Thank you for supporting my boycott in word and in spirit, if not yet in deed. It is this kind of moral encouragement that helps me keep my resolve and not succumb to temptation. Much appreciated.

It has been standard practice for me, whenever installing a game from any source, to disconnect from the internet first. I do the same just before playing, too. If I have any issues, refund.

After recently installing a firewall, I started installing/playing with my internet connected and got some warnings. This means that whatever telemetry that is happening (in my case) is not essential for the game to run. So is that DRM?

If it's not, then what is it? I don't want that behaviour, just like I don't want DRM. What is the generic term that covers both?

Devotion. Available at all good game stores.

No, in my view, telemetry is not DRM (because it doesn't restrict you from playing a game), but it is a different evil. Without wanting to take the thread off-topic, you have no guarantee with any type of proprietary, closed-source software that it won't be doing nefarious things in the background - e.g. harvesting your data, sending data back to the 'mothership'. The only way you can be (relatively) sure your software is not doing that is to use purely free and open source software.

However, this is a completely separate issue to DRM. In a sense, DRM is a (more nefarious) subset of proprietary software. DRMed software is always closed-source and proprietary (by its nature); however, proprietary software does not always contain DRM.

I am quite a big proponent of free software; however, I am also a big fan of games and unfortunately free-software games just don't cut it compared to proprietary. Therefore, I use Linux exclusively and I sandbox any proprietary games that I play, to only give them access to the parts of my system that they need to function (I use firejail). It seems to work well for me.

No it’s not. And I have started to avoid using the word DRM as there are those who refuse anything other than denuvo as being DRM. I would use control mechanisms to refer to drm, online activations, online requirements, client requirements, etc. And perhaps marketing practices, which would include telemetry, cookies, trackers, data scamming, and those types of things. It’s all bad, and endemic to everything now.

Congratulations on taking what I would argue is an essential step in improving security, with your firewall install. Aside from highlighting unnecessary or undesireable connection attempts, it can be an effective counter to malware since virtually all now requires an online connection to work. Of course, sophisticated malware will try to bypass firewalls so selecting one effective at blocking leaktests is important.

In terms of telemetry being DRM, it cannot qualify unless disabling it prevents you from playing the game.
Given these two items (telemetry and DRM) fulfil different roles, there isn't really a collective term for them, aside from perhaps a phrase like "regular Internet connection". Unlike DRM (which is a complete negative from a gamer/customer perspective), telemetry can have its positive side, though not likely to be enough to overcome objections from the privacy-conscious.

I'd argue that opt-in telemetry, like as seen in Debian GNU/Linux and the game Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, can be quite useful, while not having the same privacy issues.

For example, Debian uses telemetry to decide which packages get on the first CD, and also makes the data (anonomized, of course) publicly available. The opt-in prompt is given on first installation, and you can remove the telemetry just by uninstalling the popularity-contest package.

Open source telemetry exists; see the Debian popularity-contest example I just mentioned.

Ok, that's a fair point. Although, if it is open-source then I would argue users are much more likely to be aware of it; to know what it is doing; and to be able to avoid it, if desired. Which seems to be the case with that example.

I don't think the issue is so much that telemetry is always bad, as a blanket statement. But with closed-source software, you just don't know what it is doing behind the scenes. With free/open-source, it's community-developed; there are more independent 'eyes' looking at the code, who could blow a whistle if they see anything nefarious; and the user generally has more visibility and control over what it is doing.

Who knows, the Winnie-flag in Cyberpunk may do them in and once firewall'd they'd have no reason at all not to sell the game. As I never tire of telling, they're operating in a very grey area by selling unlicensed games in China, so they're on thin ice to begin with. In order to become an "official" seller in China (like Valve did with the Chinese Steam storefront), you'd also have to partner up with a Chinese company. Who knows, maybe that was the true purpose behind the Sell-stuff-from-the-Epic-Store-thru-Galaxy deal. I doubt that this would count as partnering up with a Chinese company, but I wouldn't discount the possibility either.

It's strange more people are upset about possible china censorship but not the retarded political correctness that's affecting everyone. Those aren't real boycotts. It looks like they're astroturfing.

Been a great day for releases, filling my wishlist up nicely. No comment as yet on anything other than “whoa look galaxy Day!”. Spent my money on some groupees bundles instead.

Your argument doesn't make much sense to me.

Does GOG decide which games to give away or does the developer? If it is GOG, then I could give you partial credit for your argument that it is not a real boycott. If it is the developer that decides then your argument carries no weight.

Not giving a company any new money for purchases is the point of boycotting, not disposing of what you currently own (if you have a item that you use and the manufacturer does something you dislike and you decide to buy nothing else from them, does that mean you should destroy what you already paid for and buy something new [only hurts you because the manufactuer will not refund your previous purchase] or do you continue to use it and spend no more money on new purchases from the manufacturer)?

Pardon a further OTing, but this is, in my view, a fallacy and potentially a dangerous one.

First of all, Linux has been (and still is) sorely lacking in application-specific firewalls (tools like TuxGuardian or Douane are very limited compared to what is available on Windows and difficult to install) which has likely led to many utilities being free to take liberties with network access. This OpenSnitch review mentioned how running the update tool yay also resulted in connection attempts from pacman, pamac, and git.

Secondly, look at the World Wide Web. Webpage sourcecode can be easily viewed making every website open source by definition. However that has done nothing to stop the avalanche of web tracking, web beacons and Javascript obfuscation, to the point now where browser plugins like NoScript or uBlock have to be seen as an essential security/privacy tool.
Any telemetry system presents two problems from the privacy perspective:

* lack of anonymity - even if the telemetry software doesn't collect personal data, it will provide your IP address which (if you have a fixed IP which most broadband users will) can be linked to your identity by searching the appropriate database (e.g. most online retailers keep records of which IPs are linked to each account, and could sell that data to third parties);

* change of ownership/purpose - unless there is a contractual commitment to delete telemetry data after a short period of time (with compliance being monitored by a third party), then there is the possibility - indeed an inevitability - of the data being acquired by someone else with the intent to use it more actively. Gaming data may not have wide applicability, but data on how you setup/use your OS could certainly be valuable to anyone seeking to break into your system.

You are entitled to your point-of-view; however we have had some rather lengthy discussions about this in the past and I strongly disagree with you.

That review you reference admits in the very first line that '... Linux is a lot more secure than Windows'. Besides that, I don't think a review of one application says a great deal about the security of Linux in general. It's not as if there aren't also poor applications written for Windows.

To your second point, yes I agree that much webpage code has html/javascript source code that is openly accessible; however, it does not qualify as free software (libre), in the sense that it is controlled by a single entity and it is not possible for anyone to modify the code. I think it is also worth mentioning that there is also a lot of website code that is not accessible. Backend sever code is generally not open, for example, and there is also a campaign being run by the Free Software Foundation calling for free javascript. So, there is recognition there that much of the javascript that is built into websites is not 'free'.

I respect your opinions; however I am not going to reply to any more posts about this topic here, as I don't want to derail the thread.