diff --git a/src/config/hardware_stats.hpp b/src/config/hardware_stats.hpp
index df882e516..90d88e5f6 100644
--- a/src/config/hardware_stats.hpp
+++ b/src/config/hardware_stats.hpp
@@ -42,49 +42,38 @@ namespace HardwareStats
             m_data ="{";
         }   // Constructor
 
-        const std::string sanitize(const std::string &value)
-        {
-          // Really confusing. Basically converts between utf8 and wide and irrlicht strings and std strings
-          std::wstring wide = StringUtils::utf8ToWide(value).c_str();
-          std::string normalized = StringUtils::wideToUtf8(sanitize(wide).c_str()).c_str();
-          return normalized;
-        }
-
-        const std::wstring sanitize(std::wstring value)
+        const std::string sanitize(std::string value)
         {
             // A string is a sequence of Unicode code points wrapped with quotation marks (U+0022). All code points may
             // be placed within the quotation marks except for the code points that must be escaped: quotation mark
             // (U+0022), reverse solidus (U+005C), and the control characters U+0000 to U+001F. There are two-character
             // escape sequence representations of some characters.
-  
-            wchar_t temp[7] = {0};
-            for(size_t i = 0; i < value.size(); ++i)
+            char temp[7] = {0};
+            for (size_t i = 0; i < value.size(); i++)
             {
-                if (value[i] <= 0x1f)
+                uint8_t codepoint = value[i];
+                if (codepoint <= 0x1f)
                 {
-                    swprintf(temp, sizeof(temp) / sizeof(wchar_t), L"\\u%04x", value[i]);
-                    std::wstring suffix = value.substr(i + 1);
+                    sprintf(temp, "\\u%04x", codepoint);
+                    std::string suffix = value.substr(i + 1);
                     value = value.substr(0, i);
                     value.append(temp);
                     value.append(suffix);
                     i += 5; // \u0000 = 6 chars, but we're replacing one so 5
                 }
-                else if (value[i] == '"' || value[i] == '\\')
-                {  
-                    char escaped = value[i];
-                    std::wstring suffix = value.substr(i + 1);
+                else if (codepoint == '"' || codepoint == '\\')
+                {
+                    std::string suffix = value.substr(i + 1);
                     value = value.substr(0, i);
                     value.push_back('\\');
-                    value.push_back(escaped);
+                    value.push_back((char)codepoint);
                     value.append(suffix);
                     // Skip the added solidus
-                    ++i;
+                    i++;
                 }
             }
-
             return value;
-        }
-
+        }   // sanitize
         // --------------------------------------------------------------------
         /** Adds a key-value pair to the json string. */
         template <typename C>
@@ -101,7 +90,7 @@ namespace HardwareStats
         {
             if(m_data.size()>1)   // more than '{'
                 m_data += ",";
-            m_data += "\""+sanitize(key)+"\":\""+StringUtils::toString(sanitize(value))+"\"";
+            m_data += "\""+sanitize(key)+"\":\""+sanitize(value)+"\"";
         }   // add
         // --------------------------------------------------------------------
         /** Specialisation for adding character pointers. String values in
@@ -110,7 +99,7 @@ namespace HardwareStats
         {
             if(m_data.size()>1)   // more than '{'
                 m_data += ",";
-            m_data += "\""+sanitize(key)+"\":\""+StringUtils::toString(sanitize(s))+"\"";
+            m_data += "\""+sanitize(key)+"\":\""+sanitize(s)+"\"";
         }   // add
         // --------------------------------------------------------------------
         void finish()