I have recently developed an interest in PVP Games both on desktop and mobile such as PUBG Mobile or COD Mobile and CSGO (Desktop). Now problem is that these games (most not all) doesn’t allow creating an account with a seperate email (no aliasing possible) and only methods is to attach (Google, Facebook or Apple) account. Not to mention most of these games are built by Chinese companies like Tencent or at least they do have highly invasive telemetry.
So, I would like to ask a few questions.
how do you play such online games as privately as possible?
I don’t have a Facebook account. Is it worth to create a Facebook account with only my real name and no info to just sign into games and play them ?
Little Off Topic : What games do you generally play
Get a Google Pixel, install GrapheneOS. Create a anonymous google account using a public wifi (cafes, restautants). Install and play the games using a separate profile to avoid cross app tracking.
There isn’t a general rule a lot, it depends. With that being said I agree a burner account or installed maybe through aurora store the game, also using GOS if you’re on a pixel or maybe DivestOS on other devices for starters.
It is generally best to use the in game’s account creation rather than logging in to something like Facebook or google as you don’t want multiple data collections happening (from eg. Facebook/Google and then the game itself), personally I’m at fault for this but some game publishers like eg. Hoyoverse provide an account setting option nowadays in game to be able to unlink those so I have the option here since I created an account of their side. If you still need the convenience, probably use multiple google play games accounts to separate identities with each game.
3. Little off topic
I play Gacha games, and looking forward to GRID Legends on mobile (hopefully it’s not as terrible as the meta quest 2 port). Gacha games would be at the moment Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Star Rail and probably Wuthering Waves when that comes out on PS5 for my friend, all come from the chinese giant Hoyoverse/miHoYo except for Wuthering Waves which is Kuro Games. But I am looking forward to Ananta [Previously was Neverness to Everness before Ananta’s announcement] assuming they don’t disappoint as Ananta seems to really gunning for the GTA x Spiderman vibe (obviously they wanna keep it PG or not but that will have to be seen but it is common for these games to be kept PG by toning down violence or criminal acts. Mostly also by the fact that they’re limited by the chinese rules but I do hope for international versions they won’t be limited to that too much.)
[Oh these are mobile, while I also play on desktop, on desktop it’s a bit different]
As for desktop, the practice more or less follows but it’s more on the security side than private:
a.(1.) Make sure you install the games through the official means whereareas possible. Eg. NFS Unbound and other games, I feel is safe to do with Valve Steam. As for the gacha games example I mentioned, make sure you get their official launcher or if you trust them at that, epic games but I doubt that, some gacha/anime games do get published on steam but not all of them [More on the security side here]. Here’s another tip, try running games off linux for privacy instead.
For some games there are community made launchers that remove telemetry and stuff that’s on it and potentially bypass anti-cheat or run them in userspace using the proton/wine tools necessary(it does pose risks of banning but under fair play and seeing the discord, none was banned for 1-1.5 years since but I guess be warned of the risk if you don’t mind it.) otherwise again steam.
More importantly yes if you can, run off of a virtual machine if also the criteria of linux doesn’t meet or otherwise.
b.(2.) still apply, but to add for b. just make an account with different aliases and stuff for each game if neccesary.
c.(3.)
On desktop, same games I play on mobile more or less but adding Need For Speed Unbound and while not necessarily an online game and more of a sanbox social vr game that supports desktop mode, ChilloutVR (after what has vrchat done quite a lot being corporatized, my final decision was in this game). And I am looking forward to Fate Trigger: The Novita as it is an online cross platform across every major platform like xbox, playstation, pc and mobile so it could be a fun game to play cross platform just adding mobile and xbox on top of the list to not be left out.
I sandbox the game so it doesn’t have access to personal data, and will consider using a VPN if it isn’t an action game. FPS/racing games are unplayable with a VPN in my experience.
One of the good things about gaming on linux is that the (very neutered) anticheat doesn’t care if you sandbox it.
I don’t play online shooters quite as much but lately I don’t notice any cheating in the online games I play which is mostly Racing so idk. I also play a social vr game and it’s very chill though mostly because is usually small if not familiar. Most other games I play are live service and don’t have some form of multiplayer co-op [yet]
Personally I just use an extra google account just for gaming and it hasn’t been bad for syncing my progress in the games I do play except in iOS when I still have to use my Apple ID to login thank goodness for android 15 profile system especially since it’s more better now that GOS has improved quite a lot
Games have been getting better at preventing rage hacking, but a cheater epidemic still exists in pretty much every online game that is possible to cheat on, it’s just less obvious.
Yeah I get it I probably don’t play enough shooters or something that would be prevalent of cheating for me to get it as this doesn’t happen in the game like need for speed unbound, maybe I will notice it on fate trigger novita. Honestly who knows.
Currently having an iPhone and a secondary android device. I think I might try to create a burner google account inside seperate profiles to play these games. Thanks for the suggestion.
Yeah, I do have a spare android device (not as powerful but can run games at low graphic settings). I’ll try to create a separate profile with burner account to play these games.
Yeah but most games don’t provide the email option. E.g Take PUBG mobile for example, on android they allow to create account using google and on iPhone using Apple ID or Game Center (apple). Which means if I have to ever switch platforms I can’t. The only common option between two devices is Facebook sign in. I know some games like COD Mobile allows to create a separate account but not all games have this option. For games that do give such options I might have to resort to a burner Facebook account as last option and I hate it.
I haven’t tried Gacha Games but by your description, they seem nice. I will try them out.
Yeah in a separate profile in android right? I’m thinking to do the same as suggested by others. Yeah FPS games are unplayable on VPN when ping hits 999+, you know your’e screwed. A blink and your player is off the map lol.
I think Easy Anticheat don’t work on linux right? which means most online games like HALO multiplayer etc won’t play on linux due to which I resort to windows. Offline games works nice on the Linux tho. I wish that these developers bring easy anticheat to linux so that we can have a more private experience while playing these games.
Depends on the specific game. Some games enable support for Proton, some don’t. You can check here if a game is supported or not.
I’m very wary of the privacy and security consequences of playing these games on windows. I don’t have a lot of recent evidence/proof but it wouldn’t surprise me if companies were doing things like this or worse. On linux you can at least have control over what the game has access to; on windows you are entirely at the mercy of the anticheat and game developer.
Or there are communities out there modifying games normally designed to be played on Windows to run on Linux, mostly by modifying to run the dll anti cheat in userspace or bypass it all together, and also remove telemetry. This has been possible and would love to share it but unfortunately being in a public forums sharing it would pose a risk of if the company notices their intellectual property being invaded this way, the project could go down with it unless we can use the codenames:
With codenames
The project group is called “An Anime Team” at GitHub and they remove telemetry and patch games for at the moment: Honkers, Honkers Railway, Sleeper, Wavey. Games like that and so yeah they exist
Understandable, Though not all of them iirc, I’ve viewed Hoyoverse’s (COGNOSPHERE PTE LTD. rather) Privacy Policy just in case and it didn’t seem very invading though for sure they know what system you are using and what IP but that’s honestly expected, at least in my experience but again understandable if you’re still worried and I haven’t reviewed all privacy policies. Some are the worst, some are better the like goes on
I segregate login, usually i don’t login to games with fb, google, apple, twitter or whatever sso login it allowed. Instead if it offered option to create new account via email I’ll choose that option and registered using a unique alias not use anywhere else. Simplelogin, addy.io, duck.com, apple hide-my- email etc can be used for that. I used my own custom domain for alias.
Then theres telemetry tracking. Games are the worse when it comes to tracking. Every clicks, every taps etc would be tracked and sent to whatever sdk they used. Usually those can be blocked via adguard dns, nextdns, rethinkdns etc. I used my own selfhosted adguardhome to block those craps.
