I will not discuss the hardware capabilities of Pixel phones to play video games in this thread. I am focusing on the privacy perspective of playing closed source games from the Play Store.
My setup is simple : I have only the owner profile with the Play Services installed. I do not bother too much because I have a regular threat model, which is to reduce the amount of data fed to surveillance capitalism companies. I just try to keep the number of installed app to a minimum (especially closed source ones).
However, I would like to use my phone as a handheld console and install some games from the Play Store. From what I read on the forum, it seems that playing those games have the following implications:
- Google knowing which games you play (through the Play Store and the Play Games leaderboard).
- Game developers (and possibly third party companies) being fed data from your interactions in the game.
- Other apps getting data from the game through possible IPC communication?
Are there other things I should worry about? It seems to me that third parties being aware of which game I play and how is pretty harmless in my situation.