On February 6, we launched the 1.0 version of Astroneer, and no longer being an Early Access title, this necessarily included a comprehensive End User License Agreement (EULA). This was the very first EULA System Era had ever created, and at the time of its writing we thought it would be a good idea to create a single generic EULA to cover all possible System Era titles. As a result, the EULA included passages that covered policies on advertising and on more potentially invasive information gathering than anything actually present in Astroneer.
After receiving a lot of honest and helpful feedback about the EULA, we realized that it was unnecessarily broad and caused a lot of anxiety for privacy conscious players that we absolutely did not intend, and for which we apologize. In addition, certain language on User Created Content caused some confusion with regards to our policy and intention towards video content creators.
With regards to information and privacy: Astroneer does not and will not contain any advertising. Nor does Astroneer collect any information about players outside of what happens in the game. It has no ability to report on any personal details about you or your device.
Astroneer collects gameplay and crash telemetry. That means that we have a service that tracks your progress through the game so that we can unlock achievements and grant rewards, and you won’t lose your progress even if you start playing on another machine using the same Steam account, or if you uninstall and reinstall the game later. If the game crashes, Astroneer will record a small snapshot of some of the game state at the moment the crash happened and upload a report to us. Crash reports are entirely anonymous. Beyond these two things, we collect no data whatsoever.
In the section on User Created Content, the term “gameplay videos” was never intended to refer to the type of content created by our friends on YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, or any other video sharing platform. Partnering with content creators is in our DNA, and our official policy on video monetization can be found here.
As a result of people’s legitimate concerns, we worked quickly to revise and clarify our EULA, and the new version is now published live. The entire section on advertising has been scrubbed, and the sections on information gathering and user content have been updated to more narrowly and accurately reflect both the reality of what Astroneer can do in terms of information gathering, and our intentions for user created content.
I’d encourage everyone concerned to read the revised EULA, as well as our broader Privacy Policy. I want to emphasize that the privacy policy is a broad company-wide guideline, and therefore can encompass things that don’t apply to Astroneer.
System Era has no desire to ever create anything that remotely resembles spyware, and we care deeply about responsible stewardship of people’s online experiences. We humbly regret any consternation caused by the initial overly-broad EULA. This is a lesson we take to heart and will apply to all future titles we make.
Please feel free to send any questions about information and privacy directly to [email protected], and any other concerns to [email protected].
Brendan
@brendansystem