Borderlands 2 FREE on Steam June 5th

[Paul Rudd]

Borderlands 2 is FREE on Steam right now. 93% Very Positive reviews.

Free to keep when you get it before Jun 8 @ 1:00pm.

[okkee]

8 minutes ago, Paul Rudd said:

Borderlands 2 is FREE on Steam right now. 93% Very Positive reviews.

Free to keep when you get it before Jun 8 @ 1:00pm.

Interesting war going on in the review section but all that aside, it's a pretty fun game to just grind out and play

[tkitch]

 

wow, that's...  kinda fucked

[OhYou_]

i would rather install literal malware

[Paul Rudd]

5 hours ago, tkitch said:

wow, that's...  kinda fucked

What is?

5 hours ago, OhYou_ said:

i would rather install literal malware

Why would you do that?

[OhYou_]

13 hours ago, Paul Rudd said:

What is?

Why would you do that?

bro idk, read tkitch's screencap. or if not that then drop it in chatgpt and have it explain it to you.
the game literally takes everything on your pc and scans it, uploading some of it to their servers.

[Paul Rudd]

2 hours ago, OhYou_ said:

the game literally takes everything on your pc and scans it, uploading some of it to their servers.

How does that matter?

[tkitch]

5 minutes ago, Paul Rudd said:

How does that matter?

does privacy not matter to you at all?

[CasualExtremist]

If the goods and/or services are free, you are the product. In my circle, that is just common sense, but it does feel like it gets overlooked by others. Worth highlighting that principle.

[OneMember]

Shame what has been done to this game. Was very good at the time.

[Paul Rudd]

23 hours ago, tkitch said:

does privacy not matter to you at all?

How does that matter?

[CasualExtremist]

On 6/7/2025 at 12:05 PM, Paul Rudd said:

How does that matter?

For those who maybe can't afford to isolate their gaming from their personal life on separate hardware, there is incredible risk involved if that steam review is correct.

On 6/6/2025 at 1:07 PM, CasualExtremist said:

If the goods and/or services are free, you are the product. In my circle, that is just common sense, but it does feel like it gets overlooked by others. Worth highlighting that principle.

 

It is not your responsibility to try and save everyone, but the jarring opinion you seem to be expressing is that it is not a concern at all, for anyone when a game company is seemingly turning their games into malware. The worst part is that this is just the company open about doing so. There are likely many bad actors that would not leave a breadcrumb trail in their ToS explaining what malicious activity is bundled into their games.

 

When others pointed that out, you seemed to shoot down the information as completely irrelevant, but for many it should be a significant factor in deciding whether they obtain the game for "free". I think that is where the conflict is coming from.

[Paul Rudd]

33 minutes ago, CasualExtremist said:

For those who maybe can't afford to isolate their gaming from their personal life on separate hardware, there is incredible risk involved if that steam review is correct.

What risk?

[StalePie42]

1 hour ago, CasualExtremist said:

For those who maybe can't afford to isolate their gaming from their personal life on separate hardware, there is incredible risk involved if that steam review is correct.

 

It is not your responsibility to try and save everyone, but the jarring opinion you seem to be expressing is that it is not a concern at all, for anyone when a game company is seemingly turning their games into malware. The worst part is that this is just the company open about doing so. There are likely many bad actors that would not leave a breadcrumb trail in their ToS explaining what malicious activity is bundled into their games.

 

When others pointed that out, you seemed to shoot down the information as completely irrelevant, but for many it should be a significant factor in deciding whether they obtain the game for "free". I think that is where the conflict is coming from.

Looks like a perfectly normal EULA.

[CasualExtremist]

2 hours ago, Paul Rudd said:

What risk?

From what I am reading, risk of profiling beyond the extent of the game. Part of what the steam review points out is general network traffic skimming. Do you not see where that is overreach from the game/company's side of doing business?

[CasualExtremist]

1 hour ago, StalePie42 said:

Looks like a perfectly normal EULA.

That might be it's own discussion on why the bar is set so low then. Arbitration clauses combined with unlimited data collecting power should not be considered normal.

[StalePie42]

4 hours ago, CasualExtremist said:

That might be it's own discussion on why the bar is set so low then. Arbitration clauses combined with unlimited data collecting power should not be considered normal.

The bar may be set low, regardless, a lot of what was said in this thread seems like an overreaction. Unlimited data collection is hardly true, a company as large as Take Two will have to conform to GDPR.

[Paul Rudd]

5 hours ago, CasualExtremist said:

risk of profiling beyond the extent of the game. Part of what the steam review points out is general network traffic skimming. Do you not see where that is overreach from the game/company's side of doing business?

In what way is profiling/general network traffic skimming harmful? And when should I expect this harm to occur? Today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Next year?

 

I see no reach, I'm at home playing a video game. I see the video game, and no harm has occurred over all the years I've owned and played Borderlands 2.

[CasualExtremist]

15 hours ago, Paul Rudd said:

In what way is profiling/general network traffic skimming harmful? And when should I expect this harm to occur? Today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Next year?

 

I see no reach, I'm at home playing a video game. I see the video game, and no harm has occurred over all the years I've owned and played Borderlands 2.

I think I understand now and I do agree that you have the right to value personal data minimally and the dopamine hit of the "free" games maximally. However, you seem to refuse to allow others to maximally value personal data and minimally value the "free" game dopamine within this conversation. If you truly believe you have given critical thinking to both sides and still want to refute the value of data to individuals, I will not argue with your personal choice, but there is so much to unpack beyond that if you would like to voyage some rabbit holes within the nuance of these situations. (See spoiler)

Spoiler

To me, what you are embodying is a care-free attitude in the short term that is (maybe as a side effect) disregarding the legitimate threat in the long term. I am not necessarily attempting to persuade you to the other perspective, but profiling users and collecting data is a way for these marketing machines to learn more about you than you may know yourself. This enables manipulation on a level that may be undetectable by the general public or it may be hidden behind these dopamine hits of digital content.

 

Would it be safe to assume you would only be upset if they were developing ways to manipulate your recreational experience into maximum profit painfully? If the game is "free", they are profiting off the collection and sale of data. The malicious ways it gets used at that point is unlimited. All of that does not bother you as long as you feel good in the moment? Would you not want to create a civilized discussion about how deeply your personal data is being compromised for profit and long-term impacts that holds?

 

You might see this better as a same, but different kind of data breach. Say you have personal files stored in a secure and encrypted locker of some form and your computer gets compromised and they stole that encrypted set of files. Perhaps technology today means it is a useless set of bits, but they can hold onto the files/data until technology advances far enough to make it useable. At that point, it goes from harmless to life destroying in a near instant. That is part of the inherent risk of technological advancement. The moderation in this case would be public due diligence in understanding what files/programs are installed (and where they are installed) to minimize the chance and/or level of compromise. This requires the conversation to be had early on when it seems harmless, so that people may mitigate that future harm in whatever form it chooses to take. Preventative maintenance outperforms reactive maintenance when given the choice.

 

I would at least encourage having an open mind to the likelihood that this data harvesting is training marketing in enhancing the worst addictive tendencies in the people while being able to skirt around any government or public backlash. It is literally training their marketing how to manipulate the most people into overspending on dopamine hits. It prevents backlash by targeting the care-free mindset in particular. When you don't see immediate negative impact and you get the strong dopamine hit at seemingly no cost, but the future cost is there.

 

Sorry if this derails too far, but you can also look into how these models of manipulation already exist in the bots on chat forums of all kinds and how they can profile you before engaging in seemingly normal conversation, take that profile, and structure responses in a way that would change your mind on any given topic. The information I remember reading was like a 90% success rate. This is just today's technology. I hate to come across as a pure fear mongerer, but I am not selling tin foil lined hats or otherwise incentivized to do so. I just find these situations prevalent in considering the future of ourselves and human civilization as a whole. Including in how we structure our recreations such as gaming.

 

To me, whether it makes you feel good or not, the data harvesting in the backend of "free" games needs moderation. Moderation by open discussion on possibilities for the future. The good, the bad, and the ugly. That is the part of this discussion that I felt was worth having. You may still agree to disagree since we might just have different value structures, but it seems like a good faith discussion to be had on where and why we place an amount of value on different things.

You may reject the content within the spoiler as speculation. That would be fair since the future is not yet determined. However, you can also extrapolate from the past to make reasonable future predictions and that was the intended structure of the spoiler. Hopefully it at least gave more insight to where the value of personal data might be coming from. It in a way, you might call it "potential value".

[CasualExtremist]

16 hours ago, StalePie42 said:

The bar may be set low, regardless, a lot of what was said in this thread seems like an overreaction. Unlimited data collection is hardly true, a company as large as Take Two will have to conform to GDPR.

That would be the end of the discussion in a perfect world but, for the record, global companies can grow larger than the European governing body can properly manage. At that point you may also ask "Who truly conforms to who?".

Imagine if Alphabet's YouTube site was going bankrupt and Alphabet was going to threaten turning the site off indefinitely unless governments subsidized the platform costs. It has become an essential global archive that governments would likely "bend the knee" to preserve for their own purposes. So what stops Alphabet from extorting governments with the knowledge that they "need" some of Alphabet's services to continue to exist?

Alphabet >> Take Two, but overwhelming a governing body for exploitative purposes might be more common than you'd first think.

[Hellmark]

On 6/6/2025 at 1:07 PM, CasualExtremist said:

If the goods and/or services are free, you are the product. In my circle, that is just common sense, but it does feel like it gets overlooked by others. Worth highlighting that principle.

It does that for even those who bought the game at full price. It isn't like this is a special version for free, they're doing a limited giveaway of the normal version that is being sold, and EVERYONE is having their privacy invaided. 

[Paul Rudd]

9 hours ago, CasualExtremist said:

I think I understand now

I read every word but truly have no clue what you're saying... Like, at all.

 

I've played Borderlands 2, I'm still alive and kicking. That's it.

[Hellmark]

8 hours ago, Paul Rudd said:

I read every word but truly have no clue what you're saying... Like, at all.

 

I've played Borderlands 2, I'm still alive and kicking. That's it.

They're arguing that some people are ok with giving up data privacy for a free game. Problem is, it isn't just for those who got it for free. There was a recent change for many take two games, of which Borderlands 2 is one of the impacted, that it will start doing a lot of datacollection on your system, ban your related take2 accounts if you happen to do one of many no-nos. Like, if you use mods or cheats, even for offline play, you can kiss your account goodbye. If it detects you're playing in a virtual PC, it will prevent you from being able to access the game. The updated TOS even lets them collect payment info about you, your browsing habits, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. This is all done via a new kernel level tool that is being included.

I bought Borderlands 2 years ago, and this is something that impacts me too. Plus, usually when they include kernel level tools like this, it breaks things for Proton, so question on if it will still work properly for steam decks.

[CasualExtremist]

18 hours ago, Hellmark said:

It does that for even those who bought the game at full price. It isn't like this is a special version for free, they're doing a limited giveaway of the normal version that is being sold, and EVERYONE is having their privacy invaided. 

Right, but that's more incentive structures at work also. If for example, the "Free" games break even on the profit from collecting user data, then why not make even more money on those who pay? That's actually why there is good argument to avoid any form of service when there is a Free or Freemium tier since they likely did not take the time to trim the fat for the product/services they provide to the actual paying customers. There is no incentive to make less money.

[CasualExtremist]

13 hours ago, Paul Rudd said:

I read every word but truly have no clue what you're saying... Like, at all.

 

I've played Borderlands 2, I'm still alive and kicking. That's it.

That's perfectly fine and why my first few sentences address the fact that we fundamentally place our values in different things and that's okay. I appreciate that you took the time to read it even if it did not make sense from your perspective. That's about all I can ask for and I'll leave it at that.