RedShell Spywar in somw TW games

[solops]

After the recent revelation on the Steam and 2K forums that the RedShell spyware was intentionally included in Civ 6, I did a search of my PC.
I did not find RedShellSDK.dll on my PC. I did find RedShell.dll in my TW Attila, Warhammer and Warhammer II directories. It was not in Rome 2, Shogun 2, Empire or Napoleon.
I think this is pretty underhanded of CA and I started a thread on their forums urging them to remove it.
Sorry about the typos. I am not a touch typist and editing the title does not seem to be possible.

[solops]

Hmmph. Typical CA. They deleted my thread on it and another that someone else started. Like they think they can hide it!

[solops]

CA responded on Steam:
Originally posted by CA Ella:
Hey, everyone.

Just so you know: we’re not ignoring this issue – we’re just making sure we’ve got all the facts and have addressed all your questions before we post a statement.

We’re aiming to get this out ASAP, so thanks for bearing with us in the meantime.

You can also find a brief overview of how Red Shell works here: https://redshell.io/gamers

[REhorror]

Did CA actually delete threads about this?

This just blew up on Youtube, they cannot hide this.

[solops]

Ooooh, just got some updates. Steam posts claim Redshell has been removed.

[solops]

Yes, they deleted my thread and one other that I saw about it that was posted after mine. Stupid PR on their part, but they often do it.

[KamenLily]

Red Shell is like a plague, is popping from everywhere lately.
My Time at Portia put it in recently, but the devs said that it's already removed in the last hotfix.
Holy Potatoes! We're in space!? put it in the last update too, and already removed it because the user backlash.
Kerbal and Civ VI, no response from devs.
Hopefully the Total War games will join the first ones removing it soon.

[Daruwind]

From CA_Grace, 20 minutes ago on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/co...e_explanation/

Red Shell is a program we use to measure the effectiveness of our advertising. It’s not spyware.

It’s a marketing attribution tool. It helps us determine which of our adverts are most effective. It does this in a similar way to other analytics tools by using cookies to generate a unique token from device information, and comparing that with data taken from our marketing campaigns and game activations. In this way we can see which adverts are more effective. You can find out more about it here: https://redshell.io/home

If you like, you can opt-out of web-based and cookie-based tracking by managing your cookie preferences: https://redshell.io/optout.

Whilst Red Shell is only used to measure the effectiveness of our advertising, we can see that players are clearly concerned about it and it will be difficult for us to entirely reassure every player. So, from the next update we will remove the implementation of Red Shell from those Total War games that use it.

[solops]

From CA_Grace, 20 minutes ago on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/co...e_explanation/

"It’s a marketing attribution tool. It helps us determine which of our adverts are most effective. It does this in a similar way to other analytics tools by using cookies to generate a unique token from device information, and comparing that with data taken from our marketing campaigns and game activations. In this way we can see which adverts are more effective."

???? That is the very DEFINITION of spyware. These people are so 1984! Call something its not long enough and people will start believing it?!?!? I hope not!!

[KamenLily]

From CA_Grace, 20 minutes ago on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/co...e_explanation/

Glad to see that CA is removing it! Firaxis should take notes.

[selv]

"It’s a marketing attribution tool. It helps us determine which of our adverts are most effective. It does this in a similar way to other analytics tools by using cookies to generate a unique token from device information, and comparing that with data taken from our marketing campaigns and game activations. In this way we can see which adverts are more effective."

???? That is the very DEFINITION of spyware. These people are so 1984! Call something its not long enough and people will start believing it?!?!? I hope not!!

It already happened. Steam itself is the living example of it, as is the fact that almost everyone now consider normal to have this online malware on their computer. This is therefore not surprising that they try to enforce the use of other malwares and call these moves 'innocent, for the better comfort of everyone'. Less and less people are bothered with it, and those that do get silent by the crowds, or just get silently pushed out from modern gaming by not spending their life on internet, resulting in them finding out after the facts.
In a similar 'innocent' move, GOG now try to enforce the use of it's optional client galaxy in some of their games by having it downloaded with the offlines installer, as if anyone using these installers weren't using them in the specific goal of avoiding the galaxy client, which is the GOG equivalent of steam so called 'comfortable 'malware, except that galaxy was and, for now, is still optional. But for how long?
A fact that I realised only a year after it already happened.

If only these things were limited to gaming stuffs, but they are not.

[lavez]

The reason they consider it as marketing tool rather than spyware is because it doesn't comb for 'personal information' (legally understood) and because the link between a user with hardware ID XXXX watching a promotional game video or a stream (it's possible to get this information from user's browser if it's any sort of standard internet browser like firefox or chrome) and that same user with hardware ID XXXX playing their game is relayed to their central as partially anonymised data, pasted into a neat table with a bunch of statistics and then that table is shown to their corporate subscriber.

As much as I personally detest hardware tracking and the omnipresent nature of telemetrics in applications these days, all CA (and similar companies) really have to do is introduce an in-game checkbox for game telemetry for each game with it, and by telemetry I mean all data that is not scrictly required to authenticate the user (establish the link between the game and his steam account) and have him connect to the multiplayer, leaderboards and steam achievement boards. For instance, when playing in steam offline mode, no Total War game ever should connect to the Internet in the first place, whether telemetrics have been left on or switched off.

This is a simple matter of courtesy, and recently a growing (though not universally acknowledged) attitude in video game industry. In the end, even if 20 or 30% of your users switch telemetry off, it won't distort your marketing data too much given how you track millions of customers either way. For practical reasons, not giving a telemetry checkbox invites entirely preventable outrage, and even such rash moves as removing the so-called 'marketing analytics tool' altogether - which to my mind is more damaging to a business, than a simple opt-out box in in-game options.

[selv]

It is of noboby's business when or where I decide to launch a game, watch a video or go to a website, nor is it any indication as to my tastes in general or to my futures decisions of spending my money. I watched a few warhammers, rome II/Attila trailers because I find them funny on occasion while I come around the forum, it doesn't make me a potential customer as long than these games remain with a forced policy of installing a third party malware, and I don't even know the first thing, or care about the warhammer universe. The very concept of 'user authentification' in order to install/launch a game you BOUGHT is a malware concept. Please, anyboby, if you are not ignoring what I know to be a useless little stone thrown in the ocean, spare me the 'anti-piracy' excuse. Steam only games are and will continue to be pirated just like any other games or software. No, I am no pirate, not yet anyway.

The day where a game that I really want, if that day come, will be steam only, or that GOG will have turn steam-2 for good, well this will be a clear message to me.