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Pro Cycling Manager 2021

Publisher: Nacon
Released: 2021
Steam ID: 1453850
Genre: Radrennen
System:  
Hosts entries:

Screens:
pcm2021
pcm2021 2
Features
Personal data:  
Forced online:  
DRM:  
Advertising:  
Social Networks:  
Own service/s:  
Data octopus:  
Bild
Manage one of 80 teams in over 260 races and 700 stages. From strategy to recruitment, it's up to you alone to make the best decisions. Experience more realism and authenticity with the new features added for 2021.

  Pro Cycling Manager 2021 Review

Right at the beginning of Pro Cycling Manager 2021, a tracker is initialized that joyfully and extensively makes a long-distance call to the developer. At our expense, of course.

What does the product do?


The product takes various hardware identifiers from the user for initialization. Furthermore, there is an online requirement. Players are forced to enter an email and a username even for the single-player game. Those who do not do so will be kicked out of the game. The active telemetry service tracks every action and sends it to Cyanide.

Who runs the product?


Developed by Cyanide Studio (aquired by BigBen Interactive, now Nacon) and published by Nacon (formerly BigBen Interactive)

Where are the service providers located


Cyanide Studio - Nanterre, Ile-de-France, France
Nacon - Fretin, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France

What data is collected?


Everything :]

Cyanide is greedy, because how else could we have a new spin-off of this great series coming every year ^^

For the hardware recording alone (a single connection is established for each individual value), 17 TCP connections were opened. Since every click on a button is tracked in the game itself, this adds up to quite a lot in the end.

Tracker is active under
 51.91.72.28
http://web.cyanide-studio.com/metrics/get/pcm/index.php

Especially in this case "https" (secure connection and internet standard) seems not to have arrived in France yet (unfortunately again)

Actually, you can say that "https" has more or less become the standard on the Internet after the Snowden leaks (2013) to "protect" against the US surveillance. They will only laugh about it and Cyanide probably as well, because it is not the only product in their portfolio with insecure data transfers.

Raw data examples


The "Value" is then exchanged with the value to be captured in each case
 {
"build" : "1.0.6.2",
"date" : "2023-09-07 02:58:56",
"key" : "591127CBADF6D8B72F8625FFD7F47BA6",
"platform" : "Win",
"product" : "pcm",
"revision" : "21",
"session" : "22f0820293a5bcd91452353b759ae9c3",
"stats" : [
{
"type" : "generic",
"value" : "HARDWARE RAM 32691"
}
]
}


Tracked Hardware
 HARDWARE DirectXVersion DirectX 12
HARDWARE DisplayWidth 2560
HARDWARE GPU Manufacturer NVIDIA
HARDWARE Proc CORECOUNT 12
HARDWARE Proc Speed 3593
HARDWARE GPU TotalVRam 28474
HARDWARE GPU DedicatedVRam 3072
OPTIONS_GAME FX 50 MUSIC 30 COMMENTS 50 RESOLUTION 2560x1440 FULLSCREEN 0 HCURSOR 1 PRESET 0
HARDWARE GPU Name NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
HARDWARE RAM 32691
HARDWARE Proc Desc AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core Processor
HARDWARE GPU DriverDate 14.08.2023 02:00:00
HARDWARE OS Windows 11 Enterprise 64-bit
HARDWARE GPU Vendor-DeviceId 10de-2504
HARDWARE DisplayHeight 1440


In the game itself the code is extended a bit and player actions are tracked specifically. One example, after that I will list some single values, otherwise this will be too long :P

Log in after a forced "Enter your Email" field
 "stats" : [
{
"type" : "ButtonClick "value" : {
"Button" : "Participate",
"DailBox" : "Dialbox_Profil",
"GameMode" : "None",
"InGameTime" : "0000-01-01 00:00:00",
"Page" : "Page_Home",
"SubPage" : "None"
}
}


Clicked on career mode in the game menu
  "stats" : [
{
"type" : "ButtonClick",
"value" : {
"Button" : "Button",
"DailBox" : "None",
"GameMode" : "None",
"InGameTime" : "0000-01-01 00:00:00",
"Page" : "Page_ChoixMode_Solo",
"SubPage" : "None"
}
}

Tracking users during their menu-screen experience
 "value" : "CHOOSETEAM GAMEMODE Career TEAM Deceuninck - Quick-Step"
"SubPage" : "Dashboard", "Button" : "Disabled: Carreer Mode-Tutorial",
"Button" : "checkbox-uncheck",
"Button" : "validate_Button",
"Button" : "OK",
"DailBox" : "Dialbox_MessageBox",
"Button" : "NextDay",
"Button" : "Start research and development",
"Button" : "Trash_Button",


From the start of the game to the actual "bike race", 82 connections to Cyanide were thus established, in which every single action was logged and transmitted to the studio.

The race itself
 "value" : "STAGESTAT ID 1294 VARIANT top_australia_01_2021 GAMEMODE Career TYPE Normal RELIEF Flat PLAYED 1"
"value" : "OPTIONS_RACE DIFFICULTY 2 FALL_FREQ 1.000000 SPEED1BACK 0"
"value" : "OPTIONS_GRAPH SHADOW 2 VEGETATION 3 AUDIENCE 1 LANDSCAPE 3 ROAD 1 CITY 4 ISOLATED 2 IMAGEFILTERING 1 COLORFILTERING 0 REFLECTION 1 ROADBORDER 1 MOTIONBLUR 0 DEPTHOFFIELD 1 CLOUD 1 PROFESSIONALCYCLIST 1 MLAA 1 FOG 1 PRECIPITATION 1 ROADTAG 1 SKY 1"
"value" : "OPTIONS_GRAPH ISOLATEDANIMATION 1 WATERGENERATION 1 BUILDLANDSCAPE 1 SPECIALEQUIPMENTTEXTURE 0 BUILDCYCLISTTEXTURE 1 SHAFTS 1 AA 0 ANISOTROPY 8 TEXTURES 1 LOD 0"
"Button" : "Next"
"Button" : "popup-button-close",
"Button" : "gamespeed-up",
"Button" : "order-attack",
"Button" : "order-free-effort",
"Button" : "Award ceremony",
"Button" : "Race results",


At the very last, some explict data is send to Cyanide, including
 POST /metrics/get/pcm/index.php HTTP/1.1
Host: web.cyanide-studio.com
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 345

{"product":"pcm","platform":"Win","build":"1.0.6.2","revision":"21","key":"DESKTOP-xxxx","session":"22f0820293a5bcd91452353b759ae9c3","date":"2023-09-07 03:40:55","stats":[{"type":"generic","value":"C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Pro Cycling Manager 2021\Fxo\HwIEquipmentMaterial_0011100000000000000000000100000000000000000001101201.fxo"}]}

Folder path, Gamesession, Windows System Account-Name, Date and some crap

At least my porn collection remains undiscovered this time. Not that I have one, but it could be ~.~

Overall, for a menu-simulator and a more or less fully automatic bike race, about 200 TCP connections were made, rounded up.

User agreement and opt-out/in


There is a note from the product page that a "PyLobby" account is required. However, what for and why is not explained. Also, the fact that players are under surveillance and the product is classified as spyware is not mentioned.

Can this behavior be blocked?


Yes, without restrictions
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