Data Practices and Privacy in Gaming: A Consolidated Cross‐Platform Analysis of Publishing Platforms, Online Multiplayer Games and Community Sites

ABSTRACT Video games are mainstream cultural artefacts that millions engage with every day, constituting an increasingly data‐intensive aspect of people's leisure time. Previous research has established the foundational role data plays in the production and distribution of video games, as well as the management of gamers as platform users and advertising audiences. This study consolidates this view and establishes a baseline of data practices in gaming. Addressing a broad audience of privacy researchers and policy stakeholders, the aim of the study is to provide a comparative analysis of gaming data privacy against other digital platform domains and social media use cases. To this end, the study presents the results of a qualitative analysis that investigated 37 cases of online multiplayer games, video game publishing platforms and online community sites. By analysing their privacy policies, the study sketches the common data practices in the gaming context and lays the foundations for future systematic research on user privacy, trust and literacy amongst gamers and enables cross‐disciplinary engagement with gaming and the gaming data subject position.