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…
i mean… trying to calculate an individual’s labor output is pointless.
nobody produces anything in a vacuum.
you can’t separate the office excel wizards economic output from the janitor’s, or the maintenance crew’s, or the accountant’s, or the sales person’s, and so on, and so forth.
labor, especially modern labor, is built entirely upon cooperative, mutually beneficial structures.
the part that isn’t working and parasitizes the worker’s economic accomplishments, that’s really 90% of the issue we have right now.
so the original calculation, which takes the entire profit of the company + CEO income - CEO salary (or the reasonable amount they should be getting) dividend by the number of employees does give you a reasonable baseline of compensation for all employees.
it doesn’t make much sense that one “class” of employee would make more than any other, when all of them rely on each other…