Epic launcher collects Steam friends & play history

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/15/2019 08:26 AM | source: dso gaming | 53 comment(s)

Resetera’s member Madjoki discovered stumbled into the intersting find that Epic Launcher is collecting players’ Steam friends and play history. Going into more details, Madjoki found out that Epic Games Launcher on start up searches for Steam installs and proceeds to get list of files in your Steam Cloud.

This also includes game saves for every user that has logged in on your PC, reports DSO gaming.

“Steam Cloud is stored under userdata[account id] if you wanna check

It will also create encrypted copy of configlocalconfig.vdf.
This file contains your steam friends, their name history (groups you’re part of, are considered “friends”).

It seems friends might be used for friends suggestions, but I don’t even use that feature and it collects more than that.

While it’s called “localhistory” it is synced from cloud

It will read, encrypt and then write copy to: C:ProgramDataEpicSocialBackupRANDOM HEX CODE_STEAM ACCOUNT ID.bak
It will also keep historical entries there.”

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KissSh0t
Senior Member

Posts: 11061
Joined: 2011-10-22

#5650528 Posted on: 03/16/2019 01:16 AM

Maybe if you're a good boy with high social credit, they may even sponsor a game addiction camp visit after looking at the hours you've logged

Ughh.. yeah.. I'd be getting 1000 years dungeon if they saw how many hours I've wasted in space engineers....

metagamer
Senior Member

Posts: 2353
Joined: 2018-04-10

#5650536 Posted on: 03/16/2019 01:45 AM

Is reddit funny? the pc gaming bit is the main thing I go there for, and then some early access games that have pages on reddit.

reddit is great. but you have to ignore the drama that happens on there every day.

RzrTrek
Senior Member

Posts: 2550
Joined: 2012-04-16

#5650541 Posted on: 03/16/2019 02:30 AM

It's higher than 40%. 48.4% of the shares excluding employee stock options and they have two representatives on their board of directors. I'll just torrent anything they poach, I'm not installing that spyware garbage that looks for winnie the pooh memes on my PC.
They also blocked sales of the division 2 on anything except the ubisoft store directly or the epic games store. They're a blight on the pc gaming scene right now. frack them and their engine.
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-division-2-wont-be-available-from-third-party-stores-after-launch/

I don't agree with what you said about "torrent anything they poach"... why play the game to begin with? Piracy should never be the solution!

The only way for these corrupt, greedy and shortsighted companies to go away is to stay principled; not buying or playing their games.

rl66
Senior Member

Posts: 3371
Joined: 2007-05-31

#5650617 Posted on: 03/16/2019 10:54 AM

Again, it's public data. That means it's not for the user to decide to share. If you don't want it shared, stop using Steam.

EDIT:
Doesn't change my point that people are whining over something so petty. It's not like any of that data is incriminating or can be used for potential malice.
Not at all, in the latest cluf version it is writen that steam can't share without your consent. Steam have been sued and lost about this point few years ago.
On counterpart epic ask to the user about sharing steam info with them and the button is unchecked (mean NO) by default.
It's like Amazon with Twich, to have purple skin in game, people are ready to share their info and get prime... And after they complain about their data leaking.

Most company are not fair, but if user are st**** enough to play their plan...

sverek
Senior Member

Posts: 6073
Joined: 2011-01-02

#5650629 Posted on: 03/16/2019 11:32 AM

I am amazed this thread didn't turn into "Burn the Epic Witch" kind of thread.

pats self on shoulder.

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