Thanks for the info. Maybe you should voice these concerns to GOG via email/etc?

It might not do much but it's worth a shot, at any rate.

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It's more than an opinion, if you look at what harassment entails and the criteria for such.

In order for it to be harassment they have to be doing something with the intent to cause someone undue major harm/stress/etc or be causing such unintentionally(but still to a severe level), and I am sure GOG didn't add captchas to be mean to anyone or to cause anyone harm.

There's a difference between someone/a company harassing people and someone feeling as if they are being harassed(which can sometimes, though not always, be just that.....just a feeling).

(Again, I don't say any of this to discount the feeling of you or anyone else....I am just trying to look at this from a logical-etc standpoint as to if this constitutes harassment or not)

According to dictionary lookup you are wrong. First result I got "aggressive pressure or intimidation". You may be thinking about legal definition of it. I didnt mean it in a legal sense (obvious from my POV) and didnt imply it far as I can tell.
See above: Intent to cause harm is not required. The goal of GOG in this case would probably be to pressure the user to not make a ticket and not to harm the user. The goal of Google is probably to pressure the user to use Google stuff instead of turning it off with script blockers.

Either way(even with the part I quoted below this part) it still doesn't seem to fit the definition if one goes by it alone and not just one's gut feeling.

Ok then, but I am pretty sure(though yes there is a slight chance I could be wrong) they are not trying to stop people from making valid tickets for valid reasons(beyond maybe spammers and those who abuse the ticket system for bad purposes or reasons) or pressure people into not making them(as one can use other means to contact them as well).

Heck, I have made several this week(on game related issues and site issues as well), so if their intent WAS to pressure people with captchas not to make tickets then I think they chose a very poor way to do such.

In the end, in order to prove it is harassment one would need to prove intent(pressuring people/etc) and not just state that one feels gog is pressuring people to do something(or not do it in this case).

As for pressuring people to use google: As others stated one can email gog and skip the captchas entirely, so there is seemingly no pressure to only use google captcha/google either(as it isn't the only way to contact them).

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Look, I can see we might not see 100% eye to eye on this, but we CAN agree in one thing: Captchas are cr*p and very inconvenient for a good number of people.
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Funny thing here is I didnt know this Email even existed. I just checked their Support page and searched for '@' and couldnt find any Email address. This is similar to many other companies: They have an Email but keep it away from customers so that most customers dont use it. Dont know why they have it though - could be legal reasons. I remember some ruling (probably here in Germany but not 100% sure) about how exactly companies need to be reachable by customers.

Ok.

I am guessing it's more to keep people from spamming their email box with tons of emails that might be actual spam or filled with rude/crude content(as some do with such), and less anything malicious on their part. They could also be trying to encourage(but not pressure) people to use the support tickets system which helps them to more efficiently know what issues a user is facing and more quickly process such.

But yeah they could make it more noticeable to the user base, that much is true.

I dont think the goal is to do bad things to users ('malicious'). Its simply to 'reduce costs' or convenience (which also may reduce costs) - as you say yourself Email is less 'efficient' for them. And so the difference between 'encourage' and 'pressure' is IMO just how the PR team would explain it if it would explain it.


Just made a post, edited a little thing and my post disappeared?

1st bit: Again it's not(imo) pressuring anyone, as there are other methods to contact them that are more visible. Now if they closed other methods and made people use the support system with the tickets then I could see it as pressuring.

2nd bit: It's a site bug. Sometimes if one's post starts a new page in a thread it "eats" the new page temporarily and then eventually the new page and it's post shows up.

Other methods I dont know anything other than them requiring some social media stuff which I dont use. I have no idea how they work... Before reading your post and checking their Support page I didnt even know they had other methods. There is this big 'Contact' button and the other methods require reading the text above it.
Anyway I would need to make a social media account, learn how to use it etc to use those other methods. If those social media accounts themselves use captcha to create then this is an even bigger obstacle than the ticket form. This (needing a social media account) is similar to the way Google handles their captcha stuff: "Submit to the system or suffer" (Whether the whole thing is intentional by GOG or not I dont know of course. I do believe it is intentional by Google though.)

It works now for me too.

1st bit: I get not everyone uses or wants to ever use such methods, but at least they are there & people do have other options. And yeah google likely wants people to use it's system, but I don't think they also force any site to use their system(beyond ones they own like youtube, that is).

2nd bit: That's good to hear. Also thanks again for civilly debating this with me....it is nice to have a civil conversation and not resort(like some do) to name calling and such. :)

Yes but GOG is known (see privacy fiasco and giving Galaxy users faster updates etc) to push people in this direction. I also have some recollection about "sharing GOG orders on social media" links though not 100% sure - if true this is easy free advertisement for them so it all makes sense to treat social media users better and push people in this direction. And in case of the privacy fiasco they initially simply made everybodys data public which goes way beyond that. Point being that there is a consistency in behavior which is evidence for intent.

I was thinking about the Google <-> GOG_user relationship not the Google <-> GOG relationship. Whether GOG is 'forced' by Google doesnt matter for Google <-> GOG_user.
Edit: Users of the Google system suffer less from their captcha than non-users if that wasnt clear.

Ever since Google became a force for advertizing, rather than fact-finding, they have edited their algorithm to make searching deliver predicable (bankable) results. This has crippled the search function. I prefer DuckDuckGo,* but sometimes even I must provide the Great Satan with an update to their shadow profile of my online activity (by using their search engine, directly).

Google keeps foreign keys for every person in every major application user database, so even if you don't have a YouTube account, say, or G-mail, everyone has a shadow account (actually, since it must be hard to reconcile all the different searches, the relationship would be one-to-many).

This personal information is not worth much individually, but in aggregate it is priceless —— to train Artificial Sentience.
Internet users need a union. A privacy union!
________
Tangential notes on the War on Privacy
* DuckDuckGo privacy.
DuckDuckGo Don't Track.
Spread Privacy.
DuckDuckGo Made A Giant List Of Jerks Tracking You Online.
Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo wants to keep you safe around the web.

Can you recommend a forum staff member to contact when unable to reach regular GOG support?