Ubisoft Under Fire for Alleged Secret Data Collection in Single-Player Games
Ubisoft, the company behind popular games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, is in trouble. A group in Austria called Noyb has made a complaint, saying Ubisoft is secretly collecting data from people playing single-player games, and doing it without permission.
Noyb says this breaks the rules of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which protects user privacy in Europe. If the complaint is successful, Ubisoft could be fined up to €92 million (about $104 million).
The complaint says Ubisoft forces people to connect to the internet even when they play single-player games that don’t need online features. This lets the company collect information about how people play.
From Noyb’s official post:
“The company forces its customers to connect to the internet every time they launch a single player game. This is the case even if the game doesn’t have any online features. This allows Ubisoft to collect people’s gaming behaviour. Among other things, the company collects data about when you start a game, for how long you play it and when you close it.”
The player who made the complaint even asked Ubisoft why they had to be online. But Ubisoft didn’t give a clear answer. Noyb says that under Article 6(1) of GDPR, there is “no valid legal basis to randomly collect such user data.”
The big problem, according to Noyb, is that players are not giving clear permission for their data to be used. If the data isn’t truly needed to run the game, then collecting it is not legal.
One of Noyb’s lawyers said:
“Video games are expensive – but that doesn’t stop companies like Ubisoft from forcing their customers to play offline games online unnecessarily, just so they can make more money by tracking their behaviour. Ubisoft’s actions are clearly unlawful and must be stopped.”
Noyb wants Ubisoft to stop collecting this data and delete everything they’ve gathered without proper permission.
The complaint is now in the hands of the Austrian Data Protection Authority, which will decide what happens next. If they agree with Noyb, Ubisoft could face a huge fine.
So far, Ubisoft hasn’t commented on the complaint. If they do respond, we’ll update this story, and you can check out the full report on this link.
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