is pw spyware now mandatory for STO ?

bhug

130815
Noticed it at the giveaway, it seems now PW mandates their spyware installed to play or download the client; something called arc
"To play Star Trek Online, you must first download the powerful Perfect World Entertainment gaming platform Arc. Your Star Trek Online download will initiate once the Arc installation is complete."

Been helping on a 'certain' closed beta for the last two months, and today am unable to log into the STO account...

Po_gg

They've launched Arc a while ago, so it's not something new (and not something good either).

But this move is indeed harsh... and I just checked, it's on every game's download section. Must've happened in the last few days.

I hope they will revoke this, I'm pretty sure many players are angry with this crap forcing down the throat...

 

Meanwhile, you can download the client and install it, it's working the same way as it worked until this shady PWE move (you could choose to install through Arc or download it separately, seems they simply deleted this second option recently). Here's a step-by-step and a few download locations:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=819701

TheLizardbones

I stopped playing some other games because of stuff like this. Why would I voluntarily allow someone to root my system?

Nadia

how is arc  more intrusive than steam client, or raptr, or Blizzards Warden ?

Po_gg

Originally posted by Nadia
how is arc  more intrusive than steam client, or raptr, or Blizzards Warden ?

To be honest, I can't make an exact comparison because I don't use any of those you mentioned. Nor those you missed to mention, like Origin, Aeria's Ignite, Rockstar's socially handica... errr... mandatory club, etc.  Ironically, while maybe Aeria considered the worst among those companies, Ignite is the only one which is still optional.

 

Call me old-fashioned or geek, but I like to control what's running on my gear and to allow only the ones which are important to me. Spyware (like Origin), monitoring/social tool (like raptr or the steam-ing pile of... ) or directly resource/bandwith consuming apps (like Akamai or Pando) are not welcomed, simply as that.

While I play occasionally PWI or RaiderZ, the main reason I'm with PWE is Cryptic. The clients are already installed (and I saved a current install of all 3 games for later use), so I'm good at the moment without Arc. And if PWE will pushing things further, like putting the launcher under Arc or similar shady moves, I think I'll be forced to ditch the games...  But I hope it won't get that far. Even EA had to back off with Origin eventually

Nadia

Blizzard's warden runs in background - you never specifically see it unless looking for it

 

if you play any Blizzard games on Battlenet , you are running warden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29

Po_gg

Maybe so, but, as I mentioned on here too (I think) I don't blizz

war/starcraft were the worst thing that could happened to the strategy genre (and yep, rts is not strategy), diablo and its clones are the abomination to the rpg genre, and wow... I guess it's safer for all of us if I just skip writing about wow

I admit the Hearthstone videos look tempting (those cursed TCG years I hoped I left behind a long time ago...), we'll see how good it turns out to be.

WarWitch

PWI is planning to make arc mandatory for all pwi games , For now if you have the original sto cds u can install it from their, but pwi plans to stop this as well. Whats totally messed up is arc runs anytime your pc is on not just when you are playing pwi games. Hate spy wear of all kinds I run razors game booster and turn all that crap off to make my game a lot faster .