this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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What's going on with Borderlands 2? Steam is giving it for free, but the game has 23% positive recent reviews. (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 93 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (31 children)
  • Did the EULA change? ✅
  • Were all Take Two games automatically updated in secret and now hijack your machine with root access to spy on everything you do? ❌
  • Do Take Two games contain code to report telemetry and user information(including application/system activity) to a home server? ✅
  • Is this EULA change extraordinary and particularly egregious in comparison to others that most people have probably already agreed to? ❌(IMO)
  • Are people riled up because e a YouTube video went a little viral and now they’re all playing telephone to the point where it’s now gotten to the point of random dumdums are review booming a 13 year old game claiming it’s turned into literal spyware? ✅(again, IMO)
  • Should you be surprised by any of this if you’ve been even remotely paying attention for any period of the last 30-40 years? ❌
  • Do we need more than just angry idiots in the battle against corpatocracy? ✅

We should be done coddling the late comers at this point. Yes welcome them and accept them, but at a certain point your level of ignorance became a detriment to your community and you should be made aware of that fact.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Pretty much nailed it, yep.

A youtuber named Hellfire has been on a spree, basically discovering how fucked up EULAs have been in games for the past 20ish years... well this is all brand new news to him and and his Zoomer / Gen A followers.

There is, as of right now, literally zero evidence that Borderlands 2 has been updated with a rootkit, with kernel level anti cheat, anything like that.

The last update to its game files was 2 years ago.

This is almost certainly them updating the EULA everywhere, the precise timing of this being for some specific arcane legal and business reasons... TakeTwo runs a whole bunch more games than juat Borderlands... namely GTA V...

...

Is this EULA bad? Yes.

Is it much worse than it was before, or what other large gaming companies EULAs have, and have had for... a decade+?

Maybe by a bit, but not really, no.

...

Is Randy Pitchford a dumb idiot asshole?

Oh absolutely yes, but that shouldn't give people the liscense to make completely unevidenced claims about other things.

...

The game does not have a kernel level AC or some kind of rootkit DRM, as many, many people are currently saying it does.

I guess gamer attention span can really hold onto a few keywords and phrases at a time.

... I say this all as person who is vehemently against kernel level AC, who has been pointing out for 4 years, that almost all existing anti cheat systems currently have at least one game that implements their AC, on linux, without using kernel level anything.... it is entirely possible to do AC without kernel level shit, even on linux, and has been for at least 4 years. EAC and BattleEye have supported linux for 4 years, but nearly no game that uses them has actually used this feature/available and offered support.

I am glad that this level of hate is finally being directed at shitty EULAs, but lets at least get our facts straight, or actually provide some hitherto unseen evidence that Borderlands has had some kind of sleeper malware in it for at least the past two years, just waiting to be activated by a TOS update to every single Take Two game.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (7 children)

So...if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see...really?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago

They know I use Linux and that means they know too much

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So…if Steam is running in a Flatpak, and Borderlands is launched from Steam, how much can they even see…really?

Without using exploits to escape the container, not much. A very empty Windows environment with a single game installed, your network interfaces and any directories that the Flatpak has access to (usually just the SteamLibrary directories).

The TOS (https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/) changes are mostly related to data that they collect via their interfacing with Steam and through their website. This idea that they're requiring you to agree to a root level access or installing a spyware rootkit is just nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Not a lot. Even when it isn't a flatpak windows software running on linux won't be able to interact with the system anywhere near as deeply as on windows.

They'll be able to tell it's linux, though.

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[–] [email protected] 174 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Don't just review bomb it

Report it to steam as SPYWARE, with the little flag icon on the product page

[–] [email protected] 175 points 2 days ago

Doesn’t the screenshot you posted explain what’s going on?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Owns Rockstar Games, Zynga and 2K. So if that's all their games, it includes at least these: Bioshock series, Borderlands series, Civilization series, Grand Theft Auto series, Mafia series, Max Payne series, NBA 2K series, PGA Tour 2K series, Red Dead series, WWE 2K series and XCOM series.

Amazing stuff!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's just a list of games that used to be good and now suck.

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[–] [email protected] 115 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That. The content of the screenshot you posted. That is what's going on.

[–] Showroom7561 96 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Pirates are winning over my empathy.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is this because Embracer sold Borderlands to Take-Two last year?

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