Red Shell Tracking Software Removed From PC Games Amid Allegations of Spyware

A new controversy has hit the PC gaming industry as major marketing firm, Red Shell has been accused of installing spyware and tracking user activity through over 50 games including Total War, Civilization VI, Elder Scrolls Online, Kerbal Space Program, and more. While Red Shell's official website claims that it does not collect any personal information, it is being alleged that the firm tracks user's activity even outside of the game. Many of the games have announced the removal of Red Shell from their gaming data.

Early in June this year, a Reddit thread claimed that Red Shell had indeed been stealing user data and selling it off to third parties. "Red shell is a Spyware that tracks data of your PC and shares it with 3rd parties. On their website they formulate it all in very harmless language, but the fact is that this is software from someone I don't trust and whom I never invited, which is looking at my data and running on my PC against my will. This should have no place in a full price PC game, and in no games if it were up to me," said Reddit user Alexspeed75.

Red Shell has replied to the controversy in a statement to Kotaku, saying, ""We collect the minimum amount of data necessary to do attribution... Our customers rely on us to tell them which activities they're engaged in are working and which ones aren't. Any information that doesn't help us make those matches we don't collect." The company added it doesn't sell data to third parties, nor is it used for ad targeting in the 'traditional sense' - it instead claims to help figure out which ads are .

As per the report, citing Reddit, Steam, and forum posts, developers of 16 titles have announced the removal or upcoming removal of Red Shell from their games, including Battlerite, Conan Exiles, Hunt: Showdown, Dead by Daylight, Secret World Legends, The Elder Scrolls Online, Total War, and Warhammer: Vermintide. Dead by Daylight developers explained its use of the software prior to the revelations, saying "We integrated Red Shell with the goal to track the efficiency of our marketing campaigns (how many players clicked on our advertisements on social media platforms and then purchased the game afterwards). There was never any intention to sell data to third parties."

To find out whether Red Shell is present in the game, you can look for files dubbed Redshell.dll and RedshellSDK.dll however, the thread notes, the files could have been renamed making it tough to locate the identity. Essentially, Red Shell offers digital fingerprint tracking. For instance, one fingerprint is registered when a user clicks on a Facebook ad of the game and another is registered when the game is purchased. The marketing company claims a 91 percent match rate and an astonishing over 98 percent accuracy rate.