Here is excerpt from the tos, shared by user in steam reviews of the game.
important Info in Terms of Service:
• Mods are a bannable offense
• Display of Cheats/Exploits is bannable
• Forced arbitration clause and a waiver of class action and jury trial rights for all users residing in the United States and any other territory other than Australia, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, or The Territories of The European Economic Area
• You can be banned for using a VPN while connecting to online servers
• Cannot access game content on a Virtual PC
Collected Data Types:
• Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address
• Protected Characteristics: Age and gender
• Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information
• Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address
• Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications
• Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls)
• Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest
• Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting)
• Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality.
I wouldnt touch anything this company has produced.
Here is another person, 7 years ago trying the exact same outrage-based engagement farming strategy of linking a TOS update and implying a nefarious intent: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/8naopt/take_two_a_spyware_apocalypse/ It’s exactly the same “Take two is spying on you!!!” content and yet, none of the Borderlands games have added spyware and none have added kernel anti-cheat.
Also, if you read the 2018 and 2025 TOS you will notice notice that the information that they collect in the 2025 TOS ( https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/ ) is exactly the same as it was in 2018.
TL;DR - Just because you read it on the Internet, doesn’t mean it is true.
I just don’t understand anticheat or copy protection on PvE games. I can understand it if you don’t want to play against a cheater, but this is a cooperative shooter.
IIRC Borderlands 3 scales the value of loot to the game’s difficulty setting, with some mechanics aimed at encouraging players to join online coops at high difficulties in order to earn more valuable loot. I imagine cheats undermine that intent, and I also imagine borderlands 4 might be aiming at a pay to play scheme.
I’m guessing this EULA is being used for all their IP with the intent of taking advantage of it in the future.
I sometimes wonder what will happen when EAC, that has root access to millions of PCs, gets compromised or has grunty employee and pushes malicious update
Then the death squads will come in, and they’ll ask ‘how could this possibly happen!?’, getting fucking pissed or saying “we couldn’t have known!” when you answer, and offer an ‘i fucking told you so’ in line for the camps.
Holy fuck I did not know about Overwolf. That’s the last time I download something from my, apparently, dipshit friend (no, this is not the only stupid thing he’s done).
I think it’s kind of ironic you call your friend apparently a dipshit for not knowing something you also didn’t know… pot calling the kettle black & all.
LOL. I loved the Borderlands franchise, until Epic made their evil dog shit app store and the Borderlands devs sold out to them. Motherfuck Borderlands forever now. Thanks for the warning so I don’t accidentally reinstall any of it from Steam.
I know thats not a risk for you, but this data could genuinely be used by the us government to do that in the near future, for many marginalized populations.
Especially queer people and anyone who could be seen as an immigrant.
Some of us have real problems in life, and have to actually give literally a single fuck about the world.
Yes, the government is going to get you by installing spyware in a game launcher that nobody uses. You won’t care a shit about or vet at code level any of the 200+ closed source games you will play in your life because they’re all fine in your fantasy land, but one game launcher is out to kidnap you.
There is nuance here. Not every crack is malicious but you have to assume they all are because some of them are. Trusting a source is irrelevant. Many security products will falsely tag cracked software as dangerous just because it’s cracked, not because it found a specific bit of nasty code, and this feeds the idea that you can’t believe when people tell you cracked software is unsafe. But there are many truly bad cracks out there. When in doubt, don’t trust it.
it’s been a while since I’ve used windows, but I remember having to give administrator privileges to software installers, whether they are from legitimate vendors or from ripping groups with modified code
Some software installers still ask if I want to install for all users, which require elevated permissions, or only for me, which don’t. In that last option it will not prompt for elevated permissions as it will use one of my user’s folders which I have already all permissions for, obviously.
It’s a security measure that’s half assed. People are so used to it they just click allow but don’t actually look at the prompt anymore. Like I see a lot of people do with cookies on websites.
Thats a windows thing so it can put files in “protected” folders like program files
The unfortunate thing about the UAC prompt is that it gives the software permission to put files in protected folders, but it also gives the software root permission so it can do literally anything else without prompting the user. Except, I believe, if it tries to install unsigned kernel drivers, then the user has to click a new prompt… but you can completely compromise a machine with the permissions that users routinely give to executables that they download from the Internet.
A game with a malicious crack that can escape a VM running on Windows and get to the main OS?
Sure, possible, but not by any means common.
A game with a malicious crack made for Windows that can… do anything nefarious when you’re running it on linux via WINE and Proton?
… Theoretically possible, but I’ve never heard of this actually occuring.
The same, but also inside another linux OS inside of a Bottle or Distrobox… or full VM… all running on a linux system that is significantly atomized with a read only core-os?
… At that point I am quite doubtful anyone is bothering to make a malicious crack that capable… when 99% of the existing game trainers and hacks that you can find or buy online… only work on Windows.
The crowd of people making game exploits and cheat engines… and the crowd of people making malicious game cracks… that venn diagram is almost a circle… and 99% of these people do not bother to ‘support’ linux, in anyway, at all, with anything they do.
Is using any random cracked software ever 100% safe? No.
But neither is say, using a Windows system, with 0 cracks or hacks… but with a MSFT trusted vendor’s 3rd party anti malware software… where said trusted vendor is allowed to push an unverified update to their kernel level anti-malware system… that is actually malformed, and then knocks out about 1/4 of every enterprise Windows PCs on Earth for 2 weeks.
He said they added a kernel level anticheat in the TOS which is true. But they seem to have not included it in the game yet. But they tell that by possedong the game you allow them to.
Edit : typo but can’t correct “possedong” now
That’s a typo from an i to an o, commenter probably meant possessing but made a mistake and tried to type posseding, I suspect their native language is french given their username and “to possess” in french is “posséder”.
Really ? I though, since you used a though process used in osint.
Osint is open sources intelligences, it is looking for data about something/someone in data available for all
So, to be clear:
There is nothing in the TOS that requires you to submit to a rootkit and there is no spyware that has been added. The comment in the OP is simply wrong.
He said it, root access level in the TOS of BorderLand. Not that a root kit is included, but that they allowed them self to inclid it whenever they can. That not misinformation…
There is nothing in the TOS that requires you to submit to a rootkit and there is no spyware that has been added. The comment in the OP is simply wrong.
This is what happens when you simply read social media and repeat what you’ve heard without checking to see if you’re spreading misinformation.
We may provide patches, updates, or upgrades to the Services, Virtual Items, Content, or your Account that may be required for you to continue using the Services, including automatic or “in the background” updates without notice to you.
I hope the people who upvoted your misinformation are able to see this, please think of your actions and conduct before posting multiple comments defending a company if you’re worried about misinformation.
That… doesn’t actually rebut anything FauxLiving said. That they may use anti-cheat, and that they may have automatic updates, aren’t the claims in question here.
Sincerely thank you for commenting. I was completely dumbfounded with @[email protected]’s statement and wasn’t sure if I wanted to waste my time with a response if it was just trolling.
I haven’t read the new TOS but if this review is correct it looks like a GDPR nightmare for them. Good luck to them explaining why they need to collect all that personal data.
Hm… Ok. Thats crazy. Someone wants to create a new branch of income it seems.
Thats a fucking shame. Now I need to reconsider my plans to buy Borderlands4.
But how will they do it? Which information is gathered from which source?
Most of my accounts only hold as little informations as possible. Also my Os knows nothing about me. My MS account neither.
On the other hand my steam 2FA need some mobile information.
Checkout Jump Ship? It’s some weird borderlands, Star citizen, (insert other generic shooter) type game. Pretty neat, was recommended to me by a shooter fanatic friend of mine. I trust his shooting game opinion
oh cool, I can see that it’s similar Borderlands by the screenshots, and I can see that it’s like Star Citizen because it’s not actually released yet and they’re taking money for early access.
Unless you use Linux, your OS knows a ton about you. On top of that, with root access to your computer they can do whatever they want and if their system gets hacked you become a member of a bot farm or crypto mine.
Well I use Linux, but not on my gaming pc. I would switch to it because its all amd, but I don’t want to because it lacks the driver suite for my gpu (adrenaline) and I don’t want to install a bunch of small applications to gain a small fraction of options it offers.
It’s a pitty. Because I realy want to ditch windows since its newest iteration.
Were all Take Two games automatically updated in secret and now hijack your machine with root access to spy on everything you do? ❌
Do Take Two games contain code to report telemetry and user information(including application/system activity) to a home server? ✅
Is this EULA change extraordinary and particularly egregious in comparison to others that most people have probably already agreed to? ❌(IMO)
Are people riled up because e a YouTube video went a little viral and now they’re all playing telephone to the point where it’s now gotten to the point of random dumdums are review booming a 13 year old game claiming it’s turned into literal spyware? ✅(again, IMO)
Should you be surprised by any of this if you’ve been even remotely paying attention for any period of the last 30-40 years? ❌
Do we need more than just angry idiots in the battle against corpatocracy? ✅
We should be done coddling the late comers at this point. Yes welcome them and accept them, but at a certain point your level of ignorance became a detriment to your community and you should be made aware of that fact.
A youtuber named Hellfire has been on a spree, basically discovering how fucked up EULAs have been in games for the past 20ish years… well this is all brand new news to him and and his Zoomer / Gen A followers.
There is, as of right now, literally zero evidence that Borderlands 2 has been updated with a rootkit, with kernel level anti cheat, anything like that.
The last update to its game files was 2 years ago.
This is almost certainly them updating the EULA everywhere, the precise timing of this being for some specific arcane legal and business reasons… TakeTwo runs a whole bunch more games than juat Borderlands… namely GTA V…
…
Is this EULA bad? Yes.
Is it much worse than it was before, or what other large gaming companies EULAs have, and have had for… a decade+?
Maybe by a bit, but not really, no.
…
Is Randy Pitchford a dumb idiot asshole?
Oh absolutely yes, but that shouldn’t give people the liscense to make completely unevidenced claims about other things.
…
The game does not have a kernel level AC or some kind of rootkit DRM, as many, many people are currently saying it does.
I guess gamer attention span can really hold onto a few keywords and phrases at a time.
… I say this all as person who is vehemently against kernel level AC, who has been pointing out for 4 years, that almost all existing anti cheat systems currently have at least one game that implements their AC, on linux, without using kernel level anything… it is entirely possible to do AC without kernel level shit, even on linux, and has been for at least 4 years. EAC and BattleEye have supported linux for 4 years, but nearly no game that uses them has actually used this feature/available and offered support.
I am glad that this level of hate is finally being directed at shitty EULAs, but lets at least get our facts straight, or actually provide some hitherto unseen evidence that Borderlands has had some kind of sleeper malware in it for at least the past two years, just waiting to be activated by a TOS update to every single Take Two game.
Would it shock you to know that ALL of these are in the Steam terms of service also?
The only really sus one to me is the forced arbitration clause, and Steam also had that til they were pressured to remove it by multiple legal cases, including a class action brought to them by Steam users just last September. It is only sus because it’s outdated - companies are generally removing them now rather than adding them.
https://www.legal.io/articles/5540864/Valve-Removes-Mandatory-Arbitration-from-Steam-Subscriber-Agreement
RE: remaining top 5 bullet points, 3 of the remaining 4 bullet points are uncontroversial bullet points about anticheat. The fourth is banning modding, which is also just a heavy handed anticheat attempt, and not uncommon for online games to add to their ToS to allow banning at their discretion. Either way its clumsy at the least as some mods can be harmless eg HUD mods for colourblind people and deserves some negativity - but not to this level, given everything else is just so boilerplate.
Collected data types: these are all for if you buy stuff with a credit card / paypal / etc off 2k/parent company Take 2. Remember, they sell games with in-game purchases. They also have an app which has location permissions option which is what the precise location is about.
So yes - again, as OP said, this is nothing controversial if you have paid attention to ToS meaning and content over the past 20 years.
Aside from the forced arbitration crap - which Steam, Microsoft, Amazon, Lyft, Uber, Google, AT&T - and hundreds of other major companies all snuck into their ToS over the years, and many have now been legally pressured to remove by consumer rights group. That is stupid because it shows their legal team is behind the times, companies are mostly removing their forced arbitration clauses nowadays because it has been the cause of many lost class actions.
A bit more than what, not really sure what your point here is? All of those bullet points are similar if not identical to terms in other EULAs half the people in this thread have already clicked thru.
I’ll say it again, if you think this is anything new you haven’t been paying attention. I’m all for calling this fuckery out and pushing for something better. But like where yall been?
Still no actual answers from anyone on how this is ‘more’ than what I described in my op. Sure it’s a more detailed list, but it’s really not the “gotcha” everyone seems to think it is. That is, if youve been paying attention.
I see this kind of comment before and I will never understand it - “other companies do it so just bend over and let us do it to you too!”
People say this all the time about Denuvo too: “Other games already have Denuvo, why are you crying about it here when you’re playing other games?”
And see, that’s the problem - we aren’t playing those other Denuvo games. And same thing applies here, guess what, a lot of us aren’t buying games from gross companies like EA with these shit terms. So when a company we are doing business with suddenly changes their terms to be shit, that’s a valid complaint. Some of us have already been boycotting bad business practices in the industry, so the idea of company changing terms towards the boycott after we’ve already invested in the game feels like a betrayal because it is.
So maybe stop focusing on what you assume the rest of audience is doing and instead go back to focusing on what the people at the goddamn podium are trying to pull?
Why does everyone insist on adding the ‘so just bend over and take’ part whenever someone points out another source of wrongdoing? Like what do yall always take it to mean that the speaker is implying a whataboutism argument? And not maybe as ‘oh shit this has been going on longer than just this maybe we should learn about that too and we might figure out why it hasn’t been stopped yet.’
If “everyone” keeps reading a sentiment you did not intend out of your message, perhaps it is time to consider that you are doing a poor job of communicating your point.
Or you’re being disingenuous and just don’t like being calling on your hissy fit.
What point are you trying to make? You say you’re “all for calling this kind of fuckery out” but then you’re criticizing people for calling it out? And who cares what other EULAs might say? The point is that the license agreement for this game and others owned by this company didn’t say this shit before, and now they do. The company is actively making their user agreement more hostile to the users which is what people are pissed about.
If you look at Valve’s TOS or any other game developer who has games with an online component, you will see the exact same language regarding data collection. The language being added is to comply with laws, like the GDPR, which requires specific language indicating what data is collected and how it is used.
The data that is being collected is the same as it was 10 years ago. There’s nothing new here, just a YT video that got a lot of views and social media being full of people who don’t fact check anything.
That it takes more critical thinking to accomplish the organized action needed for real change than leaving a bunch of negative reviews.
I never once said ‘other company’s do it so just deal with it.’ Fuckawhataboutism. I said “if you think this is new, you haven’t been paying attention.” What I shouldn’t have left unsaid was ‘the review is a nice start and show of intention. but we need a lot more dedicated, well organized action, to actually accomplish any change.’
But people read into things what they want to hear.
Let’s ride the wave. Turn this into a huge controversy known industry-wide. Then, next game that comes out with EULA like this, we say “THIS GAME HAS A BORDERLANDS-STYLE EULA”. Pretend it’s new to exploit the shock value and get the gamers riled up. Then, the industry gets better.
Tell the frog that the pot wasn’t always this hot.
I get that and agree, this is just a crappy and kinda dumb stick to be wasting the energy on because it makes the side opposing the injustice look like petulant children instead of enabling effective action.
So…if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see…really?
Without using exploits to escape the container, not much. A very empty Windows environment with a single game installed, your network interfaces and any directories that the Flatpak has access to (usually just the SteamLibrary directories).
The TOS (https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/) changes are mostly related to data that they collect via their interfacing with Steam and through their website. This idea that they’re requiring you to agree to a root level access or installing a spyware rootkit is just nonsense.
Not a lot. Even when it isn’t a flatpak windows software running on linux won’t be able to interact with the system anywhere near as much as on windows.
How locked down a flatpak is depends entirely on the developer and what permissions they request. By default, they can’t really see much. For example, they can’t even see the processes running on your host or your user and system files.
Flatpak does not do anything about network access though, it can only do no access or full access, no in between. The data they can collect on Linux in a Flatpak is very limited but it does not prevent them from calling home.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Owns Rockstar Games, Zynga and 2K. So if that’s all their games, it includes at least these: Bioshock series, Borderlands series, Civilization series, Grand Theft Auto series, Mafia series, Max Payne series, NBA 2K series, PGA Tour 2K series, Red Dead series, WWE 2K series and XCOM series.
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They added spyware to it.
Here is excerpt from the tos, shared by user in steam reviews of the game.
important Info in Terms of Service:
• Mods are a bannable offense • Display of Cheats/Exploits is bannable • Forced arbitration clause and a waiver of class action and jury trial rights for all users residing in the United States and any other territory other than Australia, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, or The Territories of The European Economic Area • You can be banned for using a VPN while connecting to online servers • Cannot access game content on a Virtual PC
Collected Data Types: • Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address • Protected Characteristics: Age and gender • Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information • Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address • Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications • Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls) • Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest • Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting) • Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality.
I wouldnt touch anything this company has produced.
No, they didn’t.
Just because something sounds outrageous, doesn’t mean it is true.
Borderlands 2 hasn’t been updated since 2022:
Borderlands - Last updated: 3 August 2016 Borderlands 2 - Last updated: 4 August 2022 Borderlands 3 - Last updated: 8 August 2024
No Borderlands titles include anti-cheat: https://areweanticheatyet.com/?search=borderlands
Here is another person, 7 years ago trying the exact same outrage-based engagement farming strategy of linking a TOS update and implying a nefarious intent: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/8naopt/take_two_a_spyware_apocalypse/ It’s exactly the same “Take two is spying on you!!!” content and yet, none of the Borderlands games have added spyware and none have added kernel anti-cheat.
Also, if you read the 2018 and 2025 TOS you will notice notice that the information that they collect in the 2025 TOS ( https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/ ) is exactly the same as it was in 2018.
TL;DR - Just because you read it on the Internet, doesn’t mean it is true.
I just don’t understand anticheat or copy protection on PvE games. I can understand it if you don’t want to play against a cheater, but this is a cooperative shooter.
See you’re looking at it from the point of view that it would serve the player experience, but that’s not what it’s for, it’s to mine your data
We haven’t gotten another Middle Earth game because it had an online requirement
Now look where we are
deleted by creator
Hey, you posted this twice. Pretty easy to do, if your initial post does not go through and you hit Reply again…
IIRC Borderlands 3 scales the value of loot to the game’s difficulty setting, with some mechanics aimed at encouraging players to join online coops at high difficulties in order to earn more valuable loot. I imagine cheats undermine that intent, and I also imagine borderlands 4 might be aiming at a pay to play scheme.
I’m guessing this EULA is being used for all their IP with the intent of taking advantage of it in the future.
It’s for precedent on future games and to sneak in shit for later. Wittle down your expectations and privacy, make it “normal”.
Need to protect those purchasing opportunities from cheaters.
I sometimes wonder what will happen when EAC, that has root access to millions of PCs, gets compromised or has grunty employee and pushes malicious update
Same thing that happened to genshin when it’s anti cheats got compromised I would guess. Not a lot and everyone ends up not caring.
Because normal people do not give a single fuck about the technical aspect of data privacy.
That’s right. I’m not lying at all when I say that none of my friends care about privacy. It’s actually quite frustrating.
Yup, same here. As long as it’s convenient, my friends/family don’t care what is taken from them.
Then the death squads will come in, and they’ll ask ‘how could this possibly happen!?’, getting fucking pissed or saying “we couldn’t have known!” when you answer, and offer an ‘i fucking told you so’ in line for the camps.
It probably spys on you already.
The company that makes the Overwolf game launcher is an Israli cyber security company that gets money from the US.
Tencent spys on people for China through a lot of the games they own.
Holy fuck I did not know about Overwolf. That’s the last time I download something from my, apparently, dipshit friend (no, this is not the only stupid thing he’s done).
I think it’s kind of ironic you call your friend apparently a dipshit for not knowing something you also didn’t know… pot calling the kettle black & all.
Reading comprehension is hard. I get it.
Hey, maybe your friend didn’t know either!(nor did i😭)
Yes that’s the problem, he doesn’t know a lot of things. He also doesn’t seem very keen on learning them.
He’s young, so I still have hope for him but god damnit he’s stupid and a potential hazard apparently.
Crowdstrike 2.0
LOL. I loved the Borderlands franchise, until Epic made their evil dog shit app store and the Borderlands devs sold out to them. Motherfuck Borderlands forever now. Thanks for the warning so I don’t accidentally reinstall any of it from Steam.
Bro get a life, it’s not that serious. Evil app store lmao as if they’re out to murder you and your family
I know thats not a risk for you, but this data could genuinely be used by the us government to do that in the near future, for many marginalized populations.
Especially queer people and anyone who could be seen as an immigrant.
Some of us have real problems in life, and have to actually give literally a single fuck about the world.
Yes, the government is going to get you by installing spyware in a game launcher that nobody uses. You won’t care a shit about or vet at code level any of the 200+ closed source games you will play in your life because they’re all fine in your fantasy land, but one game launcher is out to kidnap you.
You know the parent company has military contracts, right?
Ok so that explains the bad reviews, but why is steam giving the game away for free? Also BL3 is heavily discounted
Probably because borderlands 4 is on the horizon and sweat-gland randy caught some flag for tweets.
My guess is that it was planed to be good PR.
Publisher made it free to propagate their spyware.
I think it’s up to the publisher, and not steam, to give the game away for free.
🏴☠️ is free and without shenanigans.
giving root level access to russian crackers instead
If you go to the right sites you won’t get any malicious code. Stop spreading corpo propaganda.
There is nuance here. Not every crack is malicious but you have to assume they all are because some of them are. Trusting a source is irrelevant. Many security products will falsely tag cracked software as dangerous just because it’s cracked, not because it found a specific bit of nasty code, and this feeds the idea that you can’t believe when people tell you cracked software is unsafe. But there are many truly bad cracks out there. When in doubt, don’t trust it.
And you should always doubt free shit.
Same is true of any software these days, not just cracks…
it isn’t propaganda.
it’s been a while since I’ve used windows, but I remember having to give administrator privileges to software installers, whether they are from legitimate vendors or from ripping groups with modified code
Thats a windows thing so it can put files in “protected” folders like program files
What’s with this anyway? A remnant from the single-user days?
Some software installers still ask if I want to install for all users, which require elevated permissions, or only for me, which don’t. In that last option it will not prompt for elevated permissions as it will use one of my user’s folders which I have already all permissions for, obviously.
It’s a security measure that’s half assed. People are so used to it they just click allow but don’t actually look at the prompt anymore. Like I see a lot of people do with cookies on websites.
The unfortunate thing about the UAC prompt is that it gives the software permission to put files in protected folders, but it also gives the software root permission so it can do literally anything else without prompting the user. Except, I believe, if it tries to install unsigned kernel drivers, then the user has to click a new prompt… but you can completely compromise a machine with the permissions that users routinely give to executables that they download from the Internet.
Damn, its such a shame you can’t run a crack in a vm, or on linux via WINE and Proton, aw shucks.
and then run whatever modified code it just deployed on the host, yea
A game with a malicious crack that can escape a VM running on Windows and get to the main OS?
Sure, possible, but not by any means common.
A game with a malicious crack made for Windows that can… do anything nefarious when you’re running it on linux via WINE and Proton?
… Theoretically possible, but I’ve never heard of this actually occuring.
The same, but also inside another linux OS inside of a Bottle or Distrobox… or full VM… all running on a linux system that is significantly atomized with a read only core-os?
… At that point I am quite doubtful anyone is bothering to make a malicious crack that capable… when 99% of the existing game trainers and hacks that you can find or buy online… only work on Windows.
The crowd of people making game exploits and cheat engines… and the crowd of people making malicious game cracks… that venn diagram is almost a circle… and 99% of these people do not bother to ‘support’ linux, in anyway, at all, with anything they do.
Is using any random cracked software ever 100% safe? No.
But neither is say, using a Windows system, with 0 cracks or hacks… but with a MSFT trusted vendor’s 3rd party anti malware software… where said trusted vendor is allowed to push an unverified update to their kernel level anti-malware system… that is actually malformed, and then knocks out about 1/4 of every enterprise Windows PCs on Earth for 2 weeks.
Shh, the kids don’t want to hear about the dark side of free things (oh hey, a new Meta service!)
/s
Over wine?
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Yikes. Is the review in the screenshot true? They got root anticheat? Or rootkit data harvesting?
He said they added a kernel level anticheat in the TOS which is true. But they seem to have not included it in the game yet. But they tell that by possedong the game you allow them to. Edit : typo but can’t correct “possedong” now
I’d like to know how your autocorrect learned this word
That’s a typo from an i to an o, commenter probably meant possessing but made a mistake and tried to type posseding, I suspect their native language is french given their username and “to possess” in french is “posséder”.
That being said, a possedong sounds intriguing
Do you do osint ? … That pretty Mich on point. I use a English/French keyboard and sometime autocorrect do strange things.
I had to look this up… looks like it’s a whole thing
Really ? I though, since you used a though process used in osint. Osint is open sources intelligences, it is looking for data about something/someone in data available for all
No, it’s misinformation and people who uncritically repeat things without verification.
I’ve had the game installed for years and have to manually apply updates, there hasn’t been one. e: I just checked, last update in Steam is dated 2022
All they’ve done is make their TOS universal across all of their games.
e: adding this from last post. TL;DR: People are spreading misinformation
He said it, root access level in the TOS of BorderLand. Not that a root kit is included, but that they allowed them self to inclid it whenever they can. That not misinformation…
It is misinformation if the things he said are not true.
So, let’s look into the claims.
Here’s the TOS:
https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/
There is nothing about root level access.
In addition, if you look at the patch history for Borderlands 2 on SteamDB, you will see that the last update for the game was 4 August 2022.
So, to be clear:
There is nothing in the TOS that requires you to submit to a rootkit and there is no spyware that has been added. The comment in the OP is simply wrong.
This is what happens when you simply read social media and repeat what you’ve heard without checking to see if you’re spreading misinformation.
I’m really curious on what actual specific steps you took to “check”. It took me about a few minutes of reading to find it.
https://www.take2games.com/privacy/en-US/#3-sources-of-information
Furthermore, https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/#10-availability specifically section 10.2
I hope the people who upvoted your misinformation are able to see this, please think of your actions and conduct before posting multiple comments defending a company if you’re worried about misinformation.
That… doesn’t actually rebut anything FauxLiving said. That they may use anti-cheat, and that they may have automatic updates, aren’t the claims in question here.
Ummm those two would statements would in fact allow them to install a “anticheat” rookit/kernel program at any time without your knowledge…
Sincerely thank you for commenting. I was completely dumbfounded with @[email protected]’s statement and wasn’t sure if I wanted to waste my time with a response if it was just trolling.
You literally posted the answer to your question. Here is an expansion of the details.
I haven’t read the new TOS but if this review is correct it looks like a GDPR nightmare for them. Good luck to them explaining why they need to collect all that personal data.
That might be US only, where the companies have freedom to get all the customer’s data and do with it as they will.
The list where this doesn’t apply seems to basically be every country with consumer protection laws.
They obviously know this won’t fly pretty much anywhere other than the US so that’s all they’re trying to push.
The “collected data types” in that comment seems to be copy/pasted from the privacy policy
https://www.take2games.com/privacy/en-US/
Most people don’t care about privacy.
Most people in the western civilized world are on Facebook, so…
Sad truth, but it’s no excuse.
but ask those same people whether facebook should be allowed to collect and use all that data, and people will generally say ‘no’.
Do we know this is a thing in the EU?
Due to Steam’s tos updates a few months ago, isn’t take-two opening itself up to a massive lawsuit?
Hm… Ok. Thats crazy. Someone wants to create a new branch of income it seems.
Thats a fucking shame. Now I need to reconsider my plans to buy Borderlands4.
But how will they do it? Which information is gathered from which source? Most of my accounts only hold as little informations as possible. Also my Os knows nothing about me. My MS account neither.
On the other hand my steam 2FA need some mobile information.
Checkout Jump Ship? It’s some weird borderlands, Star citizen, (insert other generic shooter) type game. Pretty neat, was recommended to me by a shooter fanatic friend of mine. I trust his shooting game opinion
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1757300/Jump_Ship/
oh cool, I can see that it’s similar Borderlands by the screenshots, and I can see that it’s like Star Citizen because it’s not actually released yet and they’re taking money for early access.
Hah exactly :D
Happy cake day
😂😂
Unless you use Linux, your OS knows a ton about you. On top of that, with root access to your computer they can do whatever they want and if their system gets hacked you become a member of a bot farm or crypto mine.
Well I use Linux, but not on my gaming pc. I would switch to it because its all amd, but I don’t want to because it lacks the driver suite for my gpu (adrenaline) and I don’t want to install a bunch of small applications to gain a small fraction of options it offers.
It’s a pitty. Because I realy want to ditch windows since its newest iteration.
We should be done coddling the late comers at this point. Yes welcome them and accept them, but at a certain point your level of ignorance became a detriment to your community and you should be made aware of that fact.
Pretty much nailed it, yep.
A youtuber named Hellfire has been on a spree, basically discovering how fucked up EULAs have been in games for the past 20ish years… well this is all brand new news to him and and his Zoomer / Gen A followers.
There is, as of right now, literally zero evidence that Borderlands 2 has been updated with a rootkit, with kernel level anti cheat, anything like that.
The last update to its game files was 2 years ago.
This is almost certainly them updating the EULA everywhere, the precise timing of this being for some specific arcane legal and business reasons… TakeTwo runs a whole bunch more games than juat Borderlands… namely GTA V…
…
Is this EULA bad? Yes.
Is it much worse than it was before, or what other large gaming companies EULAs have, and have had for… a decade+?
Maybe by a bit, but not really, no.
…
Is Randy Pitchford a dumb idiot asshole?
Oh absolutely yes, but that shouldn’t give people the liscense to make completely unevidenced claims about other things.
…
The game does not have a kernel level AC or some kind of rootkit DRM, as many, many people are currently saying it does.
I guess gamer attention span can really hold onto a few keywords and phrases at a time.
… I say this all as person who is vehemently against kernel level AC, who has been pointing out for 4 years, that almost all existing anti cheat systems currently have at least one game that implements their AC, on linux, without using kernel level anything… it is entirely possible to do AC without kernel level shit, even on linux, and has been for at least 4 years. EAC and BattleEye have supported linux for 4 years, but nearly no game that uses them has actually used this feature/available and offered support.
I am glad that this level of hate is finally being directed at shitty EULAs, but lets at least get our facts straight, or actually provide some hitherto unseen evidence that Borderlands has had some kind of sleeper malware in it for at least the past two years, just waiting to be activated by a TOS update to every single Take Two game.
Its a bit more than that:
Would it shock you to know that ALL of these are in the Steam terms of service also?
The only really sus one to me is the forced arbitration clause, and Steam also had that til they were pressured to remove it by multiple legal cases, including a class action brought to them by Steam users just last September. It is only sus because it’s outdated - companies are generally removing them now rather than adding them. https://www.legal.io/articles/5540864/Valve-Removes-Mandatory-Arbitration-from-Steam-Subscriber-Agreement
RE: remaining top 5 bullet points, 3 of the remaining 4 bullet points are uncontroversial bullet points about anticheat. The fourth is banning modding, which is also just a heavy handed anticheat attempt, and not uncommon for online games to add to their ToS to allow banning at their discretion. Either way its clumsy at the least as some mods can be harmless eg HUD mods for colourblind people and deserves some negativity - but not to this level, given everything else is just so boilerplate.
Collected data types: these are all for if you buy stuff with a credit card / paypal / etc off 2k/parent company Take 2. Remember, they sell games with in-game purchases. They also have an app which has location permissions option which is what the precise location is about.
So yes - again, as OP said, this is nothing controversial if you have paid attention to ToS meaning and content over the past 20 years.
Aside from the forced arbitration crap - which Steam, Microsoft, Amazon, Lyft, Uber, Google, AT&T - and hundreds of other major companies all snuck into their ToS over the years, and many have now been legally pressured to remove by consumer rights group. That is stupid because it shows their legal team is behind the times, companies are mostly removing their forced arbitration clauses nowadays because it has been the cause of many lost class actions.
Precise location information? Wtf for?
Oh honey, what’s any of it for?
So that they can have a back door to as many private computers as possible.
Hyper Localized Advertising. Welcome to the future :(
I just saw an advertisement for a custom T-shirt:
“That’s right, I’m a December dad, who lives at 62a, with size 10 feet and prescription glasses…”
/S
“By scrolling past, you agree to sharing with us (and our affiliates) the following collected data types: …”
They use the same terms of service for mobile games and they just dont bother to change it for pc games.
This mistake makes sense to make as a mistake. But also, that’s fuckin asinine
It isn’t a mistake. Writing different EULA for each game costs more money than writing an overly aggressive one that covers most cases.
A bit more than what, not really sure what your point here is? All of those bullet points are similar if not identical to terms in other EULAs half the people in this thread have already clicked thru.
I’ll say it again, if you think this is anything new you haven’t been paying attention. I’m all for calling this fuckery out and pushing for something better. But like where yall been?
Still no actual answers from anyone on how this is ‘more’ than what I described in my op. Sure it’s a more detailed list, but it’s really not the “gotcha” everyone seems to think it is. That is, if youve been paying attention.
I see this kind of comment before and I will never understand it - “other companies do it so just bend over and let us do it to you too!”
People say this all the time about Denuvo too: “Other games already have Denuvo, why are you crying about it here when you’re playing other games?”
And see, that’s the problem - we aren’t playing those other Denuvo games. And same thing applies here, guess what, a lot of us aren’t buying games from gross companies like EA with these shit terms. So when a company we are doing business with suddenly changes their terms to be shit, that’s a valid complaint. Some of us have already been boycotting bad business practices in the industry, so the idea of company changing terms towards the boycott after we’ve already invested in the game feels like a betrayal because it is.
So maybe stop focusing on what you assume the rest of audience is doing and instead go back to focusing on what the people at the goddamn podium are trying to pull?
Why does everyone insist on adding the ‘so just bend over and take’ part whenever someone points out another source of wrongdoing? Like what do yall always take it to mean that the speaker is implying a whataboutism argument? And not maybe as ‘oh shit this has been going on longer than just this maybe we should learn about that too and we might figure out why it hasn’t been stopped yet.’
If “everyone” keeps reading a sentiment you did not intend out of your message, perhaps it is time to consider that you are doing a poor job of communicating your point.
Or you’re being disingenuous and just don’t like being calling on your hissy fit.
I dunno, take your pick.
It’s the first one, I’m terrible at effectively communicating nuanced points.
And I mean yall could interrogate the statement instead of reaching a conclusion and then responding but I get it.
But also, fuck that. Do more work as the reader.
Also, piss off with your infantilizing ‘hissy fit’ bullshit.
What point are you trying to make? You say you’re “all for calling this kind of fuckery out” but then you’re criticizing people for calling it out? And who cares what other EULAs might say? The point is that the license agreement for this game and others owned by this company didn’t say this shit before, and now they do. The company is actively making their user agreement more hostile to the users which is what people are pissed about.
That’s just not true.
Here’s a Reddit user trying the same kind out outrage farming 7 years ago using Take 2’s TOS and implying it allows spyware: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/8naopt/take_two_a_spyware_apocalypse/
If you look at Valve’s TOS or any other game developer who has games with an online component, you will see the exact same language regarding data collection. The language being added is to comply with laws, like the GDPR, which requires specific language indicating what data is collected and how it is used.
The data that is being collected is the same as it was 10 years ago. There’s nothing new here, just a YT video that got a lot of views and social media being full of people who don’t fact check anything.
That it takes more critical thinking to accomplish the organized action needed for real change than leaving a bunch of negative reviews.
I never once said ‘other company’s do it so just deal with it.’ Fuckawhataboutism. I said “if you think this is new, you haven’t been paying attention.” What I shouldn’t have left unsaid was ‘the review is a nice start and show of intention. but we need a lot more dedicated, well organized action, to actually accomplish any change.’
But people read into things what they want to hear.
Let’s ride the wave. Turn this into a huge controversy known industry-wide. Then, next game that comes out with EULA like this, we say “THIS GAME HAS A BORDERLANDS-STYLE EULA”. Pretend it’s new to exploit the shock value and get the gamers riled up. Then, the industry gets better.
Tell the frog that the pot wasn’t always this hot.
Thank you for an actually constructive response. You’ve honestly brought me around a bit with this.
If more folks are waking up and shaking a stick at it or doing something but blindly click through (thus legally unenforceable) EULAs I’m all for it.
Better late than never.
I get that and agree, this is just a crappy and kinda dumb stick to be wasting the energy on because it makes the side opposing the injustice look like petulant children instead of enabling effective action.
I don’t click thru any EULAs. I see bad EULA - I pirate. Then if it makes any network traffic i just block that shit.
yo ho
So…if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see…really?
They know I use Linux and that means they know too much
Without using exploits to escape the container, not much. A very empty Windows environment with a single game installed, your network interfaces and any directories that the Flatpak has access to (usually just the SteamLibrary directories).
The TOS (https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/) changes are mostly related to data that they collect via their interfacing with Steam and through their website. This idea that they’re requiring you to agree to a root level access or installing a spyware rootkit is just nonsense.
Not a lot. Even when it isn’t a flatpak windows software running on linux won’t be able to interact with the system anywhere near as much as on windows.
They’ll be able to tell it’s linux, though.
You can install an application like Flatseal (https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal) to inspect the permissions for a flatpak.
How locked down a flatpak is depends entirely on the developer and what permissions they request. By default, they can’t really see much. For example, they can’t even see the processes running on your host or your user and system files.
Flatpak does not do anything about network access though, it can only do no access or full access, no in between. The data they can collect on Linux in a Flatpak is very limited but it does not prevent them from calling home.
New to linux…are flatpaks like sandboxed?
They are somewhat isolated but not sandboxed.
Sort of. They can be, but are not always.
Don’t just review bomb it
Report it to steam as SPYWARE, with the little flag icon on the product page
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Steam has a history of removing things people don’t like (for example: banning ad-ridden games)
So if all these reports can bring them to add this to their TOS, it’s worth it
Fun fact, it’s called a parliament! I regret that I am not an owl.
absolutely. Steam is not to mess with and takes such matters quite seriously.
Doesn’t the screenshot you posted explain what’s going on?
Pirates are winning over my empathy.
They’ve been my best friend for years
Piracy never gave me up, never let me down
They would never turn around and desert me
Might maroon me for fucking up the FOSS though.
That. The content of the screenshot you posted. That is what’s going on.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Owns Rockstar Games, Zynga and 2K. So if that’s all their games, it includes at least these: Bioshock series, Borderlands series, Civilization series, Grand Theft Auto series, Mafia series, Max Payne series, NBA 2K series, PGA Tour 2K series, Red Dead series, WWE 2K series and XCOM series.
Amazing stuff!
That’s just a list of games that used to be good and now suck.
I object to that for XCOM
True, it was always bad :p