Once Human is getting review-bombed on Steam for its invasive Terms of Service

Modified Jul 10, 2024 14:59 IST

Once Human review bombed because of ToS — Once dissuaded, user opinion may be hard to change (Image via NetEase)

Once Human is getting a significant number of negative reviews on Steam directly aimed at its ToS (Terms of Service) from users who are finding it too invasive. The 'New Weird' survival-craft MMO was one of the most highly anticipated titles on Steam this year, following the groundbreaking success of Palworld.

While the game still holds true to these promises, many new players are being warded off by certain turns of phrase in the Privacy Policy in NetEase's ToS.

Once Human is not the only recent game to face negative reviews and have invasive data collection practices

Players don't like what they're seeing in terms of gameplay (Image via Steam)

At the time of writing this article, around 45% of Steam reviews on Once Human's page are negative. Very few of these have to do with user consensus on the gameplay itself.

About half of these are users exasperated by technical issues. This includes high latency in EU and NA servers, and a technical limitation that disallowed players from creating new Once Human characters after their first one. However, the latter issue was later resolved. Some players are also disappointed about being forced to install the LoadingBay to claim Closed Beta Test rewards.

The other half, however, are accounts of players taking a cursory glance at a select few phrases on the Terms of Service and calling it quits on the free-to-play title.

Also Read: Once Human developers confirm there will be no private servers on launch, but they might come later

Once Human uses the same Privacy Policy as most NetEase games, including those you can download on LandingBay. The first clause clarifies what kind of data collection policy the game adopts, which includes some pain points like:

(Personal Information Clause A) Name and Contact Details: Such as first and last name, title, prefix, email address, telephone number, (instant) messaging account, postal address, date of birth, age, gender, country/region, and government-issued ID, such as passport information, as required by applicable laws for age verification and correction of personal information.
(Personal Information Clause B) Location Information: Such as IP geolocation information, cell-ID, and Wi-Fi connection location.

NetEase's data collection policies are not the only ones to come under fire in recent history. A big release from last week, The First Descendant is also sitting on Mixed reviews. Perhaps not coincidentally, Nexon's latest offering also makes you agree to some invasive hardware monitoring practices under its ToS:

"The Services may access and monitor your device (including without limitation the hard drive and other storage devices, central processing unit, random access memory, video card, and peripheral hardware, software and applications) for third-party programs or software that is prohibited under these Terms."

While some of these keywords are commonplace in ToS legalese of live-service games like Once Human, the multitude of voices speaking up against it also have corroborating reasons. Once Human, after all, is a game that asks you to engage with its social media platforms from the main menu itself.

In any case, news of the outrage regarding Once Human's Terms of Service has reached the top brass. A correspondent from Starry Studio addressed the subject in a recent post on the game's official Discord server, saying:

"...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."

A 'recently revised' the Privacy Policy aiming to 'improve clarity and transparency' will be published soon, as the post claims.

Check out our other articles on this game:

Edited by Srijan Sen