And on a side note, whenever anyone PMs another user, Galaxy will be automatically downloaded to their computer. :P

It's a shame that it's necessary, as it's nice to have a way to directly contact nearly anyone on the site if you have the need, but that's a good decision given the recent rise in spam. If messages from non-friends are disabled by default then running a spambot isn't worth the effort, helping to protect even those who choose to change their settings to accept messages from everyone.

Thanks for doing something about the situation.

Thanks for the notification. I'll change my setting back to "anyone" as soon as I notice the change having taken effect, but agreed that "friends only" is the best default setting given the current spam situation, and that this change will likely protect even those who opt for "anyone".

Unfortunately, GOG has entered the phase of knowing what is best for us, and doing that for us. Which is something I utterly hate. I could maybe see it as reasonable to change what new accounts have set as default (as they have to have something pre-set as default), but changing the settings for existing accounts? The hell? Don't you thing I already have what I want set?

Agreed, the first thing you do when you make an account anywhere is go through the settings and make sure they're what you want - so there's really no need to change it for existing accounts.

Sadly we're in the minority here with paying attention to such settings. There's extensive usability research that the vast majority of users (iirc something staggering like 80-90% - but that might be application / website dependent) never change even a single setting.

edit: here's Jared Spool (probably the second best known name in usability research) writing about how fully 95% of MS Word users never changed a single setting!

So yes, good defaults matter a lot. As does distinguishing as a developer in your settings between "default", and whatever the current value for that default might be, so you can tell when a power user has deliberately chosen the value which you happened to have set as a default.

Of course they don't - it's a vicious circle where people who either are too dumb or too lazy to adjust anything for themselves make corporations, stores and other institutions become their caretakers and choose what's best for them and implement it for them, and that in turn further encourages these people and others to never do anything for themselves, because the "optimal" solution has already been implemented for them. And so on and so on.

You people forgot, that we're all imbeciles who can't even install Galaxy ourselves.

Bwainz!

I'm fine with this tbh. It should reduce the amount of spam users get, and "power users" can just change the settings afterwards.

What I *don't* think is fine, is when I recently logged on to linkedin, and had the audacity to read their (non-existing) privacy policy. Idiocy like this is all over the place, stealing your data and selling to anybody who may or may not be interested - and of course having shell companies in countries or tax havens with lousy laws for privacy and consumer protection. The amount of money that is siphoned off through tax avoidance/cheating is truly shocking.

Of course, Google, Apple etc are crooks of the worst order when it comes to stuff like this.

Does anyone still use the chat since the notifications are gone?
First all the PMs were literally killed (vanished from existence without a trace) and then the chat followed.
It's as if someone wants to forcefully transfer all community life to the client, hmm.

So you're changing a setting we can change ourselves.......m'kay.
cheers for the heads up.

Oh, bloody-
Seriously, y'all? This is the best solution you can think of? Every time I see GOG make the stupidest possible decision to fix a problem, I tell myself "This is it, it can't get any worse. Nobody could come up with an idea lower than this one." Yet here we are.
So, lemme get this straight, instead of deciding to actually DEAL WITH these bots and trolls, your solution is to force-close chat by default when people could already use this option for themselves? Well, I'll give you this much, at least you managed to stay consistent with this ever-increasing pattern of "It's ok, foolish user, we know what's best for you!"
You guys probably don't particularly care about me, and, to be fair, I'm only one person, so you don't have a reason to, but as somebody who manages the Community Giveaway, I do not look forwards to the hassle this is inevitably gonna be. Now each and every person on this website, for me to get in their chat for ANYTHING, is gonna have to remember to change their privacy settings, which the majority will likely forget to do. Even worse if they've been gone for a while and miss this thread or just happen not to see this thread in general. They'll never know anything's wrong because nobody can contact them. Even worse STILL with both chat notifications AND forum reply notifications being broken, meaning nobody can warn them or even alert them to the fact they should check their PMs. There's a whole slew of people that I'll never be able to talk to again. On top of all that, prepare for a whole storm of people asking one another why they're "blocked". I'm already waiting for you guys to screw this up and have it apply to staff PMs as well.

I'm gonna have to add a warning about this in the OPs of my giveaways, and somehow, I suspect that'll actually give more attention to it than this thread ever will...

On a (un)related note: Is the GOG forum even worth spreading spam on? Seriously?