Are you implying this somehow makes it ok?
This is the part that made me think you were defending it. My apologies for misunderstanding.
Not sure if you play on Linux at all, but a good way to start is to run Steam in firejail. It isolates that environment from the rest of the OS.
Gamers seem to agree that this company should not get away with this. Wherever "we" have drawn the line, Red Shell has apparently crossed it.
I doubt the form they have on their website where you have to know your id to opt out of the spying would hold up in court.
Opt-out as someone already noted, is available on red shell company site but I would try to block it in hosts instead of going on site where you can be again tracked. In a nearly ideal world, Firaxis would ask their customers if they agree for this e-life "improvement" of more accurate ads and whatnot else. In a perfect one, they wouldn't bother including Red Shell at all.
First, and the biggest, is you have to trust these scum. That they are doing only what they say they are and won't decide to do more in the future. Are they being audited? What are the notification capabilities and contracts when they decide to look more invasively?
Second, you have to trust their programming capability. Who knows what update / reporting capabilities it has, and how well secured it isn't (every time Project Zero looks at stuff like this they find holes. Every. Time.)
Third, the lack of transparency. If this is so awesome for me as a consumer, then these companies should prominently disclose it.
Lack of transparency? Go check out redshell.io right now and see how they open up about everything they do pretty damn clearly.
Multiple devs who use redshell announced its integration in patch notes. What more do you want?
Not expect every user to read all the patch notes go to a third party website and fill out an opt out form, and then pray the third party to honour your request. This is slightly different from expecting a game dev to do so - tracking is not their sole business model after all
Facebook is regulated as a EU data processor too. And look what that's done (very little so far.)