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Epic Game Store, Spyware, Tracking your Steam friends and play history.

Holammer

Member
Whatever you may thing about this affair, it really doesn't look good for Epic when they employ a guy running a site called SteamSpy and this blows up. Even more so when they implement this feature shortly after Valve made privacy changes that crippled SteamSpy's ability to gather data.

While I'm at it, what's the legal situation for importing Steam friends data anyway? No matter how minuscule it is, it's still data I cannot deny Epic or Ubisoft from collecting.
 

johntown

Banned
Did anyone read the EULA before they installed the software? There is probably something about you giving them the right by accepting the EULA?

The only way any of this will actually change is if ppl boycott the store. Sadly I doubt that will ever happen. Somone hire Lizard Squad to DDOS the crap out of them.
 
Did anyone read the EULA before they installed the software? There is probably something about you giving them the right by accepting the EULA?
This shit doesn't fly in the EU. The GDPR has rules that say that the user has to be made aware of the fact that data is being collected, which data it is and what it is used for. It is also against the GDPR if such things are hidden behind lawyer speak in an EULA. That information has to be visible to us, if it's not then it's a breach.

Tim Sweeney has already admitted that what they're collecting is too much and they're working on fixing it, or in other words they got caught and are now apologizing.
 

johntown

Banned
This shit doesn't fly in the EU. The GDPR has rules that say that the user has to be made aware of the fact that data is being collected, which data it is and what it is used for. It is also against the GDPR if such things are hidden behind lawyer speak in an EULA. That information has to be visible to us, if it's not then it's a breach.

Tim Sweeney has already admitted that what they're collecting is too much and they're working on fixing it, or in other words they got caught and are now apologizing.
Didn't know that but good to know.
 

NickFire

Member
Just going off the OP, it doesn't seem like they are really collecting all that much data to me. Seems innocuous, but I do understand when people are opposed to any data collection not specifically agreed to outside of some boiler plate TOS no one reads.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Valve response...

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...-to-fix-game-launcher-after-privacy-concerns/

We are looking into what information the Epic launcher collects from Steam.

The Steam Client locally saves data such as the list of games you own, your friends list and saved login tokens (similar to information stored in web browser cookies). This is private user data, stored on the user's home machine and is not intended to be used by other programs or uploaded to any 3rd party service.

Interested users can find localconfig.vdf and other Steam configuration files in their Steam Client’s installation directory and open them in a text editor to see what data is contained in these files. They can also view all data related to their Steam account at: https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata.
 
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Dunki

Member
for me it sounds like an excuse so people will not file complaints because of the GDRP. I honestly can not trust them anymore when they are saying we forgot it was there.
 

CuNi

Member
Wondering what the aftermath of this will be. They sure are doing a lot of negative press lately while their launcher progress is barely able to even be called progress. Kinda interested if since it's the weekend not much is happening press and legal wise and if things will actually change within the next week or if this will just blow mostly over and only reduce the user base.
 

Mattyp

Gold Member
Duckduckgo for the win. Though I do use Chrome for various functions it has that just aren't the same in Firefox.

I use waterfox now, I found the biggest annoyance was just the small number of sites that I use often that don't display correctly outside of Chrome.
 
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