Don’t get me wrong, if it was scanning your drive to sell data to harvesters, I’d be extremely unnerved. And you should definitely be able to turn this off. But I feel like even Valve has recorded things like “60% of players quit after losing to this boss”

[–] splendoruranium@infosec.pub 7 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Based on the article text, it’s only citing things like how long you play. I thought most games collected telemetry like this?

A commonplace travesty is still a travesty and metadata is still data. If my hairdresser asked me "Hey, in addition to me cutting your hair and you giving me money I'd also like you to constantly keep me updated on your sleep schedule, your vacation plans, marital status changes and the myriad of other things that can be directly gleaned from aggregate timeline data - all the other hairdressers have started doing it as well!", I'd likely look at them incredulously for a few seconds while silently imagining stabbing them with their own scissors.

Calling it "telemetry" has somehow normalized it over the past decades, I suppose? I just don't understand how anyone could ever accept this as normal.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 8 points 5 hours ago

That's the thing, though. I respect the analogy, but the equivalent here would be if the game was also checking your drive for other games, for financial apps, scanning your browser's cookies to see which sites you visit, etc.

If, while playing a singleplayer game, they're recording what actions you take within that singleplayer game, it's understandable some people wouldn't even want that - but I also don't see that as nearly so invasive as other data travesties. Worse, highlighting it here feels like a "cry wolf" situation where you'd desensitize people to the most harmful privacy breaches.

[–] SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I’m sorry, but that’s a terrible analogy. In the gaming scenario, Ubisoft is collecting the data on their own product usage, your hairdresser analogy is going outside of the service that the hairdresser is providing.

[–] splendoruranium@infosec.pub 1 points 16 minutes ago* (last edited 15 minutes ago)

I’m sorry, but that’s a terrible analogy. In the gaming scenario, Ubisoft is collecting the data on their own product usage

Well, in the corporate software-as-a-service insane troll logic hellscape in which we live that could indeed make sense. Mind you, that's not meant to be a rant against you but against the fact that this train of thought has indeed been completely normalized.
In the fantasy world of the past into which I'd like to go back to live happily it is precisely not Ubisoft's product. It's mine. I bought it - none of what I do with it is any of Ubisoft's business. The business transaction has been concluded. If they want to know what I do with my game then they can ask me nicely about it. I'll certainly not allow them to install a proverbial camera over the executable.

It's not a good analogy, I agree, but I'm too angry to come up with a better one right now.

[–] rothaine@lemm.ee 8 points 6 hours ago

It sounds more like the hairdresser writes down how many brunettes they've had as customers that week, or which styles are most requested.

[–] easily3667@lemmus.org 1 points 8 hours ago

This is what people usually mean these days when they talk about spyware. Not actually spyware, but counting how many hours you play each game or checking how long you refuse to update windows for.

But if you call it spyware you can write an article or fight on the internet.