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Activity Feed • Gameplay Stats • Personalization


UPDATE: We've added a new option to the Privacy settings in GOG Profiles - from now on you can turn off your profile on GOG entirely, so no one can see any kind of information that is shown on the profile page. This also means that when you turn off your profile, you won’t be visible on your friends’ friends lists, even if they decide to keep their profiles visible.
The option to enable/disable your GOG Profile can be found in your account „Privacy & Settings” options, under „Privacy” tab.



We just introduced a new feature on GOG.COM: User Profiles – a social way to share what you and your friends are up to. See what your friends on GOG are playing, achieving, and sharing across four sections – Feed, Profile, Games and Friends.

Your Feed is the centerpiece of your Profile. Here, you’ll see which games your friends have been playing, all sorts of achievements and milestones, as well as general thoughts, screenshots, and forum activity. You can dispense your approval at whim and share your own stuff as well!

Your Profile is all about you and your gaming accomplishments. It's a summary of your activity, like the time you've spent in your games , your latest achievements (and just how rare they are among other users), as well as a glimpse at what your most active friends have been up to.

If you want to know more about your Games, you need to hit the the third tab. It contains a list of all the games you own on GOG, together with stats like time spent in-game and your progress towards unlocking the achievements. Sort the list, compare stats with your friends, and get some healthy competition going.

Finally – your Friends: get a general summary of their achievements and hours played. Here you'll also see which games are the most popular among your friends right now, so you can join them in multiplayer or find something you might enjoy yourself.

Of course, your profile comes with some sweet personalization options, choose a wallpaper from your game collection and share a few words with the world.

User Profiles are available for all GOG.COM users. Your personal gameplay stats like achievements, time played and milestones depend on GOG Galaxy, but if you’re not using the optional client you can still use the feed, post in it and interact with your friends.

Launching profiles also means adding new privacy settings on our end. You'll find three new Privacy options in your account's „Privacy & settings” area. These settings allow you to set the visibility for your profile summary, your games, your friends, etc.
So what are you waiting for? There's so much room for activities!
Congratz to the GOG team for this feature!
I've a question tho, I may be dumb, but I didn't find how to set an avatar. Intuitively, I clicked on my portrait while in edit mode, but it's actually just a link to my profile.
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tremere110: I'm pretty sure GoG is in radio silence while legal figures this out. I also figure they ran the profile thing by legal but neglected to mention that not all information is hidden.
Honestly I don't thing it's because of any legal issues or that the legal team is even involved; it's not like they had a security breach, leaked sensitive info or anything like that.

If anything I suspect the silence is probably because they are in big internal discussions with devs / PR / higher ups on what can be done and when and are waiting for a decision to be taken / implemented before communicating.
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Dalthnock: Finally! Communication!

Although this was sent to me in private, I'm sure they won't mind me sharing with everyone.
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Breja: F@%# me sideways this is just priceless. I feel kind of humbled to stand in the middle of a fail so spectacular.

EDIT: Also - yaaay, random friend invites despite the fact that no one is supposed to find me through any friend recommendations.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you're posting a million replies on the forums, on which anyone can click on your avatar and invite you to friends?
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Glioburd: Congratz to the GOG team for this feature!
I've a question tho, I may be dumb, but I didn't find how to set an avatar. Intuitively, I clicked on my portrait while in edit mode, but it's actually just a link to my profile.
In the "your account" menu, click on "Privacy and settings", then on "Account and locale"; there you will have the option to change your avata.
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Dalthnock: Finally! Communication!

Although this was sent to me in private, I'm sure they won't mind me sharing with everyone.

Despite being a complete and utter bastard, however, I'm better than GOG, so I blurred out the individual's avatar & username.
It's the "at this moment" that gives me pause. Clearly, there is an official statement now, and we're all receiving the same thing.
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RoseLegion: Do you have the subject line for that e-mail perchance?
I'm.. actually super flattered that you thought that was a real email from GOG and also really bad for (unintentionally!) deceiving you..

I'll add a warning above it! Really sorry you wasted your time looking for it.

EDIT: Sorry, what I meant to say was "We have nothing to communicate at this time."
Post edited April 25, 2018 by xyem
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SpiderFighter: I have a reply from my support ticket:


Genoan (GOG.com)

Apr 25, 17:29 CEST

Hello

Thank you for sharing your concerns. We have nothing to communicate at this point, but we have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate department.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Regards
Genoan
GOG.com Support
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SpiderFighter:
Wow... Just wow...
Seriously, all than (calamity of the) situation feels like incarnation of Dilbert cartoon.
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Mueslinator: Informing a company that their business practices currently is losing them active customers is not bullying, it is a courtesy: We tell them exactly why we stop giving them our business and what they have to do to regain it, which isn't some eldritch ritual either, but a mere compliance with their own principle of treating a customer as a customer, and complying with actual law. Can't ask fairer than that, I think.
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Banjo_oz: I think it's even more important in this situation, since GOG was originally founded on the idea of being an ethical "we don't use DRM or treat you like a criminal" ethos, and a *lot* of the long-time and loyal customers started buying here precisely because they weren't like "the other guys".

I've bought tons of stuff a second or third time here just to support GOG, because I believe strongly in an anti-DRM stance, am strongly against a forced "client" or not owning/backing up what I buy, and don't care about some always-online social platform.

I do occasionally buy from companies that - while not what I'd consider "evil" - I don't like much ethically; it's hard not to these days. But when one of the "good guys" does something you'd expect from those more questionable companies, it hurts more, IMO. I don't *want* to see GOG become a second-rate Steam, and I don't like to think they are losing customers because of a foolish mistake.

The saying that only a true friend tells you when you've got dirt on your face kind of applies here, I think; it would be easy to just never buy again, close your account and take your business elsewhere... but I at least care enough that I want to stay with GOG, I just want them to not betray the principals that attracted them to me in the first place.
I entirely agree. I'm tempted to rehash or sumerize so I'm not just quoting, but this is well put and my parahprasing it won't add much to the discussion so I'll just go with well said and leave it at that.
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Galamid: Exquisite!

But yeah, I got your point.
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toxicTom: Can't always use HuniePop as an example... ;-)
I think I may have found a better example to use, courtesy of your currently-open-to-the-public games list. :P Screenshot attached.

Remember, everyone; this is on by default. If anyone hasn't signed in yet who had co-workers or family members added as friends on GoG, then I hope that you weren't trying to hide anything from them, because the entire world can see not only recent forum activity, but also your entire library, until you log in and manually change your privacy settings off of the defaults.

Even if none of this bothers you, and you really don't care what gets shared with the world...what comes next? Does anyone else remember when Blizzard announced that all players who post to the Starcraft forums would be forced to use their real names, via their "Real ID" system?

https://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-switching-to-real-names-on-battle-net-forums-1268393/

They were met with backlash, and they backpedaled on it. But what if there was no backlash, and instead the dominate response had been "It's no big deal. Why is everyone being negative?" What if the company didn't care what the users thought? What comes next after that?

You may read that article and say "Oh, well that was in 2010, and it's just one case of it happening." Fast-forward to December 2017, in which one of the most popular free dating sites on the internet, Okcupid, makes a blog post saying that usernames are going away, and real names are coming. Only first names, mind you, but there is currently no way to opt out of the system; some users have reported being flagged and receiving warnings for attempting to enter usernames in place of something that looks like a first name. Once again, there was community backlash, but this time, no reversal; the site continues to enforce real first names for users to this day.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/29/okcupids-rating-sinks-as-users-rebel-over-new-real-name-policy/

There's a reason that people bring up privacy concerns at the earliest signs: Because when you don't, it goes so much further. Not much warning ahead of time for this change? Just wait until you have to enter a real name the moment you log in, one day, and you can't even make a forum post to express your disagreement with the change without your name being on display. Won't that be fun?

GOG, you are a storefront, first and foremost. Please focus your efforts primarily on being a storefront, and don't do things that a storefront wouldn't do with customer privacy. That's all we ask of you. Thank you.
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Post edited April 25, 2018 by Irenicus73
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SpiderFighter: I have a reply from my support ticket:


Genoan (GOG.com)

Apr 25, 17:29 CEST

Hello

Thank you for sharing your concerns. We have nothing to communicate at this point, but we have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate department.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Regards
Genoan
GOG.com Support
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SpiderFighter:
Thank you for sharing that - just checked my e-mail but still no reply. And considering the content of your "answer" I would not really call that a reply!

Reading further above about the legal e-mail address I checked their privacy settings at
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632109-Privacy-Policy
and found something interesting: they have published a new privacy police that will be valid on 25.5.2018. Please read again: MAY 25th, 2018... here
http://files.gog.com/new_policies/Privacy_Policy_GOG_EN.pdf

Don't know if it is a typo or intentional and made a screenshot too (my I'm really going paranoid with all these privacy and gog issues ;-)).

If you care to read that pdf please scroll down to 7.2 there's a really nice summary on the right side...
In essence, we process
your data to provide you
with GOG services, to meet
our legal obligations and
for other reasons that are
important for like
informing you about our
games and ensuring
security of our website. In
other cases, we will ask for
your consent in advance
and you will always have
the right to withdraw it
anytime you like.

That one really made me laugh! WE WILL ASK FOR YOUR CONSENT IN ADVANCE .... hmmm... ok, good job gog!
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tremere110: I'm pretty sure GoG is in radio silence while legal figures this out. [...]
That's the feeling I get from the lingo in that attached message.


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tremere110: [...] I also figure they ran the profile thing by legal but neglected to mention that not all information is hidden.

It might be unintentional - the mobile site does hide all user information for users with a private profile. GoG seems to have blundered with the desktop site though.
It's possible that QA failed somewhere, and legal usually is tech inept, and didn't think that there might be such privacy violations at the ever of GDPR coming into force.
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RainbowDragon: It's interesting that other websites start noticing gog's latest disaster. Here was (or is but I cannot access it for whatever reasons) another page
https://www.cnet.com/news/gog-debuts-profiles-feature-users-flip-out/

Google still shows:
https://www.cnet.com/news/gog-debuts-profiles-feature-users-flip-out/
13 hours ago - Commentary: To a gaming community that many joined as an oasis from Steam, GOG's execution of its new user profile feature feels like it's worth a ... to completely hide your profile, as well as the fact that it's opt-out rather than opt-in, and that the site announced it in a forum post (where many won't see it) ...

Several other sites seem to have reposted that cnet news item but it seems to have been taken offline by cnet.com for whatever reason...
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RoseLegion: It looks to be still online, or back online, I just checked the link and it worked for me as of this posting.
Thank you! I have to go offline now for a little while but definitely will check that page later!
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Dalthnock: Finally! Communication!

Although this was sent to me in private, I'm sure they won't mind me sharing with everyone.

Despite being a complete and utter bastard, however, I'm better than GOG, so I blurred out the individual's avatar & username.
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SpiderFighter: It's the "at this moment" that gives me pause. Clearly, there is an official statement now, and we're all receiving the same thing.
By "now", you mean "not yet".

Well, at least this finally pushed me to purchase an external hard drive. 6TB Seagate 80£ from Amazon UK. Around 125€, with postage.

Time to backup my GOG installers. Hopefully, it will arrive before GOG does something worse. Speaking from lived wisdom, screw-ups do tend to accelerate. Just a heads-up, friend.
Post edited April 25, 2018 by Dalthnock
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RainbowDragon: Thank you! I have to go offline now for a little while but definitely will check that page later!
The thing that bothers me most are the people that claim that it isn't a big deal because other companies are worse.

Crass example: That's like saying that it's no problem if you grab some woman's privates because she has been raped before.
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Taro94: Galaxy installers really were not a big issue, though. They had every right to encourage people to download Galaxy - they did not force anyone to do that, so there's no problem here. You can blame them for making a feature mandatory, not for making a feature a default choice.
In the beginning they wanted to force people to download the Galaxy installers. The choice between Galaxy and Classic installers was only introduced after several days of a massive shitstorm.