Summary
WhileSteamusers have flocked to the new free-to-play survival gameOnce Human,members of the community are expressing concerns about the title’s privacy policy. Whenever a game is released as “free” to an audience, many users will begin to question how the developers are making the necessary revenue to continue supporting their creation despite not charging any money for the core experience. In most cases, profits are generated through microtransactions, seasonal battle passes, or even adverts, but someOnce Humanplayers are concerned there’s more going on.
Over on theOnce HumanSteampage,the game is currently sitting with an average review score of “Mixed” as members of the player base question the terms-of-service, citing security concerns as their primary issue with the experience. Several users allege that publisher NetEase has implemented a system that allowsOnce Humanto mine Bitcoin with players' computers while others are worried that their privacy may be breached thanks to the privacy policy. The terms of service allow NetEase access to personal information like government-issued IDs, phone numbers, and credit card details.
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Is Once Human An Actual Security Threat?
NetEase Insists Everything Is Above Board
After the influx of concerns about the type of data being collected byOnce Human,NetEase released an official statement on the game’s Discord change(viaPCGamesN):
“NetEase takes our users’ data privacy very seriously and adheres to the data privacy principles such as data minimization, purpose limitation, and transparency. For example, we would only collect government-issued IDs for the following reasons: where the local laws require us to do so (such as for a specific promotion), when the identity of a user’s parent must be verified to obtain consent for their child (if required by applicable child protection laws), or when the user wishes to correct their age information (again, if such verification is required by law). In any case,the ID information is deleted immediately after we have fulfilled the purpose for collecting the ID information in the first place."
It goes on to state that it may occasionally request information like social media handles, names, and gender within entirely optional user surveys. While the terms of service and the data collection concerns are certainly based on fact,there’s currently been no evidence thatOnce Humanallows NetEase and developer Starry Studio to mine Bitcoinwith players' computers so those claims are largely unsubstantiated rumors.
It’s worth remembering that whileOnce Human’s privacy policy and data collecting may sound scary,it’s no different to many major AAA releases and studios.Call of Duty,Pokémon Go, andCandy Crush, to name just a few, gather large amounts of user data. In fact, most free-to-play games have some kind of privacy policy that enables data collection, even granular details like social security numbers and personal identification cards;The Elder Scrolls Onlineis one such instanceof this practice.
Despite the controversy sparked byOnce Human’s terms of service and privacy policy, the game is still making waves onSteam.A few days after its launch it’s currently sitting at over 95,000 active players at the time of writingand the reviews are trending towards positive. It seems yet another survival game is taking the world by storm afterPalworldproved in early 2024that players are always hungry to gather resources and build bases.
