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General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(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 26, 2018
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Zrevnur: Ticket (me complaining about default settings for privacy) response:

Thank you for sharing your concerns. We have nothing to communicate at this point, but we have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate department.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

Edit: formatting didnt work
Got the same exact response. They are not even doing support properly.
Posted April 26, 2018
high rated
Hi everyone, here's my daily update...

Today, finally, I have received the standard non-answer-bla-bla-e-mail from gog:

QUOTE start:

Apr 26, 09:35 CEST
Hello

Thank you for sharing your concerns. We have nothing to communicate at this point, but we have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate department.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

Regards
Genoan
GOG.com Support

QUOTE end.

Nicely done, now I am really satisfied with the way how gog cares about their customer's concerns for their privacy (sarcasm off).

So, what can we now do (apart from continuing to spread the bad news and add votes to
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/disable_view_profile_function_for_customers_who_care_for_their_privacy
in our effort to get more votes there than the request for public profiles received)?

I suggest we continue to complain here in the forum, spread the news, tell your friends, other websites and also your national data protection authorities (I cannot upload the file, please get it here
http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=50061
in pdf format), and of course also complain to the European Union, e. g. here
https://europa.eu/european-union/contact/write-to-us_en
and tell them about gog's failure to keep our data private, ask them how this can be in context with the new data protection laws and how we can make gog keep our data private again.

And @SpiderFighter in (a very late, sorry for that) reply to your post #1134 - I had no idea about the necessity of any disclaimers for lists - and I have to admit I have never started such a list here or anywhere. I guess it does not matter any more because I suggest we now shall attack the issue gog-internally via the feature request and externally hopefully via data protection organizations and/or maybe government institutions
Posted April 26, 2018
high rated
Form letter from GOG support:

[i]Hello

Thank you for sharing your concerns. We have nothing to communicate at this point, but we have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate department.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Regards
Genoan
GOG.com Support[/i]

My reply:

[i]Hello

Thank you for sharing your disregard for my legally binding demand that you cease and desist from making my financial information public. I will forward my complaint and your refusal to comply with your legal obligations -- which constitutes a clear indication of bad faith on your part -- to the appropriate authorities.

Regards
[name redacted]

P.S.: The number of games in a person's account DOES constitute personal financial information that can be used to derive a person's purchasing habits and their level of income. The fact that it is approximate in no way indemnifies you, in the same way that you would not be indemnified if you publicized a person's total purchases of 1234.56 as "1235", "1230", "roughly 1200", or "over 1000". As such, you may be investigated -- and ultimately held accountable -- not only for the unauthorized release of personal information but also for violating laws regulating financial conduct and your legal fiduciary responsibilities to safeguard financial information.[/i]
Posted April 26, 2018
Even the GOG.com account has set profile to private :)
Posted April 26, 2018
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Dalthnock: Thank you for the warning, I am aware that external hard drives have this problem.

I bought it only for storage purposes of my GOG installers. I'm mulling over how I should do it, download them first to another drive and then move them to the external, or download them directly with limited speed.

Any advice?
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jorlin: First of all: not every external drive has this issue. Many external drives are doing just fine. That's why research prior to purchase is critical for success. I have had zero issues with Medion/ CnMemory drives so far. One WD MyBook drive failed after just a few months because of improper construction of the interface module between the disk and the USB/ eSATA sockets. Also, try to avoid drives that have propietary connectors at the drive end, because you won't be able to access your data after the interface module shits itself. And this *will* happen, it's just a matter of time.

Secondly: If you have a regular built-in drive with enough capacity, download in batches to that drive and transfer the data from that regular drive to your backup drive. That's also how most professional backup systems work. I work with a system like that on a daily basis at the institute I work for.
Remember: backup in small batches, especially when your backup drive might be unreliable, so you can keep track of what batches made it to the drive before the transfer cuts out.

I hope this advice will help you.
I don't want to derail the main topic though.
Let's wait and see what the legal team will come up with, but keep the discussion going.
We should not allow GOG to be complacent and just wait it out until the link to the post will get scrolled down because of new updates on the main page.
It's their store, but it's my wallet and I will keep it closed to them until this has been dealt with in a satisfactory manner.
Satisfactory to us as customers and humans demanding privacy that is.
On top of that: No matter what customer agreement they set up, they are still bound to European Law, which invalidates any statement in the customer agreement not in accordance to that Law for inhabitants of the EU.
Thank you for the advice about backups.

Yeah, I know there's external hard drives fit for everyday use, but those are more expensive, and I need it only for backup. The one I bought even says Backup Drive in the name, so it's a safe bet it's not for constant use.

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Mueslinator: I'm currently downloading directly to my external drive. Been going for over 48 hours, had one minor hiccup so far that was resolved by hitting "resume download".

I would say unless you live in an exceptionally hot area, downloading directly to external should be fine. My advice first and foremost would be to not forget to switch to manual installers for every single game, and for every single time you make the installer dialogue field pop up. Because that caused me to accidentally download a Galaxy Installer version, and I had to redownload a whopping 20GByte already. Gotta be more careful.
It's not hell yet, but it's warming up. I don't want to resume downloads, otherwise I'll be paranoid it got corrupted. Downloading a huge file over 56k with a dodgy download manager will scar you for life. Thanks for the advice.
Posted April 26, 2018
high rated
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Gersen: While I do think there should be an option to totally hide this information for those who want it; I don't think it's really "private information" even for the GDPR. (but again I am not a lawyer)
Not private, you say? I see that you have 2089 games that you acquired since 2008. That's roughly 209 games per year. Estimating that the average price for a game is around $5, if you bought them on sale, or $10 if you were impatient, I can deduce that your income level is sufficient to throw around $1000 to $2000 per year just on games, and that's not counting the possibility of you buying games elsewhere as well. By tracking your hours of play on a weekly basis (which is now possible), I could make further deductions about your lifestyle, including the likelihood that you are married or celibate and possibly even infer the possibility of various medical conditions, such as Asperger's syndrome or some inability to have a regular employ. And that's just as a casual observer. Corporations can do this on a massive scale that would allow them to correlate this information, make many more detailed deductions, and then use that information not only to target you for marketing, but also to tailor pricing to your ability to pay and your estimated desire for a product.

And there are a ton of specific scenarios that could play out. For example, say you're divorced and are paying alimony. Your ex wife could open a GOG account, track how many games you buy each month, and then present that to a judge as evidence of your ability to pay more alimony despite your claims to the contrary. Others on this thread have given various other scenarios where this information can be used to your detriment.

So, yeah, this is private information. YOU may decide it's not something you want to keep private, but anyone else has every right to keep that information hidden without regard to how you feel about it.
Post edited April 26, 2018 by puviani
Posted April 26, 2018
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Trilarion: That's a really nice, polite, business-like formulation of an idea that would have worked and gone through smoothly for sure. Thank you for displaying that actually doing a much better job is really piece of cake and it's not that GOG couldn't be better, it's "just" that they decide not to be better.
Thanks, that's quite the compliment :)

I would really like to start my own online game store.. have a bunch of random ideas for it and would be really interested to see if they would be well received or used.
Posted April 26, 2018
low rated
Congratulate gog.com, you have done a GREAT JOB. The profiles were asking for thousands of users in this and other forums and will help to publicize the platform. Gog galaxy is evolving with profiles, achievements, friends, cloud save ... You are creating a very good community and all this is based on the premise of no-drm. My congratulations.

On the other hand, although I agree that privacy options are added to the profile (that each user decides what they want to share is fair) I find it sad that the small group of users always come to annoy the rest when a new feature is added criticizing it when everything is optional but they seem to want to decide the characteristics of gog when they are a minority group of users because of which many users do not talk regularly in this forum and in other forums (I think we all know these foreros).

Like many users, profiles, achievements, coud save, no drm and gog galaxy in general seem great to me. And everything is optional, although I understand that privacy options should be improved. Although they are a very small group of users, they have the right to control what they show to others.
Post edited April 26, 2018 by MariusHispano
Posted April 26, 2018
Are number of games and hours played supposed to be hidden for private profiles on mobile? I don't see them right now (on Android). Can't they do that also for non-mobile browsers? Seems like it would solve half of the concerns (the other half being related to default privacy settings).
Post edited April 26, 2018 by Caesar.
Posted April 26, 2018
high rated
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MariusHispano: I find it sad that the small group of users always come to annoy the rest when a new feature is added criticizing it when everything is optional but they seem to want to decide the characteristics of gog when they are a minority group of users because of which many users do not talk regularly in this forum and in other forums (I think we all know these foreros).
Says the person who has supported GOG to the tune of 8 games in 3 years.

Who are you to criticise the people voicing their complaints that have supported GOG way more than you have?

(How many times do I get to do this before the point sinks in, I wonder?)
Post edited April 26, 2018 by xyem
Posted April 26, 2018
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puviani: ...
Dude you should have read the post you answered to before typing this wall of text.

The only things I said is that there is a difference between peoples wanting this information to remain private and whenever or not this information is legally considered as personal data by and is covered the GDPR.

And as I said multiple time in this thread I DO think that there should be an option for those who want to use it to totally hide all those information.
Post edited April 26, 2018 by Gersen
Posted April 26, 2018
I got a reply to my support question:

Is there a way to hide the number of games I own and hours played on my profile page? It seems to always be visible no matter what my privacy settings are.
GoG's reply:

Hello

Hiding these numbers is currently not possible.
Thank you for sharing your concerns. We have nothing to communicate at this point, but we have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate department.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Regards
Genoan
GOG.com Support
Currently not possible... - great, just great
Posted April 26, 2018
low rated
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MariusHispano: I find it sad that the small group of users always come to annoy the rest when a new feature is added criticizing it when everything is optional but they seem to want to decide the characteristics of gog when they are a minority group of users because of which many users do not talk regularly in this forum and in other forums (I think we all know these foreros).
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xyem: Says the person who has supported GOG to the tune of 8 games in 3 years.

Who are you to criticise the people voicing their complaints that have supported GOG way more than you have?

(How many times do I get to do this before the point sinks in, I wonder?)
Me and my brother have two accounts, one of them with more than 100 games. In his day spoke in this forum with the other account and that small group of users to me and other users humiliated us for not thinking like them. They are a minority but they do not respect anyone and they have been talked about in various forums.

And yes of course you can complain, I agree that the level of privacy of the profiles should improve but I see absurd those who want to eliminate them when they are options. Gog.com is creating a solid platform, with achievements, cloud save, friends, profiles ... I can only congratulate you because it is what most users have been asking for years.


But yes, I hope they improve the privacy options, that everyone decides they want to show seems fair even if they ask for a minority of users.
Posted April 26, 2018
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nepundo: Now if you'll be so kind as to tell me how NOT to share my number of games, achievements and hours played, which are private information about myself? Thanks.
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Galamid: I'm pretty sure that's not private information.
As others have said, legally speaking you might be right. I'm not a lawyer either.

But just to make sure, maybe you're thinking about "personal" instead of "private"? Personal as in "information that can be used to identify me in real life". Or reach me, like my email or phone number. If not you, I have the impression that others in this thread are mistaking that. The number of games might not be personal, but I certainly would like to keep it private.

In any case, if that's not private information legally speaking, where do we draw the line?

Pheace's example is very good. Tomorrow Amazon starts making public how many purchases everybody has made. I'd like to see how many people in the "hey, it's only games, nobody cares" bandwagon still go "hey, it's only purchases".
Posted April 26, 2018
high rated
Just shaking my head at these replies from GOG.

What they should say/do:
"Thank you for contacting us. There have been a few teething issues with our new Profiles system, and are sorry if these have caused you any problems. However, rest assured that we take privacy seriously at GOG (you may have noticed we recently updated our privacy policy to this end) and strive to listen to our customers. As a result of customer feedback, we're currently working on a way to allow people to hide information such as number of games owned and online status. In the meantime we're hiding 'games owned' for everyone (or disabling profile pages entirely) temporarily and will work on implementing a way for customers to unhide this information if they wish to as soon as possible. Again, we're sorry about this; there was a glitch/oversight/miscommunication/whatever excuse you want to make and we hope you will accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience it may have caused."

It's PR schmoozing but gives a sense they're actually listening *and* gives protects customers by erring on the side of privacy, yet isn't "we totally screwed up" admission that makes them sound incompetent. Costs nothing, makes the customer feel heard, and instantly closes the privacy hole until it can be fixed by turning off the problematic feature across the board temporarily. Those who *did* want Profiles surely wouldn't care if they had to wait another week for them to be properly re-implemented or if their games count get hidden for a few days.

What they're actually doing/saying:
"Please stand by. #Sorrynotsorry."
Post edited April 26, 2018 by Banjo_oz
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(2385 posts)(2385 posts)
(2385 posts)