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General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(2385 posts)(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 25, 2018
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mk47at: Ditto. Silence on all channels.
I kind of suspect they were so proud of their new feature they went celebrating and haven't woken up yet...
Posted April 25, 2018
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sjgm_: Come on really, addressing GOG with this is almost bullying.
That might be because this enables bullying, Mr. only-owns-26-games-here-so-their-opinion-doesn't-matter.

And not only on GOG, my post earlier is an example of how you can use it to bully people outside of GOG too.
Posted April 25, 2018
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sjgm_: You can hide almost anything. Stating that GOG is now a threat to privacy is nonsense, when you are using browsers, OS, apps and multiple services that pose a real threat to you privacy. Come on really, addressing GOG with this is almost bullying.
Btw... no use making your friends page private if you leave your profile open... I can still see both of your friends...
Posted April 25, 2018
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sjgm_: You can hide almost anything. Stating that GOG is now a threat to privacy is nonsense, when you are using browsers, OS, apps and multiple services that pose a real threat to you privacy. Come on really, addressing GOG with this is almost bullying.
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toxicTom: Btw... no use making your friends page private if you leave your profile open... I can still see both of your friends...
If that is really a major issue I'm confident that they'll address it.
Posted April 25, 2018
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sjgm_: If that is really a major issue I'm confident that they'll address it.
If you have friends who want to stay invisible, this is a major issue...
Posted April 25, 2018
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Galamid: So helpful. And judging by your 1158 games alone I'd say your quite the pussy slayer, too.

Friend request sent.
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Banjo_oz: He could also just be wealthy enough to buy a lot of those just to support GOG and have not even played half of them? :)

To be honest, I've not even installed a lot of my GOG (or Steam) games, but many were *dirt* cheap "maybe one day" buys, ones I bought but didn't like, or ones I already own the originals or bought on another platform, but wanted to show support for them being resold anyway.

But this does prove IMO that making this sort of stuff public is just all negative, as far as I can see.
Quite true. Fair few freebies and dirt cheap ones, also I sold a lot of my physical collection, and a lot of other stuff back in the day, was a nightmare moving it all. With that I brought some games here, even ones I had as I liked the store for providing just the games and none of the steam rubbish like clients, social integration, drm etc.
Its why its so sad to see it become just a pale version of steam. Not so much jumped off a cliff, but more the homer simpson doing the skateboard across the canyon, massive fail, just when they start picking up again, massive fail again. Sure, some look on it as progress, me I don't. Hence why I don't buy anything, or very rarely now, after I check the online requirements, and all the other things, and I don't recommend to use the site to anyone anymore. No-one is interested in owning anything, so just buy on steam, better client, larger catalog, better prices. Feck all point buying here even if your a horder now.
Posted April 25, 2018
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Irenicus73: So, I was just looking at a friend's profile to see whether they had made their profile private yet, and I found that on their public profile I could see what people on their friends list were playing. Curiously, the person in question actually had their profile set to private when I tried to visit it. So, I could see that the friend of the friend was playing HuniePop, when their privacy settings were set up in such a way where they probably didn't want random people knowing that they're playing HuniePop.

Screenshot attached, with names and numbers blacked out, as not to make any users identifiable from the image.
This seems to be Galaxy Client issue, cause Galaxy doesn't allow you to privately record playtime and achievements. If your friend has game playtime/achievements recording setup in Galaxy it will also share that data with all his friends. Though in the past you could only see friends gameplaytime if you owned the same game. I wish that gog would separate that setting so that you could make that stuff private. I mean the privacy issue hasn't started with the new profiles, it was already there when they released Galaxy but nobody seemed to notice the issues before.
Posted April 25, 2018
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Banjo_oz: Set everything I could to "me only" but I can't see a way to turn off showing if I am "online" or not! This is a massive annoyance of mine for even lots of web forums, etc. already. Is there seriously no way yet to hide when we are online or visiting GOG from being totally public?!?!
That part is not new and is not related to profiles, the information of whenever you are online or not has been there since years.
Posted April 25, 2018
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Tauto: Sure.I understand the privacy bit,but people need to be realistic.
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PixelBoy: Just seeing the number of games allows other people to, for instance, spy on how many games other people buy between some time period. You can even write scripts that alert you every time someone's game count changes.

Is this a real problem?
Yes and no.

No, it probably doesn't lead to any great scale disasters anywhere.

But yes, it allows other people to stalk information, and that information could be used for harmful purposes.

To give you an example, User X complains about something that GOG does in the future, let's say one of those much debated "buy more, pay less" promos. User Y doesn't agree with this, and resorts to personal attacks against User X. As game number is public information, User Y can see exactly when User X buys games here. User Y can then use this information against User X's reputation, for instance:
- "you haven't even bought a single game here in n months..."
- "you call this a bad promo, but still bought a game yesterday..."
etc.

Also, for those who use same usernames in other places, this allows other people to stalk how many games those users have here. This may have undesirable consequences, depending on the context.
I see your point but it's not something I would worry about as that is very petty.
My example is what I think all the concerned people are worried about.

''Okay boys,I've tracked him down''
''Huh! Howdidya do that Boss?''
''Very simple Knuckles,I had a peek at the Gog profiles''
''Geez Boss,that was clever.I guess that's why your de Boss''
''But Boss how so you know it's him?''
''Simple,Freckles he has 40 games and no achievements or hours played''
''But Boss isn't he stupid leaving a track like that''
''Yes,Knuckles.''
''Hang on Boss,Freckles''...interupts.
''What!''
''How does you know it's him,I mean the right person?''
''BECAUSE I JUST KNOW!''
''But Bo..''
''SHUTUP!''
''Oh alright,sorry for yelling at you Freckles.You remember that private dic called Loopy Useless?''
''Yeah,yeah he was a strange one Boss''
''Well he told me about Gog's profiles and said it was the easiest way to track someone down''
''Okay''
''Now the next thing we need to watch out for is when he buys another game and WHAM! we got him''
''I just keep on peeping and wait for the info to come in........*smiling*....''This is too easy''
''Boss,you are the smartest''
Posted April 25, 2018
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Greenlynx: No it's not if we still have information shared with the world with no way to hide it.
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sjgm_: You can hide almost anything. Stating that GOG is now a threat to privacy is nonsense, when you are using browsers, OS, apps and multiple services that pose a real threat to you privacy. Come on really, addressing GOG with this is almost bullying.
"Almost" anything is not good enough. You should be able to use online services completely privately, if you choose to do so.

As far as your examples go, firstly, two wrongs don't make a right. If there are some things that violate privacy elsewhere, that doesn't justify anyone else to do the same.

And let's break your examples down, one by one.

Browsers:
- You can choose from several alternatives, customize most of them, and use incognito browsing modes to protect your privacy. You can also run those browsers through software and hardware firewalls, as well as change your IP with VPN services. So not a good example.

OS:
- You are correct that some OS's really are intrusive and force users to do this or that. But, you can also take an open source OS, like Linux, modify and compile it to your needs and liking, and the threat to privacy is very minimal. Even OS's like Windows 10 can be used relatively safely, especially if you don't connect your computer to Internet after the first activation. There are options available, so not a good example.

Apps:
- No one is forced to use apps. You can use a 15 years old phone to make calls if you want to. If you indeed use a smart phone, each and every app is asking permissions to do this or that. If you don't want an app to access your contact information or use location based services, disallow those features for that app. Also, choosing an Android phone instead of an iPhone already increases your privacy by leaps. So not a really good example either.

"Multiple services":
- Without an example that's quite a broad statement. But no one is forced to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other such thing. So while those have privacy issues, as was recently scandalously the case with Facebook, simply choosing not to use those services takes care of that. As for services like banking and payments, you can choose to use virtual credit cards and such, which offer protection against privacy threats and theft. If you are afraid of using travel cards as someone can track your life and movement, use cash. The only real problem is governmental services, they are what they are, and one can't completely stay out of them. But at least for commercial services, most of the time you can stay as private as you want to.
Posted April 25, 2018
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PixelBoy: Also, choosing an Android phone instead of an iPhone already increases your privacy by leaps.
i agree with most things, but this one. Why would choosing something made by the world's biggest data miner increase your privacy?
Posted April 25, 2018
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Matruchus: ...
Yeah in the past my friends could see what I'm playing...

Now random person A can visit the (public) profile of person B who is friends with me, and see that I (private profile) am currently playing Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude...
Posted April 25, 2018
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PixelBoy: Just seeing the number of games allows other people to, for instance, spy on how many games other people buy between some time period. You can even write scripts that alert you every time someone's game count changes.

But yes, it allows other people to stalk information, and that information could be used for harmful purposes.

To give you an example, User X complains about something that GOG does in the future, let's say one of those much debated "buy more, pay less" promos. User Y doesn't agree with this, and resorts to personal attacks against User X. As game number is public information, User Y can see exactly when User X buys games here. User Y can then use this information against User X's reputation, for instance:
- "you haven't even bought a single game here in n months..."
- "you call this a bad promo, but still bought a game yesterday..."
etc.

Also, for those who use same usernames in other places, this allows other people to stalk how many games those users have here. This may have undesirable consequences, depending on the context.
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Tauto: I see your point but it's not something I would worry about as that is very petty.
My example is what I think all the concerned people are worried about.
You are assuming that everyone behaves like a good person. People don't.
Kids even choose friends based on what apps are on their smartphones. This is a fact. You might expect grownups to be smarter than that, but that's not really the case.


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PixelBoy: Also, choosing an Android phone instead of an iPhone already increases your privacy by leaps.
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mk47at: i agree with most things, but this one. Why would choosing something made by the world's biggest data miner increase your privacy?
Because it's still better than something made by the world's biggest DRM company.
Posted April 25, 2018
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toxicTom: and see that I (private profile) am currently playing Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude...
Exquisite!

But yeah, I got your point.
Post edited April 25, 2018 by Galamid
Posted April 25, 2018
high rated
The storm in here is being noticed outside, while GOG continues to ignore the situation.

Edit: also here, with a link to this very thread.
Post edited April 25, 2018 by Breja
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(2385 posts)(2385 posts)
(2385 posts)