What really sucks is that it was added somewhat recently with their new pvp mode, which I couldn’t care less about. I paid for the game, and they made it unplayable for me.

I think the people doing the rewrites genuinely believe it will be an improvement, and they could be correct. I get the instinct to “don’t fix what ain’t broken”, but that is what staging is for. There is no need to make sacred cows, and this seems like a perfect opportunity to improve security and integration testing as well.

I don’t hate telemetry, and words do have meanings. I wouldn’t call it a consumer attraction, however, otherwise it would make the most sense to design it as opt-in.

Telemetry isn’t malicious by nature, although it likely is in support of predatory sales practices in this case considering HP’s recent history. When opt-out, I would call it undesirable software designed to send unauthorized data from a consumer perspective.

Maybe there is a better term, but I can’t think of one. Language is flexible though, and most categorizations have defiers.

Fair point, although it feels wrong to refer to malware as a feature.