Avalanche Studios is trying to make a multiplayergame. The project is summarized under the name "shoebill". Better known as Second Extinction™
What does this product do?
Since Avalanche has now come to the idea to hide their games behind a data paywall, produtcts are tied to a registration and online obligation. No Internet? No game. No registration data? Half game content.
The game itself is more or less a data parasite. During the initializing your machine data is taken, before user consent and without agreement. In the case we agree the to the ingame policy, the whole stuff is activated.
Avalanche is using their own tracking mechanics which are present in all their games, coupled with the supposed social component that is there for nothing but mandatory online mode. In this product, the service Microsoft Azure Playfab (Analytics) is added, which again connects telemetry with mandatory online behaviour and also provides the multiplayer servers.
Compare the service with Epic Online Service (EOS) by Epic Games, Inc. It's the same pest. Mandatory online mode, tied with extensive telemetry.
In addition they use Azure Cognitive Services (Text to Speech). Users should read their privacy agreements very carefully. Like Facebook and Amazon Alexa. It's special.
Who is running the product
Avalanche Studios Group subdivision Second Extinction (again, don't forget the "™")
Where are the service providers located?
- Avalanche Studios Group - Västgötagatan 5, 11827 Stockholm, Sweden
- Microsoft Corporation - 1 Microsoft Way Redmond WA 98052-6399
What data is collected?
Like in other Avalanche Games? Everything :]
The only exception (compared to their other products) is the additional Playfab service in Second Extinction.
I have to shorten the whole story because the logs fill many sites (let alone 140MB xml file of data for one short session) so i do not use detailed data records at this point.
Everything in the game is provided with coordinates and is monitored so that the player position can be determined at any time. As example
"x" : -565,0000000000000,
"y" : 1171,000000000000,
"z" : 300,0000000000000
This behaviour goes along with timestamps and of course your ip. The same behaviour can be found in other Avalanche products. No matter whether online or offline is played
Active Heartbeat Callbacks
A heartbeat query is sent to Avalanche every 1.4 minutes. This dataset includes
FPS, GPU/CPU frametime, gamestate, is host (yes/no), max/min fps, network sessionid, num components/connections, peek bytes received/resend/sent, platform, playerlevel, projectname, running time, store, sessionuuid, user, userid, version, Coordinates
Mission select
Location, Missionname, Missionname Hash, Region, Coordinates
Mission Progress Pulse
Activities completed/discovered amount, Aggroed Dino and kill amount, difficulty, materials collected amount (augments, common, rare, uncommon), missionid, mission sessionid, network sessionid, objectives completed amount, platform, playercount, player damage tagen amount, player downed amount, playerlevel, player position (coordinates xyz), respawn amount, projectname, region, research collected amount, running time, sessionuuid, specials and specials killend amount, store, suspend length, time since mission start, user, userid, version
Materials collected
Picked up some dino poop/bone? Of course it's tracked.
Location, MaterialID, Region, Research Award, Coordinates
Killed Enemys
Each event is tracked. Kill 20 Dinos? Means there are 20 single data sets that Avalanche gets with
characterid, difficulty, damage type, enemy type, killed by player, method of death, missionid, mission sessionid, network sessionid, platform, playercount, playerlevel, region, runningtime, seasonid, sessionuuid, store, user, version, Corrdinates
In Short, they get dozend of data packets each second by countless players about what they do, when they do it, where and with whom they do it. Even if these supposedly "social components" are not knowingly used.
Player died
Damage type, Enemy type, killed by self, killed by vehicle, killed by vehicle weapon, location, name hash, region, vehicleid, coordinates
Damage Dealt
damage dealt, missionid, network session, platform (e.g. win64), player level, player count, running time, sessionid, store (where we purchased e.g. steam), userid, product version (shoebill_delivery_win64_final_2237648)
Mission Complete
Location, Missionname, Missionname Hash, Region, Starsm, Coordinates
Microsoft Playfab Analytics and Server
Character Inventory, Characterlist, Playerprofile, Playerstatistics, Titledata, AccountInfo, Userdata, UserInventory, Currency, Statistics, Constraints, Devicedata, Focusdata (tabbed out/in), last logintime, spend ingametime, lootboxes,Mission progress, Chat, Purchased Items,Currency, Prestige, XP, Last Lobby, Nameplate & Contract data, saved Missionstats/News, tracked weapons, tracking UUID, PlayfabID, Audio Codecs, Serverlist and more
Summary
A summary of connections (including used multiplayer server) made by the game were prepared in an own entry (e.g. for blocklists like PI-hole or host) for
Second Extinction. Same counts for other products by Avalanche.
A company profile to
Avalanche Studios was also created, in which interested people can get a small overview.
Company profile for
Microsoft Corporation is also up.
At the end, Avalanche products are just there to collect data on a grand scale. The described behaviour is present in all their products and even if users only use the single player aspects are constantly tracker and spying active.
The product is not recommended because Avalanche takes more than they are entitled and the privacy and data sovereignty of users is at risk.
Other products of Avalance only limited, because of their subsequently implemented data paywall. After all, you can turn off the behavior in other games by blocking the addresses. You will find them on the linked sites.
For Second Extinction, unfortunately, this does not work.
