Once Human is already a hit on Steambut there is no shortage of controversies, particularly the one related to to the spyware that it would be full of. Reading the terms of use, users have in fact discovered that the game accesses identity cards and other personal information. Since the development team is Chinese (it is part of Netease), the controversy immediately became political. In reality, there is nothing too different from what many other games do, even the most unsuspected ones.
Intermittent worries
But many are crying out against the invasion of their privacy, scam perpetrated to steal users’ identitiesas well as attempting to install spyware on their PCs. There are also those who believe that this is a way to mine cryptocurrencies.
The Once Human Terms of Service explain what personal information about users is collected during gameplay. The ones that are particularly causing discussion are:: “(instant messaging account), postal address, date of birth, age, gender, country/region, and government-issued identification, such as passport information, as required by law for age verification and correction of personal information.”
Now that It is reasonable that such terms of service may be disturbing. What is not is the fact that accusations are being made against a single game, just because it is from China, when so many other successful titles are now harvesting user data without anyone having anything to say against it. So, being vigilant is good, but being so selective is a bit suspicious.
For example, Bethesda’s game terms of service state an equally invasive collection of personal data: “social security number, driver’s license, geolocation, and personal information collected and analyzed related to the consumer’s health.” Blizzard is another example. When you install one of their games, be prepared to give them: “a government-issued ID or card to verify the user’s identity, location, and/or account ownership to comply with our legal obligations.”
In 2022 VPNOverview published an entire report to denounce how confusing some data collections arewhich do not make it clear to users what information they will be stealing. We are not talking about small companies, but Xbox, Nintendo, Disney, Spotify and Netflix among the worst offenders. There was no big scandal about it. This is not to say that you should not be careful. On the contrary, quite the opposite: we are saying that you should always be careful if you care about your privacy.
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