Red Shell in KSP2?

[Rossinero]

Good Day

Well, what's the best way to start writing that?  

I feel ripped off and betrayed, because I played the Kerbal Space Program for a long time, and now I rummaged through the Internet today. In doing so, I found out that I was being spied on the whole time I was running KSP.

Just the fact that I bought the game and I had no idea that such a program would end up on my PC is a damned shame, and now I ask myself a question: Will Red Shell, as the program is called, be back again? Installed at KSP2. If so, then I won't buy the game.

I want an answer from the game manufacturer, and a guarantee that no spy programs will run through the game. If the manufacturer cannot give the guarantee, it is very clear to me that there will be another program that ends up on the PC.

I do my e-banking on my PC and when someone watches my keyboard or other data, I get angry. I already have correspondence with Valve Corporation, because the terms and conditions of KSP & Valve do not state that there were such programs in the installation. Because otherwise I would never make such games on it.

I know Steam, Blizzard Entertainment Software also scan the PC for games and record some things, but when you quit them you don't have this problem. I have nothing to hide, but my data is important to me.

In particular my bank details.

I requested a refund from Valve Corporation, but I can forget about 560h. That's why I actually expect that here

[James Kerman]

Welcome to the forum @Rossinero, your issue has been moved from KSP discussion as it is about KSP 2.

[PlutoISaPlanet]

I do not like spying either

[Snark]

2 hours ago, Rossinero said:

I have nothing to hide, but my data is important to me.

I can totally understand your concern-- I'm super paranoid about privacy, myself, and very protective of my data.

However, based on the actual facts involved, I think you're probably in the clear, here.  It sounds as though your concerns, as laid out above, have been addressed.

I'd strongly suggest that you carefully read this statement by the KSP community manager.  It's a long read with quite a few paragraphs, but details are important and I'd recommend that you read the whole thing:

I can summarize it thus:

• Where collection & transmission of your data are concerned, there are two software packages of interest, here:
  • Unity Analytics
  • Red Shell
• Unity Analytics is, indeed, still present in KSP today.  However, personally, I'm not greatly concerned about it for privacy, because:
  • It only looks at in-game stuff (i.e. how you play KSP, what missions you run, etc.); not external stuff like what websites you visit or anything like that.
  • It has a legitimate purpose for improving the game (by letting the developer see what people are having problems with)
  • Most importantly, you can opt out to tell it "shut up and don't send anything".  If you don't like it, you can just turn it off.
• Red Shell is, indeed, much creepier from a privacy standpoint, IMO.  I'm with you on this one.
• However, Red Shell is not in KSP now, and has not been for a couple of years.
  • They added it in KSP 1.4
  • After an uproar of angry users, they removed it in KSP 1.4.4

Therefore, based on the concerns that you expressed above, I think you should be fine.  There's no Red Shell in there anymore, and the Unity Analytics stuff is quite a bit more benign and you can turn it off if you don't like it.

 

I realize that you were expressing concern about KSP 2 rather than original KSP, here.  And of course, until it actually comes out, nobody can say for sure exactly what they'll do.

However, personally, my guess is that they won't put Red Shell in there, because they got so badly burned last time and took it out right away.  It's worth noting that at the time of that kerfuffle, that was after T2 had already acquired KSP, and it was therefore T2's decision to pull Red Shell out of there.

So, yes.  We should stay vigilant, and we should keep our eyes on them, and if they were to add it back in for some reason, we should make our voices heard.  However, it's not there now, and it seems likely to me, based on their track experience, that it won't be in there.

(For myself, I also black-hole the DNS to all of Red Shell's websites, just in case any software on my system does ever try to talk to them.  It's pretty straightforward to do. Details here, for anyone who's interested.)

[Rossinero]

On 4/16/2021 at 3:51 PM, Snark said:

However, personally, my guess is that they won't put Red Shell in there, because they got so badly burned last time and took it out right away.  It's worth noting that at the time of that kerfuffle, that was after T2 had already acquired KSP, and it was therefore T2's decision to pull Red Shell out of there.

Now that KSP2 is about to be released I would like to have a statement from the KSP2 developers GUARANTEEing that there are no background programs copying/tracking your system and all keyboard klicks.

If you take the behavior around KSP as an example, you can see a rather elegant solution: it's bought and you can't give it back afterwards. 
I bought the game myself and didn't know at the time of purchase that such a spy program was running in the background. 
The game manufacturer violated their own EULA License. But then there was no refund, which is more or less fraud.

 

So yes, I would like to have a statement from the game makers where 
they make it very clear that they will not allow this in KSP2.

But they won't because they don't want to guarantee something like that. I mean... just that they don't give a refund for the KSP users who had Red Shell on their PC, or that they don't take the installation files offline, patch Red Shell out and then put it back online says a lot.
They make it extremely easy for themselves to simply blame the whole thing on the EULA and say that they've changed something there. Who discovered that RedShell was running on the PCs?
Definitely not the game maker. 
KSP is an interesting game, but thoughts on part two make me hesitate. When you "request" to find out that someone else is tracking what your password is while you're doing your banking. It's about someone watching, and something like that being sent out. As a game maker to say "there may still be RedShell files in the games, but the servers don't receive it" is properly degenerate.

 

[GoldForest]

@Rossinero The devs at Intercept Games are a group of highly passionate people. They want nothing but the best for KSP 2 and the KSP community as a whole. I don't think you have to worry about Red Shell. I for one and not worried about it.

If Take Two wanted to put Red Shell back into KSP 1, they would have, but they haven't. It's been gone from KSP 1 for years now. Do you really think they'd try to sneak it into KSP 2 after all the backlash? I mean, the community out right decided to boycott the game, not playing it. Heck, I think some modders took down their mods in protest. 

The community didn't take no for an answer. They got what they wanted in the end, and Take Two learned not to peeve us off. Because KSP 1 is a rare game. It's a game passed around by the community. Not by ads or commericals or anything like that. It's passed on by the people. And if the people decide to tell people not to buy it, well then things are bad for Take Two. 

Take Two can't afford to make the same mistake twice, because if they do, KSP 2 will fail.