Putting aside the character recreation issues for a moment, there are a number of reasons why removing the steam ID is a bad idea.
It makes it easier for trolls
Using steam you could check to see if a character was using family share and the ID of the donor account
You could check the history and age of a steam account to determine if it was a new account or one that had been around for a while
It invalidates existing black lists. Taking in the above banned players can just re login, and apart from an unreliable IP address we have no easy way to make sure trolls and cheaters have not returned
For some people it has revealed personal data(like real names) that using steam was hidden. This is potentially a huge data privacy and GDPR issue.
Basically, without the above tools it’s open season for trolls, cheaters and griefers to escape a ban and create all sorts of havoc on a server.
I am sure there were good reasons for the swap. But as well as a problematic implementations(why not assign a funcom ID to new chars only?) it also creates a LOT of issues for admins and server owners to ensure their servers are a nice, cheater and troll free place to be.
If this is the case you might want to follow up with your national DPA.
ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/redress/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-my-personal-data-protection-rights-havent-been-respected_en
Want my character, just noticed it on some of my server, players account names. Actually it’s funcom’s issue as a data controller they have very specific obligations they have to meet otherwise bad things can happen. Thought i’d at least give them a chance to do something about it before dobbing them in to the ICO or whoever…
Sure, just wanted to present the official instruction how to proceed in such a case.
If real names are exposed they should fix it quickly. I would also ask you to report it to them directly with information on how you got access to this information in case they are not aware how this data can be accessed through their system.
For some people it has revealed personal data(like real names) that using steam was hidden. This is potentially a huge data privacy and GDPR issue.
How exactly does that work, I don’t see any personal data exposed anywhere? For that matter, how does Funcom have access to our personal data, can they get it from Steam somehow?
If steam has profile information that is set to private, and funcom then accesses that data via the API and publishes it then that could be classed as a breach. It’s not every player, just some I noticed after the patch.
Regardless of the data privacy issue, the issues outlined in my opening post are biggies also. Not being able to track and trace trolls and cheaters as effectively as before are also good reasons for not doing it
Keep in mind Funcom was bought out by Tencent.
It is alleged that Tencent owns a big stake in Epic Games.
By moving away from SteamID they can push it on Epic Game Store and other outlets. If you look at Epic Game Store now you will see there are no Conan games.
I suspect this is part of their recent move.
SteamAPI is rock solid though and I don’t think that was a good idea. Another thing about going away from SteamID is making it possible to do cross platform servers.
Also noticed top conan servers isnt working. Suspect thats because they used steam API’s also. They must hate this update as they offered chargable services, and it was a good place to check how busy the server was from anywhere…