Does World of Warcraft have spyware?

#1 Wow. Very interesting, Paul. I had no idea.

#2 While it may be considered as such, the purpose of "warden" is not for spyware, but for anti-cheat/anti-hack.

As (should be/is) obvious from the site you pulled this from, as well as the first line in the quote you provided, the purpose of warden is to deny cheaters the abilities they have to mess with gameplay.

This actually is a very important topic to the community as both game players and game developers, so we'll probably give a lot of leniency to posts made in this thread, but please let's not turn it into a "cheating is good/bad", or "cheating countermeasures are good/bad" discussion!

#3 The point is: How do we prevent cheating without invading the privacy of the legit players?

#4 We can't, but WE also shouldn't track other people computers without their consent. This is worse than spam and other normal spyware where you get infected for free.

Cheaters are a problem I agree, maybe report a cheater would help (hardly with 500.000 online at any time) but we definitly shouldn't invade other people privacy...

IMHO of course ;)

#5 Thats why I started this topic. Preventing cheating is fine, but I don't like being spyed on. Thats just a gross abuse of power. The average joe reading a EULA isn't going to understand what all the jargon means but once he knows that his privacy is invaded it's a whole nother story

Quote:
As (should be/is) obvious from the site you pulled this from, as well as the first line in the quote you provided, the purpose of warden is to deny cheaters the abilities they have to mess with gameplay.

I understand thats the purpose, but who the hell knows what they could be using all that info for. Read the whole article it's not like they are just checking common things, they actually can parse through text files and all kinds of crap collecting info that they need not collect, and to what end. It justr isn't right.

#6 Also, at what point is this information going to be determined valuable enough that the people who are already gathering it could just throw another line in the EULA and start selling it?

#7 I'm not arguing for or against this type of monitoring, but the one thing that snippet doesn't mention is the type of data sent to Blizzard. From the above text I'm under the impression that warden scans your pc then decides for itself if you're cheating (I'm sure the author found the string 'WoW!Inmate' right in the exe), then sends a 'remove' request to Blizzard, so your personal info never leaves your pc.

#8 Section 13 of the WoW EULA pretty clearly states that Blizzard will gather whatever they want from a player's machine to enforce its anticheating policy. It mentions examining pretty much everything; RAM, HDD, CPU, OS. It also clearly states that they make the sole determination concerning what is cheating or not. It is very clearly written without any legal jargon. In fact, I was surprised how plainly most of the WoW EULA was written when I just went to look at it.

There is not a gross abuse of power here. We either consent to the EULA and play the game or we don't. We simply can't have it both ways. Is invasion of privacy by consent truly an invasion of privacy? In my opinion, that'd be like me inviting someone into my house and then saying they were guilty of breaking and entering.

An average Joe not reading the EULA is no different that someone not reading a lease before signing and then getting burned by the terms. People must understand that contracts come in many forms. Protect your interests in all matters no matter how trivial they may seem or accept that you're going to get the shaft. Do not relinquish your rights simply because you don't have the time or knowledge to fully comprehend what you are giving up. Find the time or find someone to explain it to you. And always keep in mind that a contract should always be an exchange of equal value. If what you are receiving (playing Wow) is not as valuable as what you are giving up (money and privacy), simply do not agree to it.

As to Midhir's question about collection information now and then potentially selling it later. That seems a more interesting point of discussion. Financial institutions are now required in the U.S. to inform their customers of the privacy policies because of issues like this. Consenting to the interchange of personal and financial data has always been part of the contracts governing financial dealings. Relatively recently, financial institutions have discovered the value of this information outside of the purposes that people were agreeing to. But there was no legal reason preventing the institutions from using the information they had gathered for other purposes. Because of the ambiguity, new laws were written to govern financial institutions in these matters.

#9 Well I dont have WOW so I really don't know what is stated in their EULA. However I am still against collecting data from computer if that isn't clerly stated (not just hidden in EULA). If it continues this way we will need a lawyer before we install game or software on our computers.

#10 This has been done in PunkBuster (and many other programs before!).

It's nothing new! Also, the article says that from what the author can see, there's no data sent to Blizzard except a hash.
There's not even one place in that article where he says that the program will send Blizzard your data.

It is however a very thin line between gathering information, and sending it. And that's why he wrote the article.

#11

Quote:
Section 13 of the WoW EULA pretty clearly states that Blizzard will gather whatever they want from a player's machine to enforce its anticheating policy.

I didn't find something like that in the in section 13 of the WOW EULA Did it get update?

#12 Just like punkbuster looking at your BF2 files. No biggie. Eschelon logs almost everything you dnld already anyway.

#13 The EULA on the WoW site may be out of date. The one I looked at was the one presented in game dated 20050607. You are forced to scroll through it twice and click accept after each patch. I'm sure that they make changes as issues like this come up.

@Denis

What do you mean by hidden in the EULA? Every MMORPG I've played has been very intrusive about getting you to read and accept the EULA. Is there some way that the information in the EULA could be presented differently to players? I still believe that it is the individual's responsibility to protect their own interests, but perhaps the publishers could do something different as a good-will jesture to prove they are not really trying to put one over on the players?

#14 The real flat out point here is not that people dont understand the eula.... its that people dont read it... they just click i accept and play the game... that means you concented to it whether you knew it or not... and if you didnt it was your own fault (im guilty of this too but i dont complaine when i find out they scan my stuff to see if im cheating etc so no biggie :P ) also with a customer base of now over 8 million peoples (BTW no game in history has EVER done that before!!!) they have to do something along this lines or the game would end up being ruined for notmal players by the cheaters *shrug*

nothign to whine about here... if you want to play it you agree to the eula and go by there rules... dont like it... find another game.. its that simple :) you give them permission, no spyware about it :)

#15 This isnt about cheating.
its about the monitoring of your activities.
so they can markey thier other products to you.
like ea gives a Shit if you cheat.

they might act like they care, just to slow up the whinners.
but honestly they dont give a rats ass.

they just want more money, and marketing is where it is at.

#16 Why would they need to gather information about your system when youre not even playing? the process should only run if you're actually running the game, or better yet, logged onto a server. and I'm sure theyre putting all that information about the programs you're currently running to good use.

I agree that this is a serious invasion of privacy. I for one wouldnt want some stranger knowing all about the porn sites I frequent...

#17 First off the only way to catch botting programs and cheat programs is to see what programs you have running. WoW as most people know by now is the largest user base mmorpg ever. So they have to think of their investments, several mmorpgs have been crushed from botters and cheaters, either losing money because it happened so early in the game, or not getting to make as much as they would have. The reason they lose money is because the real players get pissed off about those bots/cheats and leave to find another mmorpg. Lineage 2 for example ignored botters at first because they were too nervous about doing anything that might result is a lawsuit etc etc. and all the real players left they lost tons of bussiness finally went on a mass ban of botters and tried to beg all the players to come back.
If players want a cheat/bot free place and I am one of those people I have played so many video games over my life it's disgusting and the one thing that has made me quit games so fast is cheaters and for mmorpgs botters. I have nothing to hide on my computer and wouldn't care about that. Now if blizzard was selling the information or using it to get at people things like that, sure I'd get rid of the game. But I highly doubt that.
To make a very very stretch of a reference but it's the psychology Im' going for not the situation. Americans get outraged everytime the government invades privacy but the moment they catch terrorists or stop a terrorist plot by doing it everyone cheers, if they dont' invade our privacy and a terrorist act happens everyone in the US says why isn't the government doing more to prevent this.
The moral being you can't have it both ways if you don't want cheats/bots then they have to monitor for cheat/bot programs. If you don't want to be monitored discretely with nothing bad coming from the information then play a game with cheats/bots but with how good cheat/bot programmers are and the vast vast user base of mmorpgs you can't have it both ways.
And I also agree that a lot of people refues to read eulas and then get mad about them, which is silly.

#18 Sears:

while I dont completely disagree with you.

I will reiterate that big business will use your information for monetary gain.
period.

now you can go ahead and think cheaters have something to do with it.
if you re-read the eula you will note that this is not just during gameplay time.

they are collecting web browser information.
it is for money, they dont give a Rip about cheaters.

Everquest, did not seem to suffer from the great botters.
nor did Asherons call.

#19 @ Badguy

While I cannot comment on Asherons call, both EQ and EQ2 were destroyed by botters and a heck of a lot of people left both games.

Even after over 1000 accounts were banned on EQ2 for botting, they still came back under new accounts.

There are certain zones that are just not playable because of them.

Personally I thank Blizzard for adding this to their software, and frankly don't give a damn about them possibly selling the info.. After all, isn't that the American Way??

Regards

Graham Evans (Moria)
(in Canada :) )

#20 Yes believe it or not botters are having an impact on such things. The earlier the game the less it suffered from botting, at first the macros weren't good enough and also companies hadn't formed who's whole living came from botting (which brings us to the fact of people who hate botters still go buy in game items from stores causing more botting). I played AC and EQ both for the first 3 months they were out ( I tend to not stay with one game longer then that I get bored). And on neither of those games did I come across a botter and covered the whole game map. AC I played an insane amount and had no such issues, so as for what happened later on I can't be positive, although Graham seems to agree botters kill games. Lineage2 I got the day it came out and played this one for 1 month canceling before my free month ran out. Botters were there from day 1 and were in so great of numbers in so many areas the real people could not play the game. This game was crushed by botters as I previously posted so won't bother recapping that all. Botting can truly bring down a game.
The part that amuses me the most is how many people who hate the "spying" will continue to play that game while complaining.
In blizzards defense that they are using it to at least some good I've heard and read of many people banned for botting offenses, most of whom of course felt it was unfair to be banned for it. But when they listed what they were doing it was 100% botting. Such as one guy complained, he was a high level character and set it up so that he could improve his other weapon skills by having it attack a mob that couldn't kill him whil ehe equipped weapons he had no skill in and left, then came back after several hours to check and if needed switch to a new type of weapon. Blizzard nabbed him and banned him instantly so congrats to blizzard for enforcing their rules