Weekend PC Game Deals: Sony hits, strategy festivals, bundled dinos, and more

inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world · 10 months ago

Weekend PC Game Deals: Sony hits, strategy festivals, bundled dinos, and more

inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world · 10 months ago

Don’t sleep on Psychonauts 2 for 15 bucks.

uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 10 months ago

Note that the Sony intrinsic spyware is still active on the GOG release of Horizon Zero Dawn

Sinful@mastodon.social · 10 months ago

@uriel238 @inclementimmigrant Can you explain more please?

JohnEdwa@kbin.social · edit-2 10 months ago

This.
Scary legalize for “We collect telemetry and crash reports”, essentially. How much H:ZD actually sends I don’t know, AFAIK that’s essentially generic data collection privacy policy thing from Sony.

uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 10 months ago

Before you play HZD Sony requires you to affirm your compliance with the Sony terms of service, including the game’s capacity to scan your computer and report back to Sony, including the DRM Free version on GOG.

This may be limited to benign game related elements (scores, telemetry, crashes and bugs, etc.) but the TOS doesn’t limit it to this, and Sony is essentially mandating they can collect whatever they want about you. There are similar clauses in some AAA launch clients, such as EA’s Origin (Now, just The EA App ) but for me, that’s a deal breaker, especially from a company that has a history of installing malware rootkits as a DRM measure. Sony, like several major electronics and software companies, has earned my distrust.

It also raises questions regarding the veracity of the GOG guarantee that games are DRM free.

I believe the same click-through contract (or a similar one) is on every Sony PC game since HZD.

JohnEdwa@kbin.social · edit-2 10 months ago

Telemetry is not digital rights management, nothing happens if you don’t have internet access or if you block the game with a firewall, you can still play the game fine. It’s a bummer you can’t opt-out of it completely obviously, but “they can collect whatever they want about you” is entirely false as long as you select “Limited Data” when it asks for your consent - they are GDPR compliant after all.

Here, I created a full image for you. Limited data is system & hardware specs, game crash logs & load times, network/server logs and online game data (e.g on an MMO/online match, H:ZD is offline game so doesn’t really apply) and “Legal information required by law”. Again, I don’t know when any of these are sent - it might be always you boot the game, it might be only when you send a crash log.