I'm not familiar with that analysis, its accuracy, or its evidence. I would be surprised by this given it seems like providers are still in the growth phase.
Typically the burden of proof is on the one making the claim.
Nintendo is the publisher and co-owner of the franchise. They have outsourced development (e.g. Bandai Namco) or licensed to other developers (e.g. Niantic) in the past, and seemingly could have done so more often.
People love the concept of pokemon and monster collection, and it hasn't really evolved beyond the same RPG formula in 20 years.
Nintendo has utterly failed to deliver different experiences in the franchise. There's clearly an appetite for it.
I don't think different genres mean a completely different target audience. Most gamers play multiple genres, and there's a massive overlap of fans of Pokemon and fans of Palworld in particular.
Perhaps they were so successful at getting their clients minimal punishments that they didn't see a need to meaningfully invest in proper IT security compared to the inevitable slap on the wrist.
I just tried the experiment myself and I get very similar results to what the article describes.
It's mostly sponsored (4 of the top 10 are sponsored). There is only 1 on the entire first page where I recognize the brand. It's the 2nd last on the page (Cuisinart). I see no KitchenAid or OXO.
That link shows Gabe Newell's estimated net worth, but does he have have 100% ownership of Valve? The Valve Wikipedia page shows his ownership as ">50%" [0], but isn't more specific.
If anything the mobile browser situation is much worse.
On one major platform, there is Chrome by default (so even bigger market share issues). People can install other browsers, but far fewer do than even on desktop. For those that do, most use the Play Store which has some conflict of interest concerns.
On the other platform it's even worse. The only option is Safari and the conflict of interest is fully realized because other browsers aren't even allowed on the App Store
I agree, this doesn't feel like much of an apology.
In addition to the reasons you mentioned, it also only acknowledges a single event, when the original post describes multiple incidents spanning multiple years.
Furthermore, there's no statement that suggests he intends to change his behavior in the future.
> ETags can be used to track unique users, as HTTP cookies are increasingly being deleted by privacy-aware users. In July 2011, Ashkan Soltani and a team of researchers at UC Berkeley reported that a number of websites, including Hulu, were using ETags for tracking purposes. Hulu and KISSmetrics have both ceased "respawning" as of 29 July 2011, as KISSmetrics and over 20 of its clients are facing a class-action lawsuit over the use of "undeletable" tracking cookies partially involving the use of ETags.
It appears that there have been at least a few cases of this in the wild.
The main distinction (at least to me) between ETag and the other tracking methods you mention is that ETag doesn't appear to be easily clearable by a user (although that sounds like something browsers should fix if they haven't already).
It's unfortunate that features like this end up getting co-opted by trackers, which leads to breaking legitimate use cases like your app in the process.
Have you considered using something other than ETag for your use case? It seems like ETag been compromised by trackers, and unfortunately this is why we can't have nice things.
It looks like the add-on has an option to "Allow referral marketing" which is off by default. If you install this add-on and feel like enabling this, it looks like you can.
That said, it still results in some level of tracking and given the add-on's purpose, having to opt in to affiliate links seems like the right choice.
Typically the burden of proof is on the one making the claim.