Are you practicing digital hygiene in Gaming?

[David Brown]

Playstation? More like PlaySHITstation

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

For Steam games and similar libraries, you download the software and then run it and I'm sure there's some lock and key file system to tie it to your account as the one who owns it. Is it possible to jailbreak or override this system? If not I'm hoping such a thing gets made, the thought occurred to me that if there's ever a doomsday scenario where I want to GTFO steam I would like to be able to download my entire library (at least everything that isn't an online game) to storage so that I have the executables and files on my end.

If you mean "Is there a way to emulate Steam API calls?" then yes, there are multiple. You can download straight rips of Steam files and just replace a .dll and run the game perfectly fine without Steam at all. But if Valve just vanishes tomorrow and you don't have your library already downloaded however, it wouldn't be much help, since you wouldn't have a server to grab anything from, you'd just have to pirate the game from somewhere.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I can’t remember the last new game I wanted to buy on launch day. They all need a year to get out of alpha after release. They can keep their overpriced early access micro-transaction trojan horses.

Getting games on launch day was great when they were essentially the same game that would be on the shelves in three years. It was the same with movies and books.

Nowadays, there's no real advantage to playing early. You're playing an expensive, buggy piece of trash that will receive huge updates in the coming weeks.

For Steam games and similar libraries, you download the software and then run it and I'm sure there's some lock and key file system to tie it to your account as the one who owns it. Is it possible to jailbreak or override this system? If not I'm hoping such a thing gets made, the thought occurred to me that if there's ever a doomsday scenario where I want to GTFO steam I would like to be able to download my entire library (at least everything that isn't an online game) to storage so that I have the executables and files on my end.

It varies from game to game (some use Steamworks DRM, a few use Denuvo), and there's stuff like Steam emulators, and all of the games from Steam are stored on your computer (for Windows, CProgram Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common). I used to keep a list (currently being rebuilt and into a new spreadsheet listing all games and current progress because I'm an autist about these sorts of these things) of games that I did not have DRM-free copies of.

A lot of stuff is also on GOG, and hence already has installers floating around on the Internet, which is a good place to start. You HAVE been keeping a games collection, right?

 

[ThinkThankThunk]

I don't like that comparison. Modifying an Xbox 360 back then would allow unauthorized modifications onto games for cheating purposes and illegitimately obtaining access to video games. Or, in laymen's terms, JTAG their Xbox to use for modded lobbies and the like. That's why the Xbox One/Series S|X OS is currently impenetrable from modifications.

I know they weren't exactly the same situations, but I'm fucking tired of pretending that corporate powers that hate you and me should be given any rope. They want your rights stripped, your life regulated, and actively sell you out to a billion other multinational spooks just like them. Why the fuck should I be principled to defend them knowing I'll be thrown in the pit mine for my trouble?

I'm sure there's plenty of legal gobbledygook to justify stamp out modding and back their claims of ownership or right to control the actions of users. I don't care about any of it and neither should any other good natured person. Piracy and hacking level the playing field and are moral goods, period. Fuck these companies.

 

[The Last Stand]

Piracy and hacking level the playing field and are moral goods, period.

No, it doesn't. If I'm paying for Xbox Live, I do not want my experience tampered with by some random script kitty that wants god mode/infinite ammo/instant unlock in a multiplayer game. I'm sure you have an argument regarding piracy on the PC ecosystem. For console, not only is it theft on their ecosystem, it's a potential security risk that could sway away consumers and publishers from that online service.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

For console, not only is it theft on their ecosystem, it's a potential security risk that could sway away consumers and publishers from that online service.

Good.

 

[The Last Stand]

Cross post from the GTA thread (by me) regarding R*'s new "community guidelines."

There's no civil compromise for online gaming anymore. Once upon a time, there was an unwritten, unofficial expectation that online gaming could be ripe with unsavory types be from voice/text communications. That was half the fun with those experiences. You'd never know what you'd get. If it bothered you, mute the person and move on.

Now, in an effort to make gaming "less toxic," they've made online gaming less social and more passive aggressive with these convoluted ToS that should boil down to just "don't be a disruptive asshole." Cheating is less of a priority compared to regulating everyday voice chat through AI moderation.

 

[Pissmaster]

The Carpenter decision could be extended to gaming consoles. The major hitch though, is of course, the voluntary "end user license agreements" every gamer gormlessly agrees too.

Gamers should click the "not accept" at the end of the abominations. Its their right to do so. They should do so.

I really feel like that kind of licensing agreement should be agreed to before money changes hands. By the time you see that screen, you've already:

• gone to the store
• picked out the game
• handed over money
• brought it home*
• took it out of its shrinkwrap*
• inserted it in your console
• let it install
• let it download and install updates
• started it up

*not applicable for downloads

And with many stores, you can't get refunds for games. Most stores that sell new physical games don't allow returns. Nintendo doesn't allow refunds for downloads. Steam and Xbox don't after 14 days, whether or not you ever actually started it. So, what are you supposed to do if you can't get a refund? Just sit there with a dud you paid money for? Seems like there's just no alternative.

I haven't seen anything suggesting that the Xbox Series X has built in mics for surveillance, but you can never be too careful.

Xbox Series controllers don't have any mics or speakers I know about. They do have headphone jacks on the btotom for a mic, however. They are also by default powered by AA batteries, so it's trivial to cut their power.

 

[The Last Stand]

I haven't seen anything suggesting that the Xbox Series X has built in mics for surveillance, but you can never be too careful.

Xbox Series S|X, no. You may have a case for the Xbox One with the Kinect's camera and mic back in '13.

Explain to me why I need to agree to a terms and conditions clause when I boot up a video game nowadays. Call of Duty has a Code of Conduct now when it was BEST known for its no hold barred game chat back then. Meanwhile, cheaters still run rampant while the shop works perfectly fine to hold up 75 GBs+ on my hard drive.

 

[Cheeseknife]

Press A to accept.

MO, I want to make a video about this and use your article as a template. I don't want to just steal it, though, so are you okay with that?

Here's some samples of what I want to do:
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05

If you're wondering about the voice, it is the voice of the late Sir Christopher Lee which I thought was appropriate given the references to Sauron and the Great Eye.

 

[Tablet County]

I thought this was gonna be about literal in-game hygiene and I was gonna talk about making sewage into moonshine in modded Rimworld but this is just scary.

 

[30+GameOvers]

For Steam games and similar libraries, you download the software and then run it and I'm sure there's some lock and key file system to tie it to your account as the one who owns it. Is it possible to jailbreak or override this system? If not I'm hoping such a thing gets made, the thought occurred to me that if there's ever a doomsday scenario where I want to GTFO steam I would like to be able to download my entire library (at least everything that isn't an online game) to storage so that I have the executables and files on my end.

It is very simple to crack most games on Steam. I suggest everyone backup their games once they're downloaded "just in case". You never know when Ubisoft will try to remove these games from your library again or when Capcom releases another update that adds Denuvo to a 15 year old game. This way, you know you can play the exact same game you remember at any time, forever and there is nothing Valve or any other company can do about it.

 

[Sneedfully and Peacefully]

You HAVE been keeping a games collection, right?

I have a good deal of my library downloaded. A while back when I 100% games I'd delete them since I had less reason to play and could download again but now this has me shook. I don't expect Valve to disappear tomorrow and I'm not a dude who screams nigger every chance I can get but I have to consider all outcomes. I gotta get more storage

 

[mindlessobserver]

MO, I want to make a video about this and use your article as a template. I don't want to just steal it, though, so are you okay with that?

Go ahead. Half the article is just me reading the PSN TOS in full snark mode. Anyone can do that. Hell, XBOX Lives TOS is just as onerous. Even Steam is little better. You can do the same thing with any of these Satanic legal instruments.

 

[Mega Black]

I am guilty of agreeing to predatory TOS and buying digital on Sony shit but I'm going to transition to full PC/Pirate within the next year or so.

 

[Slav Power]

The TOS being bullshit part, I agree with 100%. The multiple identities part, also 100%, the less you reuse a username the better, no matter which platform. The chats on big platforms being monitored, again, 100%, look for private alternatives.

The alternative chats, mIRC is proprietary bullshit with no voice chat, Teamspeak 3 is proprietary bullshit with voice chat. You want a good alternative, set up a Mumble server for your homies. GNU GPL goodness, with no one eavesdropping on you and your pals saying "nigger". The only good alternative that has some form of text chat, voice chat and is not based on Chromium, AKA Electron. There's also XMPP group chats but XMPP is kinda shit when it comes to clients with voice calls.

The "corpo will pull out a spicy recording of you to use against you in the future", that's a gigantic schizo theory. Corporations would never do that because that opens them both to gigantic legal liabilities, especially in the EU which does have an effect on their global business, and a heavy PR disaster that just bodes bad finances, and that's a big no-no.

This scenario can only happen if absolutely all rights globally get eroded. Assuming that 10 years down the line the EU still exists has GDPR, still gives a shit about consumer rights and still has the balls to put corpos in their place, that shit will never happen. Remember that Steam had no refunds until Australia lit a fire under their asses, and big corporations like Google and Apple are doing major changes to their services due to EU passing the Digital Markets Act.

It is very simple to crack most games on Steam

Steamworks DRM

Yeah exactly, if a Steam game only has Steamworks DRM, which isn't a DRM as much as it is a basic Steam integration, shit's trivial to remove. Use Steamless to remove SteamStub from the game .exe, then use Goldberg's Steam Emulator to emulate the Steam API's. Now the game that had a "pesky evil Steam DRM" can be ran without Steam on your PC. And those are universal patches.

True DRM isn't this trivial to remove, and if Valve treated Steamworks as a DRM, Steamless wouldn't exist because they'd be engaging with the same cat and mouse chase that Denuvo does. It's just a way for games on Steam to communicate with the Steam client so Steam related functionality like Workshop or achievements can work. Some devs do a hard implementation of it, some do it so that Steam isn't necessary. For example, Postal 2 and BeamNG.Drive have Steamworks integrations but they can be ran without Steam, and they have no DRM of their own.

 

[BlueChip]

No, it doesn't. If I'm paying for Xbox Live, I do not want my experience tampered with by some random script kitty that wants god mode/infinite ammo/instant unlock in a multiplayer game. I'm sure you have an argument regarding piracy on the PC ecosystem. For console, not only is it theft on their ecosystem, it's a potential security risk that could sway away consumers and publishers from that online service.

Anti-cheat systems have been put in place first and foremost to protect the economy of the game. The fact that they sometimes catch a guy raging with their $30, detected day one cheat, is just a byproduct.

All of this, btw, is a war that these publishers and developers have already lost. Plenty of Unlock-all and Cheat Systems that are going through every hoop to make it seem like you're playing legit. Any good cheater will tell you that if you wanna play with cheats, you have to be extremely subtle.

As for the "security risk", I'd recommend when that trash - Genshin Impact - because it had kernel access for its anti-cheat system (as all of these things have this day), hackers were able to hijack others' devices ar kernel level. Go read about it. I'm sorry mate, but your gods are dead...

 

[30+GameOvers]

The "corpo will pull out a spicy recording of you to use against you in the future", that's a gigantic schizo theory

I've seen reports of people getting insta-banned by an AI that constantly monitors the game for saying something even resembling "hate speech". Of course, since we're not talking about a human here, that means that the AI doesn't get the context here, so for example if someone body is talking about fixing a car and they mention a "tranny"(short for "transmission"), the AI bans them on the spot because they think they are spouting TTD sermons on the poor innocent troons in chat.
If an AI is recording you 24/7 when you play the game, you would be an idiot to think that this info isn't getting stored and used somehow, probably sold as well. They probably have something in their TOS that nobody ever reads about how they're allowed to do that and you agreed to it. I wouldn't be surprised if this data is used to train other AI models as well.
Will they ever admit to doing so? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. Ubisoft already reports "hate speech" that their AI records to the police, god only knows what else is done with this information. You can't say that a spicy recording is going to be used against you in the future is a schizo theory when it's already happening.

 

[Slav Power]

I've seen reports of people getting insta-banned by an AI that constantly monitors the game for saying something even resembling "hate speech". Of course, since we're not talking about a human here, that means that the AI doesn't get the context here, so for example if someone body is talking about fixing a car and they mention a "tranny"(short for "transmission"), the AI bans them on the spot because they think they are spouting TTD sermons on the poor innocent troons in chat.
If an AI is recording you 24/7 when you play the game, you would be an idiot to think that this info isn't getting stored and used somehow, probably sold as well. They probably have something in their TOS that nobody ever reads about how they're allowed to do that and you agreed to it. I wouldn't be surprised if this data is used to train other AI models as well.
Will they ever admit to doing so? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. Ubisoft already reports "hate speech" that their AI records to the police, god only knows what else is done with this information. You can't say that a spicy recording is going to be used against you in the future is a schizo theory when it's already happening.

Here's a direct quote of what I was referring to:

Imagine being a dumb kid at 17, and saying the "gamer word". Then imagine being that same Kid at 27 deciding to run for Congress. But Uh oh. Here comes a Sony lobbyist. With a recording of you saying the "Gamer word" a decade ago. Better do what Sony says if you want to get into congress!

Now, automoderation with AI based on harvested data, yes, that exists and it's bullshit. Big Data being a thing, yes, that exists and it's bullshit. However, automoderation is within the realm of the platform you're using, and Big Data, as the name implies, doesn't care if you're 27 year old John Doe from Colorado or whatever, it's all macro data that doesn't care about who you are, but cares that there's reliable human generated data that can be used in those large algorithms. And as far as I'm aware, the Ubisoft snitching functions only in the UK that's not part of the EU, so clearly, even Ubisoft knows that this shit wouldn't fly in the EU.

What OP has suggested is that Sony will send a lobbyist out to publicly show clips of you being racist when you run for Congress to blackmail you. Do you realize how idiotic that would be for any of those corporations to do? Yeah that may fly in the US where there are zero privacy laws, but in the EU there's GDPR, and if Sony were to do this in the US, this would make the EU light a gigantic fire under Sony's ass because if they can do that in the US, they can do that in the EU, and they'd be fucked, both legally and in terms of PR. And the EU is a large enough market for them to give a shit about what the EU has to say, so as long as the EU keeps going after corpos, this type of shit is impossible to happen.

Money is very important to those corpos, and when you have a legislative body encompassing a massive market like the EU looming over you, you'll think twice before you pull some dumb bullshit that can set you up for gigantic fines, or even worse, getting cut off from that market. EU managed to strongarm Google, Facebook and Apple into playing by their rules, they don't fuck around unlike the FTC.

 

[30+GameOvers]

@Slav Power Even if it won't bite you in the ass 10 years from now, it doesn't really matter when it can effect you right now. I can't recall the exact instance, but I do know these kinds of AI monitoring have 100% already resulted in some dumb kids going to prison for saying the nigger word or for making stupid jokes that could be interpreted as terrorist threats or calls to violence against others. AI doesn't know the difference and the lefties in charge don't care, they want that chud to suffer behind bars.
I think this technology will eventually be used to blackmail people with something they said 10 years ago, absolutely, but it won't be by a company releasing anything outright. They will be "hacked" and the footage will be "mysteriously" in possession of some far left anonymous like group or organization that will "expose" them just like Antifa doxxed Stonetoss in their recent 1/99 xitter post thread. It will definitely be a problem and the companies will leak info in a way where you cannot blame it on them. By the time something this big happens, the goose will be cooked and people won't care, they will expect all of their interactions online to be monitored anyways.