• Epic Games Launcher appears to collect your steam friends & play history data
    105 replies, posted
Here is Epic games chiming in on what it tracks, does not track, etc. I linked directly to the Epic games employee's post. https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_game_store_spyware_tracking_and_you/eijlbge/
Honestly after hearing Tencent was involved I was already expecting the epic store to turn into a dataminer, really not surprising to see it actually do it this sloppily and I doubt they will do anything but extend the datamining over time.
I think people should stop using Tencent as a boogeyman as soon as something bad happens. They invest money all around the world. Tencent doesn't have majority ownership over Epic. Any key decision has to go through the real owner aka Tim. Do you seriously think this wouldn't have happened if Tencent didn't invest in them. Game companies does shady shit all the time. Stop minimize their own faults by blaming Tencent.
UE4 is tied to having an EGL account now, I believe. So you get it regardless. There are people with education licenses who are not very happy about the whole thing.
Wouldng that make it even more of an excuse to say fuck Epic
Yes. That's the point.
RPS hot take is pretty spicy https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/03/15/epic-games-deny-spying-allegations/ Gamers are... *rifles through flashcards* RACIST!
Tencent is actually relatively hands-off with most of their investitures, from what I understand.
Journalists like this are a net drain on society and contribute nothing useful.
They talked a lot about wanting to launch WeGame in the west and then promptly bought 40% of Epic before Epic started its drive for the Epic Game Store. Common sense dictates that they won't launch WeGame in the West and compete with the Epic Store, so they must consider the Epic Store to be that initiative.
Steam being the dominant force is bad, but I think epic would be worse, I really like the idea of having a store that allows "anything as long as it's not illegal or trolling", because I believe that any game, regardless of how good/bad/strange/controversial it might be, is still a part of the gaming industry, and should be treated with equal respect
they're going to remove the pre-caching feature https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/epic-says-its-game-store-is-not-spying-on-you/
"We didn't do anything wrong but we're going to stop doing it anyway," says CEO of Epic Games, Bart Simpson. When contacted for further comment, he responded through a PR staffer, "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything."
"Nearly perfect" ya'll
I'll wait and see if it actually happens.
they claim they were pre-caching it, but not sending it unless you gave permission.
They shouldn't be gathering any information until they're given permission.
Valve responded to this: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/epic-promises-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.
The file layout of Steam was probably going to change with the new UI update anyway, this might speed that up.
Depending on what Epic was taking, could Valve realistically sue them?
There is a growing list of reasons for Valve to potentially take Epic to court.
What other reasons? Genuinely asking as I haven't followed this much.
What they are doing could probably fall under the EU competition law, using a dominant position to go into exclusive agreements. Epic is in a dominant position in the industry and even in the storefront now since they have the biggest game with the kiddos on there hooking them in. Then again I am armchair lawyering here with no law experience just reading wikipedia so ignore me.
I assume they're referring to anticompetitive practices relating to the forced exclusivity Epic is pulling, but I'm not sure Valve would really have a legal case there
I guess, because accessing steam files isn't really a legal problem with valve, if anything it would be with their users. Because interoperating with other programs is generally fine (even without permission).
Someone on Reddit made a simple script to decrypt the ".bak" files on the SocialBackup folder. Run this script on PowerShell: Get-Item "C:\ProgramData\Epic\SocialBackup\*.bak" | % { ([system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8).GetString(($_ | Get-Content -Encoding Byte | % { [byte]($_ -bxor 0xff) })) | Set-Content ($_.FullName + ".txt") } If you don't want to use it, basically these files are copies of the "localconfig.vdf" as Valve mentioned. Each time that you launch the Epic Store, a new copy is made.
Valve should just go malicious here. Switch to using another file as the userdata file, encrypt it, and fill the old one with garbage data for Epic to read.
Looks like RockPaperShotgun made an article about the issue: Epic Games deny Store software spying accusations | Rock Paper S.. Yep, they use the racist card to minimize the problem. Also this nice detail: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/184903/6f7cc4dc-0c4f-40c8-b5d0-9bdf3d0058db/Anotación 2019-03-15 223754.jpg If they do that, Epic gonna change which file the launcher needs to read.
It'd be nice if the consumer could sue them for being malware/spyware but all software being spyware has become very standard.
it's curious because the files they were accessing might've been the steam sentry file, which would grant Epic steam guard level of access to your account. They should definitely pursue legal action against them, it's a massive privacy invasion and likely breaks some Steam terms as well. On top of them being responsible for companies pulling out of Steam (which there is precedence already for such a thing to be illegal -- see Intel/NVIDIA bribing companies to pull AMD products, for one example) Also: Tencent has been playing its hand and shouldn't be entirely innocent in this; remember that they recently announced that they'll start enforcing the DPRC's rules on streamers and they're practically fully controlled by the Chinese government. Who knows what other shady stuff Epic has been doing before the acquisition, before (or even shortly after) Fortnite exploded, too. ANOTHER THING TO NOTE: The "encryption" they're talking about is JUST XOR! Like, holy shit! This isn't even encryption, its like an extremely weak substitution cipher! They need to be investigated by the GDPR regulating agencies, like, immediately; I recommend all fellow European FPers to submit complaints about this along with Valve's statement (which would add weight to the complaint I feel)
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