I am an owner of Xcom 2 since the year it came out, but recently the game contains a NEW UPDATED policy policy and user agreement, which is very distasteful. At the bottom, I summarize. From the new policy I quote:

From their Privacy Policy section last updated May of 21:

—Gameplay Information
"
When you use the Services on hardware connected to the Internet, Take-Two receives information about your gameplay even if you are not specifically notified at the time or do not take any actions to actively give us this information. Gameplay information includes your console ID, gaming service ID, game achievements, game scores and performance, IP address, MAC address or other device ID, other console / device information, and other information and statistics regarding your Service use. We collect gameplay information even if you do not register for the Services and we may collect gameplay information while you are offline. Offline gameplay information is transmitted to Take-Two when you next connect to the Internet. We may combine gameplay information with other information we have about you.
"

Categories of Information Disclosed
"
In the last 12 months, Take-Two has disclosed each of the categories of personal information described above (e.g., Identifier/Contact Information, Commercial Information, Internet/Electronic Activity, and Profile Inferences) for a business or commercial purpose.
"

Please spread the warning to any potential purchasers and players that you can. We can not allow them to force people to agree to this CHANGE more than 5 years after purchase. If you do not agree to the policy, it clearly does these things anyways, per its text. The game also will bring the pop up on your screen everytime you reject the policy, until you accept. It also restricts you from leaderboards, daily challenges and using online services. Please verify this information if you would like. You guys have been warned. I recommend uninstalling and possibly reformatting to get this off.

Exactly, it's unbelievable. What are you supposed to do? Copy the DRM free GOG version to a computer with no internet access at all and play there if you don't want to leak your personal information to Take2?

Or just block the ability of the program to talk to outside networks. Its not that hard.

"Exactly, it's unbelievable. What are you supposed to do? Copy the DRM free GOG version to a computer with no internet access at all and play there if you don't want to leak your personal information to Take2?"

Yes, more or less.

I have ALWAYs disconnected from the net (physically pull out the ethernet cord) when playing a SP game. Many of you have been trained by companies and taught to be so lazy that you simply can't imagine doing that, so when they try this crap on you, you cry and whine, yet refuse to do the simple thing- Disconnect from the net while playing!

They can do nothing then.

Remember this; Gaming companies are NOT our friends, not any more, not for about 15 years. They use all kinds of psychological tricks to make you addicted and NOT think, for your convenience of course! This includes making long private policies that you need a paid Lawyer to read first! They know most people won't read it. they KNOW that. It's done on purpose.

Don't play their game. Pull out the ethernet cord for while you play. Also, as a side benefit, you can shut off your anti-virus etc and save on pc CPU/RAM resources being used up.

And if you're in a multiplayer game, then stop or accept you're going to be milked for all your details.

Best of all would be just not buy the game as they keep altering the deal anyway, even years later, especially on platforms like Steam/Origin/etc. Something they could have NEVER done without the platforms. Never. It all suits the company, not the gamer. No matter what they tell you.

p.s of course if we'd all protested this at the beginning (especially when Steam started this up), we'd not be in this. But they prey on kids and most gamers just are too selfish to fight together against these big companies, and the companies know it. You have to defend YOURSELF and take precautions now until gamers learn to work together, FOR eachother.

I doubt that will ever happen. gamers are a very selfish bunch, WHO OFTEN WON'T SEE THE BIG PICTURE of what's being done against them, and it is why game companies screw us over.

While we are divided because "Muh game!", THEY conquer.

Yea, I know, nobody cares and will just go back to being screwed over. But perhaps some of you will get the balls one day to starve these companies of their power, cos it's we, the gamer, the CUSTOMER who puts FOOD on THEIR table, that have the TRUE power, if only we would use it.

Would have to block the launcher as well. They keep modifying this thing to make it worse. You may be on to a solution there. I am honestly over this game anyways...this is probably why Dan Houser left Rockstar (take 2 are losers).

Are you talking Galaxy or something else? Because I don't use Galaxy.

The game launcher (some games nowadays require a launcher program, mostly for bad, this is one of them). Not the GOG Galaxy "Client".

Its usually easier to do that than block the separate executable anyway.

Thanks bro, I just blocked it off from the network. I don't need it to be connected, anyway.

Who would guess those people are so nasty?
Well...maybe the last time I tried to make a purchase from the 2k games store. They charge about 10€ shipping costs - per item.I wanted spend about 70€ on Black Friday there, and it would have cost me another 70€ for shipping.
(sorry for being offtopic, just needed to blow off some steam)

I appreciate that you scanned through this. It's my favourite game for 2 years now, so probably 2k has collected enough information from me.

+1
Shoshana Zuboff, in her seminal work The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, quoted the research, by two Carnegie Mellon professors, who calculated that a reasonable reading of all the privacy policies that one person encounters in a year would require 76 full work days at a US national opportunity cost of $781 billion. (With footnote 75: Aleecia M. McDonald and Laurie Faith Cranor, "The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies", Journal of Policy for the Information Society 4, no.3 (2008), pp.50&549. Note the research is dated 2008.)
As always, people are trying to violate Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative —— never treat another person as an means to an end. Whereas socialists use tyranny to coerce those of differing opinions to do their bidding, the commercial equivalent uses strategies like loyalty bonuses (carrot) and nagging (stick). If shiny achievements (which, to someone looking from afar seem almost identical to the stickers that elementary school children love to receive, right down to the little graphics) don't lure the gamer, then the nag screen prompting the ill-prepared to surrender to their Fear of Missing Out. This counterfactual argument is meaningless. Perhaps the loss of privacy and its ramifications (the unplanned and unexpected consequences) will produce sufficient motivation for future decision makers. This is how Zuboff explained the scenario facing everyone, with a superb (borrowed) callida junctura, thus (highlighted):

To all of the posters who are totally demoralized, we do not have CBDC yet. We vote with our yens, pesos, dollars, pounds, etc. If the money supply turns to this currency, you will just have to smile/be happy/love Klaus Schwab and WEF little girlies. I do not like them and I let them know about it whenever I can and vote with my money this way.

Keep buying games from 2k with these practices and support our peril. Games are not of value compared to rights and freedoms.

Same thing applies to the Medical Industrial Complex, they are as bad as the Military Industrial Complex. The secret doctrine. Do not trust them anymore than the politicians allowing gaming companies to change access to a games features and let them do it with or without consent. If the courts were real, Take 2 and 2k should be bleeding from the nose.

This series is basically dead anyways. Firaxis let this happen. 2kgames/take 2 is making it happen. Play games, don't let them play you!