The State of Privacy in Online Gaming Today
We had another guest lecturer in class again recently; this time it was Dr. Paul Gates, who spoke about privacy on the internet and the kind of technology that goes along with it. He made a comment that, truth be told, he didn’t feel we really have all that much privacy in the modern internet landscape. And of course, this got me thinking about the state of privacy in online gaming today. There are multiple popular game clients and stores that players find themselves having to rely on to engage in major online games these days, and user privacy is something that definitely must be considered before choosing to use one of these platforms to buy and play games.
Discovering that your private information isn’t as secure as you originally believed can be a chilling thought, but for some, this can unfortunately become a reality. An infamous horror story in the gaming community would be the Playstation Network hack of 2011 in which around 77 million users had their account information compromised, resulting in one of the largest data breaches in history. This was a devastating blow to many gamers who had felt that their information would be secure in the hands of Sony, and it raised questions among many as to how safe their personal information really was with companies such as this.
Also, with so much controversy today about how social media sites like Facebook use our personal information, one might argue that it can be a bit odd seeing some game clients borrowing so many elements from these sites. Just when taking a quick glance at the activity or community tabs on Steam the service almost looks more like a social network than a game client. This isn’t necessarily a negative point, but it is something that some might find off-putting.
As gaming technology and services continue to advance, I can’t help but feel that a true sense of privacy is something that players are going to have to fight for. For better or for worse, the video game industry is adopting more of an “always connected” infrastructure than ever, and it’s only to be expected that there will be points of contention going forward. Whether they choose to fight these points or allow them, it will ultimately be up to the players to decide how private they truly wish to be.
Images Courtesy of:
Valve Corporation
