16 Studios Removing Alleged Spyware From PC Games After Fan Outcry
https://tinyurl.com/ydxpxddj
In Mario Kart, red shells target your nearest rival and ruthlessly stop them
in their tracks. Marketing company Red Shell, meanwhile, helps video game
companies more accurately target you. This fact has not sat well with some
players who have recently discovered the software in a veritable kartload of
Steam games.
According to Red Shell’s website, their software is meant to help game
companies “measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns” by “
tying information from marketing campaigns to in-game play.” Basically, it’
s installed alongside games and tracks information about your devices
(operating system, browser version number, IP address, etc) in order to
ascertain how effective advertisements for that particular game are. The
company swears up and down that it doesn’t collect personal information.
“We don’t collect names, emails, or addresses,” Red Shell says on its
website, noting that games can offer an opt-out to players if developers so
choose. “Our service basically says ‘this computer clicked on a link from
this YouTube video and the same computer played your game.’ We have no
interest in tracking people, just computers for the purposes of attribution.”
The software has been discovered in over 50 games including The Elder Scrolls
Online, Conan Exiles, Hunt: Showdown, and Civilization VI. For the past
couple weeks, a contingent of players have dedicated themselves to weeding it
out, decrying it as “spyware” that many companies failed to disclose.
“Red Shell is a spyware that tracks data of your PC and shares it with 3rd
parties,” Redditor Alexspeed75 wrote last week in a thread that’s became
something of a rallying place for aggrieved players. “On their website they
formulate it all in very harmless language, but the fact is that this is
software from someone I don’t trust and whom I never invited, which is
looking at my data and running on my PC against my will. This should have no
place in a full price PC game, and in no games if it were up to me.”
Since then, players of the aforementioned games and many more have started
irate threads in Steam forums and subreddits. In many cases, they’ve gotten
developers to pledge to remove Red Shell.
“We integrated Red Shell with the goal to track the efficiency of our
marketing campaigns (how many players clicked on our advertisements on social
media platforms and then purchased the game afterwards). There was never any
intention to sell data to third parties,” said the developers of multiplayer
horror game Dead By Daylight, expressing a sentiment similar to many other
developers who’ve removed Red Shell from their games. “That being said, we
have seen the player frustrations expressed about the use of this technology.
Our passionate and dedicated fans are the reason why Dead by Daylight is a
success, especially the ones who have been with us from the beginning. We
have removed Red Shell from Dead by Daylight in the 2.0.0 update.”
As of now, 16 games have either removed Red Shell or have pledged to do so in
the near future, including The Elder Scrolls Online, Conan Exiles, Hunt:
Showdown, Battlerite, Secret World Legends, Total War, and Warhammer:
Vermintide.
You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around
Valve’s PC gaming service.
====
簡單來說，有間營銷公司 Red Shell 開發的軟體功能是：借由資訊化營銷活動對玩遊戲
的影響來幫助遊戲公司量化其營銷活動的有效性。
因此，他會包裝在遊戲程式內一起裝進玩家電腦中，用以追蹤玩家的電子設備資訊，像是
操作系統、瀏覽器版本、IP......等，而該公司也宣誓絕不會收集玩家個人資訊。
當然玩家才不相信.....
國外玩家在reddit上的主要討論串 https://www.reddit.com/user/Alexspeed75
而事實上己經有超過50套遊戲被發現裝有此軟體，包含上古卷軸 online、流亡者科南、
惡靈獵殺：緊要關頭、文明帝國6......。
在玩家的憤怒之下，己經有16個遊戲工作室承諾己經或不久之後移除這個軟體。包含了
上古卷軸 online、流亡者科南、惡靈獵殺：緊要關頭、戰爭儀式、神秘世界傳奇、全軍
破敵、戰鎚：末世鼠疫......等。
--
「把已經倒下的人們的願望，還有未來的人們的希望，把這二種心情全都織入雙重螺旋
之中，挖出通往明天的道路。那就是天元突破，那就是Gurren-Lagann，
我的鑽頭．．．．是用來開天闢地的鑽頭啊！！」
── 西蒙 《天元突破 紅蓮之眼》
--
https://tinyurl.com/ydxpxddj
In Mario Kart, red shells target your nearest rival and ruthlessly stop them
in their tracks. Marketing company Red Shell, meanwhile, helps video game
companies more accurately target you. This fact has not sat well with some
players who have recently discovered the software in a veritable kartload of
Steam games.
According to Red Shell’s website, their software is meant to help game
companies “measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns” by “
tying information from marketing campaigns to in-game play.” Basically, it’
s installed alongside games and tracks information about your devices
(operating system, browser version number, IP address, etc) in order to
ascertain how effective advertisements for that particular game are. The
company swears up and down that it doesn’t collect personal information.
“We don’t collect names, emails, or addresses,” Red Shell says on its
website, noting that games can offer an opt-out to players if developers so
choose. “Our service basically says ‘this computer clicked on a link from
this YouTube video and the same computer played your game.’ We have no
interest in tracking people, just computers for the purposes of attribution.”
The software has been discovered in over 50 games including The Elder Scrolls
Online, Conan Exiles, Hunt: Showdown, and Civilization VI. For the past
couple weeks, a contingent of players have dedicated themselves to weeding it
out, decrying it as “spyware” that many companies failed to disclose.
“Red Shell is a spyware that tracks data of your PC and shares it with 3rd
parties,” Redditor Alexspeed75 wrote last week in a thread that’s became
something of a rallying place for aggrieved players. “On their website they
formulate it all in very harmless language, but the fact is that this is
software from someone I don’t trust and whom I never invited, which is
looking at my data and running on my PC against my will. This should have no
place in a full price PC game, and in no games if it were up to me.”
Since then, players of the aforementioned games and many more have started
irate threads in Steam forums and subreddits. In many cases, they’ve gotten
developers to pledge to remove Red Shell.
“We integrated Red Shell with the goal to track the efficiency of our
marketing campaigns (how many players clicked on our advertisements on social
media platforms and then purchased the game afterwards). There was never any
intention to sell data to third parties,” said the developers of multiplayer
horror game Dead By Daylight, expressing a sentiment similar to many other
developers who’ve removed Red Shell from their games. “That being said, we
have seen the player frustrations expressed about the use of this technology.
Our passionate and dedicated fans are the reason why Dead by Daylight is a
success, especially the ones who have been with us from the beginning. We
have removed Red Shell from Dead by Daylight in the 2.0.0 update.”
As of now, 16 games have either removed Red Shell or have pledged to do so in
the near future, including The Elder Scrolls Online, Conan Exiles, Hunt:
Showdown, Battlerite, Secret World Legends, Total War, and Warhammer:
Vermintide.
You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around
Valve’s PC gaming service.
====
簡單來說，有間營銷公司 Red Shell 開發的軟體功能是：借由資訊化營銷活動對玩遊戲
的影響來幫助遊戲公司量化其營銷活動的有效性。
因此，他會包裝在遊戲程式內一起裝進玩家電腦中，用以追蹤玩家的電子設備資訊，像是
操作系統、瀏覽器版本、IP......等，而該公司也宣誓絕不會收集玩家個人資訊。
當然玩家才不相信.....
國外玩家在reddit上的主要討論串 https://www.reddit.com/user/Alexspeed75
而事實上己經有超過50套遊戲被發現裝有此軟體，包含上古卷軸 online、流亡者科南、
惡靈獵殺：緊要關頭、文明帝國6......。
在玩家的憤怒之下，己經有16個遊戲工作室承諾己經或不久之後移除這個軟體。包含了
上古卷軸 online、流亡者科南、惡靈獵殺：緊要關頭、戰爭儀式、神秘世界傳奇、全軍
破敵、戰鎚：末世鼠疫......等。
--
「把已經倒下的人們的願望，還有未來的人們的希望，把這二種心情全都織入雙重螺旋
之中，挖出通往明天的道路。那就是天元突破，那就是Gurren-Lagann，
我的鑽頭．．．．是用來開天闢地的鑽頭啊！！」
── 西蒙 《天元突破 紅蓮之眼》
--
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