Assassin's Creed Shadows
- Thread starter sukik
- Start date
IMO Grummz is a trash source who regularly exaggerates and lies for views.
There was no fine. There wasn't even any government response.
A privacy firm filed a complaint based on a customer pissed about always-on connectivity. Ubisoft was collecting the same always-on crap for SP games (time played, etc.) that every other company does, and this firm decided to challenge that under Europe's GDPR, making the argument that Ubisoft didn't have a valid reason for data collection because the game in question (Far Cry: Primal) was single player only.
At it's core, the complaint is challenging just the basic EULA for the game, trying to argue that even though a user agrees to the data collection outlined in the EULA implicitly by using the product:
1. The data collected should count as personal data under the law and therefore needs to have an opt-out.
2. Ubisoft doesn't have an operational/security purpose for the collected data (part of the EULA statement).
It's a practice we all hate, but there isn't some extra layer of secret 'spying' that Ubisoft specifically is performing on top and was caught doing. The question to the EU is whether always-online and the data collection part of the EULA for single player games with no opt-out breaks the GDPR.
I certainly wouldn't mind if Ubisoft got fined and everyone had to let SP players opt out of connectivity, but a firm filing a complaint is a few steps away from a legal ruling.
There was no fine. There wasn't even any government response.
A privacy firm filed a complaint based on a customer pissed about always-on connectivity. Ubisoft was collecting the same always-on crap for SP games (time played, etc.) that every other company does, and this firm decided to challenge that under Europe's GDPR, making the argument that Ubisoft didn't have a valid reason for data collection because the game in question (Far Cry: Primal) was single player only.
At it's core, the complaint is challenging just the basic EULA for the game, trying to argue that even though a user agrees to the data collection outlined in the EULA implicitly by using the product:
1. The data collected should count as personal data under the law and therefore needs to have an opt-out.
2. Ubisoft doesn't have an operational/security purpose for the collected data (part of the EULA statement).
It's a practice we all hate, but there isn't some extra layer of secret 'spying' that Ubisoft specifically is performing on top and was caught doing. The question to the EU is whether always-online and the data collection part of the EULA for single player games with no opt-out breaks the GDPR.
I certainly wouldn't mind if Ubisoft got fined and everyone had to let SP players opt out of connectivity, but a firm filing a complaint is a few steps away from a legal ruling.
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