Can't tell you because it tries to authenticate and fails when I try to run it. I've reinstalled it multiple times, and tried system restore, to no avail.

It started when I was trying to lock down windows update and Edge. I succeeded with that, but came to find out that DA:O was dead. I've got a drive image I can reinstall if I have to, but I'd like to find out what's causing it to hang.

I didn't expect this, after the new crappy EULA. Are we sure they don't use some other spyware too?

Sad -_-'

the standard Unity telemetry stuff is still there I suppose.
Aside from that I don't know. GOG hasn't updated the offline installers yet ...

I started a new thread about this, because a forum search for 'red shell' did not throw up this thread. Sorry about that.

Here's my post..

Program called Red Shell is accused of behaving like 'spyware'.

Here's an excerpt from the article published by Naked Security (Sophos)

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/06/22/holy-potatoes-popular-games-remove-spyware-after-gamers-revolt/

'The games industry has just been taught an important privacy lesson: don’t mess with gamers – especially the ones who play something called Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space?!

The complaint was that some recent downloads of the game had included a marketing monitoring program – Red Shell – developed by a company called Innervate, that behaved like “spyware”.
.....alarm about Red Shell was spreading like wildfire, not helped by the coincidence – openly acknowledged by its developers – that a 2004 Trojan shared the same name.

The game’s developer took the path of least resistance and caved, agreeing to de-install Red Shell using a software update.
More developers pledged to do the same, including the makers of Elder Scrolls online, Conan Exiles, the Warhammer series, Total War, and a list of others constituting perhaps a third of the total number of games that currently incorporate Red Shell.'

Does anyone know if this program was included in versions of these games sold by Gog, or other Gog games?
If so, has it been removed?

https://abload.de/img/redshell2nhur4.gif

You need a firewall that allows creation of custom rules. Allow traffic between DA:O and localhost, and block everything else.

What I do is first disable my network connection and then enable the game exe access through the firewall. Then start the game which then loads and runs fine. When I've finished playing, I then disable the exe in my firewall again and turn back on my network connection. To make things a bit easier I've set up short cuts to make the process quicker! Hope this helps.

can anybody else confirm that? I mean - this game sits in my wishlist for a while, but I already faced similar behaviour in Victor Vran (not to mention, that I ll add it to gogmix of games with telemetry, at this point)

I blocked it in Windows 8.1's own built in firewall just fine, adding just 'DAOrigins.exe' in the location it was installed at.

Sorry to bring up this slightly old post but is there a current list of GOG games that do or don't spy on their users? Surely that would be more useful information to include on a game page than popular achievements!

I was thinking about buying "Darksiders" in the sale until I saw a review that says it contains spyware. Now I'm not only re-thinking buying that one but also any other new-ish game :-(

Why is it so hard to just buy a game without any unwanted crap coming with it?

Because publishers are only interested in making money and think they can get away with it. They won't really have a notion of acting decent. The question is just what they can get away with and it's a lot. The average customer doesn't really know what's going on in this regard and also doesn't care so much (my guess). Additionally, GOG informs its customers only on a very superficial level about it.

Let's face it. Customers pay money to get software installed, that spies on them.

Only buying single player games and using a firewall blocking everything by default and only allowing your browser, your OS system and the email client to be online is probably the best you can do really. Nothing else will work currently.

It's such a shame, I'd love to not give my money to companies who do this but it looks like I'd have to give up buying any games at all. I'm planning to move to Linux on my next PC to prevent Windows spying on me, looks like I'll have to read up properly on iptables then grrrr!

It's great that they think it'd be wrong for me to pay for their games then share them with other people for free but it's fine for them to steal my data and sell it on.

Just pull the internet cable out, job done.

Well I was thinking about dual booting with an offline Windows 7 to save having to faff about with Wine for any non-Linux games. Since there's no good list of spyware games I guess I'll just have to live with that :-/

I've searched the steam and gog review pages, and forum pages, and reddit for good measure, but there was no mention of spyware anywhere.

Could you please link this review that you saw?