That. The content of the screenshot you posted. That is what's going on.

You literally posted the answer to your question. Here is an expansion of the details.

I haven't read the new TOS but if this review is correct it looks like a GDPR nightmare for them. Good luck to them explaining why they need to collect all that personal data.

Due to Steam's tos updates a few months ago, isn't take-two opening itself up to a massive lawsuit?

the game's store page doesn't mention that it requires root access, like it does for some other games. am i missing something?

edit: the words "root" and "level" (ctrl+f'd each one separately) don't appear anywhere in the EULA. "access" shows up in a couple spots that definitely are NOT talking about root level access. i'm all about outrage over enshittification, but so far this sounds like bullshit

Hm... Ok. Thats crazy. Someone wants to create a new branch of income it seems.

Thats a fucking shame. Now I need to reconsider my plans to buy Borderlands4.

But how will they do it? Which information is gathered from which source?
Most of my accounts only hold as little informations as possible. Also my Os knows nothing about me. My MS account neither.

On the other hand my steam 2FA need some mobile information.

I'm assuming the post is actually about DRM operating at ring 0. That's not really root level though. That's kernel level. Root is still operating in user-mode and politely asking the kernel to interact with hardware.

Maybe it's hidden in the in-game eula and they're using their launcher to collect all that info before we even get to agree or disagree.

But it doesn't have the mandatory kernel level disclaimer either.

On one side of the ring, greedy corps which want to profile you better than the NSA does. On the other, drama-hungry and social networks-fueled outrage culture.

That's how an old game giveaway backfires and becomes the scandal of the day.

Why isnt Steam banning them? Munny?

A government that cares for is people would ban this shit and procecute any company trying to find ways around it.

Pirates are winning over my empathy.

Checkout Jump Ship? It's some weird borderlands, Star citizen, (insert other generic shooter) type game. Pretty neat, was recommended to me by a shooter fanatic friend of mine. I trust his shooting game opinion

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1757300/Jump_Ship/

Don't just review bomb it

Report it to steam as SPYWARE, with the little flag icon on the product page

I only play AAA games on GeForce Now (cloud). If the game can't run on my Linux system or on the cloud, I ain't touching it. Also, there are so many wonderful games that do not require a colonoscopy into your personal data to be played.

oh cool, I can see that it's similar Borderlands by the screenshots, and I can see that it's like Star Citizen because it's not actually released yet and they're taking money for early access.

I checked the Steam depots. It seems the game files haven’t been updated since 2022. All that seems to have changed is some license agreement in February. Seems to be a thing across take two games, and not specific to borderlands 2.

Basically nothing has changed in real terms for this game. Maybe borderlands 4 might have draconian DRM, who knows.

I did some more reading on this, and it apparently isn't due to DRM, its about an update to ToS that occurred in April. The update expands data collection for advertising and forced-arbitration. Arguably that's worse than kernel-level DRM. DRM can be ripped, legal shenanigans can't.