[bryguy32403]

It's even worse with games. If you buy a game on steam, steam has an account api that is completely usable for online play, but the game companies want more data so they force you to make an account with them.

I have a stadia account and I've taken to doing the same thing. If i go to play a game and the first thing it wants me to do is create an account, I'm not playing that game, and I'm telling support about it.

[noduerme]

Why not just set up a throwaway email for all of it? =\

[ninkendo]

For me, it's the principal of the thing. It's not that it's such a terrible thing for a company to know my email address (especially when apple makes it trivial to create throwaway ones for your iCloud account, their "hide my email" feature has improved so that now you can just make bespoke randomly generated email addresses that look exactly like an unassuming iCloud account, but forward to yours.)

The reason I do this is because I am so fundamentally against the concept of a gaming company harvesting personal information about its users, that I feel like a shitty person for being complicit in it. I'd rather miss out on the occasional good game than be "part of the problem".