Last time I checked it didn’t work. It just levels out the ‘competitive’ (sweaty top tier players) vs the casuals.
Sure they can express their opinion but others might be sceptical about it if player is bad. Would you believe player who says that desert warrior is op when this player has 0.2 kd on that vehicle?
Then they will do it in game and/or via wt replay service
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Yes sure it is but you gave agreement to provide your data to gaijin including game related one. And they made it public (replays and in game stats being available for anyone). And if this data is public, those sites can parse it and use results for their purposes unless said purposes are illegal.
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There’s plenty of major titles out there that have ‘fan’ sites for stat tracking.
tracker.gg is the biggest one with some of the biggest titles in the FPS space.
Or maybe it’s that said mid player mostly only plays the US and thus barely faces the T58.
Different side of the same coin is your statement that Russia is the strongest top tier nation, which in turn comes from a lack of playing them.
(The latter part is another reason I like statshark. Hell I personally use statshark more to identify nation mains than I use it for the stats)
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i love you pangolin
From my perspective, there are several serious concerns regarding this application.
First of all, everyone should understand that running a poorly documented third-party application is inherently risky. Users do not know exactly what the application does in the background or when it performs certain actions. The risk becomes even greater when the application requires internet access, as it can theoretically transmit any collected data without the user’s knowledge.
What we can reasonably assume is that the application captures the screen, most likely in the form of screenshots, in order to perform OCR. Even if nothing malicious happens intentionally, there are still legitimate concerns. For example: what if a user has their online banking page open in the background while the game and this application are running? What if the user alt-tabs from the game to a sensitive window? Could such data be captured unintentionally? What happens to those screenshots? Are they stored locally, processed remotely, or sent elsewhere? What exact data is being collected, transmitted, and stored? At the moment, users simply do not know.
Using such an application ultimately requires trusting that its authors have no malicious intentions and that the software behaves exactly as advertised. Each user has to decide whether they trust the people behind StatShark enough to accept that level of risk.
Another major concern is that this application appears to violate Gaijin’s Terms of Service.
3.2.3. No malicious or deceiving use
- employ any third-party software that interferes with the Game(s) in any way, unless explicitly authorized by Gaijin for that specific Game(s) or related Service(s)
Technically, we do not know whether Gaijin has authorized this application, but there is no public indication that such authorization exists, which makes this highly questionable.
3.2.3. No malicious or deceiving use
- use software (such as bots or mods) that automates gameplay, alters the game’s mechanics or functionality, provides an unfair advantage over other players who do not use such software, or otherwise disrupts the intended game experience for you or any other player
It is difficult to argue that this application does not provide an advantage. That is, in fact, the primary reason for using it. Without such software, accessing and processing this information during a battle would be significantly harder. As a result, users of this application gain an advantage over players who do not use it. This also disrupts the intended gameplay experience, as decisions in battle can be influenced by external information.
8.1.3. Attempting to gain unauthorized access to the Service(s) or another User’s Account or collecting information through the Service(s) not explicitly permitted under the Terms and Conditions.
This application clearly performs automated information collection. Screen capturing combined with OCR is, by definition, a form of automated data collection, and the game does not explicitly permit this kind of real-time data extraction.
A further issue is that some players will likely use this application regardless of these concerns. If Gaijin ultimately considers this software harmful or rule-breaking, the consequences will most likely affect the users rather than the developers. In such cases, arguments like “I found this application on the internet and did not realize it violated the rules” historically do not protect accounts from penalties.
If Gaijin intended players to see detailed ratings or performance indicators of all participants during a battle, such information would likely already be available on the in-game scoreboard. The fact that it is not suggests a deliberate design choice, possibly to avoid toxic behavior, targeted harassment, or premature match abandonment based on perceived team strength.
Finally, it is also worth noting that this application is effectively pay-to-use, as access is limited to Patreon supporters. This raises an additional concern under the Terms of Service:
3.2.5. No Commercial Use:
- use the Game(s) or any part of it for commercial purposes, including but not limited to (1) engaging with or facilitating commercial advertising or offers or (2) transferring In-Game Items through means other than those explicitly provided by the Game(s) or other Gaijin Service(s).
At the very least, this particular issue would fall on the side of the application’s authors rather than its users, but it further strengthens the argument that the project operates in a legally and ethically questionable space.
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As others have said before it was just as easy to do this before Statshark came along. I used to play with a group of people who when the match started scanned through the leaderboard within seconds (I still do it myself) to find the best players and target them.
Statshark is an extension for this but even in its current form it is quite slow. I bought a Patreon membership yesterday to try out the SharkClient and it takes several seconds to minutes for the stats to appear. (You have to hold TAB for the app to check through the names)
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They don’t have that different stats than contemporaries from minor nations. Community had it’s suspicion about minor nations having higher average skill level than major ones. SS pretty much confirmed this to be true.
This allows people to identify outliers at both ends of the spectrum. For example, T58 stands out really hard at 8.3 and no one can deny that.
If you want, you could DM me a couple of your concerns and I can relay it to Hadi in the PatreonChat.
To put disclaimer first, I dont even have statshark account, let alone live game viewer. I also agree with the security concerns. With that out of the way:
Live game viewer just displays processed information that is otherwise accessible through built-in ingame functions of right-clicking ontom someones profile in leader board and selecting “View profile”.
Theoretically, user can do the same with excel sheet, it will be just time consuming and impractical.
Not even the excel sheet is neccesary, theoretically you can assess someones performance by just glancing at their service record sorted by winrates and kills to death (without calculating KD ratio).
Ergo data provided by live game viewer cant be exactly called external information if its based solely on information gaijin themselves already provides and is accessible in game.
As such, can it be really argued that it disrupts intended gameplay experience?
Except this more likely than not refers to collection of data such as login credintials and credit card information, not player stats displayed publicly, which is clear by the “Attempting to gain unauthorized access to the Service(s) or another User’s Account”
If people login to statshark with the use of their warthunder account that is another matter entirely and could fall under this statue, but simple stat collecting likely isnt against ToS as that data is made public.
If any data collection would be considered against ToS, community tracking of SL lootboxes percentages would be bannable offense on WT forums, even moreso than stat tracking since unlike stats, your drops arent public.
Such information is however deliberately accessible through the in-game scoreboard. If gaijin didnt intend for players to look at other players profiles during a game, such option wouldnt be there in the first place.
Statue 3.2.5 is more likely than not THE strongest statue upon which Gaijin can legally act against Statshark as a whole, since they indeed are commercializing part of the game (player data, even if they are public) for money.
Exactly why you might want to use it with caution and not trust anything by default when it comes to critical information.
Don’t have sensitive windows open when playing ? Same applies to pretty much anything that needs to fiddle with your screen in order to function properly.
When you handle critical information like those from a banking account, you should already be cautious and only have necessary programs open.
Uuuuu, then you might be ableto answer one of the questions we had here - did you have to agree to some sort of ToS to use the live game viewer?
Same, at the very least I do a quick look over the enemy team myself to see if I see any squadrons that I know to be good.
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I am fan of the website, mainly for its display of global/personal statistics but i have to agree with many concerns raised in this thread. Specifically in regards to the moderation when it comes to misuse of data for the purpose of griefing and harrassment and the collection/storage of data collected by the SharkClient.
I mean sure, more power for you, but I asked about the ToS specifically.
The points brought up by @_Poul are definitely sth Hadi has to address. Especially since its a paid for application, unlike before.
I feel theres some misunderstanding. My question was whenever YOU YOURSELF had to check some “i agree with ToS” on statshark whenever you started using their live game viewer, ie. agree to statshark ToS; not whenever is any of the statsharks action against gaijins ToS.
First of all, it’s completely fine to have different opinions on the same topic. I just wanted to share my perspective.
Okay, let’s think about this for a moment. Are you saying that a player can realistically see the enemy SR1 rating inside the game during a battle by opening individual user profiles? Do you really think someone can open 15 random profiles in the middle of a fight and calculate SR1 ratings manually for each player based on all their stats? That is clearly external information, and the process is effectively automated when using this application.
Sure, technically you could copy all the data into Excel and calculate it yourself, but I would actually love to see how much time that would take in a real battle for 15 other players. The point is, the system is intentionally designed so that gathering this information in real time is practically impossible without automation. That’s why the app gives a clear advantage.
Even if you use websites like StatShark, it still takes time. It is not fully automated and cannot run in the background while you are actually playing the game. You still have to manually gather and process the information, so it doesn’t provide the same instant advantage that an application gives.