Developer Human Starry Studios has responded to player privacy concerns after many of the expected mixed Steam reviews of the survival game focused on its aggressive End User License Agreement (EULA).
Having been published by Chinese giant NetEase, Once Human collects personal information from players according to the publisher’s privacy policy. The list of collected data is quite long – as well as important game information such as your name, contact information, marketing preferences and game details, all of which are collected through the game itself, NetEase also collects information “through the use of of our services or from other sources”.
It’s that section that seems to be causing the most concern. In many cases, NetEase appears to collect information that is not fundamentally different from many other game publishers – things like name and contact details, marketing and communications data, social media accounts, game accounts such as logins on Steam or PSN. There are also sections of Privacy policy dedicated to collecting nicknames and social media accounts and location information. In some US states, NetEase is also able to collect data such as postal address, physical characteristics or description, protected characteristics such as race or gender, browsing history, occupation and ethnic origin as derived from profile pictures. or avatars.
Some of the negative reviews of Once Human mention the privacy policy, EULA, or other terms of service. While there are concerns expressed about the lack of servers or characters (the latter has already been addressed by the developers), a significant majority of players who are giving Once Human a bad review are doing so based on the personal data it collects , with many of them having only played the game for a very short time.
In response, the game’s developers released a statement on its official Discord server (via Steam). That statement says that “NetEase takes user data privacy very seriously and adheres to data privacy principles such as data minimization, purpose limitation and transparency.” It addresses the issue of government-issued IDs, saying it will collect that data only “where local laws require us to do so, [….] when a user’s parent’s identity needs to be verified to obtain consent for their child, […] or when the user wishes to correct their age information.” If that data is collected, NetEase says it deletes it immediately after fulfilling the purpose for which it collected the information.
Starry Studios also notes that NetEase has explained to players “how [they] can exercise [their] rights to manage [their] personal information,” via the in-game client services. The privacy policy has also been recently revised, with the new version set to be “released soon.” However, the developer says that “we’ve heard your concerns and will continue to improve in how we describe our data privacy practices.” That’s unlikely to change much in the short term—NetEase is a publishing giant with its influence felt across all kinds of games around the world—but it could something to help stem the tide of negative reviews Once Human seems to be off to a good start with a peak of 80,000 players, but a “mixed” sentiment on Steam could spell very bad news for a game so early in its lifespan.
Hours before launch, survivalist game Once Human is reminding players of its seasonal server wipes “to provide a fairer, more relaxed and freer gaming experience.”