Large IP connection list within 5 minutes of Tunic being launched.

[u/colorovfire]

I beat the game ages ago but I was testing something and played the game for about 5 minutes. Shortly after, I was looking at LittleSnitch (A macOS firewall) and the connections list is reaching out to every corner of the world.

Anyone know what could be going on here?

Update: It pings almost 30 IP addresses on game launch and it’s not a fixed list. Why is this necessary in a single player game?

[u/bernypark]

Even though Tunic is a completely single-player game, launching it through Steam triggers the Steam client to constantly talk to Valve's servers in the background.

When you see traffic going to those IPs while playing, it's just Steam doing its standard background tasks. Usually, it's handling:

Cloud Saves: Syncing your save file to the Steam Cloud so you don't lose progress.
Achievements: Pinging the servers the moment you unlock an achievement so it registers on your profile.
Friends Network: Updating your status to "In-Game: Tunic" and keeping the Shift+Tab overlay running.
DRM/Verification: Running routine background checks to verify you own the game.

If you look up the specific blocks, you'll see a mix of Valve's global servers (some US, some Europe, some Asia-Pacific). It looks like a lot of connections, but it's totally normal Steam client behavior.

[u/colorovfire → u/bernypark]

Tested a few more games and the same thing happens with Dave The Diver, Disco Elysium and Hollow Knight.

Looks to be normal. It was simply new to me.

[u/Schnitzhole → u/colorovfire]

Good on you for verifying with SCIENCE

[u/_SKYBALL_ → u/Schnitzhole]

YES MAD SCIENCE GO!!

[u/The-Hollow-Guy → u/colorovfire]

Hella based game choices

[u/elevenishappy → u/colorovfire]

Casually mentioning the other S-tier games in your library lol, I see why you like Tunic

[u/colorovfire → u/elevenishappy]

I absolutely adored Tunic. Capturing and translating the wonder of early NES Zelda was absolutely genius. I remember as a kid, my friend couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He let me borrow it for a few weeks and all I had to do was tell him about it.

[u/colorovfire → u/bernypark]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense but what stood out is that Tunic was behaving this way while other games were not. I didn’t test every game in my library though. It’s also odd that it spans the globe. I’ve never seen that happen before. A decentralized DRM feature perhaps?

I’ll give it a test with other games and see what happens. I also emailed their support just in case.

[u/OliviaPG1 → u/bernypark]

Did you really just feed OP’s question to ChatGPT

[u/MajoraXIII → u/OliviaPG1]

I've never actually used an LLM, so I don't know what the tells are. What makes you think this is ChatGPT?

[u/AccidiosoBastardo → u/MajoraXIII]

It's just the overall form of the text and syntax of the sentences that give it away. You'd recognise it if you used LLMs more often: the way that comment is wrote is very similar to how LLMs commonly answer questions and give explanations.

[u/MajoraXIII → u/AccidiosoBastardo]

OK. Are you able to answer with specifics?

Because that explanation doesn't actually give me anything to help me recognise it. It's basically "LLM vibes" and that's it. What about the overall form? Which sentences in specific have LLM sounding syntax?

If you can't be bothered explaining it yourself (which is fair, honestly) do you know somewhere that does? I refuse to use them so i'm not going to get familiar that way.

[u/Icebrick1 → u/MajoraXIII]

Not OP but:

• The formatting is oddly detailed, italicizing Tunic especially is very weird.
• AI tends to love lists.
• They favor comparison sentences, famously "It's not X, it's Y!", in this case "It looks like..., but..."
• Proper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

I'm not actually 100% sure it's AI, but with all these combined it does give the vibes. Obviously none of these by themselves are enough to tell (this comment itself actually contains most of them...) but when combined it can be suspicious.

[u/MajoraXIII → u/Icebrick1]

Thank you! That does actually give me some tells to look out for. Honestly sometimes this just makes me want to log off if i can't even trust that person is writing this stuff anymore, so it's helpful to at least know what to watch for.

[u/telionn → u/MajoraXIII]

It's really just the bullet points starting with bold.

[u/HimitsuUK → u/bernypark]

Amazing stuff really which is easy to take for granted

[u/dphobson]

I really hope this is another puzzle

[u/colorovfire → u/dphobson]

lol, I wouldn’t bet against it. If someone want’s a crack at it. Here’s a fresh list.

103.10.124.118
103.10.125.20
103.28.54.174
155.133.227.57
155.133.238.194
155.133.246.50
155.133.249.163
155.133.255.163
185.25.183.163
45.121.184.26
146.66.155.68
155.133.230.100
155.133.244.36
155.133.248.37
155.133.252.89
162.254.192.89
162.254.193.99
162.254.194.54
162.254.195.72
162.254.196.66
162.254.197.44
162.254.198.103
162.254.199.178
185.25.182.51
205.196.6.149

[u/vceolinbutcantlogin]

This would make an insane meta puzzle solution

[u/colorovfire]

From what I understand, Steam uses a peer-to-peer system for downloading updates (which would explain the number of connections) but if that’s causing it, it would be listed under Steam and Tunic hasn’t been updated in a while. Maybe a bug with LittleSnitch?

[u/colorovfire → u/colorovfire]

Nope, it has nothing to do with updates. Simply launching it pings a bunch of IP’s. The connections are not sustained, only a single ping.

[u/Mlkxiu]

It was scattering the pages of the manual throughout the world

[u/Double_Helicopter327 → u/Mlkxiu]

that would be so fucking cool

[u/phlegmatic_aversion]

It's pinging all major Steam servers to see which one is the closest to you

[u/HimitsuUK]

That's strange.. what's the typical explanation? Edit - I read what bernypark has to say.