Does GameAnalytics fall under any malicious or PUP category?

[BFeely]

Recently, the popular video game "Garry's Mod," in a controversial move, added GameAnalytics, specifically the DLL with the hash described at https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/2ff3aee1fbe1dbc242aec3211c8d89bd08dcd075372410a9dad4b6492a6f9b91/detection.

Can GameAnalytics be considered spyware or is it just one of those uproars that is much ado about nothing?

[exile360]

I did some reading on the GameAnalytics website and as far as I can tell it only really provides data from within the games that use it so it's not as extensive as say Google or Facebook that track you across most of the websites you visit (even beyond sites they own/are affiliated with) or MS Windows 10 that tracks pretty much everything (by default at least; it's actually kind of scary just how far Microsoft has gone in the pursuit of big data in their attempts to keep up with/imitate Google).

Generally what it boils down to are a few things for deciding whether or not Malwarebytes will detect something as PUP.  First, does it exhibit known PUP behaviors?  That one is a fine line as collecting standard customer metrics/data, crash reports and program interaction info isn't necessarily classified as PUP behavior and is pretty typical for virtually all applications these days (though some would argue that it's become a bit excessive over the past few years).  Second, and often most significantly, is it being complained about by most users (not just a vocal minority; something that it can be difficult to discern unless you do extensive research)?  That second one is often more significant because the 'U' in PUP stands for Unwanted, so if most users aren't aware of or don't really care about this little added bundle of telemetry consuming/reporting joy, then Malwarebytes probably won't target it, especially if doing so would do more harm than good (for example causing users' games to stop functioning properly/at all).

There are obviously more criteria, but those two are likely the most applicable in this case.  I don't *think* Malwarebytes will classify it as PUP, but of course that's just my opinion and the Malwarebytes Research team may see it differently; it all depends on what they find in their own investigations and how this telemetry tool compares to the telemetry collection functions in other software/games/devices etc.  Just based on what I read, it really doesn't look like it collects much more than a typical first-party telemetry tool built into any game or application would (including Steam, for example, or even Malwarebytes itself if telemetry collection isn't disabled by the user) but I'm not an expert on this particular tool/company either so public opinion may differ.