By indicating that root access is required to play the game, and that you agree to this by agreeing to the TOS. Without agreeing, you can’t play the game.
Comment on Borderlands 2 is free to claim on Steam for the next two days
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days agoHow do terms of service give them root level access?
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 days ago
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I don’t mean to be disrespectful when I say this, but I can agree that gravity pulls things up instead of down and it won’t make it so. I just skimmed through the EULA and didn’t find anywhere that it said it needed root level access (though maybe I missed it), nor did the executable take any action to try to do so.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The TOS doesn’t give the game executable magical powers to do things it wasn’t written to do.
Dagamant@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It doesn’t, installing the game does. The terms of service just let you know that you are willfully infecting your computer with spyware.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Then I suppose the loophole is to play on Linux.
Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Not in general. Typically, games with kernel level drm or anticheat just didn’t work at all.
Borderlands 2 specifically has a native Linux version though, and it may or may not abuse this fact. It isn’t run in a sandbox-like environment like Windows games that run through proton, but according to protondb it does run through proton? In any case yes, it’s probably better than running it on Windows.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yes, support for Borderlands 2 continued long after it was clear that Steam Machines weren’t taking off, which means it’s on a newer version than the Linux native one that Aspyr ported. You can still run the Linux native version, but if you want to play with your Windows friends or just get access to all the DLC, you need to run it through Proton.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Are you running out as root for some reason? Cause if you are not running it as root, it doesn’t have root access, absent some kind of major security flaw in Linux.
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I wouldn’t even give them the storage space tbh…just makes other people think it’s ok because they can claim ‘big yuge numbers of players’
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s Borderlands. They already had that claim. I don’t feel good about it, but they made this change after I’d already started this trek. It’s one more data point that gets me closer to only buying games on GOG, but I’m not all the way there yet. It’s definitely nefarious that it’s all good and legal to change the terms of the thing you bought after it’s already been sold to you.