Ubisoft faces fine of £79 million due to secret data harvesting. May scrap online connections for single player games.

DryvBy

DryvBy

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www.ibtimes.co.uk

Ubisoft Faces £79m Fine for Spying on Gamers in Assassin's Creed

Privacy experts slam Ubisoft for harvesting player data without consent in Assassin's Creed Shadows. A $104 million fine looms—will gamers finally get justice?
www.ibtimes.co.uk www.ibtimes.co.uk

Ubisoft may be forced to overhaul its data practices and scrap mandatory online connections for single-player titles.

The complaint centres on Ubisoft's single-player games, like Far Cry Primal and Assassin's Creed Shadows, which require an internet connection despite being offline experiences. Noyb alleges that Ubisoft uses this to siphon off players' gaming habits—think every rooftop leap or sword swing—without clear permission.

One user of Far Cry Primal noticed the game pinged external servers, including those of Amazon and Google, 150 times in just 10 minutes. Data protection expert Max Schrems likened it to 'the Monopoly Man sitting at your table, taking notes on your every move.'

Noyb, known for battling tech titans like Meta, argues this violates the EU's GDPR laws, which demand transparency and consent. The encrypted nature of Ubisoft's data transfers makes it impossible for players to know what's being shared, raising red flags about privacy in gaming.
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Is it even a secret? I have seen so many dumb data points trotted out by these companies on twitter. "Players have walked 30,000 steps in our game" etc.
 
I recently played FC Primal on Gamepass. The UBI app was required. The menu in game had a big page offering in game currency.

edit-it was New Dawn, not Primal.
 
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Noice Ok GIF by MOODMAN
 
BennyBlanco said:
Is it even a secret? I have seen so many dumb data points trotted out by these companies on twitter. "Players have walked 30,000 steps in our game" etc.
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The thing here is you are tethering this without player permission, or that permission is super hidden. GDPR says nope.
 
See that single player game with mandatory Internet requirement?
1. Don't buy it
2. Pirate that piece of shit if you want it so bad.
 
Ubisoft is the Arby's of the gaming industry. Almost nobody buys their games (I know Ass Creed: Shadows was #1 for the month, so bite me), but they never close.
 
Hopefully they get rid of online shit for all the later Heroes games (and M&M X), so I can finally complete the collection.
 
So they should drop online connection for single player games , all through 2022 they stopped their games working on win 7 using connect even though they were still selling them as working on older OS (although now we know why with the above data mining fine), they didn't refund anyone either, although they haven't actually done it yet i notice,

Until they reverse these anti consumer policies i won't buy Ubisoft's games and it's one of the main reason's they are in their present predicament.
 
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My tinfoil hat would have me theorize this is one giant racket and shakedown to stack everything against UbiSoft, so they would need to be bailed out by a certain monolith reclaiming their cloud infrastructure back that was done behind closed doors from a certain massive merger a couple of years ago.

All these corpos data harvest.
 
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Good. Requiring a server connection for anything other than online play is stupid. If people want to opt in to send player data then let them choose to do so. But don't force it on people who buy games.
 
BennyBlanco said:
Is it even a secret? I have seen so many dumb data points trotted out by these companies on twitter. "Players have walked 30,000 steps in our game" etc.
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That's not quite the same as, "One user of Far Cry Primal noticed the game pinged external servers, including those of Amazon and Google, 150 times in just 10 minutes."
 
"Ubisoft may be forced to overhaul its data practices and scrap mandatory online connections for single-player titles."

Hopefully this is the end of this absolute Bollocks

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May scrap online connections for single player games.

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Who thought it was good idea make fucking single player online only? Even game like Monster Hunter which very cooperative game still allows you play it completely offline.
 
Fine them a couple of more times and they will then cut online connection for single player games
 
Good, it's stupid fucking practice. They should also make their privacy notices shorter and more concise so I don't have to read through pages of shite to see what really matters. None of those companies have a clue what they're doing when it comes to data protection compliance.
 
DeepEnigma said:
My tinfoil hat would have me theorize this is one giant racket and shakedown to stack everything against UbiSoft, so they would need to be bailed out by a certain monolith reclaiming their cloud infrastructure back that was done behind closed doors from a certain massive merger a couple of years ago.

All these corpos data harvest.
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wasn't that whole ordeal to avoid strengthening MS's position as the defacto cloud monopoly? How something like you're suggesting could happen when they don't have "permission" from regulatory bodies? Well, unless 💵💶💵 is flowing their way to let it happen...
 
EN250 said:
wasn't that whole ordeal to avoid strengthening MS's position as the defacto cloud monopoly? How something like you're suggesting could happen when they don't have "permission" from regulatory bodies? Well, unless 💵💶💵 is flowing their way to let it happen...
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Yes. And MS conveniently chose the must unstable and weakest performing of the big third party publishers. One that had a history of attempted hostile takeovers and their stock has been on a steady decline for many years now.

That does not spell strength of holding the keys to your future vision. Sounds more strategic. "Our European cloud infrastructure that the regulators said was the future, needs rescuing or it would be a catastrophe."
 
DeepEnigma said:
Yes. And MS conveniently chose the must unstable and weakest performing of the big third party publishers. One that had a history of attempted hostile takeovers and their stock has been on a steady decline for many years now.

That does not spell strength of holding the keys to your future vision. Sounds more strategic. "Our European cloud infrastructure that the regulators said was the future, needs rescuing or it would be a catastrophe."
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They won't dare to buy Ubislop, right? Not now that Tencent got the best it can offer and whatever else left can burn while no one else would care a bit :messenger_grinning_squinting:
 
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Jig is up if EU starts poking its nose in data harvesting practices.
Those arguing "everyone" knew about it? Politicians have a laissez-faire attitude to businesses and want them to self-regulate for minimal friction, it's less work and good for business.
 
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