this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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No because this goes against GDPR. They aren't allowed to have anything identifying users "phoning home" without explicit consent/logging into a launcher.
If it included identifiable information then yeah it would be a breach. This is just using a mac address most likely that will also if they do it right will be hashed client side so even if a bad actor could do something with that info they won't actually get it anything from it anyway.
Then we just fall back to the issue of them not being able to identify installs, reinstalls, bad actors spoofing the source etc..
If they could track installs properly they would have solved piracy already
Well they've mainly said (recently) that they'll count new device installs, but not reinstallations on the same device. Which i believe. It's the whole, exemptions of charity sales and pirate copies is where they're spouting bullshit, or is PR/ higher ups making quick premises to placate without the engineers saying that that's possible, but now they've got to find a way. Which I don't think they will without heavily bloating the runtime into super shitty DRM realms
Couldn't they just add another ToS checkbox to click when installing the game?
TOS is given through the publisher who would be bound by GDPR by all sorts of regulations about storing that stuff.