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.
Linux + using alt names does a fair bit at keeping things mostly private/anonymous. Discord is the one thing that is a bit of a sticky point, but it can be used in a browser and kept mostly isolated if desired.
Also, avoiding the games with very invasive anti-cheats. They generally don’t run on Linux anyway, so less of an issue for me, but I don’t like how much low-level access these things have.
Being aware of the potential privacy issues with kernel level anti cheats, I will give up every piece of it as long as I am sure I don’t run into cheaters. Hate me all you want, but a good FPS gaming experience is worth everything to me.
Fair point. If you’re using a dedicated gaming PC vs your general purpose PC you can avoid a lot of the risks too.
Yeah, I get that. Cheaters absolutely ruin competitive FPS games.
In some ways having an isolated OS installed for gaming makes a lot of sense, but you just lose a lot of convenience.
As far as Steam goes, I believe there are privacy options to keep anyone from seeing your activity. Honestly, as long as you don’t play multiplayer games or add any friends, you mitigate a lot of privacy risk. I do not see Linux as some kind of panacea for privacy. You have to be careful not to give away your identity or personal information, online or in real life.
I sometimes buy from GOG, but for the most part I use Itch.io. Like movies and music, I have a strong preference for independent work and experimentation.
Also, there is decades of history in gaming, with physical media or with emulation that does not require making an account or being online.
Those are good points. I too really love GOG’s DRN free policy. It’s what keeps me buying from them. Now that Steam has amazing Linux support though I’m torn. Steam’s games are so easy to get running it really makes me want to support them for wider Linux adoption.
That is an enormous dilemma. Steam, besides having incredible Linux support either natively or with proton, is also extemely economical.
I used to have a moderately large Steam collection, over 300 games. One day I drank too much of the privacy kool-aide and deleted my Steam account. It felt liberating at the time, but not too long after Steam started becoming more Linux centric, and seeing free and open source zealots be so enthusiastic made me feel like an outright fool.
Yet, my entire collection were gained through bundles and sales, so the amount of my money I “threw away” was actuall very little, but still a waste. I now have a new Steam account, and once again I buy convervatively the stuff I actually want to play at the lowest price I can wait for.
Side note: It is still important to buy DRM, and set up a robust system to backup and organize those purchases. The archiving efforts by certain communities and enthusiasts make it almost guaranteed that most video games will be preserved… but that is not true, is it? If you want to play a game 20 years from now, you have to own it and preserve it. There are so many games I used to love but simply cannot find anymore.
… and no, I am foolish and have not set up a system yet for all of my digital media.
Compartmentalization.
Get another drive for your PC (an SSD is a better idea for gaming especially since now they’re pretty cheap).
Install Windows if you want more compatible games or Linux if the games you’re going to play are compatible.
Encrypt both drives and don’t log in into anything important while on your gaming drive.
Try to buy all of your games on GOG or itch.io (or similar platforms where games don’t have DRM).
Use different usernames between each game and/or between games that you play with strangers and your friends. Don’t use usernames that you’re already using, especially usernames that could link to your real identity.
Avoid games with invasive anticheats like Valorant.
As you probably understand, playing a game with friends using a service online will require you to provide certain information in order to work. I’m just wary of companies/governments, other orgs collecting and using data beyond what is needed for providing that service without an option to disable it.
I ain’t giving Amazon and game companies my phone number. I use protonmail, I have a Linux box and Steam Deck. I don’t play games that have invasive anticheat, as in I dropped Riot Games completely.
For true privacy and anonymity (beyond what I do regularly for myself), it is best to play single player and local multiplayer games that can function without internet access. Nintendo Games all work fine with local wireless play without the need to register online. GOG and itch.io allow you to purchase games that you can keep forever. Keeping gaming installations, drives, computers separate to your productivity is another idea.
This is a legal grey area, but if you and friends purchase a game then afterward find a way to play it without the need to connect to Steam or the game publisher’s servers, that is also a way to preserve your privacy/anonymity.
I’ve been gaming exclusively on linux for over a year now, and I have a seperate email from my personal one that I use for game logins.
If you want to use Windows, don’t use that install for anything personal (i.e. use it for games but do everything else on your phone or wherever). If you want to use Linux then check out ProtonDB to see how well your Windows binaries will run on Linux using Proton - I’m having a great time on the Steam Deck and I think most of the tips for that are applicable to most Linux installs!
Steam deck all the way, I have like 5 games I even would consider playing, that can’t run on the proton. Just switch my laptop to Linux, and once I back up my desktop, swapping that too
I just dualboot linux and windows solely for gaming, sure i could get most my game library working on linux but its just easier having all my games in one place, and i dont really have to mess with unbreaking stuff
@DeflectedBullhorn If I’m to play a game in a more private mode I’d always play a DRM-free game
Unfortunately, the best way to obtain DRM-free games is GOG. And they hate Linux, which a privacy-conscious gamer may already be using.
GOG doesn’t hate Linux. They just don’t support it with their Galaxy launcher. Games can be downloaded directly from their website, including the Linux versions if they are available. And there are great third-party launchers like Heroic if you want a launcher. It would be great if GOG would officially support Linux like Valve does with Steam and Proton, but GOG is still one of the best major game stores for Linux.
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.
