Sounds like most Linux users. jk Please don't hurt me.

Nice way to avoid answering. So there are so many devs not knowing they ship a game build including Unity Analytics that you can not even give the name of a single one?


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eric5h5 is right, network-dependent achievements are telemetry with a coat of paint to make it more easy to accept.

Sort of like how you completely ignored my question, huh. Heh. I could name a few but I'm not engaging in any effort for someone who's clearly acting in bad faith and lack of knowledge, nor would I subject anyone to harassment by said person. Go find out yourself if you actually care. Stop pretending that this is "widely known" among gamers, the vast majority of whom don't know or care what engine games use, nor do they care about DRM or telemetry, as proven by the dominance of Steam.

I will give you this link though, so you can address someone who's in a position of responsibility: https://unity.com/leadership/james-whitehurst Ask him to 1) Make telemetry opt-in by default, 2) Clearly document that this exists, 3) Stop forcing non-Pro users to have telemetry enabled. Thanks.

Make a list of unity titles to avoid, or just avoid all of them. Which the latter is a fine choice.

There was a GOG Mix, once upon a time, serving this purpose: 'Cloudy with a chance of telemetry' or some such.

I did not know that or think that was a thing. Achievements are such a low effect to make the game seem more valuable. imo

Ah, I knew there was a reason I disliked achievements. lol

Basically just kidding, as it is a personal choice. I don't like them, or more accurately, don't bother with them. I have over 3,500 hours of Fallout 4 verified in my profile (and at least many again as for several years I played F4 in offline mode as I noticed performance lags when online with F4 so I just completely went offline from about 2017 or 2018 until 2023.). And I can't count how many comments I've received asking how it's possible I "only" have about half the achievements. It's always the same answer. Because I didn't even know I had half, and I don't care AT ALL to "try" for achievements. BUT, there are gamers that DO like them very much. I respect that, and support them. Mods, achievements, playing with controller or mouse/keyboard, these are all choices that should be supported so every gamer can have the fun s/he most desires.

So, in that sense, I don't hold any possible "hypocrisy" against them if they like achievements but don't like telemetry in general. It's true in most things in life that there are exceptions to even our own rules.

Good, that’s what I wanted to know. Your pretence that developers are unknowingly shipping Unity tracking in their game builds is based on nothing, so I don’t need to take it seriously.

Whether or not the developers (and potentially publisher devs) intended to ship their games with Unity telemetry active is a moot point for me. They built (and sold) the game, so they're responsible for the state of said game.

This telemetry situation is not brand-new - there IS knowledge of it online, and it wouldn't take a massive amount of checking by devs when preliminarily testing their game to notice the game is dialling out. So the argument that "poor devs didn't know" doesn't hold much water to me.

The truth of the matter is the game devs either don't check and didn't know about it, or they knew about it and didn't give a f*ck. In the former they were negligent, the latter they were complicit. They are guilty of either one, and they are responsible for selling a product with telemetry either way. Ignorance is not a valid excuse, but it can be an explanation.

It is true that Unity coded the telemetry and probably didn't make it absolutely clear it existed. But that still doesn't fully absolve those who use the engine.

But that's not the popular opinion to have in this modern world of buck-passing. It's not "normal" any more to accept blame when things go wrong, to take it on the chin and move on with a promise to do better. It's more likely the finger is pointed to "the next guy" in order to escape any blame for something that's equally their fault.

FTFY

I'm not certain how that fixes anything I said to be honest. The fact that some variants of Unity have baked-in telemetry still does not absolve those who chose to utilise the engine to build their game.

That some versions of Unity do not provide an option to disable user tracking still leads to a choice by the game devs. They have been given two options to pay for the use of this engine:
- with money
- with their customers personal data

That the game developers decided to make us pay in their stead is not something that can be easily dismissed.

Exactly. Unity does not hide any information about telemetry, how it is used, who is responsible for the data, which data they demand from developers, that protection of privacy data is a shared responsibility, etc. So, developers can't claim they don't know about the existence of analytics and telemetry, whether they can be disabled, or opted out of, either by them or any end-user. Developer Privacy Policy I wonder why they have not yet started to collect blood, stool, and urine samples, dental impression and asking for the firstborn child of their customers.

They are also paying with their data, and some simply don't care what happens to ours.

Luckily, there are also responsible developers out there who take our privacy seriously and minimize data collection. They use 3rd-party, non-invasive data analytics providers. Those who don't care are also beginning to explore other services, not out of concern for our privacy but because it costs them more to use Unity services.