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AshenOne

Member
Feb 21, 2018
6,104
Pakistan
From a User Review of the game on STEAM:

Beside of NO privacy policy, NO information or additional options for customers, there is a lot in Zombie Army 4: Dead War from Rebellion which should actually be passed on directly to competent data protection authorities.

Related forum discussion was anonymously removed without warning or hint

An external review without censorship and more details can be reached over my main group announcement in Steam. Thanks for understanding.

Here is an overview for what customers can expect with this product and and also a small overview in excerpts, where the product phones, or what data it sends

steamcommunity.com

Steam Community :: :: Zombie Army 4: Dead War Spyware from Rebellion Developments Ltd

Steam Community: Steam Artwork. Review related Sceenshot - Epic Games Telemetry tied to forced online mode, Affiliate, Scrollbar, Google Adsense, Doubleclick and Analytics, Eventtracking, Social Network Tracking/Cookies and Denuvo

Involved files - SHA1 hashes

- za4_dx12.exe - 21003a7cf7216cabcb923bc8998b61a1a2c89b3d

- za4_vulkan.exe - 271a834614848bc8811b4e2d2c4931b758b2ba1a

- za4.exe - b88ab89b955e0f49992b841208cb210b8e6cc81f

Launcher
Is completly unnecessary. It's just there for advertising and Affiliate and Scrollbartracking and users who click on social network icons will be delivered to Facebook Trackingpixel, twitter Ads, youtube Stats, Google Analytics and Doubleclick and much more.

Google Analytics from Launcher

Rebellion Forums


Rebellion Forums


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de UTF-8
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gjid 1074610571
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Launcher Hostnames
Remote Address launcher-content.rebellion.co.uk/138.68.117.110:443
content2.webdev.rebellion.co.uk

Epic Games Spyware
And my favourite, Epic Games Spyware, Datarouter Telemetry, Websocket Traffic/Heartbeat phoning home every 30 seconds and forced Onlinemode tied to telemetry and Analytics. Same counts for as example for Satisfactory from another company.

Which is also nice to see, is the correlation ID

It's an worldwide unique tracking identifier

api.epicgames.dev



HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2021 19:11:07 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: keep-alive
access-control-allow-origin: *
x-epic-correlation-id: 9f621581-e589-48c3-b2e7-de28d1702459
server: eos-gateway
Content-Length: 2

{}


{
"Events" : [
{
"ApiName" : "EOS_P2P_ReceivePacket",
"ComponentName" : "P2PClient",
"DateOffset" : "+00:00:56.953",
"DeploymentId" : "68d2628827de4ad597c9a15c3a06ae29",
"DurationSeconds" : 60,00000000000000,
"EventName" : "UsageMetric",
"FailureCount" : 0,
"InvalidUsageCount" : 0,
"ProductId" : "949e8d3f1abe4e358fd608eb99d2abb9",
"ProductName" : "ZA4",
"ProductVersion" : "2021.02.15.1005644",
"SandboxId" : "dfd2530e80e4425d801913b0879be444",
"SuccessCount" : 7198,
"ThrottledCount" : 0,
"UserAgent" : "EOS-SDK/1.8.0-14316386 (Windows/6.2.9200.1.256.64bit) ZA4/2021.02.15.1005644"
}
]
}

wss:/api.epicgames.dev/notifications/v1/68d2628827de4ad597c9a15c3a06ae29/connect

Text Thu Feb 18 20:07:09 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:07:09 CET 2021 CONNECTED
version:1.2-Epic
heart-beat:30000,30000
Text Thu Feb 18 20:07:10 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:07:10 CET 2021 RECEIPT
receipt-id:sub-1
Text Thu Feb 18 20:07:39 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:07:39 CET 2021
Text Thu Feb 18 20:08:09 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:08:09 CET 2021
Text Thu Feb 18 20:08:39 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:08:39 CET 2021
Text Thu Feb 18 20:09:10 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:09:10 CET 2021
Text Thu Feb 18 20:09:40 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:09:40 CET 2021
Text Thu Feb 18 20:10:40 CET 2021 Thu Feb 18 20:10:40 CET 2021

Denuvo Anti-Tamper
Denuvo which is mentioned on the Storepage when starting the game from Launcher:

54.72.220.34, 52.17.173.247, 52.208.190.137, 52.49.218.253 , 52.18.94.153, 54.194.195.183, 52.49.61.71
srv01.codefusion.technology
cf-revalidation-1750743123.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com
srv02.codefusion.technology
srv03.codefusion.technology
support.codefusion.technology

Rebellion encrypted stuff
Similar address is active in Strange Brigade from the same company

nephelus.rebellion.net
nephelus.do.rebellion.net - 139.59.199.85
athena.rebellion.net/api - 46.101.64.59

Conclusion
Disable or Block? Congratulations. You have a worthless product. Even the single player campaign won't work.

Again, Developers and Publisher do not care about current laws, or even Customers. They honestly give a **** on them/us. They even have the nerve to steal data and simply take it. No Opt-In/No Opt-Out. No additional option.

We as customers therefore pay twice (as always?). Not to talk about the ridiculous DLC policy for this product.

Rebellion should improve in this regard as soon as possible or they should pay us for every kilobyte which is send.

And i bet there will be few mini patches without real content soon, to refresh Denuvo Anti-Tamper.

Related data (prepared for hosts security) is already published on https://gameindustry.eu/search/index.php?suchbegriff=Zombie+Army+4:+Dead+War&suche

and there will be an external review as well.

Source: Zombie Army 4 STEAM User Review

Not sure how to parse this info exactly but iam sure more informed people can take a better look at this. Just thought that this needed to be shed light upon.

Update: Apparently the game uses Epic Online Services for its multiplayer which is why its sending data to Epic Games. So probably false alarm.
 
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Ganado

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,176
I mean, it's probably because it uses Epic Online Services? It is free for a reason. Has anyone checked if Nioh 2 also does this?
 

Pixieking

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,956
So I guess this is Epic's real Steam Spy.

*cue CSI music*

More seriously, is this just the publisher uploading the whole Epic release because they couldn't be arsed?
 

sredgrin

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
12,276
Isn't the Epic Games thing ebcause the game uses Epic multiplayer API, like Satisfactory like they mentioned?
 

General_Frags

Banned
Jun 9, 2018
31
User Banned (Permanently): Sinophobia; Account in Junior Phase
Tencent (whom own part of Epic and a China based company) by Chinese law do have to spy on their own citizens - this is likely to be the case here and going to be in the future too.
 

FancyPants

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
707
This sounds a lot more ominous than it is. The game is online, of course the devs are going to track the usage. Of course the server provider is going to track shit. Google Analytics? Every single website and web app is using it, and tons of games too.

What's shitty is disabling the game if you block it, though.

This is like being angry because Cloudflare is tracking your IP when you connect to a website using Cloudflare. This isn't sending any sensitive data to them.
 
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elenarie

Game Developer
Verified
Jun 10, 2018
9,813
I can understand the developer and maybe Denuvo as bad as it is....but why Epic?
Could be using Epic's telemetry services? Most, if not all AAA devs have their own built-in telemetry services, but likely Epic may be offering that to third parties for now. Haven't looked into too many details around what their online services stack offers.

If it is this, this is pretty damn cool. Epic have been providing pretty awesome client-facing dev stack with Unreal and their recent acquisitions of Quixel. But have also been looking into expanding their backend offerings recently as well.
 

Dyle

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
29,938
This is like getting mad that a website that uses google adsense sends data to google
 

Vintage

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,294
Europe
Anonymous usage data is legal to collect and a lot of games do it. They probably forgot to remove Epic data collection when doing Steam release.
edit: as elenarie said, if the game is running on Unreal, that explains a lot.
 

BasilZero

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
36,343
Omni
Could be using Epic's telemetry services? Most, if not all AAA devs have their own built-in telemetry services, but likely Epic may be offering that to third parties for now. Haven't looked into too many details around what their online services stack offers.

If it is this, this is pretty damn cool. Epic have been providing pretty awesome client-facing dev stack with Unreal and their recent acquisitions of Quixel. But have also been looking into expanding their backend offerings recently as well.

Ahh, that would make sense.
 
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AshenOne

AshenOne

Member
Feb 21, 2018
6,104
Pakistan
This sounds a lot more omnious than it is. The game is online, of course the devs are going to track the usage. Of course the server provider is going to track shit. Google Analytics? Every single website and web app is using it, and tons of games too.

What's shitty is disabling the game if you block it, though.

This is like being angry because Cloudflare is tracking your IP when you connect to a website using Cloudflare. This isn't sending any sensitive data to them.
I get what your're saying but personally i wasn't aware that it was using EOS and tbh Epic has crawlers feeding epic information about steam users without using steam's own official API for it if you install EGS which is part of the reason why i posted this. Personally i can't be sure if Epic aren't collecting info of steam users under the smoke screen of EOS.
 

AndyMc1888

Member
Jul 16, 2019
1,020
People will be real surprised in what console games track from there users , it's telemetry for deep analysis in how the game is played , most games use this.
 

FancyPants

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
707
I get what your're saying but personally i wasn't aware that it was using EOS and tbh Epic has crawlers feeding epic information about steam users without using steam's own official API for it if you install EGS which is part of the reason why i posted this. Personally i can't be sure if Epic aren't collecting info of steam users under the smoke screen of EOS.

While I agree game devs and publishers should be more up front with how data is collected and what online services are used, this is hardly relevatory. And if the game is on Steam, they have complete access to the Steam API from the get-go and they can get all Steam info on all that has bought the game there. Hell, most of the API is open already.
 
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AshenOne

AshenOne

Member
Feb 21, 2018
6,104
Pakistan
While I agree game devs and publishers should be more up front with how data is collected and what online services are used, this is hardly relevatory. And if the game is on Steam, they have complete access to the Steam API from the get-go and they can get all Steam info on all that has bought the game there. Hell, most of the API is open already.
Yeah but the thing is..it was kind of unknown to customers that user data for STEAM releases gets sent to epic games also.. and considering how unorthodox Epic Games's methods are when collecting user info.. its not hard to suspect them which is why i posted this thread since i was unaware that this game was even using EOS and sending user data to Epic outside of the usual(sending data back to the developer or denuvo).
 

TSM

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,823
People will be real surprised in what console games track from there users , it's telemetry for deep analysis in how the game is played , most games use this.

Pretty much. People that somehow expect to have zero digital footprint should probably just quit gaming at this point. Just assume every single piece of software and hardware you use online is funneling your data somewhere.
 

Tbm24

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
16,329
The game uses Epic Online Services for its multiplayer. So it's using its API hooks for authentication from what I'm seeing here. What's the problem?
 

dragonbane

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,585
Germany
Almost every game nowadays uses Telemetry. It's probably invaluable data and even better than focus groups.

For example studying the Detroit code I noticed it doesn't just track all your story choices tied to your user id, but also how many times you press which button, review your objectives, how long you spend on the pause screen, booted the game in total, time spend on each chapter and all that.
 

FancyPants

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
707
Yeah but the thing is..it was kind of unknown to customers that user data for STEAM releases gets sent to epic games also.. and considering how unorthodox Epic Games's methods are when collecting user info.. its not hard to suspect them which is why i posted this thread since i was unaware that this game was even using EOS and sending user data to Epic outside of the usual(sending data back to the developer or denuvo).

At this point online users should just assume all information about everything they do on electronic devices is being tracked. Everything you do on consoles is tracked and sent back to Sony/MS/Nintendo already, everything done in an online game is stored, everything you do on storefronts and websites is tracked 100%, every third party software/plugin or engine used in the game is tracked by the developer of that third party software to see how it's used.

The information is pretty much always completely anonymized though. I've only really heard about positional tracking from phones being used to identify actual human beings. Nothing in the first post here is really controversial at all. Pointing out that things are "encrypted stuff" makes it seem shady, but it's actually a safety measurement.
 

elenarie

Game Developer
Verified
Jun 10, 2018
9,813
People will be real surprised in what console games track from there users , it's telemetry for deep analysis in how the game is played , most games use this.

Telemetry visualisation is always fun.

BFVCA_Airborne_PlayerLocations_WEB.jpg.adapt.crop16x9.1455w.jpg


BFVCA_PlayerPositions_WEB.jpg.adapt.crop16x9.1455w.jpg
 

bushmonkey

Member
Oct 29, 2017
5,604
This is a whole lot of nothing. It's using 3rd party APIs and sends non-sensitive data to them for them to function. The end.
 

spam musubi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,380
Not having a proper privacy policy could get them in a lot of legal trouble, especially since they're in the UK.
 

Adder7806

Member
Dec 16, 2018
4,125
No comment on the tracking stuff. Zombie Army 4 is a really fun game. Played through it on PS4 with my wife. Enjoyed every minute.
 
Jun 17, 2018
3,244
Anonymous usage data is legal to collect and a lot of games do it. They probably forgot to remove Epic data collection when doing Steam release.
edit: as elenarie said, if the game is running on Unreal, that explains a lot.

Yes it is, but if data is sent by installing tracking technology on the users device then it's subject to PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulation) if targeting users in the EU. This also means they would need consent as those trackers wouldn't be deemed essential (only security or functionality cookies/trackers are essential).

I'm sure Rebellion thought the risk was relatively low and carried on regardless. Some EU countries take this quite seriously though and regulators could potentially take action.

Note - this is a real quick analysis based on the information in the OP. I'd love to have a better look into how this works practically.
 
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AshenOne

AshenOne

Member
Feb 21, 2018
6,104
Pakistan

Gentlemen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,527
Iam sure a lot us were unaware of the game using EOS plus epic's history of collecting user data through unorthodox means using crawlers draws deserved suspicion when people are unaware of this sort of integration in the game.

no

Tencent (whom own part of Epic and a China based company) by Chinese law do have to spy on their own citizens - this is likely to be the case here and going to be in the future too.

this is straight up sinophobia

and posting an OP full of poorly described details without actually understanding what is going on sourced by someone who flat out lies and says it's spyware is on you
 

snapcracken

Member
Oct 25, 2017
619
Real talk all of this just comes across as

007.gif


to me. 9/10 when some random user on Reddit/Steam/etc. tries to peer through code or network traffic to prove a preconceived bias they misread things entirely and go viral off of just looking like they know what they're talking about when they have zero idea at all.

Remember when some redditor claimed HZD was a debug build because he found a random debug message string? Or going back further, when some dude blocked network traffic on Win10 and then pointed to it desperately trying to reach a MS server it could tell was online but wouldn't respond because of the network block as "proof" MS was spying on him? Tossing this out there as "I'm not sure what this is but someone more informed than I might be able to tell" is just FUD IMHO.
 
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AshenOne

AshenOne

Member
Feb 21, 2018
6,104
Pakistan
no

this is straight up sinophobia

and posting an OP full of poorly described details without actually understanding what is going on sourced by someone who flat out lies and says it's spyware is on you
I posted it as a rumor for a reason, which is not being able to validate its authenticity. Before talking about my poorly described details at least read the OP where i say that i don't understand this stuff from a technical standpoint.

Its not that i fully understand this information and parse it which is why i posted this so it can be shed light upon given Epic's history with gathering of user info of STEAM users through shady means and people who better know this sort of stuff, can parse it. I even linked the original post and the screenshot of the user checking the source of the data feed and so on.
 

snapcracken

Member
Oct 25, 2017
619
I posted it as a rumor for a reason. Its not that i fully understand this information and parse it which is why i posted this so it can be shed light upon given Epic's history with gathering of user info of STEAM users through shady means and people who better know this sort of stuff, can parse it. I even linked the original post and the screenshot of the user checking the source of the data feed and so on.

Oh. This explains everything.

There is a lot of different things I could say here but the least inflammatory one is probably please don't signal boost randos you don't fully understand? It's doubly worse when you try to play naive when you have a narrative you're trying to push, but this can cause actual damage. Now Rebellion probably is gonna get heat for just including analytics services that are SOP for PC games. All because they kept the EGS analytics in for both the Steam and EGS builds instead of running two builds for the tiny handful of people jumping at any shadow that has "Epic" in the name.
 

Patitoloco

Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,689
Iam sure a lot us were unaware of the game using EOS plus epic's history of collecting user data through unorthodox means using crawlers draws deserved suspicion when people are unaware of this sort of integration in the game.
This is like saying "wow no one told me my game info (lol) was going to be sent through Amazon servers! I didn't signed up for this!"
 

Gentlemen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,527
I posted it as a rumor for a reason, which is not being able to validate its authenticity. Before talking about my poorly described details at least read the OP where i say that i don't understand this stuff from a technical standpoint.

Its not that i fully understand this information and parse it which is why i posted this so it can be shed light upon given Epic's history with gathering of user info of STEAM users through shady means and people who better know this sort of stuff, can parse it. I even linked the original post and the screenshot of the user checking the source of the data feed and so on.
So in six months when you do this again are you going to still say you didn't know any better? And use this as an example of "Epic's shady history?"

You haven't even updated your OP with the slightest indication that maybe you got this wrong, and the developers in this thread trying to set the record straight aren't actually here explaining what this is.
 
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AshenOne

AshenOne

Member
Feb 21, 2018
6,104
Pakistan
This is like saying "wow no one told me my game info (lol) was going to be sent through Amazon servers! I didn't signed up for this!"
Iam sure a lot of us didn't know that it was using Epic's online Service for starters.. you make it sound like they announce what stuff they're gonna use and everyone knows about it clear as day lol. You do realize what Amazon has been in the distribution of content game for years now?
So in six months when you do this again are you going to still say you didn't know any better? And use this as an example of "Epic's shady history?"
There's no time period on such stuff. After this, people probably will recognize this being a thing at least on here and at the very least i won't post it but yeah if i see some other type stuff that seems 'shady'. Ofcourse, i will post about it. We are free to post about what he think is good enough to be posted unless you have any issue with that?

Oh. This explains everything.

There is a lot of different things I could say here but the least inflammatory one is probably please don't signal boost randos you don't fully understand? It's doubly worse when you try to play naive when you have a narrative you're trying to push, but this can cause actual damage. Now Rebellion probably is gonna get heat for just including analytics services that are SOP for PC games. All because they kept the EGS analytics in for both the Steam and EGS builds instead of running two builds for the tiny handful of people jumping at any shadow that has "Epic" in the name.
These 'randos' you talk about sometimes do have legitimate information regarding stuff that actually gets deleted by steam forum moderators or if there are some other issues with game that the publisher don't want its users to get informed about. Iam not playing 'naive', i posted this as a rumor to shed light upon it in the case there is legit stuff to be worried about, like i said due to epic's history of unorthodox user data collecting methods. There is a clear reason which i stated before when i post it and there are factual issues with how epic had collected data in the past. If you don't like these threads then don't post in those. Simple.
 
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MatrixMan.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,500
It's most likely for telemetry for analyzing in-game player behaviour. A godsend, because simply relying on qualitative feedback and UR when your game is played by millions is only useful up to a point. You know those infographics full of stats like "8 billion ogres have been killed by our players since launch"? They get those stats through telemetry. This feels like a non-story, honestly, as a lot of games and services take advantage of this now to better understand their audience.
 

Patitoloco

Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,689
Iam sure a lot of us didn't know that it was using Epic's online Service for starters.. you make it sound like they announce what stuff they're gonna use and everyone knows about it clear as day lol. You do realize what Amazon has been in the distribution of content game for years now?
That's my point. They don't have to announce anything, because this is nothing.

Same as half of every online game using AWS as their servers, or Azure. It's nothing, it's infrastructure.

You're the only one making a big deal of a game using *random service*, like it's not super common.
 
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AshenOne

AshenOne

Member
Feb 21, 2018
6,104
Pakistan
That's my point. They don't have to announce anything, because this is nothing.

Same as half of every online game using AWS as their servers, or Azure. It's nothing, it's infrastructure.

You're the only one making a big deal of a game using *random service*, like it's not super common.
You do realize why iam singling out epic with respect to data collection no? It may not be a big deal with other companies but with epic's shady way of data collection and again, why are you assuming that i and quite a few others in this very thread knew that EOS was being used prior to me posting about it?