I’m a firm believer that inching towards a more private life and future is a good thing in and of itself. However, I also believe that striving for a healthy social life and finding individual happiness is very important.
One area that I’m a bit lost on how to achieve better privacy is gaming. I also believe this is an area that is often overlooked. Do you all have any tips, tricks, or guides on how to game while retaining some level of privacy?
Specifically I’m referring to privacy from corporations, governments, and to a lesser extent friends. I’m also thinking about all types of games, from MMOs, to competitive FPSs, to RTS Games, to RPGs.
With Linux gaming becoming increasingly viable in conjunction with the mainstream success of the Steamdeck, I would imagine one idea for most people is kicking windows to the curb.
Couple of things: 1 is to run a privacy-friendly OS. AtlasOS is not really an OS at all, but really just Windows 10 stripped of all the spyware. This also removes pretty much all of the security features so you really ONLY want to run this on a gaming-only device, or on a gaming-only sandboxed partition. Otherwise, Proton has made Linux very usable for the vast majority of games.
Second: Look at the yellow boxes on Steam. This is where they disclose all the shady shit publishers are pushing on you. Don’t buy games with DRM. Don’t buy games with anti-cheat, this is incredibly invasive software. Don’t buy games that require you to sign an EULA, which is usually just forfeiting all of your privacy rights. Don’t buy “online-only” games.
All games on GOG require no DRM so those are usually a good bet.
I’m a Linux user, so I keep steam (and by extension, proton and my steam games) sandboxes via flatpak. While I’m sure many anti cheat solutions can install rootkits (or ARE rootkits), I doubt it’s profitable for them to design that particular type of malware.