So I was looking through Slashdot today when I found a link to a study done on Tomb Raider Underworld. I was pretty shocked to learn that every time I play any modern Eidos game, they are logging information about how I play their game, even when I am not playing the game through an online match making service. The article says:
The gameplay data, namely game metrics, utilized in this
study were recorded using the EIDOS Metrics Suite software
embedded to the TRU game. The suite is an instrumentation
system which is designed to record game metrics from
EIDOS games in production and post-launch, transmitting
the logged data to an SQL-server via an ETL process.
I was completely amazed. Tomb Raider Underworld is played entirely offline. I would have never expected that they would have any reason to communicate back to their own server. There was no warning of this, no opt out option, or anything like that.
Most people probably would not care to have this information collected but I prefer that no one collects any information on me without at least giving me advanced warning. There is certainly nothing on my Xbox that I would want to hide but who is to say that there couldn’t be malicious use of such a reporting feature on a PC?
Maybe I’m just overreacting but I think uninformed logging is WRONG and if it’s not illegal, it should be. I know that in most US States its illegal for someone to record a telephone conversation without the informed consent of all participants. Why should computer software be any different? Computer software could potentially disclose information that is beyond the scope or anticipation of the end user and its even more imperative that software publishers are very judicial in their use of logging and reporting.
For those of you who wouldl ike to prevent Eidos from gathering such data, you just have to disconnect your Xbox/PS from the network while you play. On a desktop, they may keep a log of information indefinitely, waiting for you to connect up to a network again.
*Edit*
This guy Joey Hess alleges that Palm is going so far as to report GPS positioning as well as applications installed on peoples Palm Pre. If this is true, this is worse than anything Eidos or any other game company has done to my knowledge. If they have done this, and you own a Palm Pre, please do the world a favor and file suit in your local court!