this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Gabe Newell ordered to make in-person deposition for Valve v. Wolfire Games lawsuit (web.archive.org)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (5 children)

hoovers your data

Any way to limit this?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

EA is worse with data collection imo. Or at least just as bad.

Steam has always done a little bit of it, particularly their hardware surveys, but even then it's never felt so creepy when they do it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Steam's hardware survey gathers a narrow set of hardware info, shows you what it finds, and asks permission before sending. It is completely ~~transparent~~ forthcoming and optional. That is not hoovering up your data.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, the one thing I would say is that you can never be 100% certain what data is being gathered by closed source software, especially if there is an encrypted communication channel. Saying that though, Valve are decently trustworthy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Agreed; I would much prefer games and their storefronts to be open-source.

Of what we have today, though, most of Steam's competitors are far worse in this area.

Special nod to GOG, which lets you download games with a web browser. (Does Itch do this, too?)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

And what gives about hardware.
The personal data is the scary stuff.
The payment history, the invested money, browsing history, mouse movement tracking, other programs installed on the pc and so on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

At least the hardware survey is voluntary.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

on windows, you can disable the epic games service in the services tab of task manager. it wont stop all the snoop but will limited epic games reach.

I run a bat file on start up to kill a number of services. EA Games and Rockstar games also does this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nope.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Well that sucks

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You can leave “share email with (company that owns game you’re buying)” unchecked at checkout

Games on Epic are by default DRM free but game companies can turn DRM on, unfortunately it doesn’t tell you prior to buying the game if you can play it without the launcher or not

Edit: people can correct me instead of downvoting but you should also look at using heroic games launcher. I’m not sure but it should help hide your data