people are still at this
1. gog can do what every they like since it's there company
2 gog didn't have to do this
3. they where kind enough to add a private option
4. you actually have no say on public/private profiles since your using there system/company so accounts and everything belongs to pretty much gog..

also for social means

adjective
1. relating to society or its organization.
synonyms: communal, community, collective, group, general, popular, civil, public, societal

noun
1. an informal social gathering, especially one organized by the members of a particular club or group.

so yes forums could actually fit there since it's a community of people since we talk about gog, tech, off topic stuff...

also i recommend people reading these https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-User-Agreement & https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632109-Privacy-Policy just so they know what they signed up for

I mean....
1. Being able to do something doesn't mean you should do it.
2. They didn't, but they did.
3. They were, but it was/is poorly-implemented.
4. This is part of the whole reason people came here instead of Steam and other companies, to get away from companies who just do whatever to you, so it's natural that this group of people would be pissed.

They are bound by EU laws so no they cant.

(I dont believe it was "kindness" which made them add it.)

Whether it "belongs" to GOG or not - they are not entitled to make personal information publicly available - see the point about EU laws.

In EU TOSs/EULAs and similar stuff have limited power. They also have cool quotes like "We respect your right to privacy" in there so no - this did not at all tell us that GOG would suddenly show previously private information to the public.

0 Thank you for the link gamesfreak64!
Very good video I can tell you. Personally I always considered first and later Fallout's as completely different games. I had much more fun playing first two than F3 (which I started twice and never finished the story..). I believe changes were made to bring more customers (money) to the title and because of the first person view and limitation of the engine, weren't very fortunate.. From what I saw I am not interested in the latest title at all.
I'd add to the recommended titles under the video Planet Alcatraz, sadly not yet available on GOG.

We are at war here all the time. We were at war when Galaxy happened, when pm changed to chat, when friends shows up and so on.. I can understand someone want to keep their gaming life in secret, however, making a very bad publicity because of that seems very shortsighted, very.. Changes are necessary, otherwise we're stuck in bbs times and GOG isn't only for the very few who can manage ; p Since we want more games, we need more publishers and we can get them only if we have more customers around. I don't like the Harrison Bergeron idea but is not that bad yet, is it? ; ) I only hope we never get such a mess like on the other gaming platform..
So, GOG, no trading cards! Can you hear me?

A suggestion for the guys who are in charge of the profile/social/galaxy stuff on GOG: if someone disables achievements or playtime tracking in the galaxy client, than those things should not be displayed on his/her profile page (game list tab).

Or, at least, there should be an option to remove them completely from the profile, without making it private. I mean, it makes sense. I may want people to know what games I own, but not how much I've played them or just not if I've completed them.

I have seen videos of planet alcatraz.
Fallout 1+2 are my favorites i got tactics ( retail cd) aswell cause i played a demo years ago.


Back to war : just like the voice over in fallout said.... war never chances .... ( its the guy from Hellboy and SOA (sons of anarchy).
About trading cards: i always wondered: what is the use of trading cards? i dont need any, just like online achievements , i dont have any social media account , no twitter no facebook, i do like to reply and talk about games and reply in general topic part of forums, i use email but thats because you need it to create an account and to receive information like pw and login name, but thats about it: forum , email and a dumb steam client only to get the games.

I always look for Steam games i can zip/rar and play without the client.
If i buy agame that needs steam 24/7 to run, i 'blacklist' the dev/publisher in a note pad document to prevent buying from them: BigFish games is one big drm hugger every game published by BFG no matter who developed it, needs Steam to run to play the games so no BFG for me...



regarding : " They are bound by EU laws so no they cant."
yes and no.... with EU you never know what direction the wind blows :D
just wait until EU = superstate ....... :D for now things look okay... but wait 5-10 years , then you can reply again on this dicussion ... its too early yet :D

It's the same in the U.S. Landlords and just about any other contract you sign often will include clauses which are unenforceable by law. It just shows the ignorance of "the Internet" that people seem to think if it's written into a contract that somehow makes it law. The flip side is that too many people somehow believe that even a minor breach of a contract clause makes the entire contract invalid which isn't the case either.

Landlords ? thats people who rent rooms/space to common 'people' ?
This happens everywhere if landlords can get a better 'deal' they will force the current tenant(s) to leave a give them x time to leave , happens even in European countries.

Lol, activity feed bubble today despite having turned off my profile back when they started giving that option.

I get the impression it's not going to go away unless I turn on the profile and go to the activity feed

I got a response (already some time ago) on my request to know what falls under the term "GOG services" mentioned in the privacy section of the terms of service.

The answer goes as follows:

- Yes, classic installers are part of the GOG services, so they would like to have the right to track what you do with them
- But they don't (currently). They only monitor download attempts of the classic installers and nothing beyond, unless you use Galaxy.

Now this sounds reasonable, and I would like to believe my usage of the games and classic installers is completely private and is not tracked by GOG beyond download attempts. On the other side, their behavior with the GOG profiles was so abysmal (in my eyes), that I'm not really convinced. They may change their behavior and start tracking players behavior also for users of the classic installers. Only if they would explicitly exclude this in their privacy terms I would actually believe it.

Not sure what that means for my future buying behavior on GOG. The whole thing destroyed my trust in them. I guess what I will do is giving them some probation time and if they do not screw up during that time, maybe they will be worth my trust again.

And, oh man am I happy that I never used Galaxy.

Me too. That was a case of mistrust well placed. But at least they seem to have finally listened to customer feedback finally and have replaced the Galaxy-infested installers with a 'Try Galaxy' button with the clean classic installers being the default again.

Has the visibility setting finally been fixed? Venom said it's broken, and he also said that GAG was working on a fix, but that was already a month ago, with no reply to our follow up on it.

Having said that, please take a moment and think about the last part of my post. Picture one's friends list as a room, adjacent to other rooms on three sides, one free side, and windows on all four walls. Each room is dark, and each friend has a spotlight over their head. There's a control panel with a main kill-switch for each friend, and a separate switch for each spotlight. The spot lights of those with a disabled profile are switched off by default, but only when one looks inside from the window on the free wall - both the main kill-switches and separate ones are off. When one looks inside from any of the other windows, then everyone's spotlight's on, even though the main kill-switch is off. And in order to prevent that, those with disabled profiles need to go to the control panel and actively switch their spotlight off.

My point is that certain aspects/parts of these social features are interlinked, and treating them as if they were completely independent makes no sense, and only leads to (more) conflicting user privacy settings; when one disables their profile they should be left out of the "let's all be friends with random people" game by default without having to fiddle with more than one privacy setting. Anything else is poor design that introduces more points of failure both at the implementation and at the user action level. The question is if all this is actually that hard to see, or if nobody thought/realised it during the design and implementation stage, and GAG's not ready to admit it, and correct the oversight.

I've already said it, I get that GAG wants these social features to succeed, but that should happen based on people willingly embracing and participating in the social game. The way they've been communicated and implemented at least hints/implies that GAG's not all that confident, and counting on people sitting on the, chosen by GAG, default p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶c̶y̶ publicity settings.


I'm probably talking to deaf ears, given the following.

When the setting to disable one's profile was introduced, I got a follow up to my support ticket, pointing me to elcook's post here. I replied to that email, and got the following respond a couple of days ago [emphasis added by me]: Remember all that forwarding of our support tickets to the appropriate department? Well, apparently it has spoken, and this is GAG's official (canned) reply/stance on the matter - it all falls under "legitimate interest", so public is the default, and whoever doesn't like it can opt-out after the fact; simple, isn't it?




[emphasis added]

Is this GAG's actual response, or are you paraphrasing? If the latter, I'd be interested in the exact wording regarding the part I highlighted - is it "they'd like to have the right", or "they have the right, just don't act on it (yet)"?

Very well stated, thank you.

I am amazed that GOG can say this:

'it’s not legally required for users to give opt-in consent to User Profiles"

The users in question are not even informed that they have a profile and that it is, to all intents and purposes, public. It is so easy to create a GOG profile that saying that only logged-in users can see the profiles is just a cop-out, but clearly a nice legal loophole they have found.

I have been inundated with emails from companies regarding giving my consent to various things in view of the GDPR laws, but never received any official notice from GOG, presumably because I am not subscribed to their emails.
Think of the hundreds or thousands who don't even know about this profile and that their information is on public display.

And even if GOG are right, and this is legal, it is not moral or ethical, and they know how their core users feel about it.

Not impressed with GOG's attitude at all.

Not being a lawyer but: I dont believe GOG is correct here. Simple reason being that they are bound by all (for the respective customers only though) national EU laws. Many of which differ obviously. So even if that is compliant with the new EU law then it can still easily run afoul of one or more national laws.
And: Based on my (limited) knowledge anything misleading (their quotes about respecting my privacy but then making my profile public by default without even notifying me properly if at all) does not hold up in EU. So even if it holds up to privacy laws it may still run afoul of ToS/EULA laws.
(And obviously they are never going to express any doubt whatsoever about the legality of their own offerings or actions.)


Edit: Just to make clear: I also dont believe what they are doing is compliant with the new EU privacy laws.