Garry’s Mod April 2019 Update Modifies TOS and Adds New Tracking Tool - Sensationalist Headlines

Facepunch really has turned into a reactionary hivemind if this is what you guys immediately latch onto. Literally every large game does this to provide statistical analysis of their games. You even have proof from one of the Garry's Mod developers of what's in GameAnalytics and how they use it (Willox). Also the fact that some people here seem incredibly convinced that all this information is being scuttled to some Chinese corporation who is using it for SUCH NEFARIOUS PURPOSES like..... oh, that's right, nothing because they're not, is reaching tinfoil hat levels of conspiracy. Jesus christ you even have Garry himself saying what he's using it for. If you think Garry is lying in his post, let me ask you this - what reason does he have to lie about it? How much money is Garry seriously going to make off selling the analytics data (only while playing mind you) of a daily peak of 46,000~ players? "Uhhh, yes we found that players in Canada spawned the Alex Vance ragdoll 22% more than players in Honduras" like seriously guys? Fuck off with this reactionary bullshit and actually read before you make stupid assumptions/posts.

typically not via a chinese company and typically don't even attempt to load any such code until they've fulfilled their GDPR obligations (of which this fulfills none of.) Gmod is full of very bad code and another example is Garry's hating of Lua is because he was using it in an absolutely wrong manner, he moved from ScriptEnforcer to a single convar, creates thousands and thousands of empty tables per frame that can cause the GC to choke, changing/removing features because "why not lul", full html menu that noone asked for ..why do people still play this game, and why do people trust s&box will be any better

Why is Garry collecting such worthless data on such a tiny group of people?

can i have plez

Until there's undeniable, definitive proof that this is actually recording our very personal information and sending it to China for some reason, I'm going to say this isn't that bad. Sure, it's a little concerning in a few ways, like I can understand maybe not wanting a list of programs you have installed on your computer floating about in some server, though personally I don't think something like that is very private or personal, but that's just how I feel about my own data and not a fact so I don't expect anyone to feel the same way. I'll reiterate a post from somewhere else with minor changes. I sincerely doubt this is going to be used maliciously like so many people are panicking over. If chats are going to be used at all, it's likely going to only be used for purposes of an actual crime being committed somewhere, much like Discord's ToS over using what's said in a given server, which reads in much a similar way, IIRC. I don't think they'd be stupid enough- or even have enough manpower to boot- to monitor every server's (official or non) chat and mic chat and send in the wee-woos because someone said the N word or called another a poo head or anything else that'd be a waste of time focusing on. Otherwise I'm sure until it's needed for legal reasons, no human eyes will even so much as touch it. Steam also has similar in their privacy statement, albeit not implying they'd use it to bring in the wee-woos. But it still is implied that anything you say to someone over Steam chat is recorded. (Even if it's saved for chat history reasons, who's to say they aren't doing anything with it without your knowledge for as long as it's there?) 3.3 Other Data You Explicitly Submit We will collect and process Personal Data whenever you explicitly provide it to us or send it as part of communication with others on Steam, e.g. in Steam Community Forums, chats, or when you provide feedback or other user generated content. This data includes: Information that you post, comment or follow in any of our Content and Services; Information sent through chat; Information you provide when you request information or support from us or purchase Content and Services from us, including information necessary to process your orders with the relevant payment merchant or, in case of physical goods, shipping providers; Information you provide to us when participating in competitions, contests and tournaments or responding to surveys, e.g. your contact details. The privacy policy update has to be agreed to before the game even starts via a Steam pop-up. If you decline, the game doesn't launch. If you didn't get this at all, that's Steam's fault for failing to deliver it. Nothing has been snuck in under anyone's noses if you take the time to read these things. I know, easier said than done, we'd die of old age before we ever got to read every EULA served to us, but sometimes they're worth actually looking at, if you frequently use a piece of software/play a game. You can also decline this EULA so it doesn't apply to you, and then send in to opt out of the analytics program. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/2014/61550de0-22bf-47dc-bfc3-0355a9ed4a2b/image.png (Pardon the blurry image, I was grabbing this by remoting into a computer with an account that hadn't opened Gmod since the update.) People also seem to be keen on pointing this out in Facepunch's ToS both for Rust and Gmod: ix. Conduct. do or say anything unlawful, racist, harassing, threatening, abusive, hateful, xenophobic, sexist, discriminatory, abusive, defamatory, obscene, invasive of the privacy of another person or otherwise offensive. This includes in any chat or other communications with users. Facepunch reserves the right to monitor the content of any of your messages and prevent your use of any such chat or other communication systems for any reason. Strictly speaking, the part of the ToS everyone is focusing on, I think existed before this GameAnalytics thing ever came out for Gmod. (Not 100% sure, Wayback Machine isn't helping me confirm this) So why are people only freaking out now? I can also think of a myriad of other online games with chat systems that do this same sort of thing. Yes, even in private servers/sessions. You don't need a game analytics tool to record activity in a given game. Technically they could've been doing this the whole time and nobody was ever the wiser. In short, what I'm saying is, if anything's recording your chats or very sensitive info, it's not GameAnalytics and they could've been doing this before it was ever even added. I think the only major concern with this is that it's being done through a Chinese (? I can't find any info saying it's actually owned by the Chinese, can someone link me that?) company. And yeah it's a little strange how Garry moved away from using Steam's analytics API to this. But he makes incredibly weird decisions on impulse that nobody but him understands anyway. I think everyone who've used these forums for long enough know that by now. I doubt he's become some Chinese government drone or anything like that. Otherwise analytics have been recorded in Gmod, and basically every game you've ever played on Steam, well before GameAnalytics before came along, through Steam's own API. Though it didn't record hardware being used unless you did the survey yourself.

Chances are they are considering whether a true sandbox game sequel is worth the effort and headaches. If most of the people who are still playing Gmod are doing RP, TTT, and smaller gamemodes it wouldn't make sense to spend all their resources on trying to latch onto the lightning-in-a-bottle that garrysmod was. With Gmod we have almost 13 years of bugfixes, content from 7-12 full retail games officially supported and practically every other game's models at the disposal of the community. Even if S&box is fully compatible with all of that it will still only be a yes-and. Not completely new. It could be a better bet to take a small concept, really polish and work it out into a new game.

this is garry's revenge for making valve backpedal on paid mods i still remember how angry he was about not being able to earn profit off gmod steam workshop too after paid mods feature got scrapped

The latest posters unironically defending and not giving a fuck about privacy in this thread

Because he isn't selling it to advertisers, he'd actually doing it to inform development.

Can I ask you what part of it you don't like in specific? Genuine constructive curiosity, I'm not being hostile or anything negative, I actually want to know.

I absolutely care about privacy. This is extremely basic usage data and isn't personal at all. Steam tracks this same data.

Well it's pretty clear that many people here don't really understand what sort of information is being gathered. To me it looks like bandwagoning on a non-issue. It's for basic statistics. Steam already collects the same type of data.

Oh, don't you know? This is Facepunch's blind outrage flavor of the week, where everything is massively blown out of proportion.

I'm pretty sure almost every modern game collects player information/stats related to gameplay and hardware info so I don't see why this is really outrageous. It's not even anything personal or slightly private that can be connected back to you so I don't get why it's worth caring about this sort of data specifically. The only questionable thing is that you can't be certain if this GameAnalytics thing isn't somehow collecting unspecified data or not as far as I'm aware (though that source code was posted so idk). Though I admit that faceboookId part of that source code was weird. I'm serious about data collection and China but I don't think this is worth getting this mad about.

The problem is that when you pretend that your "open source code for the SDK" does NOT use some precompiled chinese libraries, not even the devs know what sort of information is being gathered.

It's not that Facepunch is gathering information. THIS is the problem: https://reel.geel.tf/v7nz3gbakqiifuruhz5y.png https://reel.geel.tf/mae369qm8sofhz1bnk2j.png They are flat-out fucking admitting that the data gathered on game developers' behalf is being used for profit in contexts that are not controlled by the game developers

Now see, that's all someone had to post! I literally couldn't find this myself, but I fully admit I am terrible at searching. Now this, this is actually bad. Even if no personally identifiable data is gathered and thus sold, I don't really like my analytic data being sold for profit, especially not to the will of the developers. I wonder if they even know. And this means this is a Chinese-run program, which, I'm not one to instantly think anything owned by the Chinese is instantly some horrible government spyware or something, but it does raise a red flag or two. I'm okay with non-identifiable data being gathered to improve an existing product I actually use. I'm not so okay with non-identifiable data being used to make money off of me just playing a game or using a program casually.

there was no reason to ban this person, assblasted or not

I don't think Garry is a liar, but i do think he either does things without things without thinking about the consequences or without caring about other peoples opinions. I don't think he's wrong about everything, I'm just suspicious about his behavior because he's been known to be very stubborn. Time will tell i guess.

Except for the part where they were telling everyone that disagrees with them to fuck off which has historically been bannable. Multiple people have been banned for that just within the last month alone.

I do lol I just also trust him to seek money and I don't believe he'd do something illegal that would get him fined.

Honestly between this and the facepunch troubles it looks like he's having a public breakdown or something

It's still suspicious as to why did they move over to this system if garry himself said this data has been available on Steam for a while? Why move if Steam already provided all the data you want? It's also being sent to a chinese company. Mobvista owns GameAnalytics and guess what, they're chinese. idk why but it chose the wrong post to quote

We didn't use any of the pre-compiled libraries

Do you know anything about the data selling?

The new eula also adds forced arbitration for us residents Fun

So how exactly do you use the sdk if the methods you use call the code inside of the pre-compiled libraries?

I have already removed my message because I have looked into a wrong file. The source code for those methods are indeed inside of the SDK.

And what about the source code for these functions? You can easily hide suspucious activity in these functions. @Willox can you provide more information as to why Facepunch switched to a chinese-owned analytics solution that sells player data while Steam already provided the statistics you're collecting?

Have you tried doing a deeper check instead of actually just saying "hey you can take a look at the source code of the functions they use"? Anyways, here is the function that starts a new analytics session: GA-SDK-CPP/GAState.cpp at e45a393c2440dfe74ac4e6710fa7da2138b0f0.. It's amazing how you accuse me of spreading false information when it's actually proved that they sell our data and you think I'm lying because you think this is a witch hunt for chinese shit.