Hi all, regarding the latest news by CIG to implement EAC by Epic Games into SC, me and a lot of other community members had a lot of concerns. As I've gathered from the comments on the official announcement thread, there are different reasons why people are unhappy with this decision, but i tried to combine them as good as i could and opened a petition to show to CIG, how much the community disagrees with it. I'll post the text of the petition here, so you don't have to first go to the petition platform (avaaz.com) to read it: Implementing a system into a game to prevent people from maliciously manipulating gameplay is generally a good idea, especially in an online game like Star Citizen.But in particular implementing Easy Anti-Cheat by Epic Games is not. Epic Games is known to mistreat their workers (very long work hours, toxic culture and immense pressure up to the point of developers breaking down and contemplating suicide) (1) and to ignore customers concerns or complaints.The last point is especially true for players who have been falsely flagged to be "cheating" by their automatic system, the chance to challenge such a decision are slim, as no human audit of the system is taking place. (2) Furthermore, it was proven several times that the "security" provided by EAC can easily be circumvented. (3) There are even "products" in the professional cheating market that actively use EAC to gain unrestricted access to a game's services for manipulation. Epic Games' measures against these known weaknesses have been almost nonexistent. Cheaters are running rampant in all games currently "secured" by EAC. (4) On the other hand, there's an abundance of reports of people who have been falsely flagged for doing nothing wrong at all, for example for just using a specific brand of mouse or mainboard. (5) But even more important, Epic Games is 40% owned by Chinese Tencent Holdings Ltd. (6), which is a subsidiary of the Communist Party of China (7). Given the CPC's long track record of espionage, it's of great concern that this product might also be used for that. To be clear, this is no political issue, but concerns about an organisation that doesn't respect data security. If we were talking about Facebook, i'd raise the same concerns. In the past there have been several occasions where software by Epic Games could be identified to syphon data unrelated to its' primary purposte from a PC it was installed on to Epic Games servers (8). And with a kernel level anti cheat system whose actions can not be reviewed by the owner of the PC it's completely up to Epic Games to transfer any data from that machine (or even to that machine, maybe even commands) however they want. Sources (examples): (1) https://www.businessinsider.com/fortnite-working-conditions-2019-4 https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games (2) https://www.reddit.com/r/FORTnITE/comments/a3ib2c/easyanticheat_ban_appeal/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXdb1DueYCA https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/154147/false-positive-easy-anti-cheat-ban-appeal?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=mHLa0XbrpQmGslb3clFrV_Qzb1aW9clzcB_MmAybLb0-1636222715-0-gaNycGzNB70 (3) As I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to post links to illegal forums here, just look for these yourself if interested. Searching for something to bypass eac on a big search engine should yield enough results. (4) https://gamingintel.com/battlefield-2042-easy-anti-cheat-bypassed-by-hackers-cheaters/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojHsBCTjZyQ (5) https://support.facepunchstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004256798-EAC-Blacklisted-device-Bloody-Mouse https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?120036-Easy-Anti-Cheat-kick-with-ROGLiveService-exe-running https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/2025496-Easy-Anti-Cheat-banning-me-for-using-ASUS-Aura-Sync (6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games (7) https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3987506 (8) https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/valve-to-investigate-epics-use-of-steam-data-after-users-raise-privacy-concerns/ Suggestions what maybe to add or change are very welcome! If you agree, please sign this petition here: https://secure.avaaz.org/community_petitions/en/cloud_imperium_games_cloud_imperium_games_should_not_include_easy_anti_cheat_into_star_citizen/ Thank you very much for your attention! EDIT: Updated the petition and post with sources, as suggested! EDIT2: Tencent owns 40% of epic, not 48,4% as previously stated EDIT3: I just realized i forgot to copy the annotation numbers for the sources back into the text, fixed! EDIT4: I clarified my concerns about the CPC, as there have been multiple people misinterpreting this as a political or even racial issue. To re-iterate: IT IS NOT.