That's new to me. Can you please link to that press notice?

I can't find the news statement any more that said that CDProject is going to take more control. But everything official about the merger can be found here: https://support.gog.com/hc/de/articles/115003539989-Company-reorganisation
Short: GOG Ltd. will be dissolved and completely mergend into GOG Poland and everything belongs to 100% to CDProject. There is also a draft of the merger document for further details.

Thanks for the update : but is this a good or bad thing ?

I guess that lead to them overdoing "the good stuff" then... it's my only explanation for some of the decisions here lately....

Kleetus, Cimalau (spell), and Bradley have been removed. That;s something.

And yes I know, I worse than all three of them, save it. :P (btw I have been banned here three times) I'm just pointing out that they are doing something in this regard that goes beyond deleting 1 out of 100 post.

I really don't know. I don't know whether the current debacle is caused by the merger or whether a change of management would be a sliver of hope. I mean, whoever manages GOG in the future, they can't do a much worse job in customer relations than GOG is doing at the moment.

But I don't expect anything good anymore. I guess the breach of privacy will stay until someone with the necessary time and money forces GOG to comply with privacy protection regulations with a court order. And in the long run GOG will increase their share of partially DRM-ed and eventually fully DRM-ed games. They have proven time and again that their promises don't mean anything.

Currently I'm only considering whether I delete my account to make a point or whether I keep it for the sake of the forum community and to keep getting patches for the games I bought here. But I'm not going to buy any new games here.

But then the big question is: where does the huge change in GOG's policy come from? It can't be pressure from some external stock holders (GOG is 100% owned by CDProject), you say there were no major changes in management. So what changed? Were your bosses taken over by evil aliens?

GOG used to care about their customer feedback. Now they play dead whenever negative feedback hits them. GOG was supposedly founded on a mutual trust policy. But nowadays GOG tramples that trust, tries to sneak Galaxy installers on unaware customers and now shares our personal data without consent. Are you really sure that the people in your management are the idealists who founded GOG? If so, the only explanation that doesn't necessarily involve aliens would be, that your management was bribed by Steam to destroy the GOG idea. "Become like us! Be one with the DRM-collective! Resistance is futile."

The explanation is very simple. The way GOG used to be wa always just means to an end - making money. It used to be a very good gimmick to get the company off the ground, but it has exhausted its capacity for further growth (or at least was found to provide too little growth too slowly). Now it was decided that losing some of the old customers is worth it to get more new ones. Nothing changed behind the scenes, they just jettisoned the stage one engine.

Interesting! :O
I hope this will mean more money, staff, skill and care for GOG *prays*
(or GOGP XD)

Think the very brief version is that they grew and became "corporate".

We've seen the signs and development in this direction for around 3-4 years. I don't expect them to change back to what GOG once was about.

If that is the plan I doubt it'll work. It's an online store after all. I daresay most people coming here come for DRM-free and no fuss - otherwise they could just go to Steam.

Galaxy is an important part of "no fuss", with game management and auto-update (important esp. for in-devs and day one releases). Stuff like cloudsaves and achievements are features directly tied to gaming that many people demand nowadays. I get this too.

The profiles might be an added bonus for some, even many users, but I doubt that people will come here for the profiles. There are more important reasons to choose one store over another. Comfort, reliability, prices, product range - and DRM.

So I don't really get why this whole profile mess had to be rushed out this way. I'd think a lot more people are put off by broken discounts, the wonky review system and all the other glitches and failings than are drawn by this feature which has been done better elsewhere already.

Because GOG are trying desperately to create a status-quo before the new GDPR is in effect and makes profiles like this even more illegal. Don't know if that makes sense, but maybe that creates wiggle room for them. "Hey, the profiles were like this before the new rules were valid. So we totally didn't mean to break those rules. They are more like guidelines anyway!"

The GDPR is not new, it has been in effect for 2 years now. It's only the transition period (or "grace period" if you will) that's ending in May. So "it has been like that before" isn't true anyway. And even if it was, things don't become "legal by tradition". That two year grace period was in effect for the exact reason that companies could review their handling of customer data and make adjustments to make them legal again.

Agreed. I never did say that they are watching everything or that the moderation now works flawless. I just said "at least" they are watching "a bit closer" .... which basically means that I (and I am only talking about my own experiences) can see a little bit of improvement here. Far from beeing perfect - of course.