The friend request spam problem has been pointed out to GOG many, many times already. I haven't had problems lately, but I've mostly been targeted by homegrown dipshits, so this may be Fables' work and not necessarily a software fix.

Anyway, if friend requests are to remain public, (assuming blocklists now work for requests too) their exploitability is significantly mitigated by the absence of spam payload (no text) and the notion of the request (people are less likely to permanently invite total strangers into their personal spaces than read a one-off message), and can be further decreased by only allowing a limited number of outstanding requests.

Seems to work pretty inconsistently, I received messages from peoples who are not in my friend list but I cannot answer them. other time I also receive notification that I have a new message, a new user has appeared in the list but no visible message at all... seems pretty buggy.

Only a small percentage of GOGs costumers are hanging out on the forum. So I think it makes some sense to disable the messages as default. For the majority of the users, they will be free of spam, at the cost of a social feature they didn't use anyway. And with the number of spamming targets heavily reduced, GoG will attract fewer spammers too.

Nevertheless, GoG really should announce this WAY louder.

Will we get the Chat notifications back?

Yes. See #59 by Johny: "it will come sooner rather than later"

The question is: Sooner than what? Christmas? Next summer's sale? The heat death of the universe? Who knows...

Any such flag would have no idea of knowing anything that happened before it was created. If GOG did add such a flag in May (for example), any changes before May would not be caught by that flag, so we would be back to square one. Whether they added such a flag now with the change of the default is not something I know, but it would only help while moving forward, not for this change.

Yeah, you're right. So a flag would not be the solution. Still they should have contacted users via mail before doing this.

You're a GOGBear patrolling the GOG premises. Suddenly you hear a rustling in a nearby bush. It cloud be the wind, it could be something else... do you:

a) Walk on by like nothing happened
b) Turn Galaxy into a mandatory client
c) Make all the offline installers deploy Galaxy by default
d) Break the already sketchy website notification system

You hear a faint whisper in your ear as you ponder on your choice: "Choose carefully, only one of these paths will guard you from peril".

Infamy +1. If I ever start a TV show, youtube channel or podcast radio series, I promise to call it "That scanning guy". But you know I'm not scanning you right? My scripts are, and I have no control over those bits of code... they're like artists :).

Hey look everyone, it's Scanning Guy right here!


... You should totally add "Scanning Guy" after "Bastard Lunatic" in your signature, you know.

I can't message her either, but depending on your relationship with her, she may have you blocked. ;)

And the irony is, now I don't have anything to say to you. :P

(Nevermind)