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Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 34.1 hrs on record (0.3 hrs at review time)
Posted: Aug 23, 2022 @ 12:54pm
Updated: Aug 30, 2022 @ 12:04pm

Description
Total War: Warhammer 3 is a fantasy strategic game from Creative Assembly. It comes along with many surprice mechanics and consumer unfriendly DRM

Ingame version: v2.0.0 Build 15717.2658933

What does this product do?
  1. Forcing consumers to use Epic Online Services/Datarouter Telemetry
  2. Denuvo Anti-Tamper (consumer unfriendly) DRM consults activation servers in regularly intervals
  3. Product Launcher is based on advertising and spyware (Launcher Analytics with fingerprints)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2853208072

Who is running the product?
Creative Assembly

Creative Assembly was acquired by Sega 2005

Where are the service providers located?
  1. Creative Assembly - Horsham, West Sussex, United Kingdom
  2. Irdeto Access B.V. - Hoofddorp, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands
  3. Amazon.com, Inc. - United States, Seattle, 410 Terry Ave N
  4. Epic Games, Inc - Cary, North Carolina, United States
  5. Imperva Incapsula - Redwood Shores, California, United States
  6. Sega Games Co., Ltd. - 1-2 Nishiigawa River, Shinagawa-ku, 1-1 Sumitomo Real Estate, Osaki Garden Tower Tokyo, 141-0033

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2853179870

What data is collected?
Epic Games, Inc.
Already published articles, data examples and screenshots about Epic mechanics can be found on my profile and with more details on my website.

EOS contains
  1. Achievements
  2. Leaderboards
  3. Lobbies
  4. Matchmaking
  5. PlayerDataStorage
  6. PlayerReports
  7. Sanctions
  8. Stats
  9. extensive Telemetry/Metrics (Datarouter)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2853181607

Launcher Analytics
IP, advertising, timestamp, unique fingerprintID, eventtelemetry (launcher has started), langauge, resolution, sessionGUID, timezone, UserID, AppID, BuildID, Systeminfo including OS/Architecture, processor used Ethernet, OwnershipID, monitoring your behaviour e.g. what you are doing in the launcher, appID and more.

Epic Datarouter v2
IP, Timestamp, Eventstream, Sessiontracking, Player monitoring, OS/Version, ProductID, Productname, Productversion, crawling Steam contacts, Focus and more, tied to regulary telemetry heartbeat with player progress. Heartbeat telemetry callbacks occur at an interval of 7 to 40 seconds

Datarouter comes along in several versions. Epic enhanced their telemetry services during the time from a standalone service into their API and we have now V2 with a dozend endpoints and more or less an unlimted IPv4 pool. Thanks to Amazon.

Blocking telemetry means, you block online functions at the same time. Result? The game (or others with implemented Epic services) won't run, run only half and/or you'll stuck in loading screen.

Denuvo Anti-Tamper
Usertoken and machine data. Partly encoded with base64, the rest remains for the specialists :]

How is data collected
  1. Trackingcookie's set by Incapsula
  2. Launcher comes along with own analytics
  3. Game comes along with mandatory Telemetry tied to online functions

Is the data confidential or personal?
Personal and accordingly uniquely attributable userdata which can be crossplatform monitoring users

User agreement and Opt-Out/In
Since the user agreement exists only in english language, this is only limited or not valid at all. Opt-Out/In is non existant.

Singleplayer
Nothing required, except Denuvo activation. Block the game in your firewall or use your hosts to silent this piece of software.

Multiplayer/Online "features"
Bad luck. Drop your pants for the companies and BigTech.

Related IPv4 and hostnames
IPv4 and ingame related hostnames are published on usual website which is linked via my profile or primary group.

Abuse of the Steam-Overlay
SEGA and Creative Assembly are one of those who permanently abuse the Steam Overlay for campaign and referral tracking.

Since the Steam-Overlay/Browser has absolutely no adblock users have no protection and they have implemented Stuff like Google TagManager/Analytics, Relic Solutions, Sizmek Analytics, Facebook tracking, Doubleclick, stuff from adsrv and many more in their landing pages. As example, click on Total War encyclopedia or other ingame links? You have lost.

Have described this behavior external with several data examples

May an double morality example how many consumers do not care about such stuff when it comes to gaming, but they use browsers with partly integrated adblock functions and they gladly use them.

Unfortunately, this is one of the big negative points that Steam brings since a long time. The manufacturer (in this case Valve) does not care.

Protection? Disable the Steam-Overlay.

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P.S.
Should be there a future censoring here... the {LINK REMOVED} will be Amazon's company name. Valve Softworks may not parse stuff correctly with their AI and patronizing behaviour on Steam. That behaviour is a reason why i don't post links directly
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