For the last two weeks, there have been multiple stories regarding an alleged “spyware” called Red Shell being in use in multiple PC gaming titles on Steam.
RedShell is used by publishers and game studios for linking ad referrals to game purchases – this, essentially, allows them to analyze which advertisements are better at representing the title. Even though both the developers and the people behind RedShell claim the tool doesn’t collect any actual player data, the uproar was big enough to lead to at least 30 titles having their RedShell integration removed.
The list of games that are currently running Red Shell spyware:
Digging deeper, it should be noted that RedShell does collect info about the player’s OS, installed browsers, screen resolution and IP address. Even though this might seem mild, the fact that the practice isn’t disclosed to the user is at the very least uncomfortable. This fact has since been addressed by multiple studios, and the proposed solution is including an opt-out feature in-game.
If you’ve played one of the titles listed earlier, and you’d like to opt-out of the RedShell program, you can contact the game’s support team to request your anonymized User ID, which you can then use on the official opt-out page on RedShell’s website.
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