Previous PlayStation exclusive Days Gone had a relatively good launch on PC last month that was marred by players discovering data collection in this single player game.
While data collection has continually become the norm, even in games not focused on multiplayer, this inclusion was not appreciated in the community and many owners cite this fact in negative reviews on Steam.
Now an update to the game in the form of Patch 1.04 seeks to address this. The patch reads:
• Fixed decal rendering, including tire tracks and footprints
• Fixed game hang when the cinematic starts before the mission ‘What’s A Nice Girl’
• Crash fixes
• Removed Audio Device Auto-Detect
Other changes
• Updated Russian localization
• Added mouse interactivity to the repair/refuel icons
• Fixed Achievements progress bar that was not updating on Steam
• To turn OFF Data Collection, please select Limited Data
Assuming we can take the word of developer Bend Studio to heart we have to wonder why the option to turn data collection “OFF” is labelled as “Limited”. After a public dressing-down over the situation a simple off and on toggle would have probably been the better choice we think.
Despite these problems it seems Days Gone has had a decent release on PC. On Steam, at the time of writing, it has 8 724 reviews with 92 percent of them being positive. According to the unofficial tracker Steam Database the number of owners for the game sit anywhere between 170 000 and 754 320.
The PC version of Days Gone is also available on the Epic Games Store which doesn’t have any public information about its stats and also lacks any player review section.
At this point it’s worth remembering that a lot of the time player data collection is used to make infographics about player habits, either to be used as promotional material or for the developers to consider changes that need to be made on their games. Days Gone seems to have had a rough time over this with some calling the uproar a simple misunderstanding. Regardless it’s always nice to have more options when it comes to your data being hoovered up.
