a lack of empathy is literally the defining trait of sociopathy.

autistic people DO have empathy for fucks sake. they (we) just have trouble with unclear social cues, but understand and have emotions just fine.

zuck, musk, and the rest are sociopaths; not autistic. (they probably could be both, but the autism is definitely not the issue here…)

zuck, musk, and so on use autism as an excuse and shield against criticism, because, in their minds, it absolves them having to change their behavior. “that’s just how they are” - fuck no, that’s not how autistic people act or behave at all!

it’s INSANELY damaging to actual autistic people to go around saying people clearly displaying traits of sociopaths are autistic.

FUCK OFF with that shit.

afaik the client does collect a bunch if data, most (all, i think? but not a 100% on that) of which is opt-in.

they do need stuff like IPs for internet related features.

telemetry wise there’s the steam hardware survey, which is opt-in, and it asks every single time it attempts to collect your systems hardware and OS information. this could technically be identifying information, but since it’s opt-in it’s not a privacy violation and it’s entirely optional. (plus it’s super useful for all involved: users, devs, and steam. it’s kind of a win-win and straight up necessary info for devs to know which hardware they should optimize for)

they might be putting it at the top because steam has native support for DRM?

but that’s also weird, because DRM isn’t a privacy violation. it’s a shitty practice, barely does anything, barely works, and keeps breaking or hobbling otherwise perfectly good games, all of which is shitty, but it’s little to do with privacy. and the dev has to specifically opt-in and integrate it as a feature…unless they’re thinking of 3rd party DRM that can be waaay more intrusive, like Vanguard… THAT’S a privacy and security nightmare just waiting to blow up in people’s faces.

otherwise…i haven’t really heard anything bad about steam privacy wise?

doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to be concerned about, but i feel like there’d been some news about it if there was…

Arthmoor is far from the worst the elder scrolls (and specifically the skyrim) modding community has to offer, lol

he’s one of the most famous weirdos, but there’s waaaaaaay worse among some of the most widely used mods’ authors.

the best example is probably Boris, the maintainer of ENB (a shader extension/injector), who is a famously fascist russian.

then there’s all the anti-woke modders (which mostly get banned from most platforms within hours/days). these aren’t that bad in the grand scheme, but they regularly cause huge shitstorms and hilarious modding sprees that can be best described as “extra, super gay” in protest.

ETA: one kinda famous incident was some guy modding out a SINGLE reference to a (probably, implied only) gay couple of dead skeletons. they’re not even really characters, they’re just set pieces lying around, but this dude thought “absolutely not!” and posted a patch that removed that like, single text line in a diary, from the game. suuuuper petty, borderline insane. anyway, nexus community, understandably threw a fit, nexus staff was super on board and went nuclear on the dude’s account, and a bunch of mods in the theme of “EVERYONE in skyrim is now super gay” sprung up on the front page of the skyrim nexus. so that was pretty funny!

but yeah…there’s regularly gross ass bigots around…'cause, you know…viking-themed fantasy land…

have i mentioned the frequent self-takedowns of mods in protest? yeah, that also used to be a big thing on the skyrim nexus…have fun trying to mod when some of the core frameworks just dissapear overnight just because someone was mildly offended by some bullshit…except like once or twice, when they actually kinda had a point…

at least with minecraft most of the mods, and as far as i know all of the big ones, are open source. skyrim’s are often closed source, so for a bunch of the core frameworks the community is built around there just isn’t an easy replacement. if the modders got mad, things used to just…break.

and then there’s the pedos…yeah. some folks keep trying to lewd the kids in skyrim…also get banned pretty much immediately, but like…you know.

sooooo…yeah…minecraft drama is suuuper tame by comparison!

it’s intense for the people involved, sure, but big picture wise it’s childs’ play…skyrim drama hits different.