Ok so that explains the bad reviews, but why is steam giving the game away for free? Also BL3 is heavily discounted
I think it’s up to the publisher, and not steam, to give the game away for free.
lemmy yet again falls for the ragebait hook line and sinker
I sometimes wonder what will happen when EAC, that has root access to millions of PCs, gets compromised or has grunty employee and pushes malicious update
Same thing that happened to genshin when it’s anti cheats got compromised I would guess. Not a lot and everyone ends up not caring.
Because normal people do not give a single fuck about the technical aspect of data privacy.
That’s right. I’m not lying at all when I say that none of my friends care about privacy. It’s actually quite frustrating.
It probably spys on you already.
The company that makes the Overwolf game launcher is an Israli cyber security company that gets money from the US.
Tencent spys on people for China through a lot of the games they own.
Holy fuck I did not know about Overwolf. That’s the last time I download something from my, apparently, dipshit friend (no, this is not the only stupid thing he’s done).
Hey, maybe your friend didn’t know either!(nor did i😭)
Yes that’s the problem, he doesn’t know a lot of things. He also doesn’t seem very keen on learning them.
He’s young, so I still have hope for him but god damnit he’s stupid and a potential hazard apparently.
Crowdstrike 2.0
I just don’t understand anticheat or copy protection on PvE games. I can understand it if you don’t want to play against a cheater, but this is a cooperative shooter.
IIRC Borderlands 3 scales the value of loot to the game’s difficulty setting, with some mechanics aimed at encouraging players to join online coops at high difficulties in order to earn more valuable loot. I imagine cheats undermine that intent, and I also imagine borderlands 4 might be aiming at a pay to play scheme.
I’m guessing this EULA is being used for all their IP with the intent of taking advantage of it in the future.
See you’re looking at it from the point of view that it would serve the player experience, but that’s not what it’s for, it’s to mine your data
We haven’t gotten another Middle Earth game because it had an online requirement
Now look where we are
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Hey, you posted this twice. Pretty easy to do, if your initial post does not go through and you hit Reply again…
It’s for precedent on future games and to sneak in shit for later. Wittle down your expectations and privacy, make it “normal”.
Need to protect those purchasing opportunities from cheaters.
🏴☠️ is free and without shenanigans.
giving root level access to russian crackers instead
Damn, its such a shame you can’t run a crack in a vm, or on linux via WINE and Proton, aw shucks.
If you go to the right sites you won’t get any malicious code. Stop spreading corpo propaganda.
There is nuance here. Not every crack is malicious but you have to assume they all are because some of them are. Trusting a source is irrelevant. Many security products will falsely tag cracked software as dangerous just because it’s cracked, not because it found a specific bit of nasty code, and this feeds the idea that you can’t believe when people tell you cracked software is unsafe. But there are many truly bad cracks out there. When in doubt, don’t trust it.
And you should always doubt free shit.
it isn’t propaganda.
it’s been a while since I’ve used windows, but I remember having to give administrator privileges to software installers, whether they are from legitimate vendors or from ripping groups with modified code
Thats a windows thing so it can put files in “protected” folders like program files
What’s with this anyway? A remnant from the single-user days?
Some software installers still ask if I want to install for all users, which require elevated permissions, or only for me, which don’t. In that last option it will not prompt for elevated permissions as it will use one of my user’s folders which I have already all permissions for, obviously.
It’s a security measure that’s half assed. People are so used to it they just click allow but don’t actually look at the prompt anymore. Like I see a lot of people do with cookies on websites.
Over wine?
Shh, the kids don’t want to hear about the dark side of free things (oh hey, a new Meta service!)
/s
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Yikes. Is the review in the screenshot true? They got root anticheat? Or rootkit data harvesting?
He said they added a kernel level anticheat in the TOS which is true. But they seem to have not included it in the game yet. But they tell that by possedong the game you allow them to. Edit : typo but can’t correct “possedong” now
possedong
I’d like to know how your autocorrect learned this word
That’s a typo from an i to an o, commenter probably meant possessing but made a mistake and tried to type posseding, I suspect their native language is french given their username and “to possess” in french is “posséder”.
That being said, a possedong sounds intriguing
Do you do osint ? … That pretty Mich on point. I use a English/French keyboard and sometime autocorrect do strange things.
I had to look this up… looks like it’s a whole thing
No, it’s misinformation and people who uncritically repeat things without verification.
I’ve had the game installed for years and have to manually apply updates, there hasn’t been one. e: I just checked, last update in Steam is dated 2022
All they’ve done is make their TOS universal across all of their games.
e: adding this from last post. TL;DR: People are spreading misinformation
So, let’s look into the claims.
Here’s the TOS:
https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/
There is nothing about root level access.
In addition, if you look at the patch history for Borderlands 2 on SteamDB, you will see that the last update for the game was 4 August 2022.
So, to be clear: There is nothing in the TOS that requires you to submit to a rootkit and there is no spyware that has been added. The comment in the OP is simply wrong.
He said it, root access level in the TOS of BorderLand. Not that a root kit is included, but that they allowed them self to inclid it whenever they can. That not misinformation…
He said it
That not misinformation…
It is misinformation if the things he said are not true.
So, let’s look into the claims.
Here’s the TOS:
https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/
There is nothing about root level access.
In addition, if you look at the patch history for Borderlands 2 on SteamDB, you will see that the last update for the game was 4 August 2022.
So, to be clear:
There is nothing in the TOS that requires you to submit to a rootkit and there is no spyware that has been added. The comment in the OP is simply wrong.
This is what happens when you simply read social media and repeat what you’ve heard without checking to see if you’re spreading misinformation.
I’m really curious on what actual specific steps you took to “check”. It took me about a few minutes of reading to find it.
https://www.take2games.com/privacy/en-US/#3-sources-of-information
We also may use internal and third-party anti-cheat technologies to detect and prevent cheating within our Services.
Furthermore, https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/#10-availability specifically section 10.2
We may provide patches, updates, or upgrades to the Services, Virtual Items, Content, or your Account that may be required for you to continue using the Services, including automatic or “in the background” updates without notice to you.
I hope the people who upvoted your misinformation are able to see this, please think of your actions and conduct before posting multiple comments defending a company if you’re worried about misinformation.
That… doesn’t actually rebut anything FauxLiving said. That they may use anti-cheat, and that they may have automatic updates, aren’t the claims in question here.
Ummm those two would statements would in fact allow them to install a “anticheat” rookit/kernel program at any time without your knowledge…
Sincerely thank you for commenting. I was completely dumbfounded with @Warl0k3@lemmy.world’s statement and wasn’t sure if I wanted to waste my time with a response if it was just trolling.
Y’all really going to freak out over the new paralegal being told to update the EULAs and lazily hitting the update all button?
I didn’t enjoy the Handsome Collection but free is free. Thanks for sharing.
- Did the EULA change? ✅
- Were all Take Two games automatically updated in secret and now hijack your machine with root access to spy on everything you do? ❌
- Do Take Two games contain code to report telemetry and user information(including application/system activity) to a home server? ✅
- Is this EULA change extraordinary and particularly egregious in comparison to others that most people have probably already agreed to? ❌(IMO)
- Are people riled up because e a YouTube video went a little viral and now they’re all playing telephone to the point where it’s now gotten to the point of random dumdums are review booming a 13 year old game claiming it’s turned into literal spyware? ✅(again, IMO)
- Should you be surprised by any of this if you’ve been even remotely paying attention for any period of the last 30-40 years? ❌
- Do we need more than just angry idiots in the battle against corpatocracy? ✅
We should be done coddling the late comers at this point. Yes welcome them and accept them, but at a certain point your level of ignorance became a detriment to your community and you should be made aware of that fact.
Pretty much nailed it, yep.
A youtuber named Hellfire has been on a spree, basically discovering how fucked up EULAs have been in games for the past 20ish years… well this is all brand new news to him and and his Zoomer / Gen A followers.
There is, as of right now, literally zero evidence that Borderlands 2 has been updated with a rootkit, with kernel level anti cheat, anything like that.
The last update to its game files was 2 years ago.
This is almost certainly them updating the EULA everywhere, the precise timing of this being for some specific arcane legal and business reasons… TakeTwo runs a whole bunch more games than juat Borderlands… namely GTA V…
…
Is this EULA bad? Yes.
Is it much worse than it was before, or what other large gaming companies EULAs have, and have had for… a decade+?
Maybe by a bit, but not really, no.
…
Is Randy Pitchford a dumb idiot asshole?
Oh absolutely yes, but that shouldn’t give people the liscense to make completely unevidenced claims about other things.
…
The game does not have a kernel level AC or some kind of rootkit DRM, as many, many people are currently saying it does.
I guess gamer attention span can really hold onto a few keywords and phrases at a time.
… I say this all as person who is vehemently against kernel level AC, who has been pointing out for 4 years, that almost all existing anti cheat systems currently have at least one game that implements their AC, on linux, without using kernel level anything… it is entirely possible to do AC without kernel level shit, even on linux, and has been for at least 4 years. EAC and BattleEye have supported linux for 4 years, but nearly no game that uses them has actually used this feature/available and offered support.
I am glad that this level of hate is finally being directed at shitty EULAs, but lets at least get our facts straight, or actually provide some hitherto unseen evidence that Borderlands has had some kind of sleeper malware in it for at least the past two years, just waiting to be activated by a TOS update to every single Take Two game.
So…if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see…really?
So…if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see…really?
Without using exploits to escape the container, not much. A very empty Windows environment with a single game installed, your network interfaces and any directories that the Flatpak has access to (usually just the SteamLibrary directories).
The TOS (https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/) changes are mostly related to data that they collect via their interfacing with Steam and through their website. This idea that they’re requiring you to agree to a root level access or installing a spyware rootkit is just nonsense.
Not a lot. Even when it isn’t a flatpak windows software running on linux won’t be able to interact with the system anywhere near as deeply as on windows.
They’ll be able to tell it’s linux, though.
You can install an application like Flatseal (https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal) to inspect the permissions for a flatpak.
How locked down a flatpak is depends entirely on the developer and what permissions they request. By default, they can’t really see much. For example, they can’t even see the processes running on your host or your user and system files.
Flatpak does not do anything about network access though, it can only do no access or full access, no in between. The data they can collect on Linux in a Flatpak is very limited but it does not prevent them from calling home.
They know I use Linux and that means they know too much
New to linux…are flatpaks like sandboxed?
They are somewhat isolated but not sandboxed.
Sort of. They can be, but are not always.
Its a bit more than that:
Precise location information? Wtf for?
Oh honey, what’s any of it for?
They use the same terms of service for mobile games and they just dont bother to change it for pc games.
This mistake makes sense to make as a mistake. But also, that’s fuckin asinine
It isn’t a mistake. Writing different EULA for each game costs more money than writing an overly aggressive one that covers most cases.
Hyper Localized Advertising. Welcome to the future :(
I just saw an advertisement for a custom T-shirt:
“That’s right, I’m a December dad, who lives at 62a, with size 10 feet and prescription glasses…”/S
“By scrolling past, you agree to sharing with us (and our affiliates) the following collected data types: …”
A bit more than what, not really sure what your point here is? All of those bullet points are similar if not identical to terms in other EULAs half the people in this thread have already clicked thru.
I’ll say it again, if you think this is anything new you haven’t been paying attention. I’m all for calling this fuckery out and pushing for something better. But like where yall been?
Still no actual answers from anyone on how this is ‘more’ than what I described in my op. Sure it’s a more detailed list, but it’s really not the “gotcha” everyone seems to think it is. That is, if youve been paying attention.
I see this kind of comment before and I will never understand it - “other companies do it so just bend over and let us do it to you too!”
People say this all the time about Denuvo too: “Other games already have Denuvo, why are you crying about it here when you’re playing other games?”
And see, that’s the problem - we aren’t playing those other Denuvo games. And same thing applies here, guess what, a lot of us aren’t buying games from gross companies like EA with these shit terms. So when a company we are doing business with suddenly changes their terms to be shit, that’s a valid complaint. Some of us have already been boycotting bad business practices in the industry, so the idea of company changing terms towards the boycott after we’ve already invested in the game feels like a betrayal because it is.
So maybe stop focusing on what you assume the rest of audience is doing and instead go back to focusing on what the people at the goddamn podium are trying to pull?
Why does everyone insist on adding the ‘so just bend over and take’ part whenever someone points out another source of wrongdoing? Like what do yall always take it to mean that the speaker is implying a whataboutism argument? And not maybe as ‘oh shit this has been going on longer than just this maybe we should learn about that too and we might figure out why it hasn’t been stopped yet.’
If “everyone” keeps reading a sentiment you did not intend out of your message, perhaps it is time to consider that you are doing a poor job of communicating your point.
Or you’re being disingenuous and just don’t like being calling on your hissy fit.
I dunno, take your pick.
It’s the first one, I’m terrible at effectively communicating nuanced points.
And I mean yall could interrogate the statement instead of reaching a conclusion and then responding but I get it.
But also, fuck that. Do more work as the reader.
Also, piss off with your infantilizing ‘hissy fit’ bullshit.
What point are you trying to make? You say you’re “all for calling this kind of fuckery out” but then you’re criticizing people for calling it out? And who cares what other EULAs might say? The point is that the license agreement for this game and others owned by this company didn’t say this shit before, and now they do. The company is actively making their user agreement more hostile to the users which is what people are pissed about.
That it takes more critical thinking to accomplish the organized action needed for real change than leaving a bunch of negative reviews.
I never once said ‘other company’s do it so just deal with it.’ Fuckawhataboutism. I said “if you think this is new, you haven’t been paying attention.” What I shouldn’t have left unsaid was ‘the review is a nice start and show of intention. but we need a lot more dedicated, well organized action, to actually accomplish any change.’
But people read into things what they want to hear.
I don’t click thru any EULAs. I see bad EULA - I pirate. Then if it makes any network traffic i just block that shit.
yo ho
Let’s ride the wave. Turn this into a huge controversy known industry-wide. Then, next game that comes out with EULA like this, we say “THIS GAME HAS A BORDERLANDS-STYLE EULA”. Pretend it’s new to exploit the shock value and get the gamers riled up. Then, the industry gets better.
Tell the frog that the pot wasn’t always this hot.
Thank you for an actually constructive response. You’ve honestly brought me around a bit with this.
Some people will always find an excuse to change nothing.
It doesn’t matter how many similar EULA’s people have already accepted. The best moment to not eat it anymore would have been the first time it happened, the second best time is right now.
Also, retroactively amending an EULA is a different quality, since people have already paid for the game and would be locked out after the fact if they didn’t accept.
I’m sad you read this as an admission of defeat and an attempt to deter others from fighting. Was hoping for more of a ‘you’re late, you have a bunch of homework to catch up on’ vibe but I’m not great at communicating all the time.
It seems like you’re giving of a “victim” vibe with this by stating you wished for only a particular type of “positive response” when you’ve posted a misleading comment and doubled-down with “EULAs half the people in this thread have already clicked thru” which you have no way of knowing.
Were all Take Two games automatically updated in secret and now hijack your machine with root access to spy on everything you do? ❌
10.2. Updates, Modifications, and Sunset. We may provide patches, updates, or upgrades to the Services, Virtual Items, Content, or your Account that may be required for you to continue using the Services, including automatic or “in the background” updates without notice to you.
“Was hoping for more of a ‘you’re late, you have a bunch of homework to catch up on’” You’re expecting others to hold your hand and inform you of every event or action taken by every company. I guess I’ll do my part since I have been trying to let other people know for a while now,
StormGate - Privacy Policy and End User Agreement. Is this just the new industry standard to avoid? (post made by me 10 months ago)
Why don’t you see it more?
Steam Discussion deleted after questioning the “EULA” of Stormgate, another post by me after I tried to inform others and was suppressed, meaning the reviews is the only course of action that most have at their disposal. Even posting on their official subreddit did no good with the exact same type of response you’ve presented here,
Why am I consenting to have my “Medical Information”, “Browser/Search History”, “Social Security/Drivers License number”, “Geolocation and movements”, and more collected to play Stormgate? (22k members, only 122 upvotes)
(the responses)
- They didn’t collect such information (they technically couldn’t), they are giving examples of such types of personally identifiable information.
- Yeah, it’s excessive, they don’t need half of this. However, writing it this way makes it near impossible for them to screw up by accident. If you play games, you probably agreed to a handful of ELUA’s like that by now.
- This keeps getting brought up in every controversial game these days and the answer is always the same: They aren’t.
- Most of this is not out of the ordinary.
- Imagine thinking all of this information about you isn’t already owned by several corporations lol.
- Some of these stuffs are required in X countries not yours, stop thinking the entire world is all about you buddy.
You’ve officially become part of the problem and an ally to the very same reason why we can’t “accomplish the organized action needed for real change (than leaving a bunch of negative reviews.)”
Man I’m tired.
If more folks are waking up and shaking a stick at it or doing something but blindly click through (thus legally unenforceable) EULAs I’m all for it.
Better late than never.
I get that and agree, this is just a crappy and kinda dumb stick to be wasting the energy on because it makes the side opposing the injustice look like petulant children instead of enabling effective action.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Owns Rockstar Games, Zynga and 2K. So if that’s all their games, it includes at least these: Bioshock series, Borderlands series, Civilization series, Grand Theft Auto series, Mafia series, Max Payne series, NBA 2K series, PGA Tour 2K series, Red Dead series, WWE 2K series and XCOM series.
Amazing stuff!
That’s just a list of games that used to be good and now suck.
I object to that for XCOM
True, it was always bad :p
Is this because Embracer sold Borderlands to Take-Two last year?
It’s because Take Two came out with a fuck-you-in-the-ass EULA for all their games. I actually look forward to boycotting someone, there’s too much free and discounted shit everywhere
You literally posted the answer to your question. Here is an expansion of the details.
I haven’t read the new TOS but if this review is correct it looks like a GDPR nightmare for them. Good luck to them explaining why they need to collect all that personal data.
That might be US only, where the companies have freedom to get all the customer’s data and do with it as they will.
The list where this doesn’t apply seems to basically be every country with consumer protection laws.
They obviously know this won’t fly pretty much anywhere other than the US so that’s all they’re trying to push.
Do we know this is a thing in the EU?
I just read the german version and compared them a little. (https://www.take2games.com/privacy/de/) Its about the same. But ist also reads fairly normal like any other privacy policy. I also think its in line with EU law. The collected data always relates to whatever TakeTwo service you use and whatever data you provide voluntarily or technically by using it. Thats fine by EU law.
The “collected data types” in that comment seems to be copy/pasted from the privacy policy
Most people don’t care about privacy.
Most people in the western civilized world are on Facebook, so…
Sad truth, but it’s no excuse.
but ask those same people whether facebook should be allowed to collect and use all that data, and people will generally say ‘no’.
Due to Steam’s tos updates a few months ago, isn’t take-two opening itself up to a massive lawsuit?
No idea, but I think it would be funny, so I’m all for it and hope you are right.
Hm… Ok. Thats crazy. Someone wants to create a new branch of income it seems.
Thats a fucking shame. Now I need to reconsider my plans to buy Borderlands4.
But how will they do it? Which information is gathered from which source? Most of my accounts only hold as little informations as possible. Also my Os knows nothing about me. My MS account neither.
On the other hand my steam 2FA need some mobile information.
Unless you use Linux, your OS knows a ton about you. On top of that, with root access to your computer they can do whatever they want and if their system gets hacked you become a member of a bot farm or crypto mine.
Well I use Linux, but not on my gaming pc. I would switch to it because its all amd, but I don’t want to because it lacks the driver suite for my gpu (adrenaline) and I don’t want to install a bunch of small applications to gain a small fraction of options it offers.
It’s a pitty. Because I realy want to ditch windows since its newest iteration.
Checkout Jump Ship? It’s some weird borderlands, Star citizen, (insert other generic shooter) type game. Pretty neat, was recommended to me by a shooter fanatic friend of mine. I trust his shooting game opinion
oh cool, I can see that it’s similar Borderlands by the screenshots, and I can see that it’s like Star Citizen because it’s not actually released yet and they’re taking money for early access.
Hah exactly :D
😂😂
Don’t just review bomb it
Report it to steam as SPYWARE, with the little flag icon on the product page
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Fun fact, it’s called a parliament! I regret that I am not an owl.
Steam has a history of removing things people don’t like (for example: banning ad-ridden games)
So if all these reports can bring them to add this to their TOS, it’s worth it
absolutely. Steam is not to mess with and takes such matters quite seriously.
Doesn’t the screenshot you posted explain what’s going on?
