Spyware games?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Some recent games apparently thought it was a good idea to include adware/spyware with their games. Where can I find a list of which games have such stuff included with them, so that I can avoid buying them, and avoid installing demos of them?

[Tamur]

I don't know of any except for EA's Battlefield 2142. Personally I wouldn't trust anything that EA put their name on, but that's up to everyone individually.

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

I have no problems with 2142.....

[naut]

Personally I wouldn't trust anything that EA put their name on

Likewise.

[Kongamato]

A patch for SWAT 4 included ads placed in the MP game. It measures things like how long you viewed each ad texture. I believe there are ways of suppressing it.

[Xiahou]

A patch for SWAT 4 included ads placed in the MP game. It measures things like how long you viewed each ad texture. I believe there are ways of suppressing it.

Wow, that's evil of them. Is the patch required for MP?

[BigTex]

I know the Oblivion official mods contained some form of spyware. Can't completely remember what the purpose of it was.

[sapi]

Lots of games contain copy protection, and putting ads in mp is a good thing, as an extra source of income usually leads to better games (in EA's case, though.... ;P )

[Rodion Romanovich]

*removes BF2142, Swat 4, and Oblivion official mods from list of games to buy*

[sapi]

*Thinks Legio is a fool

[Rodion Romanovich]

Many people including myself actually use their computers for both work and games, and it's not tolerable in such a case to have spyware or worms slow down the computer, stealing important computation resources when the games have been turned off. It's not a boycott per se, but the effects for the game companies that include this spyware and worms are quite similar to boycott. Hopefully it'll teach them to remove such things. If people don't protest, we'll probably see every ******* game infested by virus, and then it'll be impossible to have the same computer for work and for games = $500 extra expenses.

[Geoffrey S]

I'd almost be able to understand forcing such advertising software on customers if there were advantages for the customer, such as price reductions or more consistent support for games. Haven't seen any yet.

People should decide for themselves if they want to buy games containing these kind of things; personally I'd think twice before buying, as has been said doubly so in the case of EA.

[Slyspy]

Quite so Geoffrey. There are no advantages for the customer - only extra profit for the publisher. In many respects the software industry is terribly unprofessional and can get away with much more than older, more regulated, industries.

[TB666]

*Thinks Legio is a fool

Well when it comes to BF I say he is extremely clever.

[Catiline]

Enough with the hystreia already.

Can't comment on the other games but on the BF front this isn't spyware. all that happens is your IP is checked, and the ingame bill boards change to something relevent for your GEO. Hardly a major threat to your processor cycles. i think they may also have the ability to check impression data, but it's not turned on and anyhow is hardly the end of the world. It's not running the rest of the time, it doesn't take resources when the games not running, it just feeds back an extra few bits of info to the server about your ingame experience.

[Rodion Romanovich]

That is great news Catiline, I was suspecting that that might have been the case, but there were many rumors circulating that also gave the impression that there were processes running even when you weren't playing.

[Stig]

Most stories of the spyware are blown out of proportion anyway, I'm on a computer with BF2142 and all plug-ins for Oblivion (Knights of the Nine on a disk, so that might be different) and if I run Ad-Aware or whatever I want (Spybot S&D, Hijack this, etc etc) I get nothing which is spyware, only some cookies.

[Xiahou]

I'd almost be able to understand forcing such advertising software on customers if there were advantages for the customer, such as price reductions or more consistent support for games. Haven't seen any yet.

That's the meat of the issue there. We're being asked to give up some of our privacy (however small an amount) as well as put up with the annoyance of in-game ads, for what in return? Nothing.

Most stories of the spyware are blown out of proportion anyway, I'm on a computer with BF2142 and all plug-ins for Oblivion (Knights of the Nine on a disk, so that might be different) and if I run Ad-Aware or whatever I want (Spybot S&D, Hijack this, etc etc) I get nothing which is spyware, only some cookies.

I wondered about the Knights of Nine add-on disk as well. Anyone know how it works? I have to admit that I'm not terribly familiar with what copy protection was implemented on the official Oblivion add-ons, but my guess would be that it's some phone home protocol that checks to see if you're actually licensed for the add-on before it loads.

If so, it's not really "spyware" as such, but it's still something I'm opposed to in general (see 'Steam'). I don't approve of having to ask permission from an outside server to be able to play a single-player game that I've already bought and paid for. What if my connection is down? What if their servers are down? What happens when they go out of business?

[Xiahou]

Morgan Webb on in-game advertising
I've gotta agree with her.

[TevashSzat]

If you install Wild Tangent, spyware removers treat it as spyware but people who have checked on what it really does basically agree that it only does what the EULA states