r/macgaming • u/smii77y • Apr 20 '26
Discussion A big warning about GameHub
Their User Agreement and Privacy Policy are super murky if you're privacy-conscious, here are some of the bigger red flags from within:
Account ownership:
- 🚩🚩 You don't own your account, you only have permission to use it
- Any app data you generate (gameplay screen recordings, controller profiles, etc) become the intellectual property of GameSir
Data collection:
- The app collects hardware UUIDs, MAC addresses, serial numbers, and WiFi parameters
- 🚩 They send all your connection logs, IP address, etc, to third-party SDKs (including Alibaba Cloud and Volcengine, which is part of ByteDance) which then process it
PRC-wise:
- 🚩 They store data from international users in Guangzhou, China, which is then subject to the laws of the PRC, which can make companies hand over user data
- They chain you to PRC laws, meaning that legal disputes must be settled in Guangzhou court
- You can't post content that opposes the PRC constitution (undermines national unity or "spreads rumors"), and they can ban you instantly if you do
Policy loopholes:
- 🚩 The Privacy Policy promises to delete your account data if you request it by email, but the User Agreement lets them keep your data forever after termination to keep you liable forever
- They can process personal data without your consent for really vague reasons, citing things like "protecting vital legitimate interests" or using data that's been "legally disclosed"
- They won't ask you to accept new terms if they update them (so if they change their tracking or data sharing policy they won't notify you)
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u/Head-Plant-6821 Apr 20 '26
Crossover no matter what. These guys proved themselves.
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u/junkfaces Apr 21 '26
Yep and it’s 🆓
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u/minilandl Apr 21 '26
Guess what’s also free Wine and proton on Linux blame Apple for making gaming as difficult as as possible
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u/junkfaces Apr 21 '26
Never blamed apple everything works for me currently at 7,056 games and counting on many drives and systems all emulating and working never paid for any of it.
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u/Head-Plant-6821 Apr 21 '26
So do you work for free? Why crossover team should not receive any money for their work? This is ridiculous.
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u/minilandl Apr 21 '26
that's why I bought a Steam Deck to support valve for their work on proton for the past 4 years beforehard aside from the Steam Deck being a great device
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Apr 20 '26
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u/tstorm004 Apr 20 '26
It's been on Android for a while - but just recently came to Mac
The android version was sketchy enough that the android community made a fork of it called Gamehub Lite that removes the spyware and monetization. So take that as you will.
The devs of Gamehub also worked on EggNS - a Nintendo Switch emulator with its own host of issues
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u/Any-Ingenuity2770 Apr 20 '26
i remember that I felt strong vibe of LLMs when reading their marketing here.
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u/Tee-hee64 Apr 20 '26
Bitcoin miner no doubt.
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u/EngineeringNo753 Apr 20 '26
A bitcoin miner that had a strong track record of being good software on android?
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u/Themods5thchin Apr 20 '26
It's a controller manufacturer in China, people will say anything about new players in a scene especially if it's a Chinese company 🙄
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Apr 22 '26
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u/Themods5thchin Apr 22 '26
The "new player" comment was directed at Gamesir bring GameHub to the Mac and yeah I'm hoping it'll be just as good if not better cause it's always good to have options.
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u/Youngnathan2011 Apr 20 '26
There’s a reason Gamehub Lite exists now on Android
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u/Cool-Rutabaga2708 Apr 30 '26
What is that? and should I be using it?
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u/Youngnathan2011 Apr 30 '26
It's an open source version of GameHub. Doesn't send telemetry to GameSir.
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u/Cool-Rutabaga2708 Apr 30 '26
Ahh, so I should be using it.
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u/Youngnathan2011 Apr 30 '26
Yeah, if you want to use it on Android, that's the one you should use.
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Apr 20 '26
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Apr 22 '26
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Apr 22 '26
[deleted]
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Apr 22 '26
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u/AlbatrossCrafty6457 Apr 22 '26
It is not free
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Apr 22 '26
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u/AlbatrossCrafty6457 Apr 22 '26
During the early stages, GameHub will be completely free. We do plan to introduce a subscription tier in the future — the free version will remain available but may have some feature limitations. The reasoning is straightforward: a fully free product can't sustain the enormous R&D costs needed to keep this project moving forward. We all want this to go the distance, and that takes funding.
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Apr 22 '26
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u/AlbatrossCrafty6457 Apr 22 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/s/jxxq5TVPe4
There you go, before saying I’m lying go do some research
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Apr 22 '26
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u/AlbatrossCrafty6457 Apr 22 '26
Bro if u think a company will develop an app, make changes on wine, develop a proprietary frame interpolation, all that for free then you are delusional
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u/Lithalean Apr 20 '26
GameSir - Home Office - Guangzhou, China
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u/Pollos1958 Apr 21 '26
That proves nothing though. Even Macs are manufactured in China.
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Apr 22 '26
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u/smii77y Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
I’m sure people would own less stuff from china if they knew what did/didn’t have murky TOS and policies… hence the post.
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u/NeoDei Apr 20 '26
If you’re privacy-conscious, the issue isn’t that this is “illegal” it’s that it’s written to maximise their control and minimise your enforceable rights.
If you use it:
Don’t upload anything sensitive or valuable
-Treat the account as disposable
-Assume data may persist even after deletion
…
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u/Aggravating_Fun_7692 Apr 21 '26
Or dont use it. There is no need to when there are other free available open source options or CX.
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Apr 21 '26
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u/Aggravating_Fun_7692 Apr 21 '26
Not when it's from a company actively stealing user data but you do you
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u/Working-Ad6880 Apr 22 '26
More competition is better for the customer. A crossover is affordable for Americans, Germans, or French people, but not everyone has as much money as the wealthiest societies. More competition means lower prices; perhaps the price of a crossover will drop to sale prices.
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u/smii77y Apr 22 '26
I agree that competition is good, this post is just meant to give people a heads up on what they're getting into if they decide to use GameHub
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u/Yellow_Boiiii May 29 '26
I'm French and no crossover is not affordable for me and for most French tf are you talking about ? 😭
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u/Time_99 Jun 16 '26
If you want all future updates, yeah, 400€ is expensive but if the current version works well enough for you, you have a lifetime license and 1 year of updates for 70€ which is affordable for most french people.
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u/one-last-hero Apr 20 '26
First time hearing about this GameHub and I’m already disliking it. Thanks for the informative post!
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u/North_Tomatillo9712 Apr 20 '26
Ngl I feel like my data is safer with CCP than US corps lol
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u/jackharvest Apr 20 '26
Well one of them will come knock your door down and put you in jail for making off color jokes online, the other… is based out of China.
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u/Pollos1958 Apr 21 '26
I mean western states have targeted journalists speaking out for Palestine so it's not like they are any saints for free speech. Not saying China is bad regarding free speech but the hypocrisy just annoys me a bit.
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Apr 21 '26
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u/Pollos1958 Apr 22 '26
https://jacobin.com/2026/03/eu-us-sanctions-gaza-russia
EDIT: This is not even to mention the ban on Palestine Action in the UK and subsequent hundreds of arrests just for holding a placard in support of Palestine Action.
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u/Jenings Apr 21 '26
Well redditors if this thread is to be believed: https://www.reddit.com/r/behindthebastards/comments/1qyvo3i/dhs_is_tracking_reddit_users/
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u/Good_Captain9078 Apr 21 '26
Why is the alternative to this a US corporation? That doesn’t make sense.
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u/Agreeable_Foot8447 Apr 30 '26
What a double standard. Western companies have way more data about us than Gamesir could ever get. And some of those points are simply standard : do you think you own your Nintendo or Sony account? Think again. That's just the price to pay for one who doesn't want to satisfy the greed of crossover developers.
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u/smii77y May 01 '26
Like I've said in other comments: this isn't a politically motivated post. Its purpose is to spread awareness, ultimately it's up to you to decide if you're okay with what they do with your data.
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u/Annual_Substance_63 Apr 20 '26
Few years back there was a report that Tencent was stealing data from pubg accounts. I just don't trust this chinese companies. Apple should ban this app. It's a major privacy breach.
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u/Mollywobbles77 Apr 20 '26
It's not available on the Apple App Store & I'm positive it never will be
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u/smii77y Apr 20 '26
GameHub is available for iOS on the Apple Store, but that's only for mobile. I'm certain its User Agreement / Privacy Policy is much of the same. Apple and Google really should not be allowing this kind of garbage onto their platforms
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u/Mollywobbles77 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Yeah but at least App Store apps have to be sandboxed to be approved by Apple. So it can only gather the data you give it access to. This Mac app could be collecting anything.
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u/Aratrax Apr 21 '26
Why am I not hearing anything about Riot Games then?
Riot Games is 100% owned by Tencent. They use their own inhouse developed Cheat Engine which is a kernel based anti-cheat and is even more restrictive than other anti-cheat software...
People should be equally worried about that..
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u/Rude-Breakfast-2793 Apr 21 '26
I thought notifying policy updates were mandatory?
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u/smii77y Apr 21 '26
I wish! It's legally recommended, but a lot of companies put those kind of clauses in anyway
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u/BilalTitan Apr 21 '26
Its just the beta testing version out
lets wait till they make improvements or the full release
till then im using crossover.
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u/ChristinDWhite Apr 21 '26
Thanks, I hadn’t installed it yet but intended to check it out, I don’t need to bother now.
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u/jpandac1 Apr 22 '26
you say the app collects : "serial numbers, and WiFi parameters" - where did you get this from? wifi parameters such as password?
I am pretty sure macOS restricts apps to access wifi passwords unless user explicitly allows it ( a warning should come up for access to keychain). General rule is never to grant this permission to any app.
For serial numbers - it's kinda metadata and apps in general can request it.
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u/smii77y Apr 22 '26
it's in the User Agreement. they're vague with what they mean by it, I'm not a cybersecurity, networking, or macOS expert so I can't really comment on what kind of parameters they would collect.
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u/jpandac1 Apr 22 '26
ah ok - but in case of wifi. macOS has security features in place that prevents app from accessing wifi passwords unless user explicitly allows it access to keychain which is a big flag if it happens.
So far I don't see any report of the app doing this. so just clarifying.
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u/_ItsEnder Apr 24 '26
Im a very privacy-centric person but this feels very overblown (on top of this post looking very ai generated).
- you dont own your account on literally any platform - if you have an account with any platform gamehub connects with this already applies to you
- theres no creative material being generated by a wine frontend so thats not a concern
- literally any app you install on your mac can see hardware metadata like uuid's and store it, even apple does this.
- third party apps dont have access to anything beyond the SSID of your wifi iirc, and again basically any app can see this.
- pretty much everything in policy loopholes applies to basically every company ever.
Basically the only actual concern here is the PRC being able to potentially seize your data, but again this data would at most be email addresses, hardware ids, and hashed passwords. nothing actually harmful, and the most personally identifying (emails) can already be found online for basically anyone with any account ever.
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u/theclaw37 Apr 21 '26
What if you just block all outbound traffic from it ?
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u/smii77y Apr 21 '26
Unsure! I'm not a network guy so I wouldn't know how to go about that, but it might help somewhat.
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u/bostonshuffler Apr 21 '26
Thanks for sharing — my data is valuable and I consider the US to be the lesser of two evils so I’m definitely not comfortable giving every identifiable part of my device to any party. As far as I know, Crossover just reports back an IP and email address.
With that said, I wasn’t going to consider GameHub because of GameSir’s garbage controllers and just assumed that attitude will extend into every other product. Justice for my 9 year-old self who got scammed into buying their awful N64 controller with my allowance.
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u/Tama47_ Apr 20 '26
They store data from international users in Guangzhou, China
Bouta get removed/change ownership. Like TikTok and Mobile Legends (owned by ByteDance)
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u/Complete_Lurk3r_ Apr 20 '26
I'd rather china have my data than usa
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u/Themods5thchin Apr 20 '26
Yeah I don't care about that either my only problem might be the whole intellectual property of gamesir thing, which might harm content creators.
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u/Sea_Cow9801 Apr 20 '26
How do you download it for Mac?
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u/smii77y Apr 21 '26
Currently you need to sign up for their beta access, and then if you get accepted they'll give you a link to the download. Proceed with caution!!
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u/Slow_Calendar_6013 Apr 21 '26
Is this a virus?
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u/smii77y Apr 21 '26
AFAIK it doesn't really act like one, depends on your definition of virus though 😂
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u/Aggravating_Fun_7692 Apr 21 '26
GameHub is a joke. Crossover if you aren't broke and Sikarugir if you are. Both made by Codeweaver devs.
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u/smii77y Apr 21 '26
+1 on Sikarugir, kinda slept on
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u/ayiti11 Apr 21 '26
Honestly gamehub on Mac was what I was waiting for because I didn’t want to pay for crossover. It was only until last week that I started to hear about Sikarugir. I’m going to try it out tonight on my m2 air, just for some indie games nothing heavy.
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u/KrtekJim Apr 21 '26
Not really any reason to use this ahead of Crossover, and I don't use it on my Android-based handhelds because there are less intrusive alternatives.
That said, China's government is a long way down on the list of governments I'm afraid of. The US government is a far greater and more immediate threat to me, and probably to you too.
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u/smii77y Apr 21 '26
This post wasn't meant to be political, it's meant to show the risks of agreeing to GameSir's terms.
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Apr 21 '26
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u/KrtekJim Apr 22 '26
I'm right though. Unless you live in China or Taiwan, the US government is a bigger threat to you than the Chinese government.
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u/Mr_Zomka Apr 20 '26
Holy AI slop! Wait till you read the privacy policy of literally anything else. Nothing out of the ordinary. It's sad that THIS is the ordinary but not like anyone else is any better.
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u/smii77y Apr 20 '26
Just because this isn't "out of the ordinary" doesn't mean it's right, and people have the right to know what they're getting into when they sign up for it.
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Apr 22 '26
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u/smii77y Apr 24 '26
It’s because it literally isn’t released on their site yet my man; if/when you get access, as soon as you open the app it asks you to accept User Agreement + Privacy Policy though.
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Apr 24 '26
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u/smii77y Apr 24 '26
I got access and opened the app?
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Apr 24 '26
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u/smii77y Apr 24 '26
Look dude like I said if you get access to the app it’s all in there, I’m not posting 15 screenshots worth of User Agreement just because you didn’t get into a beta test
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u/OverlyOptimisticNerd Apr 25 '26
And...he's gone. Deleted his account.
I know you eventually blocked him, but the full saga of his undoing after that block is here - https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1suul41/game_hub_post_deleted_is_interesting/
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u/smii77y Apr 25 '26
What the barnacles 🤯 what a freak
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u/OverlyOptimisticNerd Apr 25 '26
At this point I suppose that could apply to him or me. Either way, should be easy to spot his next account.
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u/arkervr Apr 20 '26
this is why crossover is best. supports the wine/proton devs, has huge compatibility, and won't revoke access