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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

It's probably less sinister than it reads. One instance where it really benefits the game to "share data with third parties" is online Age of Empires II (DE). There is a lot of cool content on Twitch and YouTube and there are tournaments, and I think this makes the game more interesting than it would be otherwise. It's only possible because people can spectate ranked online games. Also, there are pages like aoe2insights.com which provide leaderboards, and analyze public ranked games.

I think this is probably some catch-all legalese they "have" to write there, and this is a case of the EULA becoming so stupidly nondescript that it allows everything and explains nothing. It would be probably better though if they said in each game "hey, we will share your score and recordings of ranked games with other players, if you don't want that click here".

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Let the user now about "...where it really benefits the game" and let them opt in

Opt in never works though... tragedy of the commons. I would have probably not opted in, even though I enjoy the streams and the analytics sites. I forgot to opt out, because it really doesn't matter, and actually promptly one of my games was casted once, which was upsetting for a second, but ultimately pretty funny.

Why would anybody opt-in to analytics of a website they are visiting - even if it's strictly first-party, not sharing it with advertizers or Google, just for improving the site? You are gonna click "no".

Same with application analytics - if you know as a developer which functions people use how frequently, and where the app crashes, everyone benefits. The potential dangers are theoretical at best, and you can always opt out. But if it is opt-in, you get completely skewed results.

Controversial opinion, but I think opt-out should be the default in 90% of the cases, and to prevent the undesired outcome (e.g. people making ad profiles) you should not require out-in, but just ban the undesired outcome.

That's part of the problem - opt-in never works because it's an inherently an anti-consumer practice. The industry got so used to vacuuming up as much data as possible that the moment you give customers the option, they do not want to partake.

You know it's a bad thing when you say "If I ask users for consent, nobody will agree to this."

I as a customer want full control of my data and if you, the website owner, try to force me into giving data that I did not consent to (invasive site analytics, for example, that track my page behavior), I will go out of my way to block that through extensions and by just banning things at the DNS level.

> Opt in never works though... tragedy of the commons

That is not the "tragedy of the commons". (Even if Tragedy of the Commons is rubbish)

Make clear why, and people will opt in. If they do not tough luck. Be more attractive next time.

I have experience in exactly this (in a different domain).

I think it is. How about organ donations (I know the comparison is a bit of a stretch, but it is the same situation)? The experience in many countries is that many people say they would be donors, but don't actually get a card. If you make it opt-out, you add some friction to not donating, but people still have a say. I like the model in some US states most, where they ask you when you get a drivers license. You can answer yes or no, but you have to answer something. There is no lazy option.

If there is something that gives you an aggregate benefit, but no immediate benefit, and you have to go out of your way to agree, and maybe there is some scary legalese that you have to sign, then most people will just not bother.

I don't mean harmful things like sharing PII with advertizers, political parties, or law enforcement, but only things like censuses, public transportation statistics, application crash analytics.

Yea, this is a good point. It’d be a travesty if they locked down the API. So much good content comes from low key user data.

Ultimately, if I’m playing in a public lobby, I kind of assume that game data is public anyway.

This is less “user data” like Facebook and more “user data” like my bowling alley automatically posting scores online.

There is a big difference between "We enable others to access data with user permission" and "your game play, activities and usage of games and Xbox Services will be tracked and shared with applicable third-parties, including game developers". The latter means that they leave the door open to that data being sold and shared with "partners" if it's convenient.

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