MobyGames News
Today we enforced a modification of policy that previously allowed credits for compilations. As of right now, we no longer accept credits for compilations unless the credits being entered are specific additions for that compilation only. All extraneous credits for compilations have been deleted as of today.

Why this change in policy? Because allowing redundant credits for compilations was "polluting" the database. For example, let's take the example of programmer X, who worked on Pool of Radiance. Pool of Radiance was originally published by SSI. But in the late 1990s, Interplay began distributing Pool of Radiance. Because full credits were re-entered for that Interplay compilation, the database now reflected that programmer X had previously worked for SSI and Interplay, when that simply wasn't true. Multiply that for the number of compilations in the database (over 80 and counting), and you can see how bad the problem would get.

Although we wanted to do this a while ago, we procrastinated and pretended that it wasn't a problem. Imagine our surprise when developers from Westwood, Interplay, Sierra, Microprose, and other companies emailed us complaining about the bad data! Kevin Scruggs put it best:

Hello, this is Kevin Scruggs of Westwood Studios.

Your game credits database seems to be a bit buggy. Situations with parent companies issuing multi-game packs and subcontracting situations appear to be causing erroneous results on your developer description pages.

(reference to old game entry deleted)

I never worked for IG or Origin. Niether have most of the people that worked on Dune 2000. Brett (chuckle) certainly hasn't worked for any other game companies, being our founder and all...

Just to let you know we didn't play any favorites, we were completely indiscriminant: Even we (Jim and Brian) had some of our previously-entered credits deleted. For those who lost some contribution points, we hope that you understand our mission of being the most accurate historical gaming database necessitated these corrections, and we're sorry for not having enforced it earlier.
Submitted by Trixter (8745) on Aug 31, 2000