TL;DR - Sounds like some new terms of service were pushed out for ALL games in the Borderlands series (yes even the old ones) and there is some very heavy data harvesting language in there.
Not sure how the “spyware” is implemented (e.g. it didn’t say anything specific about keyloggers / kernel-level anticheat / rootkit / etc), so its possible this is just a language thing or they are harvesting from records on a server somewhere (e.g. if they sold a copy on steam, they might know some kind of details on people who bough it there, ditto for xbox live / etc). If anybody has more info on exactly how, please share, but I couldn’t find any hard details on that.
On a completely unrelated side note, does LAN Co-op generally still work in pirated games? I’m assuming based on this comment that it can at least for some games. Also, what cross-platform software do you guys use for “lan over the internet”? zerotier? something else? (looking for something that supports windows + linux, preferably open-source or at least free and that wont narc on me for playing pirated games)
edit: just to clarify. The article is calling it “spyware” not me - seems there were definitely some TOS changes but I am not sure if there is any softwaer cjhanges or not for anticheat etc. I had been thinking trying presequel and while trying to see what kinds of co-op it had, i saw “recent reviews:mostly negative” then found steam reviews like this one and other similar ones saying they were adding spyware/anticheat/etc and this article was the only think I found explaining it. if someone more knowledgable than me wants to weigh in, would love to have more info.
agreed. that’s why I put it in quotes in the post body. “spyware” is what the article said tho
i only skimmed the article after randomly seeing some negative reviews on steam (was looking at something else and noticed one of the games had “recent reviews: mostly negative” so i got curious). but kinda thinking from the wording that they’ll just collect your data from the sales info.
for my part, i dn’t plan on giving shitty greedcorps like this a penny, even if it means skipping the title completely (not really interested in BL for SP tbh). i already try to support games that do a legit good job of split-screen co-op with a legit purcahse but seems like very very few games actually add split-screen anymore and a lot of games that have it, either aren’t ported to pc or they drop the feature when it gets ported (e.g. xbox/ps game has offlien co-op but pc version is online co-op only). i swear, if they would quit fucking around and making pc versions shittier than the console ones and quit doing shit like in this article, i probably wouldn’t even bother pirate games anymore
I’m confused, if you agree the terms don’t show any evidence of spyware or excessive data collection why quote this article specifically in the first place?
And if you agree that the listed information is standard, what is is the “shit like in this article” we’re talking about?
Not having split screen on PC is a bummer, though, and it’s likely mostly revolving around an outdated impression of how games are used on PCs. Unfortunately I believe BL4 is sticking to that policy.
I’m not sure how that makes pirating the game more or less justifiable, though. If what you want is playing split screen that will remain as unavailable on a pirate copy than on a licensed one.
I mean, do what you want, obviously, but while the “removing spyware” thing would have made sense the other thing doesn’t quite.
i had paraphased the article and didn’t think to quote it until after i had posted…also did not realize that you can edit post titles until just now. fixed it to make it more clear that i am quoting… maybe?
even if it is not actual spyware, my undesrtanding is they have still changed tos to make data collection more negative towards the player and not in any apparent opt-out-able way.
unless i mistunderstood, i agree with the people that are upset that they information is more likely to be harvested. i dont agree with calling it “spyware” just bc some tos were changed and made more anti-consumer, if thats whats going on.
but i dont know for sure. i suspect its “only” legal crap that has changed to become more anti-consumer and that article writers / people in steam reviewers are using the term “spyware” wrong… but i don’t actually know. afaik, could be a tos change and some kind of software change too. so im still keeping term “spyware”… sorry for the confusion. hope that clears it up?
sorry for the confusion. you’re not wrong but i kinda explained it badly too
Bruh if you’re going to post an article, especially an inflammatory one, at least read the damn article in full before posting it?