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high rated
Can gog please remove the telemetry from my games?. most Unity games have them by default but those have nothing to do with GOG itself and is a problem that Unity has
I noticed that many non Unity games have a file named galaxy.dll which seems to connect to some servers on Europe, is this file related to their GOG galaxy program?. and why do games downloaded individually has such thing
I hope GOG can remove this from the games they sell, because I dont want to support such practices
I remember reading here in the forums that this may be related to achievements, but in that case I dont see why my games should sent info to Europe, I hope this is fixed with a patch or something
Post edited August 31, 2018 by reliq123
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reliq123: Can gog please remove the telemetry from my games?. most Unity games have them by default but those have nothing to do with GOG itself and is a problem that Unity has
I noticed that many non Unity games have a file named galaxy.dll which seems to connect to some servers on Europe, is this file related to their GOG galaxy program?. and why do games downloaded individually has such thing
I hope GOG can remove this from the games they sell, because I dont want to support such practices
I remember reading here in the forums that this may be related to achievements, but in that case I dont see why my games should sent info to Europe, I hope this is fixed with a patch or something
You could just download the offline installers without Galaxy. They don't have a galaxy.dll

But the telemetry in Unity remains a problem, that is true. It is possible to block that, but it shouldn't be active in the first place in DRM-free games.
high rated
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reliq123: I noticed that many non Unity games have a file named galaxy.dll which seems to connect to some servers on Europe, is this file related to their GOG galaxy program?. and why do games downloaded individually has such thing
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Lifthrasil: You could just download the offline installers without Galaxy. They don't have a galaxy.dll
Huh? Of course they do. Every game that has any Galaxy features (achievements, cloud saves, multiplayer, ...) installs the galaxy.dll even when downloaded and installed through the offline installers.
high rated
Hello there. You are not the 1st person to notice this and be upset about it, actually:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/what_is_gog_stance_on_telemetry
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reliq123: I noticed that many non Unity games have a file named galaxy.dll which seems to connect to some servers on Europe, is this file related to their GOG galaxy program?
galaxy.dll, similar to steamapi.dll, is a library, that handle many galaxy-related things (achievements, multiplayer and so on). Thus, it exists in all games with galaxy features (except for cloud saves and overlay - mostly, its handled by galaxy itself).

HOWEVER, depending on game engine and developer's decisions, you may be able to remove it without breaking anything (for example - all old (before SEVEN) Ys games feature galaxy.dll, but launch even without it. While, say, Grim Dawn of Titan Quest will segfault, if this library doesnt exist in game's folder).

Speaking of "WHY DOES IT CONNECT SOMEWHERE" - I think, its mostly about terrible design choices, rather than purpouse. GaG promised synchronisation (in terms of statistics) in between galaxy and non-galaxy installations.
So - I assume, it kinda works like that:
When you get an achievement in game, game tells about it to galaxy.dll and it pings to GaG. Which checks if somebody logged in with the IP, packed came from (and has the game on their account) and, if yes - checks achievement as obtained on site (thus, if you've had galaxy-less installation, but then decided to download their COMPLETELY OPTIONAL client - everything will be already unlocked).

So far, I didnt see ANY official response regarding non-optional online functional of galaxy.dll (thus, I've lost hope and abandoned my telemetry-related gogmix.
But the only thing, you can do as user, if you dont like it too - is to make it loud. Overall, join the crew: https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/remove_online_connectivity_from_galaxydll
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Lifthrasil: But the telemetry in Unity remains a problem, that is true. It is possible to block that, but it shouldn't be active in the first place in DRM-free games.
Telemetry is not DRM related. Though the respectful thing to do would be to at least give people an opt-in on installation.
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Lifthrasil: You could just download the offline installers without Galaxy. They don't have a galaxy.dll
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Geralt_of_Rivia: Huh? Of course they do. Every game that has any Galaxy features (achievements, cloud saves, multiplayer, ...) installs the galaxy.dll even when downloaded and installed through the offline installers.
said above - "cloud saves" are handled by galaxy itself, not library. Well, atleast I didnt see galaxy.dll in old games with such functional being added
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Lifthrasil: You could just download the offline installers without Galaxy. They don't have a galaxy.dll
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Geralt_of_Rivia: Huh? Of course they do. Every game that has any Galaxy features (achievements, cloud saves, multiplayer, ...) installs the galaxy.dll even when downloaded and installed through the offline installers.
Oh. My error then. The games I have installed are probably too old to be Galaxy contaminated. Lucky me!
low rated
Almost everything uses telemetry in these days: from OS to websites and games. If you want to opt-out completely you have to disconnect from the Internet. There is no other way. You have to live with it.
Post edited August 31, 2018 by Sarafan
high rated
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Lifthrasil: But the telemetry in Unity remains a problem, that is true. It is possible to block that, but it shouldn't be active in the first place in DRM-free games.
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teceem: Telemetry is not DRM related. Though the respectful thing to do would be to at least give people an opt-in on installation.
Yes. Telemetry isn't directly DRM. But it is an invasion of privacy. And a company that makes a big point about how bad DRM is for various pro-consumer reasons (remember FCK DRM?) should not allow telemetry to be on by default in the games they sell.
high rated
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Sarafan: Almost everything uses telemetry in these days: from OS to websites and games. If you want to opt-out completely you have to disconnect from the Internet. There is no other way.
and here we go again. If some shady companies add google metrics to their site - it doesnt mean that everybody should do so. If we wont worry about some games sending something somewere - tomorrow each game will be packed with spyware (there was already some attempts - google for redshell), adware and crypto miners.
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teceem: Telemetry is not DRM related. Though the respectful thing to do would be to at least give people an opt-in on installation.
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Lifthrasil: Yes. Telemetry isn't directly DRM. But it is an invasion of privacy. And a company that makes a big point about how bad DRM is for various pro-consumer reasons (remember FCK DRM?) should not allow telemetry to be on by default in the games they sell.
Sure, in an ideal world...
But wouldn't you rather just block telemetry yourself, then not be able to buy a DRM-free game because it contains telemetry-sending?
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reliq123: Can gog please remove the telemetry from my games?. most Unity games have them by default but those have nothing to do with GOG itself and is a problem that Unity has
I noticed that many non Unity games have a file named galaxy.dll which seems to connect to some servers on Europe, is this file related to their GOG galaxy program?. and why do games downloaded individually has such thing
I hope GOG can remove this from the games they sell, because I dont want to support such practices
I remember reading here in the forums that this may be related to achievements, but in that case I dont see why my games should sent info to Europe, I hope this is fixed with a patch or something
avatar
Lifthrasil: You could just download the offline installers without Galaxy. They don't have a galaxy.dll

But the telemetry in Unity remains a problem, that is true. It is possible to block that, but it shouldn't be active in the first place in DRM-free games.
I dont use Galaxy. download are made directly from the site
I dont have a problem with multiplayer games doing this(I should), but when single players games do it I feel like it is a problem
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teceem: Sure, in an ideal world...
But wouldn't you rather just block telemetry yourself, then not be able to buy a DRM-free game because it contains telemetry-sending?
Yes. That's what I do and the telemetry is not a reason for me to stop buying at GOG. (DRM would be such a reason)

But I do agree with reliq that it is a problem that GOG doesn't even warn their users about games that collect data.
I have Shovel Knight which has achievements, but even that game has no galaxy.dll on the files
Another game I noticed that had telemetry is Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight which doesn't even have the file in question, so it must be a thing done by the dev
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reliq123: and why do games downloaded individually has such thing
As far as I can tell it's because GOG is entirely responsible for the offline versions, developers just provide a version of their game that does have a full Galaxy implementation. GOG can't expect developers to maintain separate Galaxy and offline versions of their games, and just removing the DLL would not be a safe thing to do as far as I can tell. I presume that, at the very latest, things would go to shit when a game tries to actually use a function from the galaxy.dll and that one is just missing, so the galaxy.dll has to be included even with the offline versions. The DLL should just be designed not to actually do anything when the user is not logged into Galaxy.

I'm not a programmer, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.