Please allow Op-out of information collecting

[Lord Cameron]

Please don't require submitting a bunch of information like you guys did for AoWIII and also not have any opt-out on information collecting. It still saddens me slightly that I never played Planetfall because of it. I love your guy's games I'd love an excuse to play them.

Just a tiny update to AoW3 to remove the data collection and I'd flip my review around on that game and be first in line for this one.

[sikbok]

Hi Lord Cameron,


For AoW3 you only need an account - for which we request information from you - if you want to play multiplayer.

You can play single player without an account. And thus, without sharing your information with us.

[Lord Cameron]

So this:
"When playing our games or use our services we might collect some in-game data from you, like your account ID or game play/behavioural data. This data is anonymised upon collection."
Only applies online?

In that case my request stands to allow an op out feature for AoW3 and 4. Players should be able to have the full experience without being spied on/ registering an account. Especially for a game that was released on GOG.

[CrUsHeR]

Anonymous telemetrics about player behavior are completely normal these days.

They help developers to understand e.g. which features are not being used, or others being over/abused.

Forum feedback only goes so far, and often only represents the opinion of a vocal minority.

[Lord Cameron]

Data collection is incredibly useful. I'm often happy to help out. However, without the option to opt out, I also view it as an invasion of privacy. Doesn't matter if it is normalized or not.

Furthermore, once they implemented the requirement to send your location and age? among other things (to comply with EU regulations apparently, which no game has ever done that I've seen) my game started crashing and lagging. Never had problems before. These things aren't free, and 10, 50, 100 years from now when Paradox no longer exists, the program will still require you to register an account to utilize it, which may very well be impossible.

[zeshoot]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Anonymous telemetrics about player behavior are completely normal these days.

They help developers to understand e.g. which features are not being used, or others being over/abused.

Forum feedback only goes so far, and often only represents the opinion of a vocal minority.

It's 'completely normal' cuz we all allowed corporations and devs that copy from them to do that.
They've been doing it for years without asking and selling it to each other. GDPR changed a little but still - agree or don't get the product sukks.
Devs used to gain data with less invasive method which was simple forum feedbacks and pools. It was 100% related to game itself.
Now with autonomic data collection via game code from our PC, we simply cannot tell what is collected, if that's only game info or more. It's pretty much trusting developers that they don't have extra code lines that collects 'various' data when we play and using web browsers, do other background things atm (used to play AoW in window and having rest of screen with work stuff/web browser - 32").
I don't like sharing my data to play also.
Like up comment - very happy to help, share my thoughs but I love my privacy overall.

[Ayalin]

Originally posted by sikbok:

Hi Lord Cameron,


For AoW3 you only need an account - for which we request information from you - if you want to play multiplayer.

You can play single player without an account. And thus, without sharing your information with us.

Are you sure you don't have to also propose an opt-out option for multiplayer as well?

Regarding legal stuff related to GDPR I mean. While information you collect is (I hope) only about gameplay, I guess you do collect IP adress from each users in the process, and the IP adress is considered as a personal data collection from the GDPR rules. So therefore a lot of stuff applies to you guys (unless you do not collect IP adresses in the process).

You might want to double check this on your side, to be fair with you it seems that nobody cares that much about what video games studios are doing with their data as the war is raging on the social network front currently, but better safe than sorry you know.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by zeshoot:

It's 'completely normal' cuz we all allowed corporations and devs that copy from them to do that.
They've been doing it for years without asking and selling it to each other. GDPR changed a little but still - agree or don't get the product sukks.

You are confusing things here. Game companies have a product, they earn money with that. The statistics are anonymous and only related to ingame stuff.

They are not Google or Facebook who give everything "for free", where the users and their privacy are the actual product. And they are not EA where the Origin client is snooping around your hard drives for "contraband" software.



Gotta make a difference between justified privacy concerns, and weird tinfoil hat paranoia.

What kind of data could they sell about you?
Oh that guy likes mana potions and elven wizards?

Besides that, you can simply play with a Guest account.

[Central]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Oh that guy likes mana potions and elven wizards?

i love drinking "mana potions"

[TriumphJordi]

Originally posted by Lord Cameron:

So this:
"When playing our games or use our services we might collect some in-game data from you, like your account ID or game play/behavioural data. This data is anonymised upon collection."
Only applies online?

In that case my request stands to allow an op out feature for AoW3 and 4. Players should be able to have the full experience without being spied on/ registering an account. Especially for a game that was released on GOG.

For Age of Wonders 3 the account is only used by Online MP. That title precedes the Paradox EULA and has, to my knowledge, no data collection/telemetry implemented.

For Age of Wonders: Planetfall and Age of Wonders 4 you can opt out of personalised content in the Launcher. Data Collection in those titles is fully GDPR complaint but for question and concerns you can always open a ticket from the Paradox Support Page [support.paradoxplaza.com]. Here you can also request to see all of your collected data and request it to be removed.

[Jo]

I think you meant GDPR compliant

[Lord Cameron]

Originally posted by TriumphJordi:

Originally posted by Lord Cameron:

So this:
"When playing our games or use our services we might collect some in-game data from you, like your account ID or game play/behavioural data. This data is anonymised upon collection."
Only applies online?

In that case my request stands to allow an op out feature for AoW3 and 4. Players should be able to have the full experience without being spied on/ registering an account. Especially for a game that was released on GOG.

For Age of Wonders 3 the account is only used by Online MP. That title precedes the Paradox EULA and has, to my knowledge, no data collection/telemetry implemented.

For Age of Wonders: Planetfall and Age of Wonders 4 you can opt out of personalised content in the Launcher. Data Collection in those titles is fully GDPR complaint but for question and concerns you can always open a ticket from the Paradox Support Page [support.paradoxplaza.com]. Here you can also request to see all of your collected data and request it to be removed.

The change to AoW happened after the acquisition. And Paradox's website directly states it is collecting data. (But no longer storing it.) Unless Paradox just forced Triumph to state what they were already doing.
This is nice to hear, but doesn't solve the stability problems I mentioned it introduced. Which theoretically a tiny update could to reverse what they did.

What does "personalized content" mean? Anonymized information is still sent? Because it's opt out from all I'm asking for.

[Lord Cameron]

Perhaps I can rephrase this to appeal to your business sense.

I bought 3 copies of AoW3. 2 on Steam, 1 on GOG.
The GOG one required registration /after buying the game/ in order to use a significant amount of each features. This goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of what GOG stands for and I consider it a disgrace that the game was allowed to stay there.

The Steam versions did the same, but I didn't expect much of Steam, so I went about my happy way.
Until, years after my purchase, I suddenly was informed of a bunch of new data collection and was required to provide even more information to use the product I'd already paid for and created many popular mods for.

Without any act of good faith on your part, why should any customer trust your company not to pull the rug out from under them for a third or fourth time?

[Syrris]

"Personalized content" for a launcher generally means that the news feed/ads you see on it will consider what you already own on that account. (It won't keep announcing an expansion that you already have, for example.) If you've opted out then you'll get a generic set of things shown instead.

Depending on how it's done it may not even be sending info to a server anywhere, with the launcher just removing things from its standard rotation.

[TriumphJordi]

The Triumph account you were prompted to create exist to facilitate online multiplayer for GoG users, specifically to allow users to play with their friends on Steam. If you don't play online multiplayer you can play the game with needing to make an account.

Then AoW3 was a finished/completed product before the Paradox Acquisition took place. Afterwards, as all our titles became part of Paradox, their EULA applied to all of our Titles. As Sikbok indicated, in AoW 3 the only information shared with us is the information requested during Account Creation. Now if you have stability issues with the title I'd refer to the discussions of that game and not here.

Now as I indicated before, please contact Paradox Support through the link I shared if you have any questions regarding Data Collection and GDPR Compliance.

[Lord Cameron]

And prevents LAN.

You are telling me what I know, without addressing what I am saying.

Why not, "We will continue to take your data and have no plans to address that in future or add an opt out option."?