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General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(2385 posts)(2385 posts)
(2385 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 30, 2018
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!
Posted April 30, 2018
Thanks for the update.

If there's no option to make my list of owned games public like my wishlist so IsThereAnyDeal.com can automatically sync it into my unified "stuff I own" list, then I have no use for a profile and might as well turn it off to retain the level of privacy I had before.
Posted April 30, 2018
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Wurzelkraft: After all these years and added features GOG still makes the same mistakes. Every time.

Implement stuff without announcing it,
"gather" feedback (= let people talk/complain/criticize for weeks) and stay silent during this time,
apologize and alter the newly implemented feature after weeks (if at all),
repeat

In this case you kind of announced it in the forums(!) before it happened but just for the sake of announcing it. Everything was already finished and in place and all the voices and concerns were ignored until now.

Why won't you try to improve this whole "feature process"? Is it too hard to ask and consider people's opinions during a project, before launching anything?
There's actually something new this time, which might answer some of your questions: The emphasis that the nagging old forum regulars are just a small minority and not GOG's main target group, if you want to read it that way. It's not really news since we secretly already knew that (also judging by the many announcements on social media instead of here), but I think this is the first time I've seen the staff admit this truth.

What has stayed the same though is that this correction seems rather half-baked again. A 404 error page will only make the website look broken or buggy, and even if you disable your profile, apparently you still get notifications about your activity feed.

(Btw, I didn't mind having a profile page, I'd just have preferred to have more control over the information it's displaying to others. And where's the use in displaying how many hours in total a user spent with Galaxy anyway? Not even Steam does that, they only display the time you spent with specific games.)
Post edited April 30, 2018 by Leroux
Posted April 30, 2018
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drmike: Just curious if anyone else has seen this positive feedback.
I've seen it on Facebook, since I follow GOG on there. The positive feedback is also coupled with comments about how we're a toxic community and a bunch of whiny assholes.
Posted April 30, 2018
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elcook: [...] Taking it all into account, we decided to tweak a bit the Profiles settings, and add another option to the Privacy settings - from now on you can entirely turn off your profile on GOG, so no one can see any kind of information that is shown on the profile page. [...]
Thank you. Especially in the name of users who will join in the future.

Unfortunately in the eyes of some of the users who had "constructive feedback" the damage to our trust into GOG is already done. In that regard do I have a question: The way I understand it the wait time to get one's account deleted would be 30 days after the account gets marked for deletion by a member of your support staff. Will the upcoming changes to your privacy policy still be applied to accounts already marked for deletion before the 25th of next month, even if they are not yet deleted?
Posted April 30, 2018
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elcook: Thanks for bearing with us for the last week, we have an important update to the GOG Profiles.
GOG, you really should learn to maintain a conversation with your core supporters, not just throw "announcements" at us. For better or for worse.

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elcook: The news about profiles has spread across plenty of websites forums and communities, and we took our time to track all of them, and gather all of the feedback. The reception of the new feature we saw in the comments on Reddit, under different global and local media publications, as well as on social media, was really positive and this proved to us that we released a new feature that most of our users were waiting for. On the other side, some of you guys here in the forums, have felt differently about this new addition, and stated it clearly here.
"We judged by the reaction of people utilizing "social media" that the addition of "social media" elements to our website was seen as really positive."

.... I mean, really? To hammer the point home, people who do NOT see the need to participate in "social media" online are not really going to leave feedback there, will they?

Your forum should have been seen as the most important feedback point, along with support tickets/direct e-mails. It is supposed to allow direct contact with you.

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elcook: At this point, we’d like to thank for all the feedback we received - the good as well as the constructive one.
Well, either this is a thinly veiled slap on the face of the "complainers," or somebody in PR really screwed the pooch with the choice of word.

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elcook: You bring a lot of important feedback regarding GOG, as you are very devoted to the platform, even if you're not the biggest crowd out there. And while we understand that there will be always different opinions, we definitely do not focus only on the positive mentions we come across, and always consider making changes if these changes are beneficial for the whole GOG community.
I don't see any mention of changing the Privacy Policy itself to make it clear our data is safe with you.

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elcook: Taking it all into account, we decided to tweak a bit the Profiles settings, and add another option to the Privacy settings - from now on you can entirely turn off your profile on GOG, so no one can see any kind of information that is shown on the profile page. This will also mean, that when you turn off your profile, you won’t be visible on your friends’ friends lists, if they decide to keep their profiles visible.
That's nice, but it hardly addresses all the "constructive feedback" you received. Also, you had to implement it or get hammered for the GDPR violation it was.

As it was eloquently pointed out by another poster quite a while ago, the "Privacy Settings" are not. They are "Publicity" settings, and I do not see any action being taken to preserve our privacy beyond slightly limiting encroachment on it here.

Your Privacy Policy still allows data-mining and selling of it at will, the way it is currently phrased. You are unlikely not to maintain "profile" information even on those going fully "off".

I'm sorry, but as far as I see the situation you simply decided the bad PR was not worth it and did what required the least effort necessary to curb it (also, again - GDPR violation, heh).

This does not assuage my privacy concerns, seeing how Facebook is now a "trusted partner," and I have no way of knowing whether or not you have already monetized what data you could scrape before GDPR comes in effect. Or whether there are other similar plans in the work courtesy of GOG management for the future. You still retain tracking elements on your web site. You still utilize Google's captcha to lock out accounts. Your support pages are hosted by a third party, and rife with scripts from numerous data-miners. Hell, the very Privacy Policy cannot be accessed without running a bunch of third-party scripts.

As long as your Privacy Policy leaves our information open to privacy abuse, making a toggle on your web site after you screw up so badly pushing new privacy-violating "feature" does not constitute commitment to protecting it in any way.
Posted April 30, 2018
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drmike: Just curious if anyone else has seen this positive feedback.
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Ophelium: I've seen it on Facebook, since I follow GOG on there. The positive feedback is also coupled with comments about how we're a toxic community and a bunch of whiny assholes.
It's like a little bubble here, the majority think the forums are toxic.
Posted April 30, 2018
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DreamedArtist: ( My 2 cents )

A lot of the users who are active on the forum are a very specific group that despises change and social change to the platform to look like steam in anyway . They just want it for games, chat, forum only from what I found out over the years of using it, might be the case of them not used to all the info sharing cause they are old school? who knows, I do love my privacy but I do agree that the backlash was a little out of hand. GOG wants to grow and make the platform more like steam in looks not in drm to encourage more devs to come here but people are bitching about new features and push it back 7 years. thus this might push devs back from wanting to use the site cause no achievement or whatever implementations? who knows.
i'm old.

i don't have a problem with change. change is inevitable. it is part of the human condition.

what i have a problem with [and what i had a problem with here] was that the change wasn't opt-in. and when the change happened, it didn't have granular enough settings for those of us who wanted them.

it's fine for me if you want a profile. please, be my guest. it's fun and you and your friends can show off achievements and the like to each other. that part doesn't bother me a bit.

but i am not you and i value my privacy.

this isn't all or nothing/the old against the young.

it is different people with different perspectives [and that's completely ok.]
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Dalthnock: However, it's not all doom & gloom. I mean, look at all the nice Christians in this thread, turning the other cheek to GOG's underhanded verbal slaps. It warms the heart.
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lolplatypus: This.

So, to recap:
* Feature is announced on a small scale, Feedback ignored.
* Feature is rolled out, no warning outside prior announcement, no emails to your customers.
* Profiles are opt-in.
* Profiles are opt-in while partnered with facebook and the privacy policy being what its, nicely laid to out here by Djaron.
* Privacy violations due to the mandatorily displayed stats.
* Complete radio silence for a week while all of this is going on, with no hint of a rollback or anything to address the problematic situation in sight. All while a significant portion of the customerbase is probably not even aware of this due to lack of email notification.
* Then we get what amounts to "Thanks for keeping the thread active, we got some wonderful PR! Friendly reminder that you're the minority and we don't really need you, though, so, you know, know your place."

In the end a single point is fixed and everything is sunshine and hapiness again? Really?
It's honestly no wonder this stuff keeps happening. We're really easily placated, all things considered.
this.

this is important and everyone should read it, because this is how the situation was handled and this is gog going forward.
Post edited April 30, 2018 by lostwolfe
Posted April 30, 2018
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lostwolfe: i'm old.

i don't have a problem with change. change is inevitable. it is part of the human condition.

what i have a problem with [and what i had a problem with here] was that the change wasn't opt-in. and when the change happened, it didn't have granular enough settings for those of us who wanted them.

it's fine for me if you want a profile. please, be my guest. it's fun and you and your friends can show off achievements and the like to each other. that part doesn't bother me a bit.

but i am not you and i value my privacy.

this isn't all or nothing/the old against the young.

it is different people with different perspectives [and that's completely ok.]
Quoted for truth.
Posted April 30, 2018
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drmike: Just curious if anyone else has seen this positive feedback.
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Ophelium: I've seen it on Facebook, since I follow GOG on there. The positive feedback is also coupled with comments about how we're a toxic community and a bunch of whiny assholes.
Those are the people who evangelized gog and made them, at least from the people I personally know in IT circles floss/*nix people use and like gog from the start (those are usually people who value their privacy and want a no-bulls*it storefront for their good old games), and thanks to the toxic old crankers they made it and didn't break, and now they are leaving us behing, the times they are changin'......

I'm not against change, but goddamnit, you should make it opt-in with big banner buttons for those social people who like to flaunt their info and tits in public.
Post edited April 30, 2018 by dewtech
Posted April 30, 2018
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Ophelium: I've seen it on Facebook, since I follow GOG on there. The positive feedback is also coupled with comments about how we're a toxic community and a bunch of whiny assholes.
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dewtech: Those are the people who evangelized gog and made them, at least from the people I personally know in IT circles floss/*nix people use and like gog from the start (those are usually people who value their privacy and want a no-bulls*it storefront for their good old games), and thanks to the toxic old crankers they made it and didn't break, and now they are leaving us behing, the times they are changin'......

I'm not against change, but goddamnit, you should make it opt-in with big banner buttons for those social people who like to flaunt their info and tits in public.
I can certainly sign that 'letter'. Used to heap praise on GOG and try to convince friends to buy games here instead of Steam, and support DRM Free gaming. Some have bought some games here, though still mainly rely on Steam, and those are purchases that would almost certainly not have happened without positive comments from yours truly.

I no longer do this. The trust is gone.
Posted April 30, 2018
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coreyblueexclusive: It's like a little bubble here, the majority think the forums are toxic.
Who is this "majority"? You mean the people who just buy games left and right and really don't participate in the forums?

From what I gather, most people think toxic forums are heterogeneous ones. I'm sorry. A lot of us were born in a time when we were taught to think and feel for ourselves. We have opinions that don't match yours. We continue exercise our right to be offended and to defend that right. Now, some people don't express that well. But if you can't accept that we're all different and some of us are crankier than others, then don't put yourself to the trouble of trying to talk with people here. You're not going to get anywhere.
Posted April 30, 2018
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HypersomniacLive: ^So much this.

With a small correction. Profiles, as they were introduced, weren't opt-in (that would have been the proper way to do it), and they weren't even properly opt-out.
You're quite right, I messed up my terminology in the heat of the moment. It's fixed now, thanks for the correction.
Posted April 30, 2018
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Well, Bravo!

Completely ignoring your *own* forum for a week and shitting out a Zucker-coated turd of a "response" if you can call it that. ZenWan's response reflects my opinion on your behaviour quite nicely, though I feel sorry for so many lawyers fighting for justice and indeed for people's right to privacy! to be equated to your (Bwuaâaaaark) "marketing" BS.

Small wonder that frequent users of so-called social media are positive about "social" features.
I for one do not trust FB and co. with my personal data. But the money is so tempting, now, isn't it?

If you tried to come over as impersonal and inhuman as possible, try for an Academy Award in that category.
You (the current GOG) just might win once they introduce it.
You have become as colourless and bland as your own logo.
"el Cook"? Please remind me to avoid your dinner table.
Here's something you might understand: Once you abandon your USP's, you loose your reason to exist, aka: Your "Misson Statement"

Bye.
Post edited April 30, 2018 by jorlin
Posted April 30, 2018
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the reaction was not out of hand. it was about what you would expect. I'm guessing gog either didn't think about the way this information being public would be received, or foresaw it but didn't care (or underestimated how widespread it would be).

people don't have their exact penis length displayed by the pants they're wearing. houses do not display the exact amount of books they contain. it's not unreasonable for someone to have issue with the amount of games you own and time you've played imperatively displayed widely on your account profile page.

I was keen to see if they'd walk it back though because if they didn't, it meant that competitors were in a position of offering the user more privacy.

that said you can't vilify gog for displaying this stuff. they want to encourage engagement, they want that sweet sweet value add, and they want to fill their new profiles with stuff.

and something something peer pressure but hey! videogames! in the end gog gets it fixed with little turnaround, and gets a new feature.

unfortunately everybody got unfriended by tinye. so it wasn't without a hitch or two.
Posted April 30, 2018
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"Better late than never" for the option to disable the profile I guess, but I still have concerns.

Will new GoG accounts have a profile made for them by default? If so, will it have it's privacy settings set to the most open by default? Will future new features with privacy implications be handled this badly?

I may not be contemplating deleting my account any longer, but I'm still mulling over whether I will buy anything here in the future. I would have preferred an actual apology too, instead of the vague PR speak, but I'm not surprised by it.

I'd also like to point people who value their privacy to this wishlist item, if you haven't seen it yet.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(2385 posts)(2385 posts)
(2385 posts)