ESO asking PC for Precise Location

cptscotty · October 22

Why is ESO now asking my PC for location services and "Precise Location"? First game I have ever played where it is asking for that. What feature in the game is requesting this?

o_Primate_o · October 22

are you on VPN?

cptscotty · October 22

Nope. Even then that wouldn't explain why ESO would be requesting that service.

o_Primate_o · October 22

Did you try restarting your computer? LOL

Coo_PnT · October 22

cptscotty wrote: »

Why is ESO now asking my PC for location services and "Precise Location"? First game I have ever played where it is asking for that. What feature in the game is requesting this?

I have never been asked for my location by ESO, PC/Steam.
When and under what conditions were you asked for your location? Can you take a screenshot?

Nerouyn · October 22

As for why the ESO client might want to know your location, could they be thinking to combat the pretending to play from another country and buying crowns more cheaply trick?

Also, could an addon be the culprit?

I recall a CP2077 mod - I think it was the very popular cyber engine tweaks mod on which many other mods relied - unannounced began pinging player machines to capture their locations.

Nexus mods shut it down fast because that was super naughty, and the mod maker removed that nasty little surprise.

cptscotty · October 22

No mods or addons loaded at the time. Happened as soon as I hit the play button from the ESO launcher and the alert from Windows stated it was ESO requesting the access to the location services for precise location. First time I have ever seen it from ESO, or any other game for that matter.

This was after a full restart, driver update, and windows update. So a complete refresh of windows settings/data and the very first time in starting ESO it requested that service. Not sure why and find it a bit odd that this game would ask for GPS permissions on the very first restart of the game.

I cannot get it to pop up the request anymore after the first time. Whether its not needed, the request is being suppressed from my view, or because I now am spoofing my address where before it was cleared due to refresh.

darvaria · October 22

I'm not sure about this. Sounds unusual. Are you sure it wasn't some kind of 3rd party asking?

I've never seen that.

Coo_PnT · October 22

I think you should communicate with ESO support with more specific PC information. We can't tell anything from your little information. Please use a support ticket.

Nerouyn · October 22

cptscotty wrote: »

No mods or addons loaded at the time. Happened as soon as I hit the play button from the ESO launcher and the alert from Windows stated it was ESO requesting the access to the location services for precise location. First time I have ever seen it from ESO, or any other game for that matter.

Windows protecting you from a potentially dodgy location ping being made by a windows owned games developer?

Or a windows glitch falsely giving that impression?

I haven't seen this specifically but my client has become a bit wonky on a similar front.

It's not so bad right now but earlier in the year pretty much every day the client would not let me log in, telling me I was logging in from a new location and prompting me for the auto emailed code.

But I wasn't being emailed any code and if I immediately tried to log in again, then I could. Or sometimes I'd get the code prompt a few times and then be able to log in.

Danikat · October 22

ESO has never asked for my location and I've never heard of anyone else being asked either.

Nothing on my PC has location enabled. Windows has the region set to UK and I suppose some things could use the IP address to narrow it down (although that's often inaccurate), but it's a desktop, it doesn't need to worry about exactly where it is, so I've never enabled that for Windows or any programs.

TaSheen · October 22

Danikat wrote: »

ESO has never asked for my location and I've never heard of anyone else being asked either.

Nothing on my PC has location enabled. Windows has the region set to UK and I suppose some things could use the IP address to narrow it down (although that's often inaccurate), but it's a desktop, it doesn't need to worry about exactly where it is, so I've never enabled that for Windows or any programs.

This. I don't allow my location exposed to any site. That goes for my iPhone and iPad too. No one's business. I've never seen that from ESO, not in 7 years of logging in nearly every day....

DigiAngel · October 22

Got a screenshot?

runa_gate · October 23

I recently had to replace my pc and can confirm upon freshly installing ESO I saw this as well, denied it, didn't pay much attention to it so have no further details

Grizzbeorn · October 23

I've never had this happen, and I've played daily for just over 6 years.

RomanRex · October 23

1. This hasn’t happened to me or anyone I know in many years of playing.
2. Where ever that permission setting is in your PC, if it was a legitimate system prompt, it should able to toggle back off.
3. Take a screen grab of the request for precise location or the settings for it.

Without some type of evidence, it doesn’t seem like this is an ESO issue.

Dojohoda · October 23

ESO started using AI to monitor the conversations of players this year. This might not be relevant but might be worth a mention since it is a change to the game and no details have been made about it regarding if any part of it is installed on the computer along with the game.

fizzylu · October 23

Maybe unrelated; but I got a new computer recently and when I tried to install ESO my virus software program was treating it like a bad thing (didn't do this with any other game or program, said something about ESO trying to read some files). I just ended up adding it to my exceptions list so that I could download the game (yolo).... but yeah, it was kind of weird that I had to even do that.

Elsonso · October 23

ESO asked me for location a few years back, but has not asked since. This was about the same time a certain EU country banned loot boxes, as I recall.

Anyway, the only way ZOS can comply with all of the countries that have special laws that affect ESO is to know where you are.