Finally! A game about getting pegged! And it calls your friends to get a session going!
I thought that there was a non-creepy reason that every app used to ask for permission to make phone calls. Something like pausing the game when you get a phone call.
It would be better if there was more granularity in permissions and I don’t think that “automatic game pausing” is an important enough feature to justify the permission, but I recognize that most users will just click “yes” until their game starts.
If I understand correctly the reason for this is actually because what permission says it does on the surface does not always equal what it actually does. For example the phone or location permission might not literally be necessary but the app might have some reason to request. For example some of the permissions on Android are tied to using the sensors and radios and such. Also some developers are just bad and ask for permissions they don’t need. They shouldn’t do this but I’m a comment not a cop.
The strongest example is location. On older Android versions, apps doing things like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi scanning often had to request location permission even if they did not actually care where you were. That was because nearby Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices can themselves be used to infer location. Android later split much of this into dedicated “Nearby devices” permissions: Bluetooth got separate permissions in Android 12, and Wi-Fi got NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES in Android 13. Some Wi-Fi APIs still require location access.
For a game of that era, READ_PHONE_STATE could have been used for things such as reading call state, obtaining a device identifier, analytics/licensing, or by a third-party SDK bundled into the game. Before Android tightened this substantially, READ_PHONE_STATE could provide access used to obtain persistent identifiers such as IMEI/device ID.
It’s probably to gather your phone number.
You’d think that notifying an app that it’s being interrupted due to a phone call would be basic functionality on a phone. The kind of thing an app doesn’t need permissions for because it’s core OS functionality that exposes no information to the app other than that it’s being sent to the background for a moment.
I have no idea how Google thought that this is advanced functionality equivalent to making phone calls.
I’m sure android has something for telling apps that a fullscreen notification is being displayed.
Yes I think that is the reason, and yes, there should be an automatic thing or other permission at least
Some versions ago, it was possible (at least on lineageos (or was it cyanogenmod?)) To change wayyyy more permissions. So many, one could break the system into not bootable anymore.
They removed this, because permissions now are just a way to let users think they would have control.
I just checked and it’s possible for audio interruption notifications to ignore other audio sources but not calls or notifications without the call permission. The game could be smart about it and assume interruptions that last more than 2 seconds are calls. There would be a delay but I think that’d be fine.
Anyways, pretty sure the grand majority of the apps that used to ask the call permission wanted it to look up the imei.
Damn I wish I could just save the original image still. That’s funny as hell.
Wait, got it. It’s perfect:
Time to get peggled!
Time to give the ol’ prostate a ring a ding.
Who doesn’t love a good peggling
If you crave peggle, you can try Peglin. It’s an rouge like spiritual sucessor of peggle
It’s an rouge like
My eye won’t stop twitching
It’s a like a red Peggle, but in French.
Wii wii
wait that’s Japan
The ‘r’ is silent
That’s because you’re supposed to use the rouge on your cheeks. The mascara and eyeshadow is for your eyes.
Look out! It’s a rogue (rogue-like rogue-lite rogue-clone)-like
Seconded. There are multiple classes, lore, interesting builds and unique fight mechanics.
Scrabble would like to have your grandma’s banking info, NYT app wants a picture of your b-hole, Facebook wants to have permission to switch your meds randomly OR out of spite, at its discretion.
I wonder if any of the crew from the glory days of popcap are still there today. EA really drove that brand into the dirt
Peggle is a marvellous game
What is it?.. Also why does it need permissions to make calls
To pause when you get a call
But they could just do that by pausing it when it’s not the active screen? Plenty of games do that already it seems like.
Why don’t you just allow peggle to make calls, yo? Don’t you trust the magic horse to also talk to your friends, family and coworkers about the bad sides of peggle, like sometimes you lose? What are you hiding behind the privilege to exclusively make calls for yourself?
Because its still the active screen when the call comes in.
This let the game pause and the ringer take audio over. It was all bundled into the same “phone” permission group, which appeared like this when the permission was requested.
But if you’re playing on your phone you don’t actually need the ringer to take control of your audio as you are already looking at it. And if you press answer the game is no longer an active screen. If you don’t press answer or press decline you don’t really need the game to pause either.
Memory management, it needs to save its state if you leave the app for the call. If it goes to background, and it stays there long enough, whatever was going on would just get dropped.
The issue was the lack of granularity in permissions that were provided.
I know that you’re gen x or older, as millennial and newer don’t use our telephones for calling, that’s just silly. Silly-willy, even. We just disable the phone app. Big brain.
