Posted February 18, 2019
Wizard of Legend (and Enter the Gungeon) connects to the internet every time the game is launched. The game does not have any online elements, so this is essentially a form of spyware where the game is monitoring and reporting on your playing habits.
The game also hard crashes before reaching the main menu if you block this internet access attempt with a firewall. The only way to prevent this access/reporting/spying attempt by the game is to physically disconnect your internet before launching the game. The game will see that your system has no internet, and will not attempt to send any outgoing packets.
Why is this game bundled with user hostile elements like spying on player's play habits without any way to opt-out or block this short of physically pulling your ethernet cable?
edit: manually adding rules to Windows Firewall to block Incoming and Outgoing traffic for Wizard of Legend while leaving my third party-firewall set to allow traffic may be a workaround. I presume the traffic is actually getting blocked and not being bypassed as I tested this with a few other programs where having the program set to all traffic enabled in my aggressive third-party firewall (that auto-blocks and alerts on new connections to enable traffic to the program) but blocking the program in Windows with manually entered rules to stop all traffic in the firewall prevents lets the game start just fine. I assume this method works to stop network transmission and it's not somehow getting around the Windows Firewall as I tested this method with a few other programs such as web browsers and having Windows Firewall block the program but enable traffic in my third-party firewall successfully prevents the program from connecting to the internet.
It's worth noting that I have several other offline game that attempt to send data across the internet when started up, and none of them crash the game when the internet access attempt is blocked by my aggressive third-party firewall.
Regardless of this workaround it is not acceptable to bundle games with spying elements, let alone DRM-free ones. Windows Firewall in Win 7 does not pop up an alert that Wizard of Legend is sending outgoing packets, and if I did not have a better third-party firewall installed I would never have known I was being spied upon when launching the game.
The game also hard crashes before reaching the main menu if you block this internet access attempt with a firewall. The only way to prevent this access/reporting/spying attempt by the game is to physically disconnect your internet before launching the game. The game will see that your system has no internet, and will not attempt to send any outgoing packets.
Why is this game bundled with user hostile elements like spying on player's play habits without any way to opt-out or block this short of physically pulling your ethernet cable?
edit: manually adding rules to Windows Firewall to block Incoming and Outgoing traffic for Wizard of Legend while leaving my third party-firewall set to allow traffic may be a workaround. I presume the traffic is actually getting blocked and not being bypassed as I tested this with a few other programs where having the program set to all traffic enabled in my aggressive third-party firewall (that auto-blocks and alerts on new connections to enable traffic to the program) but blocking the program in Windows with manually entered rules to stop all traffic in the firewall prevents lets the game start just fine. I assume this method works to stop network transmission and it's not somehow getting around the Windows Firewall as I tested this method with a few other programs such as web browsers and having Windows Firewall block the program but enable traffic in my third-party firewall successfully prevents the program from connecting to the internet.
It's worth noting that I have several other offline game that attempt to send data across the internet when started up, and none of them crash the game when the internet access attempt is blocked by my aggressive third-party firewall.
Regardless of this workaround it is not acceptable to bundle games with spying elements, let alone DRM-free ones. Windows Firewall in Win 7 does not pop up an alert that Wizard of Legend is sending outgoing packets, and if I did not have a better third-party firewall installed I would never have known I was being spied upon when launching the game.
Post edited February 19, 2019 by bbuysshmups
