New Scaratings

Stopping the spoofers is easy -- modify the app to check if t he phone has enabled fake GPS and, if it is enabled,disable the app. I learned that is possible when I tried to use FanDuel from my phone.

I'm baffled why Buzztime would encourage freeloaders who play from home. If they threaten to quit playing, who cares!

I believe they brought the questions back for the same reason they put the questions in the app in the first place, years ago. The players IN the bars that can’t a box/tablet need to play on the app and can’t always see a tv. Also many players, mostly older ones, were very accustomed to the ease of being able to read the questions close up on the phone or iPad instead of far off.

Others have no tv on BT, esp on Sundays. That happens more than anyone realizes.

This reverse was to help players in the bars as was the original plan years ago. Those players are spending plenty of money in the bars and expect to be able to see the damn questions any way that they need.

Yes, this lets the remote players back in too. Ohh well. Maybe when BT gets some more bars closer to them they will go back in the bars. I know Richy has plenty of bars. As long as the lag is cut down I don’t care what they do. As far as I see here the lag is no more than a second and that is gone by the start of the 2nd round in LT and CD. If anyone sees anything more let us know, we can let BT know what bars still have a lag and it can be fixed.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

The problem isn't the existence of remote play; the problem is the non-existence of any way to make remote players pay.

From
http://www.scaratings.com/newScaratings/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4109

So What Can We Do Instead?

What Buzztime needs to do is set up their own hybrid situation: retain free play in bars/restaurants and create a new paying player category to create a second means of playing. Buzztime would charge a set monthly fee for access to some or all of the same games as the bars. This would work solely through the Buzztime app.

The use of locations would be expanded. Paying players could choose to join an existing location or create their own. Teams could be formed/disbanded by groups deciding to join or leave a “place.”

With the carrots come a necessary stick: devices using GPS spoofing must be automatically blocked from the Buzztime system. As I pointed out earlier, this can be done for most devices without blocking the use of phones, etc. in the bar; this is likely to be more difficult for iOS than Android phones, but spoofing Is more difficult with iOS, too.

So how would this change how my team plays? If a member of my team wanted to play, with our team or by himself, he would have to pay Buzztime a monthly fee, just like Netflix. He would have to do that because if he tried to use GPS spoofing to pretend to be in a bar, Buzztime wouldn’t let him in. When he signed in, he would no longer sign into some bar in New Jersey or Long Island; he would sign into “our” place, and that would be his (and our) location on leaderboards. Assuming Showdown was included in the games covered by the monthly fee, there would be no need to continue with the “Hybrid Showdown” play; we would just play Showdown remotely, and pay Buzztime directly to play that and all the other games.

Creating and maintaining a subscription system would be a significant cost, and one can reasonably doubt initial revenues would justify the outlay. If the only purpose of the exercise was to gather up the lost sheep of the tribe of Buzztime, I couldn’t justify it; this would need significant promotion and outreach.

But the same old, same-old didn’t really work in the good old days, and it’s a lot worse now. Buzztime has to decide whether or not it wants to keep living. It may think staying the same is the way to go, but there’s just no future in catering to a dwindling remnant of old fogies with a dwindling remnant of old locations, especially when there aren’t a stream of new fogies showing up as replacements.