In a post on Reddit, user Amnail laid into Fortnite developer Epic Games about its terms of service. Amnail stated that “[Epic’s] TOS states they have the right to monitor you and send the data to their parent company. And who is Epic’s parent company? The Chinese dev that’s known for spying for the Chinese government.” The post - which also lambasted Ubisoft for making Beyond Good and Evil 2 always online - drew a massive response, and as of the time of writing it was 28.4k upvotes.
The post proved to be so popular, in fact, that it got a reply from Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney. In the comments of the Reddit post, Sweeney said, “Epic does not share user data with Tencent or any other company. We don’t share it, sell it, or broker access to it for advertising like so many other companies do.” As the founder and controlling shareholder of the company, said Sweeney, he would “never allow this to happen.”
Sweeney goes on to explain, “The language related to sharing data with the parent companies refers to Epic Games Inc. It’s a US-based company. This language exists because when you buy an Epic game in certain territories (like Europe), the seller of record is our local (e.g. European) subsidiary company for tax purposes, but the data is ultimately stored by Epic Games Inc.” Sweeney also stressed that Tencent, which is also a partner with rival game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - is a minority investor and does not have access to Epic Games user records.
Epic Games already has access to the data of more than 200 million people because of the success of its billion-dollar grossing game, Fortnite. With Epic Games Store’s exclusive deals as well, it will only draw in even more users. While Sweeney’s comments have done enough to convince some of Epic’s players that their data is being kept securely, Epic Games may have to do more to convince the other millions of its users of the same.
Source: Reddit
