Privacy policy

[swolo111]

Hello!

I won't go much into the policy itself, since I am sure you have already heard numerous complaints about it and the disrespectful practice of just taking data without explicitly asking for consent or allowing for opting-out (except via a complicated online process which will get rendered useless the moment you start up the game again).

So, I want to explore ways of taking back control, and enjoy great games, without having such grievances about being taken for granted that you would resort to getting a certain DRM-free version of the game that is pre-blocked.

In order to achieve that, we need to know a few things. For instance:

1. Does Paradox get the non-public data about your configuration, location, and ip from Steam itself, or does the game collect such data and communicate to a central server?
If the latter, then a well-placed firewall could render the game useless in its datamining mission.

2. Do games on Steam, which do not have the "third party EULA" disclaimer, also collect data, or get used to collect data. These are usually older games such as Darkest hour, Victoria 2, etc..

3. Which data is collected from Steam, and which through the application?

4. Is the data sent directly, or does it get stored as a cookie, waiting to be sent? Does Steam send the cookie, or does the application send it?

I would have asked Paradox these questions if the Support site didn't give me a DNS error. I would have also asked them a pretty useless question: "whether they would ever consider giving people ways of opting out of data collection, even crash reports (which probably also contain the system data)".

It's an uphill battle. I hope some day the giant corporate publishers stop treating customers as cashcows that are there to be manipulated into purchasing a game, and then exploited for all kinds of marketing and developmental research without even knowing.

Your thoughts?
(thought if they go along the lines of: "but everyone does it, and you are already compromised, so it doesn't even matter", then just save your breath.)

 

[TinyWiking]

I'll try and shed some light on this.

1. Does Paradox get the non-public data about your configuration, location, and ip from Steam itself, or does the game collect such data and communicate to a central server? If the latter, then a well-placed firewall could render the game useless in its datamining mission.

Not sure what you mean with "non-public data" but the data we gather comes from Steam (as far as I know). I'd also like to clarify that we aren't "datamining" your computer, we never have and never will.

2. Do games on Steam, which do not have the "third party EULA" disclaimer, also collect data, or get used to collect data. These are usually older games such as Darkest hour, Victoria 2, etc..

They do not, no. Games that don't have the EULA and Privacy policy opt in don't collect information.

3. Which data is collected from Steam, and which through the application?

It's collected via Steam (since that's where the game is run from) or one of the other platforms (Origin, for example).

4. Is the data sent directly, or does it get stored as a cookie, waiting to be sent? Does Steam send the cookie, or does the application send it?

I think it's collected continuously (so for example when you start a game we may get information on what settings you select for that particular game such as difficulty, nation etc).

I would have asked Paradox these questions if the Support site didn't give me a DNS error. I would have also asked them a pretty useless question: "whether they would ever consider giving people ways of opting out of data collection, even crash reports (which probably also contain the system data)".

The fact that you're getting a DNS error worries me as I've not been able to replicate this ><. Can you try a different browser? As for your question though the answer is no, we do not have any such plans.

If you'd like to read more about what we store, how we store it, why we store it etc you can have a look at our legal website: https://legal.paradoxplaza.com/

 

[Jamey]

The fact that you're getting a DNS error worries me as I've not been able to replicate this ><. Can you try a different browser? As for your question though the answer is no, we do not have any such plans.

I have not gotten this exact error, but I’ve seen a couple of errors this week that look like hosting problems (I know one was a 503). They’ve all gone away when I tried again later, so I presumed there was a temporary problem on the hosting side.

On the original question, is there a way to opt out of all data collection by Paradox? If not, why not?

 

[TinyWiking]

I have not gotten this exact error, but I’ve seen a couple of errors this week that look like hosting problems (I know one was a 503). They’ve all gone away when I tried again later, so I presumed there was a temporary problem on the hosting side.

On the original question, is there a way to opt out of all data collection by Paradox? If not, why not?

Interesting! I've seen others report errors as well but I've never been able to replicate it and there has been no errors recorded in our backend. Could be plugins, could be the browser, could be.... magic ><!

As for the question if it's possible to opt out:
No. I'm going to be 100% honest and tell you that why this isn't an option I don't know. If I would speculate it would be down to the fact that the data gathered is game specific and needed for our future development of products. We want to learn how players play our games, what choices the make and what features are popular as this in turns helps us with picking what direction we should take for future DLC and possibly brand new products.

I fully understand that reading the privacy policy is like watching paint dry, it's slow, not particularly exciting and at the end of the day you may end up more confused than before. However I'd also like to make it clear that we collect very little data compared to other companies and we try our hardest to make the policy readable and understandable. We also try to be as transparent as possible as to why we collect the data we do and what it's use is as explained in the privacy policy.

Spoiler: Privacy Policy

7. WHY DO WE PROCESS YOUR DATA?
We process your data for the following purposes:

• To operate, improve, develop and provide you with our games, apps and Services
• To provide you with recommendations and game offers that you may like
• To respond to inquiries or comments from you
• To verify your identity in order to prevent unauthorized access
• To provide you with software updates
• To understand trends in usage of our Services
• To calculate marketing conversion rates and other elements of advertising performance
• To help tracking and correcting errors and bugs in games and services
• To customize your user experience (for example, by giving you more relevant ads and inform you about game releases that you might be interested in, unless you have told us not to (opt-out))
• To maintain the integrity and security of the Services
• To process transactions and communicate with you regarding these transactions
• To maintain or administer your Paradox Account, including contacting you in order to update your Paradox Account details if necessary
• To administer and perform play- and beta tests which you have signed up for
• To create reports, analyses or similar for the purpose of research and business intelligence and be able to track potential problems, behaviour and trends
• To enforce our terms and conditions, such as our EULA, Terms of Use, Rules of Conduct and this Policy
• To send you newsletters and promotional notices and offers (jointly “Newsletters”) you have previously agreed to when either creating a Paradox account or buying any of our Games (please note that if you create an account within our Game or purchase any of our Games you will automatically receive Newsletters unless you click to unsubscribe when creating the account or in any subsequent Newsletter)
• To communicate with you who is our partner’s contact person (i.e. an employee at our partner) regarding business matters
• To keep our Services fair, investigate and prevent fraud and illegal behaviour
• To comply with applicable laws and regulations.

We will not use your data for any other purpose than the purpose for which the data is originally collected.

 

[swolo111]

Hello, thanks for the answer.

Not sure what you mean with "non-public data" but the data we gather comes from Steam (as far as I know). I'd also like to clarify that we aren't "datamining" your computer, we never have and never will.

Many of your data on Steam are basically public because that's how profiles work, and people can see your game library (which the privacy policy also collects), steam id, and achievements. I call every action that takes any data from your computer, which you haven't explicitly consented to - "datamining". This includes personally identifiable info such as ip, and hardware)

It's collected via Steam (since that's where the game is run from) or one of the other platforms (Origin, for example).

Are you saying that, if I run the game, and then either Block Steam from the internet (Or run it in offline mode), that the game itself won't communicate data to a central server? It's weird to me that crash reports would go through Steam (Although, I have seen suspect 1kb "updates" on several of my games).

The fact that you're getting a DNS error worries me as I've not been able to replicate this ><. Can you try a different browser?

I have not gotten this exact error, but I’ve seen a couple of errors this week that look like hosting problems (I know one was a 503).

Don't worry, guys. I know why it's happening, I just wanted to share a reason on why people should help me directly, and not send me to the support centre. It's because I use Tor, and most of its nodes are blocked, and it has javascript blocked and https enforced everywhere, along with other privacy things Though, it only happens on the support site.

All in all, @TinyWiking , if you can confirm to me that such data as location, ip, and hardware are anonymised, then I will be content.

And furthermore, if it's true that Paradox actually cares and collects little data, and is totally transparrent, then more effort should go into communicating this, because people see the extensive privacy policy and see all the data being collected, and they think that their data is being stolen. I think that communicating cases in which data is being taken, and for what it is being required, is it being anonymised, and in what ways is it being taken and used, would make people see the truth. I understand that name and credit card number are special cases which I will never disclose, but it's still part of a casual list, which might get people worried.
Personally I am only worried about the following: "which info, using my steam account as a key, is stored on paradox servers?". If it's only some public data, or something insignificant, then I'm ok with it.
The problem is that I have no ways of knowing that because only the list of potential data is being communicated to me. If it said: "when you play one of our games, Steam shares this() data with us, and we anonymize this() data, and keep this() data for the following reasons:...

If you can make me feel at ease, then I'm going to buy HoI4 because I've been itching to try it for a long time, and the only reason I haven't done it is because of the privacy policy. It was the reason why I tried to get to the bottom of the problem

Thanks all!

 

[TinyWiking]

Many of your data on Steam are basically public because that's how profiles work, and people can see your game library (which the privacy policy also collects), steam id, and achievements. I call every action that takes any data from your computer, which you haven't explicitly consented to - "datamining". This includes personally identifiable info such as ip, and hardware)

We can only see the Paradox games you own, not all your games. Every item in Steam has an "App ID" (for example this is HoI: https://steamdb.info/app/394360/) and that last string of numbers is the ID. When someone connects their Steam and Paradox account we can see what Paradox app IDs a customer owns and that's it, we don't see any details about the Steam account itself. We can also see the Steam account ID (but not the name of the account) nor can we see any details about the account such as achievements, how long you've been registered, what real details you've added etc.

Are you saying that, if I run the game, and then either Block Steam from the internet (Or run it in offline mode), that the game itself won't communicate data to a central server? It's weird to me that crash reports would go through Steam (Although, I have seen suspect 1kb "updates" on several of my games).

This is correct. Unless you're online when you're playing our game we won't get any data sent to us. It's not stored in a temporary folder and then sent once you connect to the internet.

All in all, @TinyWiking , if you can confirm to me that such data as location, ip, and hardware are anonymised, then I will be content.

This I can do ! We aggregate all the data we get because we don't need data on an individual basis. For example when we look at translating our games we're interested in seeing how many of players that use game X plays from Italy to verify if it's a feasible investment. There may be 10 people on the forum raging that we should do it because there are lots of Italian players but when we look at the data we can see that it's not actually the case and that it wouldn't be feasible.

The same goes for how players play our games, what settings they use etc. After the data is aggregated and we see that 95% of all users install a specific mod it's a pretty clear indication that it's a popular feature that we may want to "bake in" to the actual game per default.

Again, I understand that this policy may look like a "Omg Paradox is taking ALL MY DATA!" and I don't blame you, policies are usually quite daunting. I want to reassure you though that we don't collect anything that we don't need, we don't scan your computer, we don't gather data "for fun" and we don't sell this information to anyone. All the data gathered is used by us or our partners (who are under a Data Protection Agreement which means they have to delete the data once they've used it) and we treat this very seriously.

 

[swolo111]

Thank you! Now I can finally play Paradox games xD

You deserve a raise, my friend.

HoI4 and Sabaton, here we come

 

[Jamey]

Interesting! I've seen others report errors as well but I've never been able to replicate it and there has been no errors recorded in our backend. Could be plugins, could be the browser, could be.... magic ><!

That is interesting. In my experience, a 503 is normally something wonky on the hosting side like a server hitting its capacity (either running out of resources or hitting a contracted limit). I'm not sure how you'd see one from a client side problem, but I guess it probably is possible. Next time I see an error, I'll try to remember to screenshot it and let you know.

That said, I do run an adblocker as well as a tracker blocker (including blocking social media buttons, which serve double duty as trackers), so it is conceivable that I'm blocking something that causes problems for your hosting. However, if that were the case, I'd also expect the problem to be reproducible rather than intermittent.

As a side note, the 10 items blocked on a typical Paradox forum page is unusually high for a game forum. A quick check of half a dozen other forums I frequent (other dev and publisher forums as well as Steam and GOG) shows the others having between 0 and 4 items blocked.

HoI4 and Sabaton, here we come

I do like the Sabaton soundtracks. They are a very nice accompaniment for Barbarossa.