> harsh, company destroying penalties associated with GDPR

These are entirely imagined, most likely by Americans spreading FUD, or people interpreting the terms "maximum fine" as a minimum fine.

When it’s a largely opaque foreign regulator deciding where on the scale your fine will be I’d argue it’s irresponsible to consider anything less than the maximum when doing cost-benefit analysis.

It's probably better stated as:

> The people doing terrible things are trying to convince other companies that they will be destroyed by the GDPR

Perhaps. But the large fines are a concern without too much prompting from the problem companies.

Not saying the GDPR is bad, I’d personally like to see it applied every where.

Okay, so what was Ragnarok Online doing that it had to shut down?

Misinterpreting the rules?

Who knows? Probably fishy things, what other explanation is there?

How about: Not making enough money to actually update the codebase.

You can be doing good, normal things and still not be compliant with the law.

As I understand it, the law was passed because the representatives of the people of europe saw a misalignment between "normal" and "good" and decided to enforce it.

What good things can you be doing with my stored data that you don't need to run your service?