Agreed. And it's also obvious that some of these journalists actually believe that people complaining about Epic are being ridiculous. In their opinion, Valve needs competition so bad that it's perfectly fine to ignore a few annoyances when another company is finally challenging them. PC gamer literally wrote that it"s "for our own good".
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Developing: Epic Games Launcher appears to collect your steam friends & play history (Up2: Valve responds, See Threadmarks)
- Thread starter Madjoki
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Agreed. And it's also obvious that some of these journalists actually believe that people complaining about Epic are being ridiculous. In their opinion, Valve needs competition so bad that it's perfectly fine to ignore a few annoyances when another company is finally challenging them. PC gamer literally wrote that it"s "for our own good".
Biggest (or 2nd biggest) german news gaming outlet have released an article as well:
https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/epic-games-store-steam-daten-auslesen,3341759.html
Lazy google translation of their headline: Users accuse Epic of illegally using Steam data - Epic confirms the allegations
https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/epic-games-store-steam-daten-auslesen,3341759.html
Lazy google translation of their headline: Users accuse Epic of illegally using Steam data - Epic confirms the allegations
4chan has sections that promote hate, and therefore the entire site can be classified as tolerating and promoting hate. This falls under the clause I included in my post:
Over the last few weeks, I've seen people suggest banning PC Gamer, Michael Pachter, Polygon, Mike Ybarra - basically, any gaming outlet or notable individual that publishes or tweets something that they don't personally like. Some users would have this forum be nothing but Playstation blog press releases and Nintendo Directs.
I like most of the RPS crew, especially Alice O, and this is almost heartbreaking... I don't even know wtf they're doing.
I can expect that from Epic even though i have no proof.
Assumption: If they could be that scummy buying off timed exclusivity rights, with the way they are doing this, i do not think they have neglected subtly buying support from the willing of the industry media just to have their backs covered.
There is another possibility, some few of the gaming press willingly support any of Epic's f@ckery to get their attraction and their money in the form of ads and sponsored articles.
Or they could be doing both and probably much more, we will never know.
I never expected RPS, a site i once visited very frequently, to fall that low.
EU sites tend to care more about consumer rights then Us and UK places
I think the argument is supposedly "Because a major shareholder is Chinese, they can't be trusted with information!". I *am* a bit uncomfortable when I've seen that, but that doesn't diminish the fact that the issue at the root of it is still real and significant, and shouldn't be conflated with those sentiments.
In a broad sense, the correct interpretation along those lines is "You really ought to be uncomfortable about anyone snooping at information; you should assume untrustworthiness of all parties.". Basic computer security drilled into me early on: trust should never be the default state.
Ever since they were bought out last year their voice has been getting less unique and more "mainstream"
It doesn't help that John Walker is the only one of the original founders left, I believe
May I remind you all that journalists are not your friends, gaming journalists in particular. They only act like your ally at times for the views, to get people reading, but when they get "sponsors" fuck the readers because they'll paint the sponsors in a positive light no matter what. Sadly, every gaming journalist outlet is like this. Even youtubers like jim sterling aren't above the shilling.
Put them to task people otherwise they'll just stay yes men for corporations.
Put them to task people otherwise they'll just stay yes men for corporations.
I mentioned something a few days ago, about games journalists not being aware of proper business practices, economics and socio-geopolitics, and this whole thing is indicative of that. Cambridge Analytica/Facebook was a year ago, and any journalist who doesn't view data breaches with one eye on what happened then - and since then, with Facebook and Google taking advantage of Apple's trust in developers - does not have enough knowledge about the world around them to write succinctly about data privacy and potential breaches.
Great point. We should be pushing writers at these outlets to spend some time brushing up on the latest trends outside of gaming as well as those inside the industry.
Alec's still there too for another couple of weeks, but it's definitely a pretty different era to when they stopped covering Ubisoft when they pushed their always-online DRM.
Intreasting how so far every media site has rushed to the defense of Epic regarding this even while Tweeny and his engineers admit it doesn't look good on them doing what they did.
The issue with a Chinese owner has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with its governments legacy. It's as racist as pointing out America's imperialism. We know that all Chinese companies are carefully watched by their government
So many straw man arguments in this article. I like RPS, but this reads like a propaganda news article in some dystopian fiction.
My concerns about this have little to do with Tencent or Epic spying for the Chinese government, and I don't think most people upset about this have these concerns at the forefront of their arguments either. Western companies have proven to be just as incompetent or sinister with people's data as Chinese companies, and we have laws like GDPR for that very reason. I don't see why Alice O'Connor has chosen to take this editorial line, in all honesty.
It feels like she's dismissing people's legitimate concerns under the guise of some shadowy anti-China conspiracy theory.
That's odd though because it has nothing to do with Chinese people themselves, but the Chinese government. They definitely have a history of spying and people doing business with them have every right to be weary. For example, I don't trust both the US and UK governments right now, but that has nothing to do with how I feel about Americans and Brits.
It's the fact that as a Chinese company, if the Chinese government asked Tencent for any information, they have to provide it. Do people really think that Chinese companies are allowed to just do what they want without their Communist government interfering?
This is what Wikipedia has to say about the founder of Tencent:
"According to the official Tencent website, Ma is a deputy to the 5th Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress and serves in the 12th National People's Congress.[5]
Because of Tencent's dominance of the social network and instant messaging markets in China, Ma Huateng' relationship with the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly come under scrutiny.[citation needed]Speaking of censorship at a tech conference in Singapore, Ma was quoted as saying "Lots of people think they can speak out and that they can be irresponsible. I think that's wrong […] We are a great supporter of the government in terms of the information security. We try to have a better management and control of the Internet".[35]"
When your founder is also a member of the countries only political party, makes you wonder.
About Tencent:
Tencent owns a stake in a ton of videogame companies (like for instance... Paradox). In the case of Epic, they are still a private company and Epic owns a majority stake so they should not be as influenced as many of you fear.
The fact that EGS is not available in China should be enough to tell you that they do not really have that much in common with Tencent (except sending them money). The Tencent bullet point really needs to be dropped down until there is any proof Epic are actually sending data / sharing it with Tencent.
That is not to say that Epic does not have a problem disregarding GDPR (their "tick this box not to send your email to developers" during launch) or security (it seems they still do not check your email when you create an account and they have had several information loses, but that can also be attributed to be a major target for hacking).
Tencent owns a stake in a ton of videogame companies (like for instance... Paradox). In the case of Epic, they are still a private company and Epic owns a majority stake so they should not be as influenced as many of you fear.
The fact that EGS is not available in China should be enough to tell you that they do not really have that much in common with Tencent (except sending them money). The Tencent bullet point really needs to be dropped down until there is any proof Epic are actually sending data / sharing it with Tencent.
That is not to say that Epic does not have a problem disregarding GDPR (their "tick this box not to send your email to developers" during launch) or security (it seems they still do not check your email when you create an account and they have had several information loses, but that can also be attributed to be a major target for hacking).
That's all quite true, my point was more that dismissing the criticism as being potentially racist "because China" doesn't factor in the fact that the Chinese involvement isn't directly relevant: it's not who has access to the data that's the subject of criticism, it's the fact that the data is being scraped at all.
I could be wrong, but I read Epic's response like they purposely replied with as much technical sounding words as possible so either people just get confused or shrug it off as something that must be ok. Sounds shaddy as fuck though. Don't care what is buried in their ToS.
The accusations were made by a technical user/audience so they replied with a technical answer. Using the terms "UDP" and "source code" are useful to those who comprehend the finer details of the situation.
She's reducing this to "some Steam lovers on Reddit are unhappy about Epic- again, sigh".
Taking jabs both at Steam (it's fans are irrational in their epic-bashing) and reddit (anyone can say anything there- look, here are some anti-china cherry-picked quotes).
Followed by, " and here's Epic's technical explanation. Sounds legit to me". And then some more edutorializing about "those silly reactionary steamophiles"
There's zero evidence Tencent has access to this data. Zero. Sweeney has also already come out and said it.
Tencent already owns or has invested in a big portion of the industry. Even before Fortnite hit its stride, they already owned Riot Games and Supercell, both of which had reach on the level of Fortnite or greater. No data snooping or privacy issues there. No data sharing. It makes zero sense that they'd suddenly have Epic put in a sloppy, illegal backdoor. Go to any Epic thread and you can find plenty of users here fearmongering over Tencent. It's entirely racist.
You're so eager to de-legitimize concerns you're going to brand people as racist now? ok
we're done here.
I think the whole "Well duh, they are owned by Tencent" Line is kind of dumb and a big stretch...
It just gives ammunition to some outlets (ie: RPS) to discredit the whole thing because "Of course Internet people are accusing China to spy on Fortnite players /rolleyes".
Epic and Epic's management are plenty dumb enough to do something like that without partaking in International espionage...
It just gives ammunition to some outlets (ie: RPS) to discredit the whole thing because "Of course Internet people are accusing China to spy on Fortnite players /rolleyes".
Epic and Epic's management are plenty dumb enough to do something like that without partaking in International espionage...
Eh, I wouldnt call it racist as the fear would be similar if it was from other countries with dictatorial, not giving a fuck about privacy governments like Russia. The fact that most top Chinese companies are also pretty linked with the government is something really important that must not be forgotten.
But again, yeah the fear is overblown as they have never shown to share that information with them and Tencent is often pretty hands off with their investments. However, Epic has shown several times they dont really care about the privacy of our data.
There is no proof Tencent gets that information.
Pretty much every high ranking person in China is a member of the communist party. You have to in order to make it there.
At least they're transparent about it data collection. People don't think the NSA can get all the information they want?
This is my issue with all the "China is stealing my data" statements, especially in journalism. The US government has a vested interest in making China appear as a bad actor, so I always take these kind of claims with a grain of salt.
Not saying the Chinese government have not done some heinous shit, but so have the US government, and a lot of other government's as well.
What is racist about calling out a company that has dealings with the Chinese Communist Party, the same party that imprisons it's own fucking people because they happen to be Muslim. Get out of here calling people out as racists, this isn't about the Chinese people it's about the scummy government and it's ties to all the companies over there.
None of it is racist and again you undermine any argument you had with saying that.
It does strike me that the role of news outlets shouldn't be to say "Reddit hates Chinese people now", but to point readers back towards the genuine, verifiable issue, which is Epic scraping user data in a genuinely suspicious manner, Tencent be damned. Instead they do the former and use it to dismiss the latter.
Yeah, the racist thing is a bit too much. You could do well by omitting it.
However, do you really think that if Epic has those data available they will not share them with their principal partner?
Do you really think that if Tencent knows Epic has those data they will not ask Sweeney for them?
Do you really trust Sweeney's word?
Until there is proof of that, we might as well trust Sweeney. Tencent has major investments in a ton of western companies and they have shown to be quite hands off.
I said it before and i will say it now i will say that Epic and Sergey especially would be my first guess for data collection responsibility. I really don't believe that Tencent is accessing those data because they have far more popular games they made where they can get data for analysis.
Also i wouldn't go that far and say that journalists are taking money from Epic. They maybe have their own biases and they publish biased articles but i wouldn't say that they took any money for it.
Also i wouldn't go that far and say that journalists are taking money from Epic. They maybe have their own biases and they publish biased articles but i wouldn't say that they took any money for it.
He says one thing today and a different one tomorrow as shown from his tweets.
I want to say that this is not how a honest person would have reacted on this situation. If they were clean one tweet with the explanation would have killed the issue because it would be a non-issue.
That is not happening now.
western companies are entirely capable of being shitty about private data collection. In fact, many of the biggest western firms are built on that and have gotten numerous large fines for it. Tencent being involved or not is immaterial to this story.
That PC focused sites like PC gamer and RPS seem entirely unconcerned about private data breaches is very disapointing though. If any part of the games journalism landscape should be a bit better informed and concerned about that stuff it's them.
At least the german speaking sites take this seriously. But privacy is a much bigger concern around here than it seems to be in the US
That PC focused sites like PC gamer and RPS seem entirely unconcerned about private data breaches is very disapointing though. If any part of the games journalism landscape should be a bit better informed and concerned about that stuff it's them.
At least the german speaking sites take this seriously. But privacy is a much bigger concern around here than it seems to be in the US
I mean, I think he was doing shady stuff with the information, but on an Epic side of the company, without any input from Tencent.
Again, Tencent is quite hands off with the companies they invest in (for the moment) and Epic didnt even partner with them to launch their store in China. The Tencent side has to be dropped off until we see if they had send any information to them or major changes happen in their relationship.
The Tencent thing is a red herring that's useful for journalists and epic apologists to turn this into another round of social justice debate and conflate those who criticize epic ("the steam-lovers") with people who want games like RapeDay on Steam.
Meanwhile, the fact that Epic was using its launchers to quite possibly snoop around its competitors' usage data without authorization can be conveniently overlooked.
Meanwhile, the fact that Epic was using its launchers to quite possibly snoop around its competitors' usage data without authorization can be conveniently overlooked.
If true, does this person's findings warrant more worries?
https://reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b1fvqe/epic_games_launcher_also_appear_to_collect/
https://reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b1fvqe/epic_games_launcher_also_appear_to_collect/
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Having worked for three companies that had Tencent ownership or involvement at this point, yes, I can say with 99% certainty that Tencent doesn't ask for data.
I wish this shit was bannable. Coming to a thread to say "I don't care about any of this, you are all wrong. Oh, I was wrong? I still don't give a fuck, I refuse to read the OP" doesn't exactly make someone look like a valuable forum member looking to engage in good faith discourse.
Calling people racist because they dislike a government and the way they treat people and worrying that government might get their hands on their data.
Doesn't sound like a logical argument like you say.
And also like you mentioned, this isn't even most peoples concern, it feels like the author was focusing on that however in order to make a poor argument.
Dutch tech site tweakers.net has made an article as well. Translated it says "Epic Store copies Steam information without permission". What a huge difference with PC Gamer and RPS.