No Freaking Thanks

Chapter 9

Tuesday, October 11, 2022; New London, Connecticut, U.S.A.

The four traveled down to a Spirit Halloween to pick out their costumes. Lucky for them, the store had the perfect costumes: an 80's workout one (Terry), the luchador (Vince), the plague doctor (Jared), and the Scarlet Witch (Joy).

"Do you ever feel a mile wide in that costume, Terry?" Jared jokingly asked.

"Come on, lad. It's getting old," Terry shook his head.

"I appreciate old things," Jared boasted, "And old people...like your mother." A smirk grew on Jared's face.

"Since when did you start having an affection with Mom?" Joy asked.

Jared defended, "Oh ho! I am not looking forward to marrying her; she's just one hell of a cougar. It is amazing how well she turned out even after turning fifty. She is lucky to have you two."

"We get it," Joy said, "Now, will you please excuse me? I have a purchase to make."

As Joy walked up to a cashier, Jared leaned in towards the two. "Everything is going according to plan. My family is making flyers along with a Facebook post for our party. You got any ideas?"

"Implement a mandate on vaccinations or negative tests," Vince suggested while laying his hand on Jared's shoulder, "We do not want to create a super-spreader event. I may be a Republican; I graduated from medical school. This should not be a political issue; it is a public health issue."

"We get it, Vince," the two replied sternly.

Monday, October 24, 2022; New London, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Vince and Jared arrived at the Darrell household with some news to share. They rang the doorbell, and Joy answered. "Hi, can I help you two?"

"We came across some 'colorful intel' regarding Riley. Is Terry home?" Vince asked.

"Oh, we are taking a break from reviewing Agent Polina on the Wii. It is dinnertime, so help yourself to some Cajun corn, fettuccini alfredo, and strawberry shortcake."

"That sounds delightful," Jared said happily while growing another smirk, "Speaking of delightful, is your mother around?"

"Jared!" the three groaned in unison. Terry then replied, "Mum's setting up schedules for student-led conferences. Best to try not to interrupt her duties."

"Well, Terry. There is something you need to see," Vince said as he tapped on his Lenovo laptop.

It displayed a recently-published article about how Eagle Games just established their own PC client similar to the likes of EA's Origin and Activision-Blizzard's Battle.Net. They not only boasted on exclusively having their projects on there; the company said they want to see full profit from their products. Along with a horrible Call of Duty clone was a line of derivatives of various classics such as a Pac-Man clone involving a look-alike in a tricorn hat evading four soy ghosts while eating beef cuts, a Doom clone that looked a lot like the 2002 racist shooter (Scheeres, 2002), and a Streets of Rage knock-off featuring actors fighting against cancel-culture warriors.

For investigation purposes, Vince used a burner account to sign up to the client. He first noticed a small number of countries displayed by flags: the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and Canada. That meant portions of the audience are from those countries. Then, there was the noticeable lack of a minimum age requirement (or possibly a parental consent requirement) while creating a client account. There is a clause in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) that reads:

I operate a general audience video game service and do not ask visitors to reveal their ages. I do permit users to submit feedback, comments, or questions by email. What are my responsibilities if I receive a request for an email response from a player who indicates that he is under age 13? (Federal Trade Commission [FTC], 2020)

Anyone running a game service can send a response to a child's account without needing parental consent, but the former must delete the latter's contact information soon after (FTC, 2020). If one were to keep the information, parental consent is required. About the lack of an age requirement or parental consent on Eagle Games' game client? That could be a possible COPPA violation. Parents would not be aware that their children were playing games that featured extremism of the far-right. There were also signs of more COPPA violations such as the use of kid-orientated animated characters found in Eagle Games' Streets of Rage clone and that transphobic project about pretending to be an animal or the act of promoting a line of children's books written by far-right politicians. If this case was from the far-left, it would not be any different. Since people from the listed countries had accounts on the client, Eagle Games might face other violations of international Internet laws.

The three men noticed these red flags right away while eating their dinner.

"Age requirement: no. Parental consent: zilch," Vince uttered.

"Possible lawsuit: yep," Terry speculated.

"Outcome: train go boom," Jared said.

"And with their NFT-orientated shooter on the horizon, those bastards are going to see the children become crypto miners," Terry hypothesized, "Parents will probably be pissed at the company."

"I would not count on that," Jared argued, "Not everyone in the same age groups as our parents at least has a clue what NFTs are."

"But I do, gentlemen," Hayden said as she walked downstairs.

Terry gave his friends a quick smirk before telling his mother the news. "Of course you do, Mum. Listen, there is this rich bloke that wants to join the video game industry with this shooter that, in theory, allows users to engage in this Ponzi scheme with the guns, attachments, charms, whatever."

"Gosh! That's horrible!" Hayden exclaimed.

"Oh-ho! You don't even know half of it. When my lad Vince started creating an account on the bloke's game company's client for investigation purposes, we noticed that anyone [as the user] does not need to confirm their age or get parental consent," Terry shook his head as if he was about to burst, "This means this bloody business is luring kiddies into one hell of a scam...without their parents' knowledge!"

"In that case, I should warn my friends on Facebook about this. They usually let their little ones play on their devices while running errands," Hayden said.

"Care to add me on Facebook, Ms. D?" Jared asked. His friends raised their eyebrows at him. Jared then defended himself, "What's wrong with getting more friends on the web?"