I learned of this cuz Bethesda is taking it out of Quake Champions due to a backlash against it.
I don’t know if this is true, but there are accusations (haven’t seen proof nor have i seen a serious source for this) that this software also does keystroke logging.
some quotes:
“The Red Shell software has seen players complaining on the forums of games such as Conan Exiles, The Elder Scrolls Online, Dead by Daylight, Civilization VI, several Total War games and Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space?! since March.”
“Therefore, Red Shell’s method tracks a different set of data points when users interact with adverts. These are generally data points about the user’s device, such as its operating system, installed fonts, browsers (and versions) used, timezone, language, the user’s in-game ID, and screen resolution.”
And frankly I don’t care what the studios have to say about this. Why would I take their word about what it does or does not do? They didn’t even bother informing anyone about this shit in the first place, let alone ask for permission.
I’ve heard that Square-Enix collects a lot more than that. Apparently, they’re logging everything you do in-game in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This is why I never installed that game when I got it in a Humble Bundle. I’ve also heard that they were doing this in Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday.
Today’s deal Chronicles of Nyanya is published by Fat Dog Games who Indygo says forced them to impliment Red Shell. Could anyone who bought Nyanya check and see if they too come with this spyware?
Why is it always someone need to come in and tell others they shouldn’t be concerned about things that they find important?
Just because you do not understand the full ramifications of a single company gathering data on behalf of any number of other companies and products without so much as letting the users know about it.
If you don’t care then feel free carry on not caring, but leave those of us trying to care to raise awareness of these issues as they surface unimpeded, thank you.
And thank you @harith for bringing this to our attention.
yeah! and it’s always those job-stealing, country-overtaking gnomes!
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were behind this whole thing to begin with, and now Papa Gnome conveniently tries to pretend it’s no big deal!
Anyway, here’s a rather simple thing you can do for now
Add packet level firewall block for all traffic to;
*.redshell.io
*.treasuredata.com
That should block this spyware from reporting anything, for now.
hm, still can’t agree on this with u @Fraggles; i rly feel he can freely share his thoughts about the subject and even debate it if he so desires
I’m mostly just kinda shocked about this whole situation; i guess i shouldn’t be surprised, but i naively thought games wouldn’t be affected by this type of shit
alright let me be blunt so we can hopefully get it over with quickish
have any of you ever used a ms, apple, sony product, smart tv, electronic device with internet access, or otherwise “smart apparatus”?
news flash; you’ve been “spyed” upon
every gd damn thing the past decade has had some sort of analytics measure for their precious data and metrics
this is nothing new, nor is it new in games,
there is nothing nefarious, ffs you all saw activison patent that is just another diff slice of this even
why do you think almost every eula, tos has some sort of “oh by the way we might be collecting some sort of non personal data” -because a ton of companies ofc employ such measure
ffs the steam api is filled with metrics-lite, -how steam spy even operates, and was afraid it had to shut down after the privacy changes
you have apps, and programs placing “spy” cookies on your computer to make sure they don’t get removed along regular browsing cookies
games companies have been tracking user metrics in diff forms for years, don’t think your playsation or xbox goes clear of that, ofc Sony and MS utilize the same metrics they can
even freakin tv’s provide metrics if hooked up
people are freaking out about a basic, regular analytics “cookie” tool, no different than everything else you encounter and don’t know about
people are less freaked out about apple, or ms or even windows metrics than this how the fck come this is suddenly Gamings Skynet.
if people bothered to actually check the stuff they “sign” they’d see a sht ton of games include some form of this
Kerbal Space program was already well known to “spy” yet now people freak out about it
this is nothing but straight up overblown consumer hysteria, because “someone” suddenly thought something,
srs… it’s utterly eyeroll enducing to witness with all the other stuff out there
ffs, keyboards and mice have metric data pinging home with more than this
y, u r right; that’s why i’m usually kinda pragmatic about this type of shit, but here i’m just shocked and outraged cuz it’s in our games, rofl
And also cuz of the rumors of keylogging; I suspect that’s just BS, but if it were to be true it would be a huge issue for everyone, and there’s also rumors this shit keeps tracking what u do when yr not ingame either, but the studios deny that, but, again, what if it is true? that would go too far, no?
on the flipside though, these studios are now removing this shit because of the backlash, so doesn’t that prove that backlash works? Doesn’t that mean that @Fraggles has a big point? If ppl would rage about all that other shit, wouldn’t all those other companies, softwares, hardwares, etc. not also be forced to remove all their spy-shit???
I guess the true lesson is that we wouldn’t be in this shitty situation (which @Gnuffi described so well in detail) had we (the consumer) not let them do it!
that’s the problem with this “sudden” discovery, all the ridic unfounded speculations that come up
is it bothersome it exists? maybe
is it a surprise, heck no, surprise in games, still no, games companies have been tracking “non personal” user data for years, sometimes you get that little “we might collect data about your system even”, meaning now "they " know what processor and gpu etc you’re running their game on
whether or not it is a breach of trust i don’t even think is up for debate because it allows the possibility of people being surprised by this, and like i mentioned, how could it be a surprise “this day and age”, most sites/programs/apps don’t even tell you which way they track you, why should some pc game analytics suddenly be different?
it doesn’t mean i “like” it, or even agree with the practice, i’m just saying, don’t get riled up about “everyday business”, and don’t act like people didn’t know, they “knew”, but just didn’t care enough then to make this big a fuss about it like now, for some reason, -and it’s not like things are gonna change, they are just gonna get their precious data another way, because companies always want that “green”, or just as an edge in marketing or production of their goods, -games or not
dono, couldn’t say, doubt it
notice how not all removes it btw, some stand fast on it, (and i can guarantee you some of the others just find different metrics, -because they really do want that stuff)
would be nice if outrage caused enough reform to make a change, but i still think dollar rules, so they’ll keep doing it and laws keep allowing it
(funny how if you went in a physical store and a clerk tracked you all teh way through other stores and back home it be considered stalking and illegal lol)
MS sure as sht didn’t give a fck and just showed metrics into win7 and skype and sht, despite people being miffed in the early win10 days
i sr doubt big companies will ever change that policy
smaller games companies might for the goodwill it buys them, -but i’m still betting a bunch the small ones are still gonna be looking for data somewhere else then
Well Harith, here’s a prime situation to demonstrate what I mean.
This is not an argument or really sharing a valuable opinion, this is just him telling us what we should do. Now 2nd post he’s making arguments and sharing opinions, that’s an entirely different thing. Post #2 I’m fine with post 1 is shitty bs that gets thrown at these things all the time.
So I shall now tackle post 2.
“Bad things happens so we shouldn’t care about any bad things happening” is a terrible argument, yes metrics and data gets collected everywhere all the time. I go to as much effort as I personally can to avoid it. I do NOT use apple or google products if I can at all avoid it, among many other things. There’s also a great difference between some metric collections and others, this one we’re talking about right now doesn’t comply with GDPR for one thing so it’s noteworthy just for that.
You keep using such derogatory language no one is “freaking out” we’re collecting and sharing information and allowing those who are interested in hearing about it to do so, we’re figuring out how to protect ourselves from breaches of privacy as best we can.
So again your only argument here seems to be bad things happens so stop caring about all bad things. I can’t accept that, sure I can’t stop ALL privacy breaches, I can’t block ALL attempts at collecting my data. But I can stop some and when I get news about new attempts I try to find out how to block those. Further more when such attempts actually break the laws then it’s up to notifying the public to the point where it makes the companies in question actually follow them.
By just sitting idly quiet and saying “ah well it’s going to be bad anyway” it will get so MUCH worse so much faster because companies WILL do anything they can get away with. it’s thanks to people occasionally “freaking out” like this that this negative trend is ever so briefly halted every once in a while.
I think that is worth my effort to write and spread news about it. You clearly do not and so I don’t ask you to do the work if you don’t want to. I’m only asking you try to not stand in our way.
agree, because i’m sorta grumpy about this, because this whole “phrasing” just seem like more fuel on a needless fire, my bad for not getting out of bed on teh right foot
i’m not saying “don’t care”, i’m saying, don’t act surprised, like this is news, or like there is much to do, (and yes you could list of ways to “combat” this, by i would also argue it’s futility given the “regular” innocent tracking not being worth teh hassle, imo)
yes, yes people are, and they are coming up with insane conspiracy theories, and i just don’t want people to “freak out -here”, because this is just “regular everyday business” spying like we are used to, barely worth mentioning because of how “normal” it is, unfortunate as that may be
(like, that list of games is totally not compelete for one, noway redshell could operate on just that tiny buisness, so obviously there is more people just haven’t figured out “yet”)
see that i’m curious about, because last i read, semi official statement/article, redshell company said it did comply, being non personal data and all that, encryption, handling terminologymajiggy (tho ofc just their words and could just be regular company “talk”)
and it’s fine if you wish to shout it on the mountain tops, like we’ve established i’m far too unphased by this to care enough to do so given all the other spy sht i got going on, and applaud your concern and effort/vigilance, i just didn’t think it was necessary for “more” torches given the furor it has already made (srs surprised you people hadn’t stumbled upon this already, -it’s been “everywhere” it seems)
and i’m fine with people making a fuss, if it might change things and get the big baddies to tow the line
but a ton of people are just hunting “poor little devs” for doing nothing out of the ordinary, -which i’m not okay with, given the molehill and all that, fine if they want to change it to get their good graces back, but not like they really had anything to apologize for imo, given the "tracking standard"of the world. , hell some might even really benefit from the analytics and are now without… poor them…
but sure, if this can somehow make the gdpr include companies (obviously) shouldn’t stalk people, fine, light the torches and raise the pitchforks and get this cookie lynched nice and good
just all came off as another “gamer” /pc entitlement uproar to me (or people just being strangely naive) where there might not be “as” much call for it as is going on, dono… -people do got a “right” to their complete privacy and if they wish to be notified/without something like this i suppose
Can only really blame @harith for the phrasing situation. Everything else I’ve read on this topic has been well sorted and informative. Still disagree it’s needless, without it none of the games that have now removed redshell would have.
That’s pretty much been the only message you’ve conveyed thus far.
You can’t call something both an ‘everyday situation’ and a ‘conspiracy theory’. Again if you don’t like @harith’s OP then that’s fine, you can’t demand we don’t discuss things you’re not interested in though.
The threads and articles I’ve read elsewhere are solid, confirmed and informative in nature. I don’t require you to do all the reading obviously, but you can’t discard the entire notion on the merits of the one thread you’ve read.
Of course it isn’t, in fact the live reddit thread lists a fair number of games and it’s being added to as they’re found and confirmed. They are also updating it with which devs have pledged or already have had it removed. Which is why I think it’s great that this work is being done and shouldn’t be hampered.
You’ve got a weird way of expressing that. Telling us to calm down, stop and “don’t freak out -here”. But alright if you’ve changed your mind on that then thank you.
Also again no freaking going on, just information.
Those poor little devs were the ones who decided to bundle spyware with their products and not tell anyone about it. They rightly deserve to be called out for it. The only way for us to get at redshell and any similar practices is to make these devs and others think about buying into such a scheme in the future.
Again because bad things happens we shouldn’t care about any bad things.
They did a bad thing, plenty of other companies, maybe ALL companies do bad things. We call them out as we figure out the bad things, we can’t call out ALL the bad things at once we have to take these things as we go.
Oh piss off, no seriously. That’s so needlessly antagonistic.
It’s ‘entitled’ to not want hidden spyware bundled with your games, huh?
Come off it.
, must be tuesday 
)
