Kind of looking at this with interest to see what the profile page will look like. I do like the idea and we do seem to have neough options that if people dont want it they can turn it off.

There are a lot of open questions regarding this and I simply want to add my voice to the "maximum privacy" crowd. With the way these settings are worded you shouldn't allow access to any other people by default.

Access to personal information by default? What is this, Facebook?

There's an explanation for that, see attachment.

Coincidentally, the news of this upcoming movie greets me today on i09. And from the director of Gattaca, probably the scariest movie I've ever seen.

That would be a *good* thing.

Not calling you out speciifcally but why does the anti-privacy, pro-Galaxy, pro-Steam crowd on this site always want this site to be like the others? The trick is to carve out a niche and stand out, not be a carbon copy of monopolies who have vastly more resources and influence.

Leave that up to the user, who may *not* want people to see them.

Sometimes you must choose your battles. As I said, I understand the point. I just don't think it's that big of a deal. I have already changed the settings, so I can forget now (but I might change them back once I see what's exactly on the profiles).

I am fine with GOG not resembling Steam (actually, I am here because they offer what Steam doesn't), but as recent posts have reminded us (for example, the one about Startup Company), a lot of users coming from Steam expect certain features to be here too. It's a difficult balance for GOG, because in order to stay competitive they need to grow their customer base.

Does other online communities show which games you own by default?

Well, it's kinda funny how people go crazy over something that is going to happen, even though they don't really know what is going to happen at all.

Well it would be better to have privacy set to „only-me“ as per default. Just say so. No need for the drama.

I don't quite understand what you mean by adding profiles....we already have profiles, can add friends, etc. Other than the privacy settings what exactly will this actually do/add in terms of functionalities that we don't have?

Well, I can tell you that most online communities don't sell games and therefore it isn't possible for them to know which games you own. GOG also doesn't know which games you own that you have not bought on GOG.

So I think it's pretty easy: GOG is no "normal" community, so we have to see privacy settings in a different way.

If you take a look at the forums every day you know about the change. But would you know about it if you wouldn't take a look at the forums and change it?

There's nothing wrong with borowing ideas from Steam. I've been a fan of GOG for a long time and I really dislike Steam.

The reason for that, however, lies in the two platforms' DRM policy. There's nothing wrong with admitting Steam, as a platform, is much more robust and implementing Steam-like features is nothing wrong as long as they're optional and the core principle of no DRM is not abolished.

People who complain about social features can very much use GOG in the same way they did so in the past - no social features, no Galaxy. In fact, GOG is the only major publisher that has a client which is optional.

Sure, things can be improved and suboptimal design choices have probably been made, but this is run by humans and humans tend not to be perfect.

I can't help but feel people are overreacting horribly (really, what other conclusion can you draw when they loudly announce they don't want to buy GOG games anymore because of an optional feature being introduced?).

Ok, I'm allowing myself to compile what I believe most of us here reached something of a consensus on into a single post, so that it's easier for you to hopefully give us some answer to our suggestions/complaints.

1. The default setting should be the "max privacy" one. We realise that you want the new feature to be used by as many people as possible, but it should be their choice, not a default setting you hope they won't bother to change. Not everyone is going to know about this change immediately. It's no loss for someone who wants to use it to opt-in at a later moment, but it is a problem for someone who doesn't want it to suddenly realise infor they wanted private was public. And if you want a more "selfish" reason GOG should want it set to private as default - in the light of recent controversies, it would look better for you to show such care for our privacy.

2. You should do more to inform everyone about the coming change than to just make an indistinguishable forum thread. Not everyone uses the forum, not even everyone who does will notice one thread among many.

3. The "your visibility" checkbox is extremely poorly implemented with the confusing changing description text.

4. "Find by username" and "find by email" should be two separate options.

5. We can choose to hide our list of friends, but we'll still be visable on friend lists of our friends if they make those friend lists visable, kind of making the choice to make your list hidden pointless. We should have the option to just be invisable.

Thank you for announcing this - it's great news. Having profiles and being able to share game lists on the site is far more natural than the current way of doing it via GOGWiki user pages (especially since GOGWiki has been having some troubles since the last server upgrade, making it difficult for new people to sign up).

May I request one very important change? The "Your Profile page including activity and active friends can be seen by " option needs some more granularity. I personally would like a public profile, but I absolutely don't want my activity shared at all.

This applies to Galaxy as well. I personally like Galaxy, but I completely avoid using it because if I play a game while Galaxy is running then it announces what I play to other people, which freaks me out.

I'd really like to have a public profile and have my game collection publicly visible (like how the wishlist works) but have the option to be assured of the following:
- Nobody receives those "Friend starts a game" notifications about me when I start a game
- Neither Galaxy nor the website indicates what I am currently playing anywhere
- Nobody can see a list of recently played games on my profile or elsewhere

That way I can play games freely without having to overcome my social anxiety or avoid Galaxy.