in most countries, afaik, you actually can’t patent game mechanics, for the same reason you can’t patent rule sets for boardgames:

because they are essentially just logical connections. it would be like patenting math, which is also not allowed, for very obvious reasons. (with some very specific, very niche exceptions)

japan is just plain weird and wrong about their patent system.

that’s why all of the lawsuits about this stuff are happening in japan; not just because that’s where the companies are, but because japanese copyright law is (especially) fucked.

afaik the client does collect a bunch if data, most (all, i think? but not a 100% on that) of which is opt-in.

they do need stuff like IPs for internet related features.

telemetry wise there’s the steam hardware survey, which is opt-in, and it asks every single time it attempts to collect your systems hardware and OS information. this could technically be identifying information, but since it’s opt-in it’s not a privacy violation and it’s entirely optional. (plus it’s super useful for all involved: users, devs, and steam. it’s kind of a win-win and straight up necessary info for devs to know which hardware they should optimize for)

they might be putting it at the top because steam has native support for DRM?

but that’s also weird, because DRM isn’t a privacy violation. it’s a shitty practice, barely does anything, barely works, and keeps breaking or hobbling otherwise perfectly good games, all of which is shitty, but it’s little to do with privacy. and the dev has to specifically opt-in and integrate it as a feature…unless they’re thinking of 3rd party DRM that can be waaay more intrusive, like Vanguard… THAT’S a privacy and security nightmare just waiting to blow up in people’s faces.

otherwise…i haven’t really heard anything bad about steam privacy wise?

doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to be concerned about, but i feel like there’d been some news about it if there was…

Arthmoor is far from the worst the elder scrolls (and specifically the skyrim) modding community has to offer, lol

he’s one of the most famous weirdos, but there’s waaaaaaay worse among some of the most widely used mods’ authors.

the best example is probably Boris, the maintainer of ENB (a shader extension/injector), who is a famously fascist russian.

then there’s all the anti-woke modders (which mostly get banned from most platforms within hours/days). these aren’t that bad in the grand scheme, but they regularly cause huge shitstorms and hilarious modding sprees that can be best described as “extra, super gay” in protest.

ETA: one kinda famous incident was some guy modding out a SINGLE reference to a (probably, implied only) gay couple of dead skeletons. they’re not even really characters, they’re just set pieces lying around, but this dude thought “absolutely not!” and posted a patch that removed that like, single text line in a diary, from the game. suuuuper petty, borderline insane. anyway, nexus community, understandably threw a fit, nexus staff was super on board and went nuclear on the dude’s account, and a bunch of mods in the theme of “EVERYONE in skyrim is now super gay” sprung up on the front page of the skyrim nexus. so that was pretty funny!

but yeah…there’s regularly gross ass bigots around…'cause, you know…viking-themed fantasy land…

have i mentioned the frequent self-takedowns of mods in protest? yeah, that also used to be a big thing on the skyrim nexus…have fun trying to mod when some of the core frameworks just dissapear overnight just because someone was mildly offended by some bullshit…except like once or twice, when they actually kinda had a point…

at least with minecraft most of the mods, and as far as i know all of the big ones, are open source. skyrim’s are often closed source, so for a bunch of the core frameworks the community is built around there just isn’t an easy replacement. if the modders got mad, things used to just…break.

and then there’s the pedos…yeah. some folks keep trying to lewd the kids in skyrim…also get banned pretty much immediately, but like…you know.

sooooo…yeah…minecraft drama is suuuper tame by comparison!

it’s intense for the people involved, sure, but big picture wise it’s childs’ play…skyrim drama hits different.