I'm surprised it hasn't come fully back around to Valve's curation policies, really.I see the defection campaign has worked? Somehow Epic admitting to violating privacy is now about China.
I'm surprised it hasn't come fully back around to Valve's curation policies, really.I see the defection campaign has worked? Somehow Epic admitting to violating privacy is now about China.
Authority argument fallacy right there.This is coming from your personal experience working with large Chinese companies? lol. Do tell.
Waiting for those sources to prove you actually know what you're talking about and aren't coming from a place of fearmongering ignorance.
And suddenly it's a privacy issue AND mass corporate espionnage.If true, does this person's findings warrant more worries?
https://reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b1fvqe/epic_games_launcher_also_appear_to_collect/
I see the defection campaign has worked? Somehow Epic admitting to violating privacy is now about China.
I see the defection campaign has worked? Somehow Epic admitting to violating privacy is now about China.
We are starting to lose the thread.
I feel it's important to establish the extent of what Epic did here, before further speculating "how high up does this go"
We still don't know exactly what data is being taken when we link our accounts.
The file they use to take that info is encrypted and it's literally their word that they only take the friends list info when we enable it on EGS, but for some reason they package everything else in that file as well.
2 points were raised earlier in the thread (on my phone, so can't look for the quotes)
1) during the linking process the actual .bak file does not appear to be accessed (raising the question of why do those files even need to be there then).
2) someone described the .bak files as not being encrypted but using some substitution code (not sure about this, may have misunderstood that post).
Thread whining is bannable. Report and move on.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.
"It's entirely racist to think a chinese company may be spying on people for its government"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.
Pretty much my feeling for the ost few years about video games journalism.
We really don't need to pass the blame on to Tencent, Epic are perfectley capable of doing this by themselves. It's not like american companies don't spy on their customers and competitors.
Exactly.We really don't need to pass the blame on to Tencent, Epic are perfectley capable of doing this by themselves. It's not like american companies don't spy on their customers and competitors.
Yup, I think it's a big mistake to start talking about it like it's Tencent's doing. There is no proof of that, and doing so is a perfect way of derailing threads like this one.
We really don't need to pass the blame on to Tencent, Epic are perfectley capable of doing this by themselves. It's not like american companies don't spy on their customers and competitors.
I want to quote this again because.... well, has Sweeney or anyone else at Epic given an explanation for this?According to this website: Fortnite Guide- Now Add Steam Friends In Fortnite - VoStory the functionality that lets people import their Steam friends into the EGL was added with Update 4.3 of Fortnite. That update was released on May 30, 2018. The first files scrapped by the EGL on my computer were generated on May 4, 2018. Did those files travel in time?
I want to quote this again because.... well, has Sweeney or anyone else at Epic given an explanation for this?
Is there a reason why the "Non-english" publication see it far harder?
(German)Gamestar wrote a really good article.
(German) 4Players too.
I want to quote this again because.... well, has Sweeney or anyone else at Epic given an explanation for this?
As far as I remember they did. Something about implementing code for testing or something like that. But I find it really curious that they added that just 2 weeks after Valve locked Steam accounts and Sergey wos most vocal about it and worked at Epic at that time.
Yeah not sure I buy it. "Implementing code for testing"... in a live, production setting? This doesn't add up.As far as I remember they did. Something about implementing code for testing or something like that. But I find it really curious that they added that just 2 weeks after Valve locked Steam accounts and Sergey wos most vocal about it and worked at Epic at that time.
Yeah not sure I buy it. "Implementing code for testing"... in a live, production setting? This doesn't add up.
According to this website: Fortnite Guide- Now Add Steam Friends In Fortnite - VoStory the functionality that lets people import their Steam friends into the EGL was added with Update 4.3 of Fortnite. That update was released on May 30, 2018. The first files scrapped by the EGL on my computer were generated on May 4, 2018. Did those files travel in time?
Yeah not sure I buy it. "Implementing code for testing"... in a live, production setting? This doesn't add up.
Yeah not sure I buy it. "Implementing code for testing"... in a live, production setting? This doesn't add up.
This was their response to that:
I don't feel it's good enough (since people didn't even know that they would add that functionality in the future)
Also the fact they are scraping way more than just friends ID's.
Makes no logical sense and sounds like they are being dishonest to me.
What's more, they claim the file that contains all of that extra information they scrape isn't even involved in the friend list linking.
And yet that begs the question, why is any of that data being accessed in the first place and copied. That file shouldn't even exist and all we have is their word that they don't touch it after making it.
This was their response to that:
I don't feel it's good enough (since people didn't even know that they would add that functionality in the future)
Also the fact they are scraping way more than just friends ID's.
Makes no logical sense and sounds like they are being dishonest to me.
Fortunately the retail version of Division 2 seems to run directly through UPlay, what a thing to say these days...
Epic kinda looks like they're trying to take the Aldi approach to game stores but they're missing the low prices part. Guess they gotta do shady shit if they cannot offer customers a real reason to shop there...
And there is that. Even *with* the user permission they are sill parsing a file that has more info then just the friends list. Their insistence in accessing local files even after all of this is really getting suspicous for me.
And besides, Aldi already has a game store: https://www.medion.com/de/shop/gamesAnd unlike Aldi, they don't have any professional gamers to pwn some kids and make them eat their dinner on time...lol.
Aren't Medion a Lenovo company mostly known for making crappy cheap laptops?And besides, Aldi already has a game store: https://www.medion.com/de/shop/games
Dunno, I got that address from a leaflet in an Aldi store.Aren't Medion a Lenovo company mostly known for making crappy cheap laptops?
Pretty sure they have nothing to do with Aldi, outside of Aldi having a deal with them to sell their laptops in some countries. Tesco used to sell them here.
Also the fact they are scraping way more than just friends ID's.
Makes no logical sense and sounds like they are being dishonest to me.
Well, seems like I was able to decrypt the file:
It seems to be parsed to binary format (possible some used by Unreal Engine?).
It seems to parse VDF (valve definition format to that)
Interestingly TimSweeney specifically claimed they didn't parse the file for playtimes in addition to not using it.
It did seems odd claim (especially as he didn't have to make that claim), since if you used any kind of parser, you'd end up parsing everything, even if technically.
But they definitely seem to even save that information to new file in their own format, which I'd definitely count as "parsing".
It's just XOR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR_cipher
For me key was 223, this may differ for you.
Yeah it doesn't. Much less keeping history even if it's just locally. Even if there is no code now, they could plausibly implement code in patch and get data from users and get rid of evidence. Or even stream code from server and instantly get rid off it (I believe Valve's VAC works similarly, for example, to make it harder to know what it actually checks). Possibilities are there. (But no proof whatsoever, just random thoughts)
They say it's not being sent to them, but if I don't personally ask to get it collected dont pre collect it then tell me it's okay, because you don't have it.
Except it's clear they are doing way more then that, and CEF doesn't run like that. It's a closed container and none of your information would reside anywhere other then in Epics own folders.They also said that they were only looking at the friend list and they are collecting info about the played games.
Same.Just uninstalled the Epic Games Store.
Not even the free games will make me install it again
Germany is a pretty PC-centric country, and hardcore too. Probably the most in EU too (I can see France writing similar articles too).Is there a reason why the "Non-english" publication see it far harder?
(German)Gamestar wrote a really good article.
(German) 4Players too.