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Comment by boondaburrah | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I was going based off of what I remember from last year when I swore it off. Hopefully they'll allow you to disable it completely, but there was no way when I checked (again, last year).

The fact that it's even there rubs me the wrong way.

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It is an analytics service that you can choose to use or not to use - it's totally up to you. If you don't use it no data is gathered from your users. (Currently it's off by default and you have to explicitly turn it on.)

Check out out FAQ and EULA at http://www.defold.com

(I work for Defold)

>Currently it's off by default and you have to explicitly turn it on.

As others have said, the fact that it is included is worrying and a reason I would not even test drive, however promising it looks, sorry.

Also, opting in for analytics means implicitly opting in for marketing and promotions per the linked site:

"marketing and promotion of our Services or related products, for example sending communications (including by email) for these purposes on our, or a third party's behalf. If you do not want us to use your data in this way please let us know by contacting us at: info@defold.com; "

shady

I don't know about Defold, but I'm getting lots of emails lately that goes like, hi customers, we changed our privacy policies and toc, make sure you read the hundred pages the following link and notice the subtle changes in wording without us providing a diff or breakdown. It is this easy to change default behaviour.

I can understand coming from that perspective, that including analytics could be interpreted as unnecessary for people not actually needing it. One of the reason it was added is since a lot of game devs want to actually see how their game is doing when released. But this is something they don't want to spend precious development time on. That money/time is better spent on doing cool games instead. :)

There is no hidden agenda here, we really just want to enable people to track installs/DAU etc across platforms without writing a row of boring platform specific analytics code.

That passage relates to us reaching out to you as a developer. (Your players and their data is covered in the separate player privacy policy.) If you don't want mails about updates etc just tell us and we'll stop sending them.

You are right, I did not read it carefully. Looking through the player privacy policy is still concerning though. The weasel word reasonably comes up 4 times, including:

3rd party sharing:

"We will only share your data with third parties:

with your consent (including as set out in this Player Privacy Policy);

as reasonably necessary in order to provide the Services to you;"

"as we reasonably believe is permitted by law or regulation; "

Information retaining: "We may retain information about you after you have deleted a Game or after we have ceased providing services if retention of your information is reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations, meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes between members, prevent fraud, cheating or abuse, or enforce this Player Privacy Policy or any other agreement we may have with a user. "

Point 5. looks especially bad to me: "5. Other Information .. We may combine information that we collect from you with information about you that we obtain from such third parties and information derived from any other subscription, product, or service we provide. "

I understand it is not very different from currently accepted practices in privacy policies, and one could say it is unfair to point out just in this case, but it does not make it any better.

Disclaimer: I don't think Defold is a bad actor, just my 2 cents when somebody wants to do the right thing

Thanks for your comments. We're trying to gather concerns about our terms so we can discuss them internally.

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