This reminds me of the bullshit with Galaxy, hiding it in the installers so that people will accidentally install it so they can get their numbers for the share-holders. GOG is becoming less and less a site I want to associate with. I may start buying on Steam again as my platform of choice, and only buy on GOG when a game is unavailable on Steam. You know instead of doing the opposite like I do now.

Of course it's constantly being pointed out. Even on Steam, though that's rare.

Why? Because people who are concerned about such things are either unlikely to engage in but the bare minimum of interaction to enjoy their games (if they are on Steam at all), or have by now mostly given up on trying to have an actual discussion of the issues with GabeN's fan club.

Last time I looked at Steam's thread on the CA scandal the typical response was "lulz, everybody's doing it nowadays, it's called progress, tinfoil hatter!" Hardly something inspiring any desire to have an actual conversation on the issues.

GOG began with a firm claim of adherence to "customers first" principle. I realize a lot of that was marketing-speak, but a lot of us decided to put our trust in the new kid on the block, and often put significant effort to assist GOG in reaching the market share it holds now.

I don't see ignoring the wishes of even small fraction of its users as "customers first." The profiles could have been implemented in a completely different way, where ANY data tracking and storage was explicitly an "opt-in" feature.

GOG could have asked around on forums how its users perceived the inclusion of Facebook login. Before putting it in.

GOG could have amended its Privacy Policy to be as detailed and explicitly limiting any potential for data-mining and trading as possible.

Just as an example.

i have...so much to say.

i'll try and keep it brief. [i clearly failed. i had one job :P]

i don't normally poke around the actual forums, so i didn't actually know there was a minor test, where you floated the idea of profiles, then just made them go live without warning, but it is my understanding that there was a lot of negative sentiment in that thread about the idea.

it didn't "take you a week." you saw the writing on the wall from the word go and you proceeded regardless. all we need to know about you is now contained in that singular action. [this has been building up for a time, now, of course, but...]

so, our new "contract" probably goes like this: for the time being, you will visit unpolished ideas on us, you'll make them go live, then you'll see what the pushback is. if there's too much, you'll walk back the bare minimum and see where you land. that doesn't sound healthy to me, and you ought to probably re-think it.

whoo boy. i don't know if you wrote this or if a pr person above you wrote it, but i'd like you to read it back - not as a member of gog, but as a user of the site/a paying customer.

now, go away for twenty four hours, let it sink in and come back and tell us how it made you feel. i bet it didn't feel good. [you do worse as the message goes along, but this is the very tip of the iceberg.]

we are your customers. and we exist on all those platforms - reddit and social media sites included. i was one of the people who went ahead and tried to rope jim sterling into this mess, so a) not all social media attention was good attention and b) not all forum attention was bad attention. my point is: every piece of "information" you "gathered" had many layers to it. abstracting it to "we troglodytes" vs "social media darlings" makes YOU look awkward.

remember that iceberg i was talking about? well, here we go again.

again. don't know if you wrote this or if a pr person wrote it, but you REALLY should reflect on how this sounds. this sounds like, "oh gosh, you guys. we have to put up with you, but we kiinnnndaaaa don't want to. you're a minority. you need to get over yourselves." even IF that's not what you mean [and some pr person will probably step in here and say, "oh no, i'm completely misconstruing you, that's not what you meant AT ALL!" you NEVER say this to your paying customers. EVER.

but even that aside, it comes across as a verbal slap. it comes across as you tolerating us. and that's not the relationship we are in. we are in a fiscal relationship. now, sadly, there are very few drm-free options for customers like us, so our choices are sort of limited. so in a sense, you ARE right. but you are also wrong. i have 413 games on my account. i could stop giving you money right now, back up all my games and probably not be done with playing them when i die, even if i never bought another game.

long answer short: we keep you in business. maybe we're a small handful, and maybe you don't want to tolerate us, but we're directly responsible for helping you keep the lights on.

this helps. it doesn't /quite/ go all the way, but it's a step in a positive direction.

this profile business - and your response to is - is a strong suggestion to me that newgog probably isn't going to be for me [and our "vocal minority" in the long run.] - i know this is what you want, you want us gone. but don't be surprised if - eventually - we do go - and we take our money elsewhere.

because you have absolutely become "your competitors" with this controversy. we are now just little, walking wallets to you. not valued customers. not people who enjoy old games. we're just dollar symbols. and that's pretty sad.

On facebook... (I have nothing more to add to that, actually.)

Facebook are specifically mentioned in the Privacy Policy document of 25 April 2018. Mostly in relation to Facebook Connect, but with the huuuuge black hole of:

[i]Data is gathered strictly in accordance with the social
network(s)’ terms and conditions, so check your privacy settings
on Facebook.[/i]

I hope people don't use that idiotic feature. I'm sure other data flows in both directions without it, but it should at least minimise the danger of personal information on the loose.

Of course, you also have this nugget under Trusted Partners:

[i]Social media platforms for the purpose of personalized and
targeted communication;[/i]

Wow so many comments. Didn't know this was controversial. Anyway, I just wanted to also say I'd like even more granular privacy controls. Over things like past gaming activity, current game played, etc. Just more options would be nice.

I said somewhat bit-for-bit.

You left out a significant aspect of your analogy (the cashier not doing their job correctly in the first place) which means it isn't analogous to the situation that happened here. For your analogy to be appropriate, GOG would have had to have had the "profile on/off" button there in the first place.

It would be funny if it wasn't that way, I think.

Don't you guys/gals know that ALL analogies MUST be car related? =)

You obviously seem to have problems, but they seem to be with your life in general, not specifically GOG. You're getting too worked up over bullshit and you're being way over-dramatic.

And yes, as much as you don't want to admit it, you ARE in a minority. And the fact that you apparently demand GOG to fulfill whatever requests you have just shows how egocentric you are. You. Are. In. A. Minority. Making that minority happy will likely make a majority of people unhappy. They're paying customers too. So...instead of empty threats of leaving, be a man and just leave. Nobody will care. GOG will continue doing business. You'll find another DRM-free distributor eventually. Everyone will be happier.

It seems like, if the user doesn't have his profile public, then shouldn't that option be greyed out if we select "View Profile"?

I agree in so far as I think that the upvoting and downvoting of posts doesn't improve the reading experience for subsequent readers. I'd also like to point out that it's absolutely nonsensical to have the option to rate above the related text rather than below it - since a sane person with the intention to rate a post will read it before rating.
A rating system I've seen in action was in the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_(software)]Discourse[/url] forum software: Users get to upvote up to 50(-ish) posts per 24 hours. There is no downvoting. Whether or not it was motivated by the forums, that community was rather fluffy. They still had plenty of disagreement - some of which uncivilized.

However I disagree that the threat of downvoting would discourage anyone to speak out their mind. The only drawback that a reputation below 7 has is that you can't post urls or embed links. And quite frankly that option is broken for more complex links anyway. Other than that it's just another number. If an audience dislikes what you have to say they won't stop disliking it or stop voicing differing opinions in the forums.
There's no such thing as a wrong opinion. For example: I disagree with Breja's views on graphics in modern video games. But that doesn't stop me from agreeing with their ideas about appropriate/ethic business practices and/or the notion that having nothing to share is not the same thing as having anything to hide. They don't go to my people I have to hate from now on list or something. ;)

Just say what's on your mind. If you make a good point, others will at least accept your opinion. There are always [fill in genital related curse word here] in every community.

"Well... Get those missing people in here! ... What do you mean, 'you can't'?"

You see: You can't drag 51% of any community into the forums and make them speak their mind. You are lucky if 5% give their feedback. At the end of the day, the people who raise their voices in these forums are effectively the GOG community. Everyone on reddit can say they like/dislike what GOG did, but they might not even have an account here (or might have an account but only to participate in the giveaway promos...).
Also keep in mind that some users (especially those with a family) might prefer to simply vote with their wallets. And personally I feel like I have made like 12 posts in this thread. I could have made about a few hundred - replying to everything, saying things that have been pointed out by others 20 times already - but that wouldn't have helped anyone. I tried to make a difference and made attempts to explain the concept of "consent" to a few people.
But our lifes don't just stop and wait when GOG decides to make huge portions of our previously private information public. I bet the majority of GOG's users hasn't even logged in since the profiles were added and still displays their information unknowingly - possibly involuntarily.

I was being facetious, my friend.

This is the best thread on GOG! I haven't laughed this hard since the early 'net days. What a week. And just when I was getting bored, GOG's official reply came in, and oh boy, it was a doozie.

It's gonna take a very special release for me to spend money on GOG again, after we were BTFO'd this hard, but I'll certainly keep an eye out for the next GOG intercourse-up. It's certain to be an epic feces-show!

100 pages of comments because people are concerned that others may be able to view what games they've played?

Wow.

I just now found out about all this "Profiles" nonsense. Why THE HELL is this opt-out rather than opt-in?! Every privacy option should have been completely turned off from the get-go, and the entire thing should have been optional to anyone who wants it in the first place, much like the client. I did not expect GOG to act in this way.

I realize there's 130+ pages of replies and I might skim some of it, but on something like this I have to comment regardless: I do not care about the GOG client, I don't care about achievements or automatic updates or GOG-friends seeing my activity, I came here years ago to buy and download DRM-free games and that's it, I had all that other nonsense on Steam and I never wanted it, it's partly why I came here. When you started bundling the client into the installers as the default download option I groaned but said nothing, but this opt-out configuration smells like modern social media platform behavior to me, and makes me hesitant to trust further changes on this site.

If someone wants to make their activity here more social and interconnected and another platform for self-validation, that's fine - give them the option, just please leave everyone else OUT OF IT COMPLETELY BY DEFAULT. This should not even be a question, I expected more of GOG.

(edit: typo)