Limit data collection for profit on games/ban EULA changes after end of life
Borderlands/Take2 controvery is going to be a big problem in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKMhqKzHxs

It is one thing to monitor metrics for the purpose of game improvement.
However this move where some new company purchases a 10+ year old game then forces a EULA you never would have agreed to to or foreseen happening to even play offline single player.

This is opening a very big problem for steam in the future.
Why?

You will see a surge of private equity firms buying up companies, forcing updated EULAs on 10+year old games that are generally accepted as being at end of life and recieving no support or updates.

Suddenly every game in your back catalog is now unplayable unless you agree to a different companies EULA that only exists to sell your data and exploit you and refusing to agree to becoming surveillance for profit dataset.

How is this Steam's problem? Well it's Two Fold.
-You will see an increase in piracy because why bother doing the legal thing if at any moment no matter what you are promised at the time some 3rd party private equity slush fund can decide to but the company and change the EULA to restrict access of all legally purchased copies.
-Videogame purchases are happening currently regardless of if the game will be played or not, people will be more aware they need to play and beat what they purchase digitally in fear of their EULA being changed if they don't beat it fast enough. Steam benefits from people purchasing large backlogs they get around to eventually. If EULAs can be arbitrarily changed on entire backlogs over surveilence data points even for offline gameplay, why would I purchase anything I do not plan on playing and beating within a few months? Where as sales benefit from hoarding a digital library, suddenly that digital library backlog can be a liability and overall sales take a hit.

There is no benefit to steam allowing games that get bought by a 3rd party company to data mine or restrict access to their customers in an offline mode.
Offline singleplayer/couch co op has no reason to collect marketing data as a TOS, even less when the game has reached end of life and only gets this EULA update because a new company purchased the developer/publisher.

I look forward to catching a ban now from raging contrarians that love spamming report to feel powerful for taken advantage of Steams broken community features to silence anyone who disagrees with them and being told in the comments how actually mass data collection for offline single player especially of 10+ year old games is super cool and consumer friendly and how if you disagree you don't know what you are talking about.

Future is looking bleak. :Quiet:
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Showing 1-15 of 67 comments
Valve doesn't control other people's products. if you feel a product is violating the policies laid out for https://partner.steamgames.com/steamdirect/ then report the game.

Valve will investigate and act as it needs to. Although that may mean things not aligning with your opinions is something you'll need to accept.

Keep in mind, you may own a license to a product, but the product owner actually owns the product and they can do whatever they like with it. And sometimes your choice, if decisions are onerous enough, is to cease using a product that doesn't align with your values. You're probably not going to have much luck forcing product owners to serve your requirements. Steam doesn't exist to project your values on product owners.

Originally posted by HulaGirl86:

I look forward to catching a ban now from raging contrarians that love spamming report to feel powerful for taken advantage of Steams broken community features to silence anyone who disagrees with them and being told in the comments how actually mass data collection for offline single player especially of 10+ year old games is super cool and consumer friendly and how if you disagree you don't know what you are talking about.

Future is looking bleak. :Quiet:

Well you're telling yourself a story there. Lots of bogus reports don't do anything, so don't break the rules you'll be fine.

Also you should note there is a distinction between supporting something and understanding Valve is not gaming's Mom and doesn't really have the power to control things the way you would like to see them.

Of course no one wants major changes to EULAs or data collection or any number of things. But ignoring that the product owner has the right to manage their product without your approval doesn't strengthen your arguments. And hoping someone will swoop in to squelch the rights of product owners has a lot of problems too. More than you care to admit.

And choosing not to play games that have been ruined through EULA updates is the lesser evil than some kind of Steam sponsored gaming fascism.
Last edited by nullable; 7 May @ 8:59am
eram 7 May @ 8:58am 
Uploading metrics isn't new and you've agreed to it like 10 times already.
blunus 7 May @ 9:03am 
Originally posted by HulaGirl86:
Future is looking bleak. :Quiet:
The future remain unchanged even after Pong "steals" audience data and its developers get very happy that the gaming industry grow well.

Like the guy said above, that change is nothing new and TakeTwo is not limited to.
Last edited by blunus; 7 May @ 9:06am
EULA updates can happen at any time. They can happen without there being a change of ownership. Steam's SSA has changed multiple times since I've been a member this past 20+ years. And when there is a change of ownership, it's a reasonable expectation that the new owners will want users to be aware of their own EULA and acceptance of it.

You as a consumer need to be the deciding voice whether or not those changes are agreeable, not Steam/Valve. Unfortunately, deciding not to agree to the new terms could potentially result in losing access to the game. But that, too, is a reasonable expectation between users and the service. Again, not something that Steam/Valve can intervene.
Last edited by rawWwRrr; 7 May @ 9:05am
nice
Originally posted by eram:
Uploading metrics isn't new and you've agreed to it like 10 times already.
Metrics isn't what I am refering to as it has a function in game.
I am refering specifically to data being collected to be sold for profit or surveilence such as the specific ones listed in Take 2's updated EULA.

Doing this for offline play is also a point of contention. At that point, why not pirate?


Originally posted by nullable:
Valve doesn't control other people's products. if you feel a product is violating the policies laid out for https://partner.steamgames.com/steamdirect/ then report the game.
They can remove any dev/publisher from being allowed on their storefront in the future disincentivizing this problem as well as allowing users to run rollback versions of the game their original EULA applied to.

Originally posted by nullable:
Well you're telling yourself a story there. Lots of bogus reports don't do anything, so don't break the rules you'll be fine.
1. Moderation is outsourced and rules are not applied evenly or in a way that makes sense
2. Updated policies can change something that was acceptable at one time and long forgoten about to be a massive bannable offense.

but this is off topic of the main discussion and not worth engaging further.

Originally posted by nullable:
Also you should note there is a distinction between supporting something and understanding Valve is not gaming's Mom and doesn't really have the power to control things the way you would like to see them.
If that were the case they could allow people who publish games with rootkits on the platform, yet they will permaban devs caught doing that.
Adding a EULA that then says an indie dev can do this won't make Steam reverse that policy.

You could say Steam is also not gamings mom and dad when it comes to anticheat, community forum content, or if the software you download is even safe to download.
Yet they impliment VAC, community bans, and ban devs who are caught putting malware in their games.

Originally posted by nullable:
Of course no one wants major changes to EULAs or data collection or any number of things. But ignoring that the product owner has the right to manage their product without your approval doesn't strengthen your arguments. And hoping someone will swoop in to squelch the rights of product owners has a lot of problems too. More than you care to admit.

And choosing not to play games that have been ruined through EULA updates is the lesser evil than some kind of Steam sponsored gaming fascism.
A 3rd party company 10 years after the fact suddenly changing the EULA is not the original contract, especially when they are not maintaining anything on their end such as a server.
If this were the case they they could legally force you to send back your physical discs because the EULA you agreed to hasn't been agreed to


Well, as expected... replies are " totally real" consumers actively pushing for contrarian anti consumer practices (and ad hominem attacks) by companies that are not the developer long past the original terms of purchase with 0 oversigtht or restraint into what the company can do and 0 rights for what the customer can expect in return spewing terms like "fascism" for suggesting that Steam take pro consumer.

What happens if EULAs get updated to determine to have access to the license you agreed to a decade ago determines you have to pay full retail price a second time to cover (insert made up fee)?

Rest of you aren't worth addressing since it's disingenuous arguments trying to re-frame it as being against any data collection at all or a variation of "who cares bro, just let companies do what ever they want. They have the right to do anything they want however long after the agreement bro" and completely ignored that I was talking about changes made long after support for the game has ended or made by a private equity firm who purchased rights long after the fact just to data mine, or for the purposes of collecting data for advertising (which I feel falls in line with the spirit of the anti advertising in games policy that steam has added)

Guess government regulation is the only solution.
Pretty sad I was proven 100% right that contrarians would argue against Unreasonable Contract Terms (especially with an entity they never entity that was never part of the contract) being used against them.

If this is the future, the future is bleak and piracy will most likely be the future. :Quiet:
Last edited by HulaGirl86; 7 May @ 10:18am
Ettanin 7 May @ 10:23am 
Originally posted by HulaGirl86:
They can remove any dev/publisher from being allowed on their storefront in the future disincentivizing this problem as well as allowing users to run rollback versions of the game their original EULA applied to.
Valve is effectively a monopoly on the PC game store market considering concurrent and monthly active users. As such, they are, due to laws banning anti-competition practices, restricted in who they can deny to such audience.

If Valve starts banning publishers for practices that would still be legal in most jurisdictions, they would be prone to an antitrust lawsuit.

Therefore, you are barking up the wrong tree. Ask your legislators, not Valve.
Last edited by Ettanin; 7 May @ 10:23am
I mean if you are worried about the data a video game has on you then you don't want to know what your browser tracks, your ISP tracks, your phone tracks, your government tracks, etc.
Originally posted by Ettanin:
Originally posted by HulaGirl86:
They can remove any dev/publisher from being allowed on their storefront in the future disincentivizing this problem as well as allowing users to run rollback versions of the game their original EULA applied to.
Valve is effectively a monopoly on the PC game store market considering concurrent and monthly active users. As such, they are, due to laws banning anti-competition practices, restricted in who they can deny to such audience.

If Valve starts banning publishers for practices that would still be legal in most jurisdictions, they would be prone to an antitrust lawsuit.

Therefore, you are barking up the wrong tree. Ask your legislators, not Valve.
They already ban indie devs caught bundling crypto miners and malware and in the anti advertising policy will ban any dev/publisher who breaks them.
Valve has competition (GOG and Epic come to mind) but are in a weird place where they are and aren't a monopoly due to popularity.

Unsure why you are arguing so hard for the rights of private equity purchasing rights to games whose original EULA they had no part in being allowed to do this, but Steam implimenting rules that benefit consumers is a bad thing.

Either way, seems like government needs to be lobbied to stop this. And even 70 year old senators are starting to see this EULA/anti-right to repair culture is having negative effects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HafelMKC9RI
Originally posted by Brian9824:
I mean if you are worried about the data a video game has on you then you don't want to know what your browser tracks, your ISP tracks, your phone tracks, your government tracks, etc.
Then they don't need my EULA consent of need to deny me access to offline single player to do it... Correct?
Unless there is a very specific legal issue they need my consent to.
Then your argument is just anti consumer pro surveilence talking points

Also just because "all the cool kids are doing it" does not justify as an excuse to do it.
Didn't work for the soldiers at Nuremberg.
blunus 7 May @ 10:36am 
Harmful computer software has nothing to do with EULAs.

I don't even know you switch to that unrelated situation so swiftly.
this fight was lost decades ago when data collection started

had people been this outraged at the beginning

we may have been able to put a stop to it

there is no way you are going to stop this billion dollar business now, though

it may evolve and we may get some concessions

but it is not going anywhere
Originally posted by blunus:
Harmful computer software has nothing to do with EULAs.

I don't even know you switch to that unrelated situation so swiftly.
Your original post had nothing to do with my topic.
Your second post is attempts to claim I am bringing up unrelated topics without any context or reading what I wrote.

My only point in replying to this is to give an example of someone being disingenuous or refusing to address my point, and show who is not worth responding to in the thread.
blunus 7 May @ 10:42am 
Originally posted by HulaGirl86:
Originally posted by blunus:
Harmful computer software has nothing to do with EULAs.

I don't even know you switch to that unrelated situation so swiftly.
Your original post had nothing to do with my topic.
Your second post is attempts to claim I am bringing up unrelated topics without any context or reading what I wrote.

My only point in replying to this is to give an example of someone being disingenuous or refusing to address my point, and show who is not worth responding to in the thread.
Sorry but my posts still stand about EULAs that your thread stated. I thought you would ignored me so thank you for that.
Last edited by blunus; 7 May @ 10:44am
Crashed 7 May @ 10:45am 
YouTube influencers are not a reliable source of news.
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