The point I was trying to make may have been lost in the exact wording I used above so I'd like to clarify both what I previously said, and what my core point was so as not to be misleading or confusing to anyone.

First on my wording "The fact that some games on Steam or elsewhere implement some cloud features in their game ...", should more accurately have the word "may" placed in it after the word "elsewhere" to read "The fact that some games on Steam or elsewhere may implement some cloud features in their game ...". This would convey my meaning more clearly and remove any ambiguity. Note however that my statement is however not false information because I do not state "save games" specifically but instead stated "some cloud features", and by that I include anything that requires one to be online and connect to Steam or any other company's servers in order to play a single player game. There are games such as Starcraft II, Diablo 3 and others which from my understanding talking to people require storing single player game data in the cloud without an option to have a completely offline gaming experience. Those games are not on Steam, but they are "or elsewhere". There are many games on Steam and other services which require being connected to the cloud for certain features in the game however, among them include achievements, multiplayer (for games that support only central matchmaking with no LAN or Direct-IP mode available), and other features.

But the point that I was trying to make which I do not want to get lost, is that most of the modern features of gaming that are provided by platforms such as Steam, Blizzard's Battle.NET, Uplay, Origin or other clients and services which are managed online, certainly could be implemented in such a way that they are completely optional and do not require being online to be able to use them (unless their very nature is online such as multiplayer matchmaking). Save games can be implemented offline on the local hard disk for any game ever made pretty much, as could any form of achievement system, and any number of other features, and they could be implemented so that if one chooses to optionally connect to a central online service without being forced to mandatorily, they could synchronize their local save games, achievments or other data to online servers if they wish to. But they should never be required to be forced to log into an account for these features which can technically exist all offline. Because such features can exist offline, my premise is that should GOG add any of these type of features to their service/platform offering it is both technically possible for them to implement it in such a way that these features can exist in games offline on the local computer/hard disk, and also have optional online features in the cloud that one could opt into using if they wished to synchronize save games, character data, achievements or other data/metadata to an online profile. Some game companies may have started to make such functionality mandatory online, but that is their choice and not something required to provide such features, and a company like GOG wanting to provide such features truly for the benefit of people who want them, and without any desire to use such features to limit or restrict people's freedom or as anti-piracy measures, they could certain implement it to be a truly optional feature for the benefit of customers, and something that can be completely optional and ignored by those who do not wish to have such features.

Furthermore, I trust that should GOG implement any such functionality into the Galaxy platform, I strongly believe that they will make any such functionality work offline without ever having to use the Galaxy client or online services, and that any aspect of the online service or client which has optional benefits to store the data online on their servers or share achievements or other stuff within one's social network would be completely optional. My opinion is based on the fact that GOG has strongly stressed from day one how everything regarding Galaxy is optional and that they do not believe anyone should be required to be online to access their games or game features. I believe that anyone's fears that "they say that now, but just wait and see..." are unjustified because both GOG themselves and us community of gamers know very well that if GOG was to make strong statements about Galaxy being optional and then turn around in 2/6/12/24 months and start integrating features into games that make Galaxy a mandatory thing for a game that hell would break loose and the community backlash they would receive from it would be incredibly devastating to their business.

I don't think GOG is stupid enough to make a claim that Galaxy will be optional and then do something stupid in the future to make some game require it mandatory.

Hopefully I've clarified what I was trying to say a bit more clearly as it was not my intention to cause confusion or make any misleading statements. Thanks for bringing it to my attention though also.

TTYL

You're cherry picking things and nitpicking about them as if you just want to argue with me about things that have no relevance to the point trying to be made. I think my above posts clearly state my point though so I'm going to leave it at that as I don't find value in a negative argumentive discussion of that nature. Neither one of us nor anyone else would benefit from that.

If this gets implemented I sure hope we can set this separately for each game.

But... But... If people were allowed to earn achievements offline, then they could hack their game files and get achievements they hadn't in fact earned, thus making my e-penis look smaller! WAAAAAAH!

Seriously, that's the official reason for why achievements in StarCraft 2 only work when you're connected to Battle.net. It's pathetic. I'm okay with achievements, but I like to get them for my own enjoyment, for the challenge. I don't give a rat's ass if anybody else can even see my achievements, and I never look at other people's achievements either.

In short, in case it was unclear, I agree with you perfectly. All those features, including achievements, could and should work offline.

How positive are you of this?
Do you own every game and checked their options?.

Steam Cloud saves are stored locally; if cloud saving is disabled the files will still be made but won't be synced.

It's a global Steam option and works the same way for each game where the developer/publisher chose to support it. The developer/publisher just picks at least one file or folder which will be synced with the cloud. It even works for DOSBoxed games, it really has nothing to do with the games' individual functionality.

Just curious if anyone here has tried Game Save Manager? - it seems to have a database of game save locations and can sync the files with free cloud services (like DropBox)

I want a global setting to disable all "cloud" saving permanently for all games. I don't want to ever be reminded or nagged about cloud saving.

I don't authorise GOG or any game publisher to collect statistics of my gaming usage either.

I want to play a game just like I play an MP3 song or video file from my hard drive, or load a PDF file. No getting datamined and no spyware.

That sounds like a reasonable feature request but there's one thing I'd add which is that if such a feature does exist it would probably not be enabled by default anyway because GOG games are not going to require anyone to use the Galaxy client or services so they could not access cloud saves by default anyway. It would be nice for those who use Galaxy client to manage their library to have the option to both globally enable or disable, and individually enable and disable the feature on individual game titles that support it though.

Same here. I hope the cloud save support is solid!

I would die to see this happen. If GOG will support cloud saves for all games I'd have no reason to use Steam.

So has anyone officially heard if they will be offering this? Like for Witcher 3?? Thats all thats keeping me from getting steam copy :)

Hmm you're making conclusions and then criticisms about things you dont even understand