Hi.

I don't know exactly when it began but lately when I try to redeem a code I get to spend time training Google's AI.

At some point GOG changed the old "I'm not a robot" checkbox with a "This app feature is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of service apply" and I would'n mind it so much if I had to solve it ony once.

As it is now it works like this:

1. Click "Continue".
2. Solve reCAPTCHA.
3. Solve reCAPTCHA.
4. Solve reCAPTCHA.
5. Click "Redeem"
6. Solve reCAPTCHA.
7. Solve reCAPTCHA.
8. Solve reCAPTCHA.
9. Click "Pay for your order now"

Just to be clear I'm blaming GOG for this. Yes I know reCAPTCHA is "better" wink, wink, if you help Google train the freaking AI but no matter how good the discount is I won't buy if you annoy me.

Just for reference I attached two screen captures of the new and old interfaces.
Please switch back to the good old checkbox.

Regards,

A.

PS: Since I'm a firm believer in voting with my wallet... you know.

As long as you use the same device, usually you don't see those. Except if you disable cookies.

Are you using GOG Galaxy for the redeems?

The more Google nows about your browsing history, the easier it makes the captcha.

Naturally Google has no no knowledge of what happens within GOG galaxy, so it defaults to the hardest problems (often grainy pictures and painfully slow updates for the 'click until it stops appearing' tasks)

Web browsers are a different story. Google can track you across different sites, so it has a better understanding that you are human. Logging into Gmail first often makes the process even easier.

Invasinve tracking or a test designed to make you fail. Tough choice.

There is no excuse to use this stupid service in 2021, personaly i think it's worst than drm to force people allowing google tracking their browsing, i use some addon on firefox for privacy and security and everytime i have a google captcha it's a nightmare, with other captcha i have no problem to solve but with google who try more to track your browsing history than realy help website protection i always have problem, sometimes i have to solve 3 time in a row, sometimes it fail even if i check the right pictures.

I'm surprised so many people really hate the picture matching minigames graciously provided by Google.

I think GOG is the only site that makes me fill out these accursed things despite being logged in.

It almost looks like some manager added "Google captcha" to a checklist enforced on GOG Web developers, without even thinking about what this captcha-thing even is, only remembering that their neighbour has one and is really happy about it…

The only fix would be to remove it. (I mean the captcha. Well, the manager behind it too actually.)

Done! I'm using a browser and I do have quite a lot of privacy protection going on but I haven't had any kind of issue whatsoever with the "I'm not a robot" variant. That said I would like to point out that if I had failed the reCAPTCHA I would not be able to reach #5 in my list. The fact that I do reach #5 means I should no be asked for verification any more which is not the case.

Per Google's reCAPTCHA pricing table GOG should have been paying a good chunk of change every month. My guess is Google gave GOG a discount for the "have your users train our AI" concept and that is why the checkbox is gone and we have to waste our time with the images.

This is Humble every single time for me. And each gets progressively lower quality like it suspects I'm a bot even as I pass.

Which is why I stopped buying from Humble altogether a looong time ago.

Here's the fun thing: If you're located in China, you can't even log into Humble. Why? Because ReCraptcha is a Google "service" and since all Google "services" are blocked in China, you get a spinning wheel of death during the login as it tries to load a Craptcha from a blocked website. I sent Humble a mail about it and they were like "Whoops. Sorry for the inconvenience!" and then didn't bother to do anything about it.

thats what you deserve human

I doubt it: even when it was "only" a checkbox, clicking it would spawn the images captcha anyway every time for me. Maybe when you have a Google account it simply ticks it instead, but I do not have one and had to click on buses and bikes every time…

I thought maybe some day AIs will be smart enough to actually tell us appart from bots. Then I realized the other team also has access to AIs so in the end it will be two AIs trying to outsmart each other and we will have to keep solving the cursed puzzles.

Third choice: Vote with your wallet as OP suggested.

There are already anti-captcha addons (with actual humans on the other side solving them for <0.01$ IIRC) but I would expect there to be AI based free browser addons in the future to do away with captchas. The 'make sure the other side is human' scheme is doomed to fail without having access to severe invasion of privacy. I dont think there is even a point. Why dont they simply allow bots and build around that. They are a company intent on making money. I dont see anything wrong with making money off bots.