I’m a firm believer that inching towards a more private life and future is a good thing in and of itself. However, I also believe that striving for a healthy social life and finding individual happiness is very important.

One area that I’m a bit lost on how to achieve better privacy is gaming. I also believe this is an area that is often overlooked. Do you all have any tips, tricks, or guides on how to game while retaining some level of privacy?

Specifically I’m referring to privacy from corporations, governments, and to a lesser extent friends. I’m also thinking about all types of games, from MMOs, to competitive FPSs, to RTS Games, to RPGs.

With Linux gaming becoming increasingly viable in conjunction with the mainstream success of the Steamdeck, I would imagine one idea for most people is kicking windows to the curb.

Couple of things: 1 is to run a privacy-friendly OS. AtlasOS is not really an OS at all, but really just Windows 10 stripped of all the spyware. This also removes pretty much all of the security features so you really ONLY want to run this on a gaming-only device, or on a gaming-only sandboxed partition. Otherwise, Proton has made Linux very usable for the vast majority of games.

Second: Look at the yellow boxes on Steam. This is where they disclose all the shady shit publishers are pushing on you. Don’t buy games with DRM. Don’t buy games with anti-cheat, this is incredibly invasive software. Don’t buy games that require you to sign an EULA, which is usually just forfeiting all of your privacy rights. Don’t buy “online-only” games.

All games on GOG require no DRM so those are usually a good bet.

Create a post

In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more…


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We’ve tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the “official” Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other “Privacy Guides” communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don’t ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don’t repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don’t abuse our community’s willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

Additional Resources:

  • 1 user online
  • 10 users / day
  • 42 users / week
  • 116 users / month
  • 1.08K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 660 Posts
  • 11.1K Comments
  • Modlog