The Ongoing Disasters of the EPIC Games Store

Warning: Bad Language. Angry rhetoric. Both Videos, actually all I could find were pretty P.O.'d about the situation.

Metro Exodus devs threaten to discontinue Metro on PC if Epic Games sales flop
Retro Q Gaming
Premiered 11 hours ago
Hope my refund gets approved. It probably will because Steam are good like that.


Metro Exodus Developer Attacks and Threatens Fans Over Epic Games Store Exclusivity Backlash
Griffin Gaming
Published on Feb 2, 2019
A Metro Exodus Developer at 4A Games has attacked and threatened fans in response to backlash over Metro Exodus being a timed exclusive to the Epic Games Store after being pulled off of Steam. This Developer threatened pc gamers to either buy the game on Epic Games or there would be no more Metro games released on PC ever again. Do we have another Don't like it, don't buy it" situation again. Of course this comes in the wake of the previous controversy surrounding this game being pulled off Steam and the overall negative sentiment towards Epic Games. Let me know your thoughts.


4A Games developer: If Metro Exodus does not sell on the PC, the next Metro will not come out for it
FEBRUARY 2, 2019 JOHN PAPADOPOULOS 345 COMMENTS
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/4a-g...e-pc-the-next-metro-will-not-come-out-for-it/

"Last month, Deep Silver announced that Metro Exodus will be a timed-exclusive title on Epic’s digital store for the PC. Obviously, this frustrated a number of PC gamers – with some review bombing both Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light on Steam – and on Gameru’s forum, a 4A Games developer has expressed his feelings toward this whole situation.

This 4A Games developer with the nickname “scynet” admitted that it was a sudden decision to announce the timed-exclusive deal with Epic Games only one month prior to the game’s release and that it could cause some inconvenience to players. Scynet also claimed that those that decide to pirate the game would have done so, regardless of this timed-exclusive deal, and those are not the players that the developers target.

However, the developer went one step further and stated that if all PC gamers boycott Metro Exodus then the next Metro game (if there is one mind you) will not come out on the PC. Now I’m pretty sure that the developer was exaggerating here but it begs the question; how many PC sales can guarantee the continuation of the Metro franchise on the PC?

Of course, this is the opinion of only one developer and not of the entire studio or the publisher, however it shows how nervous some of 4A Games’ developers actually are. And, to be honest, we all know that the publisher actually makes the final decision. If the publisher wants to release a game on the PC, the developers will either have to develop it or let another team handle that version.

Scynet also stated that 4A Games is currently putting the final touches to the PC version of Metro Exodus, which is currently scheduled for a February 15th release!"

Metro Dev: If PC Gamers Boycott Us Over Moving To Epic, Then We Just Won't Make Games For PC
BY SAM WATANUKI – ON FEB 02, 2019
https://www.thegamer.com/metro-dev-threatens-no-more-games-for-pc-with-epic-store-move/

Found this, source unknown:

 

4AGames developer named "scynet" has responded
https://steamcommunity.com/app/412020/discussions/0/1780513643852520184/

https://www.gameru.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=71769&st=0&p=1648737&#entry1648737

Google Translate:

"I watched the bubbling. Impressions are twofold. On the one hand, the withdrawal from the stim is ambiguous, so no one has done so sharply (as far as I can tell). This is new, which could cause rejection. Yes, and such a move pulls the need to install an epic launcher, which could cause some inconvenience to the players, and therefore cause discontent.

On the other hand, the reaction of a certain category of players (onli torrents and all that) is hardly adequate. It seems that people did not want to play, just waited for a reason to pour out their bile. That is, it turns out that we (the developers) for years have been hard and painful, with losses, trying to do something special, but a certain category of players believes that our work is not worth even a couple of minutes to install the launcher. Naturally, it is their life and their right, but then what do they care about the Metro? Obviously, it is not interesting to them. I can only say that they were not our players either, they are not interested in our work, which means that, for example, the opinion of such people is not interesting for me either. What is the point for me personally (and not only) to listen to their opinion?

But! Consider the situation deeper. Someone says that they say they crap Exodus and the previous games in the series, it will make the world better, they will put greedy developers in their place. To this I can answer that in a pinch, if at all all the PC players announce a boycott of the Metro, then the next metro, if it does, is definitely not on the PC. Better or worse, decide for yourself. I personally feel sorry for the loyal fans, yes. But my assessment of the work done personally by me and my friends and colleagues will not change this. I firmly know that almost everyone who pours this dirt on the net is also incapable of a bit of what we have done and hopefully do more. And that means they have no idea what they are talking about.

And further. Despite the fact that during the development I went through each level of each game, hell knows how many times, it is interesting for me to play Metro. I went through the previous parts completely and more than once, and now I am going to go through the whole PC version, to which we make the final touches. For me, this is already a tradition, I always re-pass the game completely before release. Allows you to evaluate the work done. What is it for me? I remember the words of the Prof, which I have heard more than once, both from myself and on the Internet - the game must be made for myself, so that you like it first. And only schA begin to understand this fully - no clever man can shake me about the value of the work that we have done. And there will always be disgruntled."

 

They are just asking for a backlash with statements like that.

 

I feel like the devs are under the impression they we think the game is bad. But we don't we think it's going to be a fantastic game.

The problem is the shady stunt they pulled. They featured it heavily on steam, like seriously the little start pop up, the big banner etc.

And then they rip it down and go epic only. Well I am sorry but epic lacks many features that would draw me to the platform. The primary two being user reviews and local currency support. Because there is no way in hell I am paying an extra 8-10 dollars for currency conversion fees to buy a game.

That takes me to the final bugbear in the room epic does not support offline play for any game with some form of DRM. A couple of other people and I in a group I hang around managed to find out that you can boot a game from the .exe file but if it has DRM you need the client running which does not work without an internet connection.


In short, 4a in regards to me at least has shot themselves in the foot and them threatening to never release a game on PC because they don't want to listen to legitimate complaints about their practices has ensured their games failure, much like EA, Activision and Bethesda with their shady practices and politics.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

What A way to destroy their own game! Even the creator was conflicted with the move to epic store. https://gamerant.com/metro-exodus-author-epic-store-exclusive/

In a post to Glukhovsky’s Instagram account, he joked about Metro Exodus‘ exclusivity announcement, saying, “Apparently the Steam was not enough for our steam train.” The reference here is that Metro Exodus is about the player taking the “Aurora” train away from Moscow and across the continent. Someone responded to the post, writing,”Lol you’re killing your own franchise.” This drew a direct reply from Glukhovsky, as he stated, “No, I am standing by and watching it be killed”.

 

The writer for metro on the whole I find is a pretty decent guy. He knows where he came from and who got him there. I have a lot of respect for him as a professional writer. Now if only other authors could follow his lead.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

Watched a few interviews with him and have to agree, he seems like a pretty cool guy.

 

List is missing what should be one of the most important things to [gaming] laptop owners ... Offline Mode.

 

Aha, yup, was thinking about that as "Offline Mode" been important for keeping Windows Vista machines running steam installed games

I also read that someone had tried to do this with Epic's Launcher, and although it looked like it worked on some games, others with DRM not only wanted the Launcher to be running, it required active internet access to game.

 

Yea that would be 100% top of the list. I can forgive no user reviews because there are forums and stuff like that I can turn too. But if you have no offline (and they confirmed denuvo for their DRM) I am locked out of playing your games 30- 50 % of my free time instantly devaluing your games to wait until it's at least that much off the sticker price.



@hmscott that was me. Lol though I don't have a full list of games. I think he tried supereat boy, jack box, subnaughtica and one other game.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

Epic's store clearly has a long way to go, and all things being equal, I probably would have preferred downloading it on Steam. But I do think the backlash is overblown. The game will still be playable on PC regardless of what .exe file is run before launching it. It's about time Steam finally started seeing some competition, and I really can't feel sympathy for a multi-billion-dollar monopoly that's had one game taken away from it.

That dev's response to the backlash is pretty ridiculous though.

 

it's actually a dev's personal statement and not representative of 4A games.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqq1h9

so why ppl are taking it as the view of 4A games is very dumb.

If you want to blame someone, blame Deep Silver for this decision.

 

I found this and its a bit more in depth.


Edit: some people asked for source, I found it floating around on facebook.

 

Thank you for finding and posting, I was waiting for this kind of response...The full text:

Metro Exodus · @MetroVideoGame
3rd Feb 2019 from TwitLonger Tweet

"The recent decision to move Metro Exodus from Steam to the Epic Game Store was made by Koch Media / Deep Silver alone.

The recent comments made by a member of the 4A Games development team do not reflect Deep Silver’s or 4A Games’ view on the future of the franchise. They do reflect the hurt and disappointment of a passionate individual who has seen what was previously nothing but positive goodwill towards his work turn to controversy due to a business decision he had no control over.

We respectfully ask that any and all valid feedback over this decision is directed at Koch Media / Deep Silver, and not the developers at 4A Games.

The future release strategy of the Metro series lies with Koch Media / Deep Silver. Our decision to partner with Epic Games was based on the goal of investing in the future of the series and our development partner at 4A Games. We have every intention of continuing this franchise, and a PC version will always be at the heart of our plans."

 

A compromise to this whole debacle would have been to make the game available on both services but price the Steam version higher. If people want that platform's convenience and broader array of features, it will come with a slight premium. If you don't care about that sort of stuff, you can save a few bucks by buying it on Epic's store. This also would have been a great opportunity for the publisher to A-B test and see where customers will actually buy and plan future releases accordingly.

 

Not 100% sure, but I think the Steam Agreement requires pricing to be lowest on Steam, or the same at most, so not lower elsewhere. Although I can't find that now...

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/pricing

 

this is really a shame.....shame on you 4A

 

again, how is it 4A games' fault? read the tweet!

 

How to ignore all of Deep Silver's games from Steam store.

From: https://steamcommunity.com/app/412020/discussions/0/1780513570967671335/

1) Go on to https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/deepsilver
2) On the top right, click the hyperlink "Deep Silver", right under the Developer Hyperlink.
3) This is their face page on Steam where you can browse all their games. On the top right there is a gear icon. Click it.
4) Select "Ignore all content from this publisher". Now you will no longer see their games in the store unless you directly search for it.

 

I'm just going to wait a year for it to show up on Steam. It'll probably be cheaper by that time as well. This way, I can punish Deep Silver up front and then reward the developers who had nothing to do with this decision, on the back end.

 

Steam really was used for free advertising.

https://www.spieltimes.com/news/met...re-epic-games-exclusivity-production-process/

“For how long were you informed about the decision?”, “While you can’t comment on the exact date you were informed, tell me how long has it been. A year? Five months? Two years?” and “Was it before E3 2018?” were all sorts of questions I asked.

It was after E3 2018 when 4A Games was informed about the Epic Games Store exclusivity. Metro Exodus was still a game for Steam in terms of development before that time of period. “Well after that(E3 2018), that’s all I can say”, my source confirmed.​

 

Ahh, here's a steam developer providing the same answer, he doesn't provide a reference:

If Steam always take 30% from sales why doesn't the Dev just lower the prices on his website to make it more attractive for new players.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/5px0to/if_steam_always_take_30_from_sales_why_doesnt_the/

TheMelnTeam 50 points· 2 years ago
"Almost certainly in the agreement to have Steam distribute the game, part of the deal was not to intentionally undercut Steam's sale price elsewhere.

In other words it's doubtful Steam would allow this and still be willing to offer the game itself."

TynanSylvester Lead Developer 46 points·2 years ago
"This is the correct answer."

 

More fun on twitter:
https://twitter.com/mshankute/status/1092117037592297472

carl @mshankute
Replying to @MetroVideoGame
"the people who are mad about this represent the most embarrassing elements of the gaming community. Please rest assured that real Metro fans will be playing Exodus wherever it is released, especially if the platform is one that's better for the devs"

Kane @KaneJedina 16h16 hours ago
"do not buy on epic and install that launcher it will pick up all your personal info search on internet people are hacked on daily base and bad servers you cant even login sorry on my bad eng."

mori teapot @niwatorichi 16h16 hours ago
Replying to @mshankute @MetroVideoGame
"Im mad because I had to deal with a data breach and account break-ins spammed endlessly to my email all because i made an epic account. I bought exodus months ago expecting to play it where it was advertised. Epic is **** and they stole customers and ransomed a game and its devs"

ChipBoundary @ChipBoundary 11h11 hours ago
"Not one of those things is true. Not a single one."

mori teapot @niwatorichi
"Replying to @ChipBoundary @mshankute @MetroVideoGame
"Say that to my email and receipt dude"

https://twitter.com/MetroVideoGame/status/1092115385061646336

josh is dabbing @rabidrhino01 19h19 hours ago
"My dude all you have to do is download a new launcher it’s not that big of a deal if you don’t want fortnite on your computer then don’t download it all this is doing is creating competition for steam which is a good thing. The consumer wins in this situation"

Leonardos Mylonas @DrTesleo 19h19 hours ago
"download a launcher that does everything wrong in comparison to steam, has 0 features, no security at all accounts gets hacked all the time... And the fact that i preordered a physical copy with steam activation but they decided afterwards to give me epic key is anticonsumer ****"

JTmanic @jt_manic 14h14 hours ago
Replying to @DrTesleo @rabidrhino01 and 2 others
"Also 1)auto signs you up for email spam if you don’t actively opt out when buying/dLing a game. 2) I had an inactive account on epic for months that I would get emails about attempted signs in on. Took asking customer service to nuke the account entirely to make it stop."

Tobias @tobiaslane 14m14 minutes ago
Replying to @jt_manic @DrTesleo and 3 others
"^this. Had steam, origin, bnet, uplay for years and years without incident. Within a week of making an epic games acct my gmail went nuts w attempted logins from overseas and their customer support blamed me. Epic games launcher is ****ing terrible. THATs the issue."

Malloc420 @Malloc420 5h5 hours ago
"also shows epic (and others)that buying exclusivity deals works and that's all they will do which is not good for the consumers."

https://twitter.com/MetroVideoGame/status/1090924718478295040

 

oh wow your right its not 4a i retract...i just skimmed

 

I haven't had any email spam but I opt out of everything by default. Though I have been having issues with my network on my machine being clogged so I am gonna nuke it when I get home and see if that makes a difference.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

Metro sucks anyways, its the Kiddie dumbed down version of stalker. Made for console franchise.

 

Apparently STALKER 2 is happening, but don't get too excited
Does it even exist?
Robert Purchese, Senior Staff Writer, @Clert, 16/05/2018
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...alker-2-is-happening-but-dont-get-too-excited

"Apparently STALKER 2 is happening and will be released in 2021.

That's according to Sergiy Grygorovych, owner of STALKER developer GSC, who shared on Facebook: "Today 15.05.2018 I officially declare: GSC GAME WORLD DEVELOPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2."

His post linked to a STALKER 2 website displaying the project's logo and the number "2021", which is presumably the planned release date."

Take it with a pinch of salt.

GSC fell apart in 2011/2012 during development of STALKER 2, coincidentally. The staff who worked there were dismissed by Grygorovych and formed Vostok Games, which makes Survarium and recently announced STALKER-like battle royale game Fear the Wolves, and bolstered 4A Games, which makes the Metro series. GSC hasn't existed in any meaningful way since 2012. To what degree it exists now, if at all - and whether it has a team there capable of making a game - is unknown. Ukrainian developers I spoke to, who were once involved with STALKER, have not seen or heard anything.

The STALKER 2 announcement has questionable timing, arriving alongside news 4A Games has delayed Metro Exodus, a game which looks every bit the STALKER 2 we never got; and close enough to steal some thunder from Vostok's Fear the Wolves, which is racing to release this year.

Nevertheless, both of those games will be out long before STALKER 2, which is three years away if it ever arrives at all."
Comments 21

DiabloSP 9 months ago
"There are many reasons not to trust the announcement. The old GSC was famous for delaying launches indefinetly, launching with myriads of bugs, and lacking something resembling a roadmap on their developments. Announcing a game launch made by GSC in 2021, is something akin to predicting WW3."

The GSC and Stalker 1 / 2 websites can't be reached... maybe it's transient network problems?...

https://www.gsc-game.com/
https://www.stalker2.com/
https://www.stalker-game.com/

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 / Website about the game
http://en.stalker2.org/

 

I always considered stalker a dead franchise. Lol it's been what 10+ years since the last installment?

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

That's a pretty bold statement there...
Personally, between the two I prefer Metro series. But hey, different people have different preferences.

 

Well, I am back with some interesting news, I deleted the epic games launcher and dropped about 5-10% off cpu, knocked off that persistent 5% network connection and so far my Videos have no more issues loading. Weird AF.

 

Makes me wonder if the client is doing some reporting back to Epic’s Chinese stakeholder.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I really do wonder.

I didn't have the foresight to start capturing network data and all that to see what's up but eh, my issues are resolved. I just hope the agent assigned to me appreciates my taste in media.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

Whoa an apology from the creator himself https://www.instagram.com/p/Btg-Cm1gcad/

"So basically they're sorry and hopping for fans not to abandon them"

The pre-orders on epic and their forecast of sales must be very low even on the consoles. This is really sad

 

Buying the game would just be rewarding the exclusivity regardless of the amount of "sorry"s. Are they sorry they entered the exclusivity agreement, or sorry that it seems the deal is going to kill sales of the game?

I hope Exodus does so bad that THQ breaks up Deep Silver and just absorbs it. THQ shouldn't have allowed this deal to be made.

 

your hoping what could be an amazing game flops....LMAO

 

Wow, that's both great news and sad news at the same time...

Geez, I hate to ask, but if you find time to set up monitoring and network packet inspection, it might be worth installing on another test system - even a VM - to see what it was doing...

Clone your C drive into a VM container so it looks the same, I'm sure it must do some poking around to see if the system it's installed on is worth dumping across the internet to them, a clean Windows install might not trigger the activity.

It's interesting for sure.

It's not the game that's the problem, it's the potentially nosy Epic launcher interfering with our systems and our privacy.

The Metro Exodus game is the tasty bait they know you can't resist, the Epic launcher is the Chinese Trojan come to steal your secrets.

Too bad the launcher causes system slow downs and video playback problems, seems it's more than effective, it's rude.

@JRE84 is gonna have to decide if the game is worth the suffering from the Epic Launcher.

 

I'll give it a go if I get the time. Been a bit crazy with the winter overtime and trying to transition careers.

Do you have any links to good applications to use?

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

Not something I can train on or recommend. There are good info's on the internet, google is your friend.

 

Aight. Might be a bit longer then. I'll try and figure that out to get it set up and give it a week to start up its shenanigans. That's about how long it took the first time.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

So first off, is there ACTUAL PROOF that the Epic Launcher has Trojans in it stealing personal info etc..?

So I started doing some analysis.

• they used OpenSSL 1.0.2g/h, they have a metric ton of CVE's, they at least didn't allow weak ciphers though..
• They used Symantec signed certs.. UGH come on guys.
• looks like they used akamai and AWS exclusively
• I don't see anything nefarious in the network traffic, though I didn't watch very long..

Seems like a bunch of FUD unless someone spent some time on this and found something, but I'm left to think Epic would be monumentally stupid to do that knowing it would be found eventually.

 

That outburst was completely unhelpful. As was listing a bunch of things it's not, I could list a whole lot more, but that's not the point, the point is the vendor is likely doing the snooping, which is why we aren't interested in installing a Chinese based game platform.

The same as I won't use a Chinese based rooting kit. Or some random Chinese knockoff of a "free game".

It's been clear for a while those things will get your phone hacked, and now they want to encourage people to get games through a compromised installer in the same way.

Of course we know all of this, and we aren't going to ignore the vast reporting of problems we are seeing, especially when one of our own is reporting problems:

And his problems went away after uninstalling the Epic Games Launcher:

That's enough for me.

I don't have time to unscrew a games machine from that mess, I can wait for the game to come back on Steam.

 

Outburst? I just calmly stated that no one has actually proved there is malware stealing personal info and asked for some definitive proof. I didn't list a "bunch of things it's not", I did some real analysis to see what was I could find out about the launcher, mildly interesting from that perspective. I don't really have the free time to spend hours analyzing it as I'd rather do other things. I'm pretty sure it would be a death sentence for them if they did surreptitiously hide malware in there, because someone would discover it given time. My guess is it's just bugs due to the early nature of the software, if there's performance issues, that will eventually get ironed out.

 

Whether someone external can hack the launcher isn't the question, that's what I said when you started listing how secure it is, that's not the problem, you were listing things that don't matter.

It's the vendor / controller of the launcher itself, who is setting the parameters and destination for the telemetry data collected and sent.

Yes, that is the other thing, lets wait for things to check out, be found out, and reported - until then I wouldn't chance installing Chinese based software on my laptop.

Just like I wouldn't install the examples I gave on my Android devices.

I'd in fact, wait about a year for things to shake out, and then buy it when it's back on Steam.

Update: Oh no! Things didn't check out! The vendor of the Epic Game Installer is one the of the active partners in the Great Firewall of China, and works directly with the Chinese Communist Party (Government) to Censor and Oppress anyone they can gain information leverage over. What a disappointment!, what a surprise!

 

Reddit, Banned in China, Is Reportedly Set to Land $150 Million Investment From a Chinese Censorship Powerhouse
Patrick Howell O'Neill, Wednesday 12:15pm
https://gizmodo.com/reddit-banned-in-china-is-reportedly-set-to-land-150-1832375439

"...The apparently impending Reddit-Tencent marriage is complicated by the fact that Reddit, one of the most popular websites on the internet, is regularly—and is currently—blocked in China as part of the world’s most notorious and sophisticated censorship regime, the Great Firewall of China.

Further complicating matters is the fact that Tencent is not merely a resident on China’s internet—the company is one of the most important architects of the Great Firewall. It’s an interesting source of cash for a Silicon Valley company whose product is essentially speech.

Tencent is, at great cost and ultimately for great profit, literally reinventing censorship in China. The Great Firewall was not built by the Communist Party in Beijing, it’s built by the tech giants all around China. This opaque but clearly powerful relationship between the $500 billion company and the Chinese government raises interesting and unanswered questions about Tencent’s forays into the West, including questions about Reddit’s future.

“It is representative of the strange bedfellows that the interaction of the U.S. and Chinese technology systems creates,” said Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is much bringing them together—money, people, and ideas. And there are serious political forces pulling them apart.”

Censorship monitoring organization GreatFire.org’s statistics on Reddit in China show that it has been 100 percent blocked over the last 90 days.

Spoiler: ...like there's more?...

“I think there’s a widespread misunderstanding of how censorship works in China,” said Adrian Shahbaz, the Research Director for Technology and Democracy at Freedom House. “We tend to think of Great Firewall as this huge thing the state has built. In reality, it’s the companies in charge of weeding out unfavorable information online. There’s a whole host of regulations, one new law passed on average every two days, about what content can and cannot appear online. Then it falls to Chinese companies to comply with this widespread censorship regime set by the communist party itself.”

Authoritarian state actors have a long, hypocritical history of internet censorship. The Iranian government bans Twitter, for instance, while high-level officials including the country’s president regularly use Twitter themselves. Chinese officials and state-owned media are even more popular on Twitter which is, of course, banned in China as well.

The pending Chinese investment in Reddit, a social media company with relatively little Chinese-language community, is a richer twist on that old tale, and it’s a part of Tencent’s expanding global investment strategy.

The Chinese company owns about 12 percent of Snap, for instance, even though Snapchat is banned in China. Tencent also owns a piece of the chat app Discord even though, you guessed it, Discord is blocked in China.

If Tencent does kick in $150 million on a nearly $3 billion valuation for Reddit, as TechCrunch reports, it will be interesting if we ever find out exactly what it means. What kind of influence and position, if any, will Tencent gain at Reddit? Neither company responded to Gizmodo’s questions.

Tencent has a long and intimate relationship with Chinese censors. They own the massively popular messaging app WeChat, which is closely watched and censored by the Chinese government to the point of Chinese citizens being arrested for comments made on the platform.

China requires close cooperation from all of its tech juggernauts. Tencent, by nature of being one of the biggest companies in Asia, does Beijing’s bidding at a wildly big scale: Over 1 billion monthly users on WeChat require some of the most technically cutting-edge surveillance and censorship techniques in the world in order to follow the government’s strict rules on speech.

Last year, researchers at Canada’s Citizen Lab reported on how Tencent is inventing new ways to censor both text and images on an unprecedented scale.

“The algorithms to perform this kind of image filtering are computationally expensive in terms of time and energy,” report author Jeffrey Knockel said. “Performing this type of filtering is the last thing Tencent wants to be wasting money on, but the fact that it does suggests that there is a large amount of pressure Tencent receives from the Chinese government to implement it.”

Reddit, which in the recent past had numerous executives say the company stood “for free speech,” is of course not alone in receiving the Tencent cash. In addition to Snap and Discord, Tencent’s accelerating investment program has grabbed a piece of over 600 diverse companies globally.

At this point, it would be a small shock if anyone ever turned them down.

“The question becomes who is going to change as a result of that relationship?” Freedom House’s Adrian Shahbaz said. “Is it that these companies are investing just to make money or are they trying to slowly change the norms of how these companies operate or even gather important intellectual property as a result of being on the inside? The broader question becomes, in the future is the internet going to make China more open, liberal and tolerant? Or because we’re all connected are we going to start adopting Chinese practices of censorship and surveillance?”

Chinese firms are also hardly alone in dishing out this kind of money. In Reddit’s last investment round, the company received money from VentureSouq. That’s a venture capital firm based in the United Arab Emirates, a small Persian Gulf nation notorious for censorship, surveillance, and jailing of internet users who criticize the local monarchy. China, however, is operating on a different scale entirely.

“These days, I tend to say that we’re a place for open and honest conversations—‘open and honest’ meaning authentic, meaning messy, meaning the best and worst and realest and weirdest parts of humanity,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was quoted saying last year in the New Yorker.

Hey, you know who has trouble having open and honest conversations on the internet?

If you know all the details from the new investment or just want to chat about the torrid love affair between the Chinese surveillance state and Silicon Valley, I’m here to talk to you too. Email: [email protected]

So, please tell me again how we should all install the Tencent Great Chinese Firewall application as our Epic games installer?

I'd sure hate to miss out on all of that Metro: Exodus goodness simply to avoid funding the oppression of people everywhere.

What a horribly difficult choice.

 

This is nothing new, China has been blocking all sorts of sites for years.

 

Well, I finally managed to get things installed. I'm using glasswire, and it is showing a constant 40kb/s communications to an international server. I just cant tell what it is saying. (not that skilled or equipped)
Steam and GoG have reported 0 outgoing usage in the same time frame (about 45 minutes) despite both downloading games.

I attached a thing that shows the outgoing traffic. but I don't know what to make of it. Though it does seem to pick up a bit when I am doing much more stuff on my computer.

 

Wow, that's nutzo, and to be clear - you aren't actually playing any game through that Epic launcher, right?

The Epic launcher should be completely idle like the Steam / GOG launchers are, as there is no reason for any of them to be in contact with remote servers to facilitate game activity.

If your increased computer activity - up from idle no usage - increases the network transfers and CPU usage of the Epic launcher - traffic increases to the remote servers - that suggests your activity is being logged and shared remotely - in real time!

This is crazy, how did they think noone would notice this activity?

Thanks for doing this for us @NuclearLizard !!

I think this behavior of the Epic games launcher should definitely give pause to anyone desperate to use the new RTX features of Metro: Exodus, don't be a sucker for the bait! It's not worth it!

Nvidia thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/nvidia-thread.806608/page-181#post-10862634
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/nvidia-thread.806608/page-181#post-10862633

 

I'm not using it by any means. It's just sitting there. Waiting. I only have the one game (uninstalled).

Also I noticed there are two instances. One that is idle and one that is reporting to a remote server.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

OK.. So I still don't buy any of this FUD, so I've spent the last couple hours or so capturing network traffic from it's process while it's sitting in the background and I'm doing all sorts of different tasks.

All the connections are to AWS US-East-1 region. This makes sense as they probably have the entirety of their infrastructure deployed to AWS. It also makes sense that it's using US-East-1 in their multi-region scenario as it's an extremely popular region for this purpose in the US. I would imagine if I was on the west coast I'd be hitting US-West. We have a lot of AWS/GCP multi-region deployments of this sort where I work and we make heavy use of US-East for both cloud platforms. (We spend millions on cloud costs).

It maintains a connection to AWS EC2 infrastructure on port 5222 (XMPP). This makes perfect sense as well because it's most likely using this as a push notification messaging platform for game updates, the friends list, etc.. I would expect to see some traffic going back and forth for this. I do not see any increase in this traffic when I'm just going about my business loading bunches of apps, playing steam games, etc. It just keeps messaging once in a while, which is normal for this type of messaging infrastructure. The network payloads for these messages are encrypted (I would expect nothing less) so I'm not going to be able to inspect the contents unless I can hack this client. I don't have the time or patience to spend trying to find the secrets for this it would not be easy.

It also creates an HTTPS connection to US-East EC2 once in a while, this is probably a check for updates of some sort or maybe just dumping client analytics. Any platform like this would probably send analytics. It could also be maintaining login session. Hard to tell. Again, without the server cert there's not much we can do here to decrypt what's happening.

There's nothing at all interesting about the frequency of this traffic that I can see.

If you want to continue to assume these guys are keylogging you, be my guest. I highly doubt this is happening, nothing is impossible though. They would be monumentally stupid to do so, however.

The amount of info Google is gathering about you dwarfs this, and if you have a Facebook account, forget it. Epic are lightweights in this game by far.

EDIT: oh, I also checked out what was happening with the client opened in the foreground. It pretty much acts like a normal web app. Seems they are using graphql for all their rendering data, pretty good idea. Seems to be coded rather well to be cross platform if they ever get that far. I'm sure they can improve this client's performance in the future, seems to be an OK start though. Building something like this is extremely complicated.

 

Yeah, it's coded really well, even though everyone complains it's crap and completely inadequate as compared to Steam's implementation and wide range of features.

They didn't pay big money for Metro: Exodus to create a money making enterprise, an entre' into the world of big time game selling, certainly not by pulling this last minute switch, even though it was planned months in advance - they knew it was going to piss off a lot of people, but they don't care.

If they wanted to make a happy and profitable game selling ecosystem to rival Steam they wouldn't have pulled this crap, even morons know you don't pull this BS to win customers.

They don't care, all they want to do is to get their software installed on millions of PC's before anyone can have a moment of quiet contemplation, taking time to figure out their motives before installing willy nilly due to their emotional ties and expectations to the game.

And, Metro:Exodus is only the 2nd game with RTX features since release 6 months ago that already has a million RTX nvidiots pre-screened for gullibility chomping at the bit to take the bait.

My guess is since they've easily got caught doing this, if called out in public they'll then turn off the telemetry saying they "fixed it", and then every sucker out their won't give it a second thought, and swallow the bait whole.

But, that same software, with the telemetry switch flipped off, is still installed on their machines, waiting for a software update to flip the switch, perhaps with better more stealthy software implemented to not get caught so easily.

So you found the network traffic is real, and so you have confirmed the data breach is real during times the game(s) aren't running.

Thanks for the confirmation.