wow
Between the THQN debate and this, gaming sites are showing their true faces now more than ever.
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Developing: Epic Games Launcher appears to collect your steam friends & play history (Up2: Valve responds, See Threadmarks)
- Thread starter Madjoki
- Start date
Between the THQN debate and this, gaming sites are showing their true faces now more than ever.
Anyone who wants to see what copies of "encrypted" steam data is in the socialbackups folder can run the following in powershell:
This will create unencrpyted versions in the same folder as the BAK files:
C:\ProgramData\Epic\SocialBackup\
Nice to see Epic encrypting a copy of a file that includes DOB... without informing me
I'm already not planning on ever purchasing another thing from Epic because their account system security is a joke (account got hijacked even with 2-step authentication on, with seperate unique passwords for my Epic and Gmail account)
This might just push me to get rid of the Epic Launcher entirely from my computer; I only kept it because I pop on fornite co-op every few months to see of the changes...
Code:
Get-Item "C:\ProgramData\Epic\SocialBackup\*.bak" | % { ([system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8).GetString(($_ | Get-Content -Encoding Byte | % { [byte]($_ -bxor 0xff) })) | Set-Content ($_.FullName + ".txt") }This will create unencrpyted versions in the same folder as the BAK files:
C:\ProgramData\Epic\SocialBackup\
Nice to see Epic encrypting a copy of a file that includes DOB... without informing me
I'm already not planning on ever purchasing another thing from Epic because their account system security is a joke (account got hijacked even with 2-step authentication on, with seperate unique passwords for my Epic and Gmail account)
This might just push me to get rid of the Epic Launcher entirely from my computer; I only kept it because I pop on fornite co-op every few months to see of the changes...
Deleted the launchers from my PC yesterday and probably gonna get console versions of any exclusives I don't want to wait for just to not deal with Epic from now on.
ok.
I think since we have bad actors (Epic) in play, Steam should probably be sandboxing itself if at all possible. Not sure how inconvenient that will be, but that's clearly where software is going in general.
The inherent problem with sandboxes is that it then be ones a nightmare to interact with anything outside the box. Steam has some rather broad functionality and it needs to interact with a lot of things outside of its direct purview.
This is the most laughable comment I have seen by Tim Sweeney yet...
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b1fre2/comment/eimee9b
This is my first time seeing this comment so forgive me if I am late on this but my goodness me, what a complete lack of self-awareness (best case) or complete showing of pure arrogance (worst case)
Also, the bolded part made me legitimately laugh.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b1fre2/comment/eimee9b
This is my first time seeing this comment so forgive me if I am late on this but my goodness me, what a complete lack of self-awareness (best case) or complete showing of pure arrogance (worst case)
Also, the bolded part made me legitimately laugh.
He seems so far up his own ass that he can't tell up from down anymore.
Also he probably wanted to focus on one subject in that video, not a big network of them. He's fallen ill with asthma and bronchitis shortly after the video so if he's planning to cover Epic's bullshit that'll take a few days.
It's a weird answer. He's not completely wrong, but he does not really elobarate on the procompetitive part, he does not acknowledge the impact their decisions have for customers other then "I get that you don't like it" and he says that "Steam sells Valve games" which is a ridiculous agenda driven way of describing Steam.
This isn't a big deal to anyone other than vocal angry people on internet forums. EGS thankfully isn't going anywhere.
Please cite any sales data showing that games on EGS are selling well or even at all.
Epic isn't closing their store because of this "controversy"... That's like the height of bubblethink.
They didn't launch the store only to close it if things don't sell well in the first few months. That's not how businesses with all the money in the world think. So sales data is irrelevant. They're not closing LOL.
I don't think Epic or the EGS is going anywhere. I do think this is a medium deal with a potential to be a big deal. Frankly, I just don't get why Epic would go down this road just to get your friend list, considering I can't think of another program who would do something like that. Even Valve seem to find it a shady way to do that. If a program started going through my Facebook cookies to get legit info rather than use the API, I think it would raise some very understandable flags.
Right now I do give Epic the benefit of the doubt that they're not sending themselves the file, but I'm very wary of trusting big corporations with anything regarding data and privacy, especially since they have a very clear interest to collect this sort of data. Either way, I think they should, at the very least, ask me for permission and a way to opt-out before even attempting to access the file.
I don't like the Epic Store - I'm not crazy about exclusivity deals, but I'm more concerned about the idea of such a heavily closed-down store, to which only big and successful indies get an invite (I don't blame them, being a "successful indie" is not that luxurious and the market is not easy ATM - But I don't think making it harder for smaller guys to gain success is the way to solve these issues.) But even if I did like the EGS, I'd still be reasonably concerned over what seems to be happening here.
It's unlikely that Epic will close it's shop soon™.
Otherwise it's Epic we're talking about. The same company that already ragequitted the PC market 10 years ago and blamed the PC players for beeing not worthy.
Yep. Steam sandboxing itself would potentially protect you against Steam screwing something up. To prevent EGS from reading files, you need to sandbox EGS.
Why is EGS a good thing? Can you give me a list of reasons as to how it benefits the consumer in its current state? (Since you say that it's "thankfully" going nowhere)
Here are some reasons why it doesn't benefit the consumer...
1. Inability to purchase keys from third party sellers, therefore decreasing overall competition in the long run and removing choice from consumer purchases and allowing Epic to set the price (which has actually been increased in every case so far) and possibly even harming developers long run because of the push back from consumers.
2. As above, Epic forcing consumers to use their store for moneyhatted exclusives which has no benefit whatsoever to the end user and only benefits Epic.
3. A lack of features on their store (no user reviews) which has a direct negative impact on the end user experience when they are forced to use Epic store.
Like with Phoenix Point, where them moneyhatting has resulted in Linux users losing the ability to run the game for the first year despite it being promised to them before Epic threw wads of cash at the developer, should that make people thankful for having EGS?
4. Private Data storing without user permission also seems pretty anti-consumer to me.
Also, I want to add, Tim said that Steam also have the right to buy exclusives from developers, which is true but they never have, why is that? Is it because Valve believe in choice for the consumer? They have had plenty of opportunities to do what Epic are doing but have never resorted to it...
I will quote what someone said on reddit to Tim
"You are talking about things that are good for you and/or game developers.
And you are forgetting that we are neither.
We are the people who are supposed to be your customers and possibly benefit from all those great partnerships, but as customer we have no benefits, whatsoever, to using your store. Or your horrible "launcher". Or to have "exclusives".
But, indeed, market should in the end sort this all out. Good luck."
So yeah, I guess the market will tell us how big of a deal it is to people, I don't see how you can be thankful for having EGS though, unless of course you can give me some evidence based reasons as to why it benefits the PC market and more specifically, consumers?
I don't want them to close their store. I just want them to stop engaging in anti-consumer and anti-competitive business.
That's bullshit.
Data privacy is such a big deal to so many people that we even managed to get great laws like the GDPR passed which luckily protect hundreds of millions from arbitrary misuse of their personal data.
My thoughts as well. Pc gamers refusing to use their shop won't result in Epic closing it. But it will result in Epic being more pro-consumer, and that's exactly what we want.
You do realize that this kind of blatant violation of privacy can hit them in the behind if EU decides to make an example out of this? We are talking about up to 4% of global revenue in fines or 20 million euros whichever is BIGGER. That hurts any company a lot, regardless of how much money they have.
Security isn't Epic's strong suit. Their lack of security practices were critical to all of the Xbox One/PS4 leaks. Not sure what people are expecting out of them.Anyone who wants to see what copies of "encrypted" steam data is in the socialbackups folder can run the following in powershell:
Code:Get-Item "C:\ProgramData\Epic\SocialBackup\*.bak" | % { ([system.Text.Encoding]::UTF8).GetString(($_ | Get-Content -Encoding Byte | % { [byte]($_ -bxor 0xff) })) | Set-Content ($_.FullName + ".txt") }
This will create unencrpyted versions in the same folder as the BAK files:
C:\ProgramData\Epic\SocialBackup\
Nice to see Epic encrypting a copy of a file that includes DOB... without informing me
I'm already not planning on ever purchasing another thing from Epic because their account system security is a joke (account got hijacked even with 2-step authentication on, with seperate unique passwords for my Epic and Gmail account)
This might just push me to get rid of the Epic Launcher entirely from my computer; I only kept it because I pop on fornite co-op every few months to see of the changes...
They only look at security as a reactionary/incident response standpoint. When you don't bake in security, that practice makes it really difficult to develop a solid secure product.
My opinion is based on my work and my analysis of the industry. I work in security compliance and product security field, and I have reviewed Epic's job postings and company structure.
Uninstalled EGS last night, when I got home after being abroad. Was reading this thread for the last few days and sure, I'll miss my free copy of Subnautica but ...... who am I kidding, I can always buy Subnautica on Steam when I am ready again to play it.
Okay, I must've missed this news when it broke, but the SteamSpy guy was working for Epic the whole time? Damn that's shady.
Yeah. He's still getting quite a bit of patreon money for it (even though it's a lot more inaccurate now), working on the epic store (and defending weird decisions), and he's the one that got those weirdly specific stats about fortnite users' usage of steam.
Yes, and he is still running a Patreon for it. Literally to spy on his rival company.
It seems the majority of game journalists wants to see Steam burn. Gives them more stuff to write about I guess?
"Jimmy did it too!" What a kindergarten level argument. I'll have to see the segment myself, but I expected better of Jeff.
Yah, to be fair they don't have much context. Hopefully it's getting some discussion time on the podcast tomorrow.
Giant Bomb is not writing articles, they are generally good about discussing that stuff, but hearing this from Jeff was very disappointing.
i doubt that's jeff doing anything other than being his usual cynical self. it's not "everyone does it, it's fine" but rather "it's shit but everyone does it and you can't really do much about it".
Hope so and I hope they'll recognize some things that make this more that "people having it out for Epic".
a. this is happening in a post-GDPR internet and this is flying right in the face of current rules, b. people are generally more anxious now about data collection and manipulation, c. this is a company taking data from their direct competitor, d. they did so while circumventing the usual API that everyone uses for quite frankly unsatisfying reasons, and e. said data was collected without any disclosure or transparency as to what they collect, how they collect it, and what's being done with it -- whether the data got sent back is almost irrelevant. If it was just one or two of these factors, you might be able to brush it off, but altogether it paints such a skeezy picture.
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I've come to expect Era level hot takes from the games media. They don't seem to care about PC stuff. Normally, I wouldn't mind that, but they are quick to try and shame everyone who does.
I mean, the simple cynical answer is that Epic and others communicate directly with the media, while Valve basically never talk to the media directly and just announce things in public and answer emails.
None of the gaming media even tried to email Valve about this. Bleeping Computer sent them an email and got a quick response.
That + a general lack of care and awareness for PC gaming, and you'll see a lot of bizarre hot takes.
Giant Bomb was the same way about PS4 pre launch when all the Xbox One stuff was announced. And PS4 didnt even end up doing it.
They don't like Steams curation policy, that's the main reason they will do anything to make Epic a competitor, including ignoring blatant anti-consumer tactics.
It's confirmation bias on their part I think, the main argument is them saying "People just don't want change! It's the consumers fault, what Epic is doing is justified because we don't like Steam"
I am also not ruling out the possibility that Epic could also be throwing money their way because I wouldn't put it past Epic at this point but I think it's more likely that a lot of outlets just dislike Steam and want something "new" and them having a mediocre curation policy is just giving them ammunition.
What Epic are doing is far worse than anything about Steams curation policy though, in the long run, if Epic manage to succeed with this (which they won't) it will be them and them alone on a closed market anti-consumer platform which benefits nobody but themselves.
I think some of the reason some corners of the media don't like how Steam has changed is that it used to be easy to find the big indie games that they should cover by looking at which indie games were on Steam, whereas now if they want to be plugged into indie games, they have to do more work.
Edit: they were missing noteworthy indie games in the past (much like Steam was), but doing so didn't negatively impact them.
Edit: they were missing noteworthy indie games in the past (much like Steam was), but doing so didn't negatively impact them.
