Red Shell Integration REMOVED in v1.1.3

[Daylight Studios]

Dear Spudlings

Thank for your feedback here! We have updated the game to remove Red Shell due to the complaints received from you.

We might integrate it more properly in the future with an 'opt-in' approach rather than opt-out so you don't have to go through the hassle of opting it out yourself.

However, please feel free to let us know of any other approaches you think are better.

While we have made the decision to remove it, for now, we will also like to clarify some of the notions about it:

- Red Shell does not have anything to do with showings ads inside the game. We don't show ads inside the game and we never will as it is a premium title.

- Red Shell only tracks if someone bought a game through a link we posted, say on Facebook or Youtube or somewhere. For players who already have the game, it does not affect them. The way it works, from our understanding, is as follows:

1. Someone clicks a link on Facebook that directs them to our Steam page. When they click the link a cookie is stored in your computer with a unique id which is a one-way hash of your IP which means there is no way to decrypt it.
2. The above person ends up buying the game and playing it. The first time the game starts, it generates the id again and compares it against the cookie saved in the browser.
3. If the ids match, it lets Red Shell know that someone bought the game through the link. It is just a number that gets added to the campaign data. There is NO personal information at all or anything regarding the behaviour of the player.

- Red Shell is an analytics tool like Google Analytics, which is very commonly used to understand the behavior of users on a website; for instance, what links they are clicking, whether they bought something, which countries are most users coming from etc. In fact, Red Shell does only a tiny bit of what Google Analytics does on websites.

- Analytics are used by almost every company to understand how people are using a game, a platform, a website etc. Steam itself uses analytics heavily to determine, for example, what games to show you. Without analytical data, it will be very hard to optimize any sort of software and result in poor user experience and wastage of resources.

- Red Shell solves a key problem that we have. With the increasing numbers of games that are being released on Steam, it is not easy for us to get visibility. The other way to get visibility is through marketing our game outside of Steam, like through social media, Facebook, Youtube, Google etc. If we market our game outside of Steam, we need to know if it works since we are spending time, money and resources to do it. Ultimately, what we need to know is if people are buying the game as a result of our marketing activity or ad campaign so we know our resources are utilized effectively. There no way to know that by default on Steam (unlike Apple App Store and Google Play which provide this feature). Red Shell solves this problem by letting us know if people bought the game through our social media post or an ad campaign. If, for example, we are not getting enough sales through an ad (determined through Red Shell) we will decide to try a different kind of ad instead.

Please understand that we are determined to always improve the experience of players in our games. But at the same time also need to get more players to check out our games. And there are not many ways to do it effectively without knowing if our strategies are working or not.

Thank you again for the feedback and if you have any questions, do ask here! We will also love to hear if you have any ideas on how we should approach integrating any such tools in the future in a way that's acceptable.

Best Regards
Daylight Studios Team

[Hassat Hunter]

Anything else in the patch?

[Daylight Studios]

Hey Hassat

Yes, there are a couple of changes. The game has been significantly optimized so the performance should be way better in terms of frame rates and loading times! But let us know if it actually improved on your end!

For new players, we have also improved the tutorial to be bigger since some players were having trouble reading it. Game is also saved during the tutorial.

The complete patch notes are here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/holy-potatoes-in-space/announcements/detail/1653265320419309114

Feel free to give us any suggestions or ideas for future updates. We are busy working on the next title but we still wish to update this one when we can!

[franben]

another data-grab? no thanks

[douglas]

While I'm not very happy that you are introducing RedShell, I'm glad you are at least open about it.

For everyone who wants to avoid being tracked, without sending an email to redshell (as their homepage suggests), just block their API hosts, e.g. by adding this to your hosts-file:

127.1.0.2 api.redshell.io application-api.redshell.io prod-lb.redshell.io

[Alexspeed]

Its spyware.

Bethesda tried to use the same ♥♥♥♥ in their game Elder Scrolls Online and had had to remove it. ( https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/8nugzo/news_zos_red_shell_reply/ ).

You think you can use it? fine, you wont see a dime from me any more.

[bitduck]

At least I now know what game not to buy, thanks devs.

[Madpinger]

I can't help but feel this is unnecessary and unwelcomed, I'll uninstall and remember this for later.

You even have to email them to opt out of the game based collection, such a hassle and unwelcomed indeed.

[HonoredShadow]

Yep. It's a game. Games are meant to be fun. Not us lot trying to figure out how to remove/deactivate stuff. We should not have to goto websites per game and opt out.

This is unacceptable. Remove it NOW please.

[[BHA] Parazac]

now removing the game from my pc, i did not buy spyware!

[thorm81]

It appears that to opt out I would have to agree to give them more info than I trust them with.

Shame, I liked this game.

[Xaintrix]

Uninstalling, will avoid future titles.

[schmusekater78]

Just my 2 cents. The company which produce a data collection plugin says in a blog that they are GDPR "compatible" ...

lets say nope

Just a logical question ... how should they offer a opt out function if they can't identify me ? ... They might not connect my name inside their database with their checksum or whatever they use to collect data about my behaivior ? Now -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation#Pseudonymisation


Also there is something much more clear stated inside the GDPR -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation#Data_protection_by_design_and_by_default


The last thing ... why do you need advertising in a fullprice title and the in your post mentioned measurement of " effectiveness of our marketing and social media activity"? Advertising might be common on other platform where you refinance part of the price throu advertising but is a no go in pc games.

[Prokaryot]

the next games name is "a spy story" and this happens? thats almost funny.

[Smeggit]

I wonder if Red Shell gives the devs info on how many times the game is uninstalled because of Red Shell. Surely this is important information too.

[Daylight Studios]

Originally posted by schmusekater78:

Just my 2 cents. The company which produce a data collection plugin says in a blog that they are GDPR "compatible" ...

lets say nope

Just a logical question ... how should they offer a opt out function if they can't identify me ? ... They might not connect my name inside their database with their checksum or whatever they use to collect data about my behaivior ? Now -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation#Pseudonymisation


Also there is something much more clear stated inside the GDPR -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation#Data_protection_by_design_and_by_default


The last thing ... why do you need advertising in a fullprice title and the in your post mentioned measurement of " effectiveness of our marketing and social media activity"? Advertising might be common on other platform where you refinance part of the price throu advertising but is a no go in pc games.

Thank you for your comments! Your question is a correct one and since we are not the developers of the plugin we don't know exactly how it will work with the 'opt-out'. We have now removed the plugin but we will check with Red Shell to find out how exactly the opt-out feature works. We do believe there are ways to do it without personal information but I can't be sure.

Also, I hope I am not misunderstanding you here but to be clear we are not adding any advertising inside the game. Red Shell was meant to track if an ad/post of our game online (such as on Facebook) is working or not. It has no link whatsoever with anything shown inside the game.

As mentioned in our updated post, to get more players to play the game it is important for us to market it outside of Steam which means spending considerable resources. We need to analyze if those resources yield any returns and that is why we integrated the plugin.

In any case, we have removed it for now. Do let us know if you have any suggestions or questions.