Statement Regarding Chorus’ Games on Xbox One

28th June, 2020

Recently, an issue with the way we ported some of our games to Xbox One became a serious issue and it became important to acknowledge and address it. We issued a tweet which referenced the game, Coffee Talk. However, the issue affects other games, which are:

  • The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle Episode 1
  • The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle Episode 2
  • The Videokid
  • Headliner: NoviNews
  • Coffee Talk

To summarize the issue:

  • The 5 games mentioned above are all ported to Xbox One using a framework called the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). 
  • UWP offers the advantage of making one build which runs on both Windows and Xbox One. This is the principal reason we chose this route.
  • When a UWP-built game or app is first loaded on Xbox One, it displays a message asking the user to grant permissions for personal data to be shared with the developer.
  • The screen appears even if the game/app does not request or collect any personal data. It is simply the default behaviour in UWP and cannot be changed.
  • If the user grants the permissions, the game will proceed with full functionality.
  • If the user declines the permissions, the game will still proceed, but save games and Achievements will not work.
  • The above has been confirmed by the developer support team at Xbox as the default behaviour for UWP, and cannot be changed.

It’s important to state here: none of our games on Xbox One request or collect any personal data. If you feel you are able to, please be assured that granting permissions on the screen will not allow us to collect any data, personal or otherwise, beyond the normal aggregated data all developers and publishers receive from Microsoft around Achievements earned, crash data, etc. But we are not able to remove the screen requesting access to personal data.

How we are addressing this:

Firstly, we are investigating whether it would be possible to re-build Coffee Talk using a different framework for Xbox One. However, the concern here is that players who have been playing the game so far could lose their save files. To date, there have been over 550k downloads and approximately 300 messages via reviews, email, social media, so it’s important that we don’t do anything to disrupt the experience of the vast majority of players.

Secondly, we will not be using UWP for the porting of future games, starting with The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters. This has almost completed development but we will go back and use a different framework to bring the game to Xbox One. We’re looking forward to bringing more games to Xbox and we will do everything we can to ensure players are able to enjoy the games without being confronted with justifiable privacy concerns. We firmly believe that gaming should be a safe space for us all to enjoy ourselves and have fun.

Finally:

The issue detailed above is 100% on us, Chorus Worldwide, and we’re going to do better in future. We’re grateful to all our studio partners and to Microsoft for their patience and understanding as we work to resolve this and create better experiences on Xbox One for all our fans. Most of all, we’re grateful to the players who have taken an interest in our games. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.