For those that say it installs or at least tries to install "something" into Chrome, is it an extension? I have nothing installed in Chrome (v32.0.1700.72 m).
I am just trying to understand where some people are saying it installs stuff in Chrome when Arc clearly did not do so on my system.
Now, I do have an add-on in IE11 for Arc but it remains disabled by default.
In chrome there is an option to block any plugins from being installed without your knowledge. When something like arc attempts this it blocks it unless you allow it to go through.
On top of all that it offers me nothing that I want and PWE just doesn't see it that way so I guess i'll have to stop playing sto.
If Arc ever becomes required to update the game, I'll still not participate in their data-mining. I'll just set it up on a virtual machine, block all outgoing communication, and copy the patched client back to my regular machine. Then, I'll launch the game .exe directly. :rolleyes:
Don't force Arc. You're going to lose that battle, and waste thousands of dollars in the process.
Oh, I think I'll also get technical about something that bothers me:
I've seen a report that Arc will scan every hard drive that exists in the system. Supposedly (unconfirmed) this is to look for PWE games. Why? Seriously, any game the user has installed should be in the registry. All you need to do is look for the appropriate registry key (HKLM/Software/<vendor>/<game>) to know if the game is installed or not. If there's no registry key, you can safely assume the game isn't there.
"Oh, but users can just copy their game directory to a new computer, installation is not required!". Well, scanning is STILL not needed. Just give users the option to specify an installation directory for their games. Arc should then scan JUST that directory to verify its contents.
There is literally no legitimate reason for Arc to scan every hard drive on the system. As it is, it shouldn't even be scanning the system drive. My directory structure (and its contents) are of no concern to anyone except me.
There is literally no legitimate reason for Arc to scan every hard drive on the system. As it is, it shouldn't even be scanning the system drive. My directory structure (and its contents) are of no concern to anyone except me.
They said it has no data mining abilities rofl... and you are right its no ones concern but the owner of the machine. For a launcher its eating up too much resources as well to just be a "launcher".
Reminds me of that raptr thing too where it data mines your online gaming information and then posts it. If I wanted that information known I'd post it myself lol. Its looking to me like its going to data mine and say you still have 5 bucks in your account so hand it over lol.
Guys, it is a stupid program that has no real benefit but this isn't what this thread is for.
They want our feedback on its functionality. Not whether you like it.
Edit: Remember the way they work. They will raise their arms and say "don't ever ask them for feedback because this is what happens". So please try to not have that happen
FYI...the forum moderators have merged other threads into this one simply because ARC is discussed. So a lot of what you're seeing may be merged information never meant for a feedback testing discussion.
Oh, I think I'll also get technical about something that bothers me:
I've seen a report that Arc will scan every hard drive that exists in the system. Supposedly (unconfirmed) this is to look for PWE games. Why? Seriously, any game the user has installed should be in the registry. All you need to do is look for the appropriate registry key (HKLM/Software/<vendor>/<game>) to know if the game is installed or not. If there's no registry key, you can safely assume the game isn't there.
"Oh, but users can just copy their game directory to a new computer, installation is not required!". Well, scanning is STILL not needed. Just give users the option to specify an installation directory for their games. Arc should then scan JUST that directory to verify its contents.
There is literally no legitimate reason for Arc to scan every hard drive on the system. As it is, it shouldn't even be scanning the system drive. My directory structure (and its contents) are of no concern to anyone except me.
At this point probably the least bad explanation is it could just be lazy programming. Why program a search with any limits on it when you can just tell it to search everywhere.
I ran ARC for a period of time. It slowed down my computer by diverting processor and RAM power to it instead of STO. My graphics are already turned as low as they can get, with the resolution halved, and I still had terrible framerate issues due to ARC. With my graphics turned down so low, I should not have to turn off the HUD too in order to actually activate my buffs and fire my weapons when I want no, not when the game bothers to notice I hit a button over and over again.
ARC uninstalled, got an old installer downloaded and re-patching the game again. I should be able to log back in and play in a few days time, once the game patching finishes. 8166MB.
Weyland-Yutani Joint Space Venture - Always open to new members!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My name is Rage, and I too support a revised Galaxy family.
What we are not getting with ARC is answers
1. What the hell does it actually do?
Right now, I open launcher, it looks for updates, gets them, then launches the game. THAT'S ALL I NEED A LAUNCHER FOR! I don't need or want PWE sticking their nose in my business!
Google snoops in my email, but gives me free email.
If PWE wants to give me infinite Zen to buy in game stuff, then they can snoop too. But as long as I'm paying, KEEP OUT!
I can tell already the competitors are gonna get an influx of STO players coming their way lol. If seasons 7 and 8 weren't enough to make someone quit the arc wars will.
Y'know what? I've decided to look through the other PWE games that may be talking about Arc. So far, I've only found two: Neverwinter and RaiderZ. You know what surprised me?
Simple. It wasn't forty-one pages of players stomping their feet and complaining and making entitlement vows of quitting. At most, it was two pages, a few people excited to see it happen and a bug notification or two. Not... THIS.
You people complaining should be ashamed of yourselves! No wonder Star Trek fans tend to get looked down at!
Y'know what? I've decided to look through the other PWE games that may be talking about Arc. So far, I've only found two: Neverwinter and RaiderZ. You know what surprised me?
Simple. It wasn't forty-one pages of players stomping their feet and complaining and making entitlement vows of quitting. At most, it was two pages, a few people excited to see it happen and a bug notification or two. Not... THIS.
You people complaining should be ashamed of yourselves! No wonder Star Trek fans tend to get looked down at!
You lack the understanding of what Arc does to your PC, and what it means to STO, and the intentions of PWE/Cryptic therein.
They want to make ARC a unified launcher fine, they want to make it a standalone browser fine, let them get rid of the spyware and the bloatware and come clean about what it is doing on the computer. Then we can give it an honest look.
Nobody really cares what the kiddies in neverland have to say, some of us do other things than just play games and we don't want to have to deal with the inconvenience of having to completely reconfigure a computer that has been messed up by a video game.
So if it's a choice between losing hours of work restoring needed files and uninstalling Star Trek Online and never looking back the choice is going to be a simple one.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
I won't use ARC. I don't want it. It wasn't designed for my needs or purposes. The Targ wholeheartedly disapproves. If ARC becomes mandatory for Star Trek Online I'm out. *angrysnort*
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
You lack the understanding of what Arc does to your PC, and what it means to STO, and the intentions of PWE/Cryptic therein.
According to you guys, Arc is a secret malware program that is designed to steal all of your information, prevent STO from running normally and is probably a devious plot from PWE and Cryptic to get more money. Maybe the last part is true, but I'm not so keen on the rest.
But, I've had enough - I've spent all day reading these posts and the entitlement and rage and seeing that other PWE games are actually level-headed in their concerns and bugs. I don't like getting angry over posts, but this has what it's done to me. For now, I wash my hands of this. I'm going to bed, I'm gonna wake up a few hours later and enjoy my pretendy fun-time ships for as long as this game lasts.
Y'know what? I've decided to look through the other PWE games that may be talking about Arc. So far, I've only found two: Neverwinter and RaiderZ. You know what surprised me?
Simple. It wasn't forty-one pages of players stomping their feet and complaining and making entitlement vows of quitting. At most, it was two pages, a few people excited to see it happen and a bug notification or two. Not... THIS.
You people complaining should be ashamed of yourselves! No wonder Star Trek fans tend to get looked down at!
Yeah, insulting Star Trek fans is just going to make ARC all the more acceptable. :rolleyes:
You clearly aren't willing nor caring to understand why STO fans aren't happy with ARC. So I'll make this as simple as possible: We are happy with things as they are and don't trust ARC as far as we could throw it. :P
As I understand it, Steam only looks at those files related to what you've downloaded. On the other hand, Origin (EA) scans your entire computer and watches what you do online.
I've just skimmed through Arc's privacy and cookie policy, and unless I missed something in my less than thorough read I didn't see anything unusual. At least, not in the sense of what online companies and marketers have already been doing for years.
So on a scale ranging from Steam to Origin, where does Arc land?
PWE has repeatedly said that Arc does NOT have P2P functionality or spyware installed in it. Unless somebody has proof to back up their claim, they should stop contradicting the Devs on this point.
PWE and cryptic have a history of saying things that aren't exactly true. I shouldn't have to remind you of this. If they are going to claim its not doing anything then they can explain in clear technical terms exactly what it is doing, exactly what that process is doing that can't be shut off while STO is running and why it attempts to install plugins in my browser. They can also explain why kaspersky has been going nuts with warnings about it. When an antivirus thinks a program has malware it thinks so for a reason. Its doing something they aren't
telling us
Y'know, it's funny - I use the old version of Arc. It does nothing but sit there. I don't bother it and it doesn't bother me. I'm pretty sure the new version will do just the same. You people and your tin-foil hats, seriously...!
Tell me what it is doing before you go around throwing tinfoil hat insults around. I'll trust warnings from my antivirus and processes that they have refused to explain before i'll trust you
Thanks for reporting the issues with Malwarebytes and Avira. I will pass along the reports and we will look into what is causing that. Arc doesn't contain any malware or spyware, so we will see what could be causing the alert to go off.
Quoted because i'm going to remember you said this, and if I find out otherwise we're going to have a problem. Frankly I don't buy it
That's not what he said, he said (in better words) if you are going to accuse PWE of telling lies then bring proof to backup your claims.
You mean like, say, a history of lying to customers and multiple antivirus's stating blocking its actions and screaming malware? proof like that? thats proof enough. they're the ones claiming there is no malware, they're the ones that had better prove it
We are committed to addressing any compatibility issues with anti-malware software, so please feel free to continue escalating those reports. We've already escalated a couple regarding Avira and Malwarebytes from this very thread.
For any reports of alerts from these programs, please let us know. The more information that can be provided, the better. The full report from the software, including what specific activity or behavior it identified as suspicious, can help us improve Arc to ensure that it is accurately analyzed as safe and secure.
translation: 'we want to learn to hide what its doing better' i'm not stupid, its pretty clear what your real intentions are with that data. Now you either tell me what is really going on or when I do find out for myself - and I will, you will most certainly be hearing about it, and not in a nice way. There is zero legitimate reasons, none whatsoever for arc to be setting off warnings like this, nor for it to be trying to install secret plugins in browsers.
-They will phase out the existing launcher and replace it with Arc as the primary means of distributing patches. It is unknown if you will still be able to play arc-free using steam or not.
No it isn't unknown. steam doesn't allow other companies to use such launchers via steam, its a violation of their user agreement. So its fair to assume STO isn't going to be available via steam at some point
The spyware programs are probably warning against background processes/installs. I.e. it is installing things without telling you it is installing things, such as plugins for firefox etc.
in other words its warning against invasive programs, spyware and malware
Who the heck knows what it's looking for? Details like that aren't being disclosed, and that alone should set off red flags for everyone.
No, you may not scan my system or install plugins everywhere. You may not do anything to my system without my explicit permission, and no, you may not establish this permission with some vague, catch-all TOS agreement. You will tell me every single thing your program does and give me the chance to opt out of each item, or it's not getting installed on my machine.
Well said
We have no proof of that, in fact there has been zero transparency about what ARC actually does on a users computer and things we discover on our own are proving contrary what we are being told. We're told ARC has no Spyware yet it installs plugins in other browsers that are active when viewing other websites, We're told ARC has no Torrent capability but will be used for downloading and patching game files where a torrent function would be implicit.
I realize you guys are obligated by your employers to put a positive spin on this thing but you better remember you are not dealing with a bunch of idiots, if something smells fishy we are not going to call it a rose.
Well said again
If hope you guys know that you can uninstall the arc from your system and still play STO, because there is an option in the uninstaller which says that only uninstall Arc but keep the installed games.
thats because its not a final release yet. in the future that won't be an option
PWE Does not need arc to spy on the computer. Sto is already on the computer and it is controlled by PWE. The could just use sto to spy on us and we would never know because it already access the hdd and the network.
that would be blatantly illegal, it wouldn't just get PWE in trouble it would get STO shut down by court order the moment such activities were discovered, as a safety precaution. and it would stay shut down until a court determined exactly what was going on with it. even PWE isn't that stupid, to say nothing of the fact that such action would make the devs themselves liable for their involvement in including such an ability in the code. No developer in their right mind would have anything to do with it and legally none could be forced to keep quiet about it
ARC is not the evil app you guys think it is.
Right. and yet its doing all kinds of questionable things. Things they refuse to explain and want info about so they can better hide them
If you're asking us to trust your software, please be able to explain exactly what it does. What information does it collect? Why does it collect it? What exactly does it do on our systems?
This. and i'll remind PWE that they are required by law to answer these questions. Its illegal to do anything to someones system without their full knowledge and consent
According to you guys, Arc is a secret malware program that is designed to steal all of your information, prevent STO from running normally and is probably a devious plot from PWE and Cryptic to get more money. Maybe the last part is true, but I'm not so keen on the rest.
But, I've had enough - I've spent all day reading these posts and the entitlement and rage and seeing that other PWE games are actually level-headed in their concerns and bugs. I don't like getting angry over posts, but this has what it's done to me. For now, I wash my hands of this. I'm going to bed, I'm gonna wake up a few hours later and enjoy my pretendy fun-time ships for as long as this game lasts.
you're an idiot. period. you're here to belittle and insult and nothing more. entitlement? what entitlement? you want to talk of entitlement? here is something i'm entitled to: not being lied to about what a program is doing to my system. and how about not acting as malware AS CONFIRMED BY MY ANTIVIRUS and the software of many other people on here. its very clear as to what it is doing. yet they refuse to explain why. if you can't see the red flag there you are a fool.
Y'know what? I've decided to look through the other PWE games that may be talking about Arc. So far, I've only found two: Neverwinter and RaiderZ. You know what surprised me?
Simple. It wasn't forty-one pages of players stomping their feet and complaining and making entitlement vows of quitting. At most, it was two pages, a few people excited to see it happen and a bug notification or two. Not... THIS.
You people complaining should be ashamed of yourselves! No wonder Star Trek fans tend to get looked down at!
Eh most of the player base are mmorpg players who just happen to be star trek fans too. On that note though with Cryptic and PWE without star trek online we'd never play a game of theirs to be brutally honest.
Their other games just suck so badly they are hoping the STO player base will come in and bring life to their other games but there are so many medieval clones out there already no one wants a rehash of that.
You make me install it, I'm done and gone from this, and every other Cryptic and PWE game, and I won't come back, until Arc is no longer needed, and even if it isn't ever needed, I still might not come back.
I didn't read all the pages of this thread, but I'm not about to do anything even remotely risky to my computer just because PWE wants to shove their other games in my face.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Until I'm forced to download Arc I'll continue to play STO but be mindful not to waste any money on a game I could well be abandoning in the near future.
That sums up my sentiment of late. The mandatory Arc on the horizon has been a disincentive for me to invest actual money into the game, though at least they get something from the folks that buy my dilithium. Still, I'd be far more interested in investing into the game if it was explicitly stated that Arc would be optional.
No, forum troll, you can't have my stuff when Arc becomes mandatory; I plan to liquidate my in-game assets and give them to my Fleets. :P
But, to reiterate: No Arc. There is no flood coming, more like an Exodus, and you can't spell Noah using PWE.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
I did let the plugin that keeps popping up go through just to see what it was going to do. Basically what it is and based off what some ppl had been saying in this thread too is that it wasn't pulling the most recent news off the main page. Basically thats what this plugin does if you don't allow the plugin it seems to just go off its own direct link to arc which is probally when they do maintenance on it updates the previous days info.
As far as the malware thing it seems that the scripting they do to *scan the HDD* its not exactly scanning the HDD. Its basically looking for a specific file in the directory of each game to connect to the library. So if you have no champions directory it knows you don't have it installed. Hopefully the loading that it is doing is just a biproduct of it technically still being in beta and the security issue thats my only concerns right now. The only real outgoing info arc is actually doing by putting everything on the most strict profiles I can do is when I am using it right now to post this forum message. Other than that it isn't submitting information anywhere else.
Edit: My best guess after carefully looking through everything to see what is actually going on where some ppl said it was scanning any external drives as well. With the scanning per say its basically allowing you to make it where if you hard drive shuffle you could use an external HD to be your game library thats my best guess on that.
I'm 100% positive as of this thread that Cryptic feeds off of butthertz. Somewhere in the chain-of-command is a butthertz vampire, and he/she is feasting at the buffet that is this thread.
Comments
In chrome there is an option to block any plugins from being installed without your knowledge. When something like arc attempts this it blocks it unless you allow it to go through.
On top of all that it offers me nothing that I want and PWE just doesn't see it that way so I guess i'll have to stop playing sto.
Don't force Arc. You're going to lose that battle, and waste thousands of dollars in the process.
How will they get feedback on functionality when no one likes it, nor wants to install it?
I've seen a report that Arc will scan every hard drive that exists in the system. Supposedly (unconfirmed) this is to look for PWE games. Why? Seriously, any game the user has installed should be in the registry. All you need to do is look for the appropriate registry key (HKLM/Software/<vendor>/<game>) to know if the game is installed or not. If there's no registry key, you can safely assume the game isn't there.
"Oh, but users can just copy their game directory to a new computer, installation is not required!". Well, scanning is STILL not needed. Just give users the option to specify an installation directory for their games. Arc should then scan JUST that directory to verify its contents.
There is literally no legitimate reason for Arc to scan every hard drive on the system. As it is, it shouldn't even be scanning the system drive. My directory structure (and its contents) are of no concern to anyone except me.
They said it has no data mining abilities rofl... and you are right its no ones concern but the owner of the machine. For a launcher its eating up too much resources as well to just be a "launcher".
Reminds me of that raptr thing too where it data mines your online gaming information and then posts it. If I wanted that information known I'd post it myself lol. Its looking to me like its going to data mine and say you still have 5 bucks in your account so hand it over lol.
FYI...the forum moderators have merged other threads into this one simply because ARC is discussed. So a lot of what you're seeing may be merged information never meant for a feedback testing discussion.
At this point probably the least bad explanation is it could just be lazy programming. Why program a search with any limits on it when you can just tell it to search everywhere.
C) I hate it
ARC uninstalled, got an old installer downloaded and re-patching the game again. I should be able to log back in and play in a few days time, once the game patching finishes. 8166MB.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My name is Rage, and I too support a revised Galaxy family.
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
Ditto. The only PWE game I play is STO. Why on earth would I want to use ARC? I don't need PWE flashing TRIBBLE on my screen.
Right now, I open launcher, it looks for updates, gets them, then launches the game. THAT'S ALL I NEED A LAUNCHER FOR! I don't need or want PWE sticking their nose in my business!
Google snoops in my email, but gives me free email.
If PWE wants to give me infinite Zen to buy in game stuff, then they can snoop too. But as long as I'm paying, KEEP OUT!
I bet the excitement ebbed around reply #6
If that causes me to not be able to play the game, so be it.
Are you listening PWE and Cryptic, I will NOT install Arc on my computer, or any other computer, period.
JustGaming4US - https://www.youtube.com/user/JustGaming4Us/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Brent_Justice
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/brentjustice
Simple. It wasn't forty-one pages of players stomping their feet and complaining and making entitlement vows of quitting. At most, it was two pages, a few people excited to see it happen and a bug notification or two. Not... THIS.
You people complaining should be ashamed of yourselves! No wonder Star Trek fans tend to get looked down at!
You lack the understanding of what Arc does to your PC, and what it means to STO, and the intentions of PWE/Cryptic therein.
JustGaming4US - https://www.youtube.com/user/JustGaming4Us/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Brent_Justice
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/brentjustice
Nobody really cares what the kiddies in neverland have to say, some of us do other things than just play games and we don't want to have to deal with the inconvenience of having to completely reconfigure a computer that has been messed up by a video game.
So if it's a choice between losing hours of work restoring needed files and uninstalling Star Trek Online and never looking back the choice is going to be a simple one.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
According to you guys, Arc is a secret malware program that is designed to steal all of your information, prevent STO from running normally and is probably a devious plot from PWE and Cryptic to get more money. Maybe the last part is true, but I'm not so keen on the rest.
But, I've had enough - I've spent all day reading these posts and the entitlement and rage and seeing that other PWE games are actually level-headed in their concerns and bugs. I don't like getting angry over posts, but this has what it's done to me. For now, I wash my hands of this. I'm going to bed, I'm gonna wake up a few hours later and enjoy my pretendy fun-time ships for as long as this game lasts.
Yeah, insulting Star Trek fans is just going to make ARC all the more acceptable. :rolleyes:
You clearly aren't willing nor caring to understand why STO fans aren't happy with ARC. So I'll make this as simple as possible: We are happy with things as they are and don't trust ARC as far as we could throw it. :P
I've just skimmed through Arc's privacy and cookie policy, and unless I missed something in my less than thorough read I didn't see anything unusual. At least, not in the sense of what online companies and marketers have already been doing for years.
So on a scale ranging from Steam to Origin, where does Arc land?
PWE and cryptic have a history of saying things that aren't exactly true. I shouldn't have to remind you of this. If they are going to claim its not doing anything then they can explain in clear technical terms exactly what it is doing, exactly what that process is doing that can't be shut off while STO is running and why it attempts to install plugins in my browser. They can also explain why kaspersky has been going nuts with warnings about it. When an antivirus thinks a program has malware it thinks so for a reason. Its doing something they aren't
telling us
Tell me what it is doing before you go around throwing tinfoil hat insults around. I'll trust warnings from my antivirus and processes that they have refused to explain before i'll trust you
Quoted because i'm going to remember you said this, and if I find out otherwise we're going to have a problem. Frankly I don't buy it
You mean like, say, a history of lying to customers and multiple antivirus's stating blocking its actions and screaming malware? proof like that? thats proof enough. they're the ones claiming there is no malware, they're the ones that had better prove it
translation: 'we want to learn to hide what its doing better' i'm not stupid, its pretty clear what your real intentions are with that data. Now you either tell me what is really going on or when I do find out for myself - and I will, you will most certainly be hearing about it, and not in a nice way. There is zero legitimate reasons, none whatsoever for arc to be setting off warnings like this, nor for it to be trying to install secret plugins in browsers.
No it isn't unknown. steam doesn't allow other companies to use such launchers via steam, its a violation of their user agreement. So its fair to assume STO isn't going to be available via steam at some point
in other words its warning against invasive programs, spyware and malware
Well said
Well said again
thats because its not a final release yet. in the future that won't be an option
that would be blatantly illegal, it wouldn't just get PWE in trouble it would get STO shut down by court order the moment such activities were discovered, as a safety precaution. and it would stay shut down until a court determined exactly what was going on with it. even PWE isn't that stupid, to say nothing of the fact that such action would make the devs themselves liable for their involvement in including such an ability in the code. No developer in their right mind would have anything to do with it and legally none could be forced to keep quiet about it
Right. and yet its doing all kinds of questionable things. Things they refuse to explain and want info about so they can better hide them
This. and i'll remind PWE that they are required by law to answer these questions. Its illegal to do anything to someones system without their full knowledge and consent
you're an idiot. period. you're here to belittle and insult and nothing more. entitlement? what entitlement? you want to talk of entitlement? here is something i'm entitled to: not being lied to about what a program is doing to my system. and how about not acting as malware AS CONFIRMED BY MY ANTIVIRUS and the software of many other people on here. its very clear as to what it is doing. yet they refuse to explain why. if you can't see the red flag there you are a fool.
Eh most of the player base are mmorpg players who just happen to be star trek fans too. On that note though with Cryptic and PWE without star trek online we'd never play a game of theirs to be brutally honest.
Their other games just suck so badly they are hoping the STO player base will come in and bring life to their other games but there are so many medieval clones out there already no one wants a rehash of that.
Period.
You make me install it, I'm done and gone from this, and every other Cryptic and PWE game, and I won't come back, until Arc is no longer needed, and even if it isn't ever needed, I still might not come back.
I didn't read all the pages of this thread, but I'm not about to do anything even remotely risky to my computer just because PWE wants to shove their other games in my face.
That sums up my sentiment of late. The mandatory Arc on the horizon has been a disincentive for me to invest actual money into the game, though at least they get something from the folks that buy my dilithium. Still, I'd be far more interested in investing into the game if it was explicitly stated that Arc would be optional.
No, forum troll, you can't have my stuff when Arc becomes mandatory; I plan to liquidate my in-game assets and give them to my Fleets. :P
But, to reiterate: No Arc. There is no flood coming, more like an Exodus, and you can't spell Noah using PWE.
As far as the malware thing it seems that the scripting they do to *scan the HDD* its not exactly scanning the HDD. Its basically looking for a specific file in the directory of each game to connect to the library. So if you have no champions directory it knows you don't have it installed. Hopefully the loading that it is doing is just a biproduct of it technically still being in beta and the security issue thats my only concerns right now. The only real outgoing info arc is actually doing by putting everything on the most strict profiles I can do is when I am using it right now to post this forum message. Other than that it isn't submitting information anywhere else.
Edit: My best guess after carefully looking through everything to see what is actually going on where some ppl said it was scanning any external drives as well. With the scanning per say its basically allowing you to make it where if you hard drive shuffle you could use an external HD to be your game library thats my best guess on that.