After the Once Human rules sparked a flood of negative reviews, the survival game’s creators say they will only ask for government ID in special cases

Once Human developers Starry Studios have addressed players’ privacy concerns after many of the highly anticipated survival game’s “mixed” reviews on Steam focused on its aggressive End User License Agreement (EULA).

Published by Chinese giant NetEase, Once Human collects personal data from players in accordance with the publisher’s privacy policy. The list of data collected is quite long – in addition to information relevant to gameplay, such as name, contact details, marketing preferences and gameplay details, which are collected through the game itself, NetEase also collects information “through your use of our services or from other sources.”

It is this section that seems to raise the most concerns. In many cases, NetEase tries to collect information that is not significantly different from many other game publishers – such as name and contact information, marketing and communication data, social media accounts, gaming accounts such as Steam or PSN logins. There are also sections privacy policy dedicated to collecting social media aliases and accounts, and geolocation information. In some U.S. states, NetEase may also collect data such as mailing address, physical characteristics or description, protected characteristics such as race or gender, browsing history, occupation, and ethnicity obtained from profile pictures or avatars.

Few negative Once Human reviews mention the privacy policy, EULA, or other terms of service. While there are concerns about the lack of servers or characters (the latter of which has since been addressed by the developers), the vast majority of players who give Once Human a bad review do so because of the personal data it collects, and many of them only played the game itself for a very short period of time.

In response, the game’s developers released a statement on their official Discord server (via Steam). The statement reads that “NetEase takes user data privacy very seriously and adheres to data privacy principles such as data minimization, purpose limitation, and transparency.” It points to the issue of government-issued IDs, saying that it will only collect this data “where local laws require it, (…) when the identity of a user’s parent needs to be verified in order to obtain consent for their child, (…) or when a user wishes to correct their age information.” If this data is collected, NetEase says it deletes it immediately once the purpose for which the information was collected is fulfilled.

Starry Studios also points out that NetEase has explained to players “how (they) can exercise their rights to manage (their) personal data” via in-game customer support. The privacy policy was recently revised, with a new version “soon to be released.” However, the developer says that “we’ve heard your concerns and will continue to improve how we describe our data privacy practices.” It’s unlikely to change much in the short term — NetEase is a publishing giant whose influence is felt across all types of games worldwide — but it could do something to stem the tide of negative reviews. Once Human seems to be off to a solid start with a peak of 80,000 players, but the “mixed” response on Steam could spell very bad news for the game so early in its lifespan.

Hours before its launch, hyped survival game Once Human is reminding players of seasonal server wipes “to ensure a fairer, more relaxed, and more casual gaming experience.”