Because telemetry is a key tool used to improve quality.
What software dev doesn't think logs and crash dumps are useful?
What software dev doesn't think logs and crash dumps are useful?
That intersection of users seems absolutely miniscule relative to the overall Windows 10 userbase, and in most cases the telemetry data they contribute is not going to be any larger than a margin of error in Microsoft's Windows 10 overall telemetry trends.
Nobody is going to argue that telemetry isn't useful for developers, but at some point you have to decide if it's worth it to force users into giving you telemetry data if it means driving potential users away to competitors and giving fuel to a very vocal minority of users that write unfavorable articles and comments on news sites, blogs, and social media at every opportunity because of this decision.
> many UX studies have shown that this applies to only a tiny percentage of users
Ironic because that's exactly the kind of thing telemetry is excellent for proving. It's quite useful for informing and providing quantitative feedback on UX.
Uh, no, it's really not.
It's just creepy and invasive.
Visual Studio is probably the primary reason I'm even bothering with Microsoft but fuck me they collect a lot of unnecessary shit. They claim its "anonymous"... Some of this doesn't seem so anonymous to me:
"Context.Default.VS.Core.User.Location.GeoId":x, "Context.Default.VS.Core.BuildNumber":x, "Context.Solution.LastSolutionBuildID":x, "Context.DebugSession.VS.Diagnostics.Debugger.DebugSession.StartupProject.UniqueGuid":"{x}", "Context.DebugSession.VS.Diagnostics.Debugger.DebugSession.UniqueGuid":"{x}", "Context.Default.VS.Core.User.IsInternal":"False", "Context.Default.VS.Core.User.IsOptedIn":"True", "Context.Default.VS.Core.User.IsMicrosoftInternal":"False", "Context.Default.VS.Core.User.Type":"External", "Context.Default.VS.Core.User.Id":"x", "Context.Default.VS.Core.Machine.Id":"x", "Context.Solution.ActiveProjectGuid":"{x}", "Context.Solution.SolutionSessionID":"{x}", "Context.Solution.SolutionID":"{x}"
Short of actual source they send everything (and details) you do in VS in real time.
That part jumped out at me too. This probably means they're recording the name (or even hash?) of every executable you run and comparing to a list of known game .exe files. In addition they're recoding how long you have been using each executable (if not start/stop timestamps).
I'm not a security expert but it seems like this kind of information could be correlated with (for example) Tor exit node traffic to unmask a Tor user or other fun surveillance uses.
Also, the Microsoft Store has an entire category called "Game" and can just use that.
Worst case though, by "game" it might just use the Window's Xbox app's determinant for shortcuts like Win+G which is essentially, from what I gather, "Does it use DirectX? y/n".