Video games giant Ubisoft accused of illegal data collection

A privacy campaign group filed a complaint Thursday with authorities in Austria against video game giant Ubisoft, accusing the "Assassin's Creed" publisher of illegally collecting users' personal data.

The Vienna-based organisation, Noyb -- which stands for "none of your business" -- said the French games maker forced users to connect to the internet even to play offline, then used their personal data for commercial ends without their consent.

"Video games are expensive -- but that doesn't stop companies like Ubisoft from forcing their customers to play offline games online unnecessarily, just so they can make more money by tracking their behaviour," said Lisa Steinfeld, a data protection lawyer at Noyb.

"Ubisoft's actions are clearly unlawful and must be stopped," she said in a statement.

Noyb said it had filed the case with Austria's data protection authority (DSB) on behalf of a user of Ubisoft's "Far Cry Primal", who noticed the game had established connections to external servers 150 times in just 10 minutes, including those of Amazon and Google.

The transmissions were encrypted, making it impossible to know what data was being sent, said the complaint.

Noyb asked the Austrian regulator to find Ubisoft violated the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires users' consent in such cases.

It called for a fine of up to 92 million euros ($105 million).

Ubisoft said connecting to the internet to play its games was only required when first opening them.

"Our solo games can then be played offline," it told AFP.

Data collected from online play "is used to improve game performance", it said.

The case comes after Japan's Sony was forced to backtrack last year on making PC players of popular game "Helldivers 2" link to its PlayStation Network, after an outcry over data collection concerns.

Ubisoft has faced other recent headaches, announcing a major restructuring last month in a bid to escape financial woes.