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Minecraft to add telemetry

minecraft.net

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Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#11

Post by diegoperini »

rozab wrote: post #6

If the reasons they give for this were honest, you'd think their time would be better spent building the kind of extremely basic integration tests that would detect if, say, their world generation broke making the game unwinnable. https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-236618 Inflammatory zingers aside, I don't mind telemetry in a product like this and I'm sure I'd want it if I were working on it. But I'd want automated t…

No amount of integration tests can replicate millions of players, organically interacting with a video game. The state space is too large for that.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#12

Post by sneak »

belval wrote: post #7

Eh Minecraft is a video game, I just don't see the privacy risk with "typical" Windows-level telemetry happening there. At some point we have to accept that this data actually helps them fix real issues too, they're not monetizing their players directly with it.

Windows-level telemetry is not "typical"; it includes a dozen or more different spy subsystems. Most spyware apps only include 1-3.

If you are judging based on Windows as a benchmark, almost all software is going to come in as acceptable.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#13

Post by belval »

sneak wrote: post #12
belval wrote: post #7

Eh Minecraft is a video game, I just don't see the privacy risk with "typical" Windows-level telemetry happening there. At some point we have to accept that this data actually helps them fix real issues too, they're not monetizing their players directly with it.

Windows-level telemetry is not "typical"; it includes a dozen or more different spy subsystems. Most spyware apps only include 1-3. If you are judging based on Windows as a benchmark, almost all software is going to come in as acceptable.

I just meant to say that wherever the line is, I don't think Minecraft telemetry is anything to get angry about.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#14

Post by codetrotter »

diegoperini wrote: post #11
rozab wrote: post #6

If the reasons they give for this were honest, you'd think their time would be better spent building the kind of extremely basic integration tests that would detect if, say, their world generation broke making the game unwinnable. https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-236618 Inflammatory zingers aside, I don't mind telemetry in a product like this and I'm sure I'd want it if I were working on it. But I'd want automated t…

No amount of integration tests can replicate millions of players, organically interacting with a video game. The state space is too large for that.

Yeah I thought so too, but reading the ticket they linked it looks like in a specific version of Minecraft, strongholds we’re not being generated at all?

I only recently started playing Minecraft again after years. Last time I played it, The End did not exist yet in Minecraft. Back then we used to joke about “winning Minecraft”. Also, lava used to be an infinite resource if you built a cross and filled each corner with lava, you could then take infinite lava out from the middle which was neat. But they decided to remove that for some reason.

Anyway, bugs happen and I think the GP is wrong to suggest that telemetry is not helpful. Being able to see how people actually use the software is how Microsoft has done it since many many years AFAIK. And it helps Microsoft to develop better software.

There are many things I don’t like about Microsoft and I don’t use their Windows operating system almost at all. But I think they still got a lot right about how to develop software.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#15

Post by DHowett »

foepys wrote: post #8
kortex wrote: post #4

> In this release, we are re-introducing diagnostic tracking, which was part of Minecraft: Java Edition until 2018. So it was there, they took it out, now it's back.

If it was "game crashed, here's the stacktrace" before and now (or later) it's "player put 20 blocks of gold on server IP 127.0.0.1 with players foo, bar, baz present", it's a difference.

“At this point the only implemented event is world load.”

Are you certain about your assertion? Can you link to the document where you found it?

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#16

Post by h54545nb »

Well I was going to re-install and check out new updates but I guess not anymore. I don't care how helpful it is, if there is no details on the exact specification of what data is shared and no way to disable it, I won't support the product.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#17

Post by vkoskiv »

The phrase "...to better understand our [users] and to improve their experience..."

always rings alarm bells in my head. It's corporate lingo for "We want to increase profits by selling your private data for as long as we can get away with it."

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#18

Post by buzzy_hacker »

foepys wrote: post #8
kortex wrote: post #4

> In this release, we are re-introducing diagnostic tracking, which was part of Minecraft: Java Edition until 2018. So it was there, they took it out, now it's back.

If it was "game crashed, here's the stacktrace" before and now (or later) it's "player put 20 blocks of gold on server IP 127.0.0.1 with players foo, bar, baz present", it's a difference.

This is just speculation on your part? Is that all they were collecting before? And they are not collecting that now. They are collecting:

launcher identifier user identitifer (XUID) client session id (changes on restart) world session id (changes per world load, to be reused for later events) game version operating system name and version Java runtime version if client or server is modded (same information as on crash logs) server type (single player, Realms or other) game mode

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#19

Post by lmilcin »

belval wrote: post #7

Eh Minecraft is a video game, I just don't see the privacy risk with "typical" Windows-level telemetry happening there. At some point we have to accept that this data actually helps them fix real issues too, they're not monetizing their players directly with it.

But the explanation just does not satisfy me.

I mean, world building is an expensive but actually pretty simple, predictable operation. If they want to see how it performs on slower computer they don't need to get telemetry, just actually run it on slower hardware.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#20

Post by buzzy_hacker »

h54545nb wrote: post #16

Well I was going to re-install and check out new updates but I guess not anymore. I don't care how helpful it is, if there is no details on the exact specification of what data is shared and no way to disable it, I won't support the product.

The details are in the link?

Contains following information: launcher identifier user identitifer (XUID) client session id (changes on restart) world session id (changes per world load, to be reused for later events) game version operating system name and version Java runtime version if client or server is modded (same information as on crash logs) server type (single player, Realms or other) game mode

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