Infinity Clan, Cyberspace (Dec 17th, 2009) – The Infinity Clan, also known as the InfinityMW clan, has engaged in successful talks with gaming developer Zynga after nearly a week of turmoil and boycott. The talks included several top executives from Zynga in addition to developers, customer service, security, and operations managers; representing the MafiaWars community were several Infinity clan officers, an alliances liason, and Vinnie Vici (Godfather of Infinity). Effective immediately, the boycott of Zynga and in particular that of MafiaWars has been called off. The effects of the boycott were profound not only on Zynga but also on the addicted customer base who participated. It goes without saying that the boycott was formed as a result of issues that needed adequately addressed. Technical issues which affect an inordinate amount of players, such as half-loading frames (“white screen of death”), were just one aspect of the bigger picture; Zynga’s commitment to correcting technical errors and poor coding practices in general has been reinforced both by our conversation and the voice of the MafiaWars community as a whole.

Perhaps the most pressing issue of concern was Zynga’s use of a tool called iesnare/mpsnare. Iesnare, a trademark of Iovation, is designed primarily to assist with payment authentication and backend fraud protection through the use of Device Reputation Authority (DRA). This technology links your computer (well, your NIC card’s MAC addy) to your account, which was believed by many in the MafiaWars community to be a privacy invasion. Further conversation with lead developers and Zynga’s head of security have clarified this situation on a technical level that appeases the concerns to a degree; none of the information collected can be used to identify you personally, and stored data is aggregate data; even more pleasing though is that Zynga has decided to develop an in-house replacement to Iesnare (albeit this may take a little while to implement). This is much better than the old solution of simply changing the name due to the word “snare” in it. Users of the MafiaWars application should note that the technical conversation revealed that the current circumvention technique of using the local loopback address (127.0.0.1) only serves to subject the end user to increased risk and as such Infinity recommends that users cease utilizing that method (other methods employed by users remain viable). The bottom line is, iesnare is only used for payment processing and not to detect the use of bots, scripts, or alternate accounts.

Among other improvements and solutions the MafiaWars community can look forward to:

* iFraming is out (no need anymore for the Jailbreak tool in the InfinityMW Toolbar); this should alleviate many sufferers of the White Screen of Death (WSOD)

* Payment processing concerns: in particular, an exploit that could be performed using Firefox and TamperData has been immediately resolved (and personally verified as resolved); Zynga’s payment processing, in terms of security (not stability), is PCI compliant and secure. Stability & errors, they are working on.

* Robbing is coming back! While the previous iteration by Zynga was that it may not be plausible, the current position was a quite clear (verbatim) “We will be bringing it [robbing] back”

* Zynga will be working on providing clan leaders with a Zynga-employed liason that provides direct interaction with the leaders and developers at Zynga; this would likely be restricted to established GFs/GMs, so go join a good clan (might I suggest Infinity)

* Code testing prior to production launch will be more rigorous; equality in the sense of the “same game for everyone” will be improved, but offering “first time” purchasers a discount on GF points is standard fare.

* Fighting algorithms, game stability & proper load balancing, and general customer service will be improved; rollout dates for Bangkok were adjusted to accommodate the concerns.

* Zynga maintains that censorship on their boards was related to cross-linking / promoting of non-Zynga sites; I cannot find evidence that any person was given infraction or banning for postings that did not have external links, and such links are indeed prohibited by Zynga’s terms of service (TOS) for their forum.

* Zynga will be working as diligently as possible to fix individual concerns; users with customer service complaints should please try to provide their UID to Zynga when filing a ticket (without it, Zynga can’t really do anything to help you!)

* Zynga and Infinity will continue to hold talks every few weeks; next talks will be the first week of Jan… updates will of course be provided!

* Zynga will be providing for the reallocating of skill points, to individuals that meet the requirements, in the near future. The purpose is (and always has been) to do so for players who got used to the “old system” (circa July – August)…. so if you have a new(er) account, do not be too expectant.

* Wishlist issues should be fixed in the very near future (as in could be already when you read this)… clan links / hitlists should be running properly again as well!

* Tools: Zynga is going to be working more with us rather than against us… full-on autoplayers are of course still forbidden; most clans already police autoplayer users to begin with (what’s the point if you aren’t going to play?)

* Zynga has been made adequately aware of our concerns regarding loot drops and energy packs in particular; they will be addressing them soon, there are a few more pressing technical concerns which take precedent.

Infinity, as well as a large chunk of users, looks forward to resuming game play and awaits the materialization of the mentioned solutions. A large thanks to everyone who pitched in.