit.
Do u guys know this iste: https://elobuff.com/landing
It is the sam ecompany that did this site Dotabuff... now see the facts.. Dotabuff was TOTALY free, now we have some Plus, and tomorrow? we will have do pay to see anything.. what valve did was correctly... they dony want another company make money with something that they dont are the owners.. and we have the privacy issue too.. and other thing, API will grow, now its poor but they will increase the possibility..
Honestly, what I get from the last 2 weeks is that dotabuff is an extremely unprofessional company that needs to have an end put to it.
It isn't just that they are trying to make money, that is fine. The whole DBR thing where they ignore 1/4th of the people who visit the site is disgusting and demands an apology. Which they did, but everything after the "we are sorry" bit was just antagonizing valve. Just look at their diction in all their statements, "valve shuts down dotabuff", you mean stops giving out freebies that dotabuff was never entitled to in the first place? They are true dota players, its never their fault always somebody else's fault.
@SaciDaCapoeira
edit:nvm, misunderstood your statement
@Infinite Regen
"ignore 1/4th of the people who visit the site"
Ignore? Wat? Apparently they did exactly what this minority wished - they made DBR private without an option to make it public.
@FelStyle It was in their plan to make them not private to plus users. That would be ignoring. Once it is clear that they have pissed a lot of people off, they apologize and make private. They catered to this 1/4th after making them angry. If they hadn't ignored them in the first place maybe they wouldn't be in such a bind?
@Infinite Regen
That would be ignoring, but they didn't do so. They created poll, they listened to both sides and they made solution that satisfies minority. Seems right for me.
Also I don't think that whole 1/4th of people which voted against public stats was "angry". Probably just couple of people.
@Argentino
No my win-ration is 51%
I am 1815 rated and 97% dbr
But I am still happy this page is going down
Good bye dotabuff , no 1 will miss you
"ignore 1/4th of the people who visit the site"
If only 1/4 didn't want public DBR, doesn't that mean that 3/4 were either in favor or had no opinion? Isn't a bigger issue to ignore the larger part of your fanbase to cater to a few who will yell and cry when they don't get THEIR way?
Dotabuff provides a service that Valve REFUSES to at this time. They fill a gap that is obviously in demand in the community.
And if you're so against stats, why are you here in the first place?
I'm not against stats at all. I'm against DBR, but that is another matter.
Dotabuff is a company, and companies cannot afford to split their audience like dotabuff did. 1/4th is a huge amount of their audience, and they cannot be ignored. They shouldn't be ignoring the other 75% either. They shouldn't be making stupid decisions and splitting their audience. If they can't understand this, then they shouldn't be running this site in the first place.
@#D3viLisHDOTA Dotabuff might be missed, but you sure won't be. You might want to actually learn to play before you do little tricks like level 1 rosh to boost your self esteem. Baddie.
https://dotabuff.com/matches/101811805
@Infinite Regen
As far as I understood your logic (I tried really hard), you mean that making any decision that somebody is not going to like equals to splitting audience, which is commercial suicide. Especially if you ask kindly and make a poll about this, cause then, woah, discussions are starting, community is splitted and a lot of bad things happen. K.
Man, maybe just face the fact that the only thing you don't like about Dotabuff is the idea of DBR. And you don't have to justify this by some wicked logical acrobations, you can have your opinion and your opinion matters. You can even support Valve which is (probably) against DBR, but please, stop these logical double backflips.
For one last time you ignorant stupid fucks - THE DATA DOTABUFF USES IS PUBLIC. IT IS PROVIDED AS PUBLIC DATA BY VALVE ITSELF. Now adopt ANAL and crawl into your fucking little holes cause you understood shit from Valve's EULA.
DotaBuff IS NOT SELLING THE DATA, it is selling access to their own fucking site. Their work, their right, their privilege. And to the moron that suggested stealing from DotaBuff's site, now that would be breaking the law you witless twat.
Now try to read and comprehend and maybe you will learn something:
1) DotaBuff used other methods in obtaining the data cause the WebAPI was launched, available for a day or two and immediately shut down for 6 months cause Valve didn't want to allocate resources to it. For a company that took a community game, such blatant disregard towards that same community is shameful.
2) In their half witted approach to limiting access to scraping client data and relaunching the WebAPI, Valve removed replay links from the game information. They did this to protect the so called "privacy" of players, but the end result is hugely limited possibilites to what community sites can do - and I'm not talking DotaBuff exclusively here as replay parsing is what other sites like Dota Academy rely and plan to build upon too. Just check CyborgMatt's huge post on Bruno's replay parser. If you think anyone is going to manually download replays and build any sort of community site on it you're sorely mistaken. Oh and btw, before anyone jumps the gun and makes an even bigger idiot of himself, the replay parsing information is also publicly provided by Valve.
Now go and try to build and run a site with 1,3 million pageviews per day all on a database with 100s of millions of records. Make it look good, free and stable. Have no advertising. Come back in few months and I'll bow to you for having the brains and balls to do it. But until you do, just shut your flapper and use some lube for that anal pain of not being able to afford something you want.
Per favore Accedi per inviare commenti.
I can understand that Dotabuff wants $. Remove Plus membership, make an option to donate and have a contract with Valve.
6$ Monthly fee? Come on, you are showing stats of a Valve game, not Blizzard.