Borderlands is struggling with accusations that the loot shooter spies on players. Now, a specialist in game file analysis says whether this is true.
What is the accusation? A few weeks ago, criticism emerged towards the Borderlands games because the publisher Take-Two Interactive changed the terms of use.
- Players left thousands of negative reviews on Steam and accused the game and the development studio of spying on players and their data due to a clause in the terms of use.
- Several reviews stated that the Borderlands games would install spyware. Players refer to a section of Take-Two’s privacy policy.
- When Borderlands 2 was available for free on Steam from June 5 to June 8, a multitude of bad reviews emerged again.
In the past 30 days, the second part of the series received over 8,500 negative reviews. The entire franchise reached over 12,000 criticisms in the same period. Many players stated that they do not even want Borderlands 2 for free (via Steam).
Data analysis expert explains what is behind the spyware accusation
Who is the expert? The YouTuber “EpicNNG” is a modder and dataminer who has released mods for Call of Duty, Payday, and the various Borderlands games. Currently, he is working on the revival of a Borderlands MMO that was never released in Western countries.
As a dataminer, he examines large amounts of a game’s data in detail to discover relationships or valuable information. Oftentimes, it is dataminers who uncover unreleased, new content in games and then “leak” this to the public before it is officially presented by a developer.
EpicNNG, as a Borderlands modder and dataminer, is thus an expert who knows the files of the loot shooter and is capable of assessing whether there is spyware in the games.
Dataminer is convinced that Borderlands contains no spyware
This is what EpicNNG says about the allegations: EpicNNG clearly states that, according to his findings, Borderlands contains no spyware:
First, the biggest question: Does Borderlands contain spyware? The answer is no, there is no spyware in Borderlands. Personally, I have modded every Borderlands game and can confirm: The games contain no spyware anywhere. And yes, this also includes access at the kernel level to your PC. It simply does not exist. The most invasive thing these games have ever done, in my personal opinion, is the implementation of DRM, best known as Denuvo […].
The dataminer then explains that the games do have a system to gather statistics like enemy kills: “The absolute most ‘spyware’ that Gearbox has built into these games is the collection of statistics in the form of tracking activity completions, enemy kills, and character selections. This has been around since 2012, to my knowledge. […] It is extremely common in almost all video games connected to an online service.”
Can the developers secretly add spyware later? EpicNNG is convinced that the developers could not secretly add any form of spyware to the Borderlands games, as modders log and check every hotfix. He explains:
“The Borderlands games contain a hotfix system, which allows Gearbox to make changes to the games from their side. To our knowledge as modders, they currently have no way of sneaking in spyware, nor is there a way for them to mine your personal information for their theoretical benefit. However, if they were to do so – and even if we did not understand how they would do it – we would know immediately that they were doing something, because every single time they apply a hotfix to their server, it is logged by us. We log every single hotfix that goes live. We are able to check and track the changes as soon as they become publicly available on the server.”
This is what the developers say about the allegations: Meanwhile, the developers of Borderlands, Gearbox Software, have also commented on the allegations. They state clearly that the Borderlands games do not contain spyware and that the privacy policies apply to all media and platforms.
This means that the policies also apply to websites or account creation where players must sign up and possibly provide information like a phone number or email address. You can read the full statement from the developers here: Players do not even want one of the best loot shooters on Steam for free – Now the developers are speaking out
