This Means Warp Review

This Means Warp by Outlier Games Limited is a spaceship management and roguelite experience for 1–4 players. The product is based on the Unity engine and has multiple active trackers.

What does the product do?

When the game starts, several processes are loaded in the background, collecting various user data and sending it worldwide before users can even say hello. Specifically, these include the default Unity Analytics, followed by the analytics and debugging service "Backtrace I/O" and "GameAnalytics," as well as Valve's "Steam Datagram Relay" (SDR for short).

This means we have three telemetry services. SDR is responsible for routing and multiplayer content (and telemetry), while the actual multiplayer operations are handled by Photon, which only activates once users actively enter multiplayer mode.

Who operates the product?

This Means Warp was developed by Outlier Games Limited (Ireland) and published by Jagex Ltd (UK).

Welche Serviceanbieter sind involviert?

GameAnalytics - Pilestræde 58, 2, 1112 Copenhagen K, Denmark
Backtrace I/O - 450 Sansome Street, 9th Floor San Francisco, CA 94111 USA
Google, LLC - 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy Building 43, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
Amazon.com, Inc. - 410 Terry Ave N Seattle, WA, 98109-5210 USA
Valve Corporation - 10400 NE 4th St, Suite 1500, Bellevue, WA 98004 USA
Unity Technologies - San Francisco, 30 3rd Street, CA 94103, USA
Exit Games GmbH - Große Elbstraße 145c, 22767 Hamburg, Germany

GameAnalytics is owned by the Chinese technology corporation Mobvista.
Google serves as the backend for Unity Analytics.
Amazon serves as the backend for GameAnalytics and Backtrace.
Valve's SDR uses Akamai Technologies.

What data is collected?

A lot... especially considering that most of the data is already collected and sent before the user can even take their first action in the game. This is accompanied by continuous telemetry and regular callbacks on player progress and usage data.

Backtrace I/O
Application Name, Company Name, Application Installation Path (e.g. X:/Steam/steamapps/common/This Means Warp/This Means Warp_Data), Mobile yes/no, Sandbox Type, SessionID, User system Language, Application Temp Path ( e.g. C:/Users/your username/AppData/Local/Temp/Outlier/This Means Warp), Unity Version, Application Version, Audio Support, Backtrace Version, Boottime, CPU Model, CPU Count, CPU Frequency, Device Model (Mainboard), Device Name (e.g. Desktop-Penguin), Device Type, DirectX Version, Graphic VendorID, Graphic Memory, Graphic Multithread, Graphic Cardname (e.g. NVidia Whatever), Shader, GUID, Hostname (e.g. Desktop-Penguin), Scripting Backend, Operating system Family, Full Name, Machinetype, Sysname, Sysversion, Timestamp, Unique GUID, Player Progress

GameAnalytics
BuildID, ClientID, DeviceType, Unity Version, Event UUID, EventID (e.g. Average FPS), Connection Type (e.g. LAN, WLAN),Manufacturer, Os Version, Platform, UnitySDK, SessionID, Session Number, UserID, Category (e.g. Session start/end), Custom

Unity Analytics
AppID, BuildGUID, DeviceID, Identity Token, ProjectID, Platform, PlatformID, SDK REV/Version, Sessioncount, SessionID, UserID, Startup time, DeviceInfo, Jailbreak yes/no, Device Infohash, Model (Mainboard), Devicename (e.g. Device-Penguin), CPU Model, Count, Frequency, RAM, VRAM, Screen Resolution, App Resolution, DPI, Language, Sensors, App Name, Graphic DeviceID, VendorID, GFX Name, GFX Vendor, DirectX, Shader, Flags, Texture Size, Cubemap Size, VSYNC, First Scene, DirectYX Features, Ressources, Options, Player Progress and a lot more

Privacy Policy/Terms of Use and Opt-Out/In?

Users must agree to the This Means Warp EULA  . There is also a separate privacy policy   on the developer's product page, which everyone should read carefully. Opt-out is not available.

The terms of use are restrictive in nature and primarily focused on protecting the rights and interests of Jagex. User rights are significantly limited, and there is little flexibility regarding liability issues or changes to the terms.

The terms of use only refer generally to Jagex's privacy policy, without specific information about what data is collected or which third parties are involved in data analytics or error tracking.

Can this behavior be blocked?

Unity Analytics, Backtrace, and GameAnalytics can be blocked without any loss of functionality. SDR and Photon are required to run this product. The file "UnityCrashHandler64.exe" should be deleted from the installation directory before playing, as it handles additional crashlytics and cloud reporting.

Note

The privacy policy includes the usual section emphasizing the privacy of children:

Children's Privacy

Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13.

Well, the game is rated for ages 6 and up. What does that tell us? Exactly, a contractual clause out of touch with reality.

Either way, users are paying €19.50 for a time-limited product that they don’t actually own, and they pay again with their data at each product launch, with no control over where that data goes.

Such methods should be quietly prohibited.