Valve and Steam

[Mikhail Reign]

Yeah I can tell ya 100% that if they could 'monitor ya memory' like you claim, SWIM would be having a few unpleasant discussions with Valve.

Also in most cases with most games that do this, the original host (Ludeon) would continue to host the files on their end as well, so those who don't want to use steam can still download the game via the email link - those who don't need tinfoil hats and that want to use steam, can use steam.

The opposition to this is quiet frankly, perplexing to say the least.

[lusername]

Where did you get the idea that there's spyware from? There's VAC but that only checks you haven't modified certain game files for certain games.  They aren't going to away your stuff without a reason, either.

From what I hear, "Being German" is one of their reasons.

[tommytom]

That's Germany though. Violent games are not allowed to be published or possibly even played(?). Blood is removed or green. L4D2 had to have "figures of authority" removed as it "promoted violence against them" (no cops, firefighters, etc).

Anyways, that's just for BUYING games THROUGH STEAM. VAC (if the game even requires it, which this one won't) shouldn't be checking what country you are from or anything like that. Just making sure you haven't modded your game files to cheat or running processes that enabling cheating (like see if cheatengine is running or a debugger/trainer that can modify game memory while running).

Steam is just a unified game distribution system and store. Anything else is optional/extra or enforced by the developers (blame the developers).

[lusername]

Anyways, that's just for BUYING games THROUGH STEAM. VAC (if the game even requires it, which this one won't) shouldn't be checking what country you are from or anything like that. Just making sure you haven't modded your game files to cheat or running processes that enabling cheating (like see if cheatengine is running or a debugger/trainer that can modify game memory while running).

And at that point, you're snooping through the user's system memory and process table on an application that phones home. This is spyware. If you can see that, you can see everything else.

[tommytom]

Anyways, that's just for BUYING games THROUGH STEAM. VAC (if the game even requires it, which this one won't) shouldn't be checking what country you are from or anything like that. Just making sure you haven't modded your game files to cheat or running processes that enabling cheating (like see if cheatengine is running or a debugger/trainer that can modify game memory while running).

And at that point, you're snooping through the user's system memory and process table on an application that phones home. This is spyware. If you can see that, you can see everything else.

Actually, no. There is a Windows API for grabbing the process list. I could write a single line of code that the OS willingly spits out the process list. By your standards, taskmanager is spyware since it has access to processes and monitors network activity (just to make graphs).

That's besides the point anyways as that is only MP VAC-enabled games. RimWorld won't have that and I haven't even seen it in any games recently and I don't have it installed on my system but I own 100+ Steam games. Probably just Valve MP games like Counter-Strike.

[lusername]

Actually, no. There is a Windows API for grabbing the process list. I could write a single line of code that the OS willingly spits out the process list. By your standards, taskmanager is spyware since it has access to processes and monitors network activity (just to make graphs).

Just because it's a windows API doesn't mean that it can't be used to create spyware.

Task Manager isn't spyware because it doesn't combine that with phoning the results home. Digs through things that don't belong to it + phoning home = spyware.

[YamiKaitou]

Digs through things that don't belong to it + phoning home = spyware.

So by that definition, you claim that Windows is spyware as well. As is any other program that has the feature "send anonymous data back to help improve the product".

[warden]

Digs through things that don't belong to it + phoning home = spyware.

So by that definition, you claim that Windows is spyware as well. As is any other program that has the feature "send anonymous data back to help improve the product".

Personally i categorize Windows as spyware, so i don't use it. But if a software has an opt-in anonymous statistics feature, that wouldn't be spyware because it's disabled by default and it's up to you to allow it or not.

[tommytom]

People are weird.

"Phoning home" is such a stupid term.

90% or more of your apps connect to the Internet and the majority of them connect to the developers website ("HOME"), so that means 90% of apps are spyware?

Third time now. This still has nothing to do with Steam. That's VAC, which wouldn't be used.

Any app at any time cant spy on you. Closed source can have code in it doing just about anything. Just because you use this or that app for the last 100 years doesn't mean someone won't trojan it one day and do nasty stuff without giving you the slightest idea. So, in that regard, I honestly don't give a **** as I'm not compiling everything from source after reading every single line of code (yes, an OSS can be compiled with trojans or bad code not in the public code or simple have trojan code right in the public code but no one reads it).