Kind of envious. That's some serious paranormal chativity.

I'm broke. Can someone give him a game or something for this post? XD I think it merits something expensive, no Teen Agent bullshit.

Thanks, I'm good. Since I'm slaving away on my GOG game backup, it would give me one more title I'd have to check if I remembered to click down for the "classic" installer.

Lern 2 database design (because GOG didn't). GOG can't tell between a setting the user set deliberately and a setting the user left on by default. Therefore, they need to change chat privacy for everyone in this pool of uncertainty, to reduce the ohexploitability of the GOG userbase. There are only two options -- implement the change or don't implement the change -- and nothing to discuss with anyone who's capable of discussion. If you are aware of the change and don't like it and want to inform GOG you don't like it and demand to be left at "anyone", you can just register your preference automatically by changing back.

There's really only one issue with this: GOG has to implement per-user website update alerts to communicate changes like this.

Important perspective update: I just tried to buy a humble bundle and the website made me complete five fucking captchas in a row when logging in and four more when checking out. Edit: and I failed. I wasn't buying anonymously, I was buying from a seven-years-old account in good standing that has only accessed like three steam keys ever.
Automated accounts are not a GOG-exclusive problem.

Edit: so in the end it took 13 captchas (some of them prolonged) to pay $5. Seriously those fuckers should've given me the games for "free" in exchange for doing their hitjobs.

Dear GOG: because of how terrible humble is, I'm taking back half of my rhetorical vitriol. I also bought two full-price products yesterday so let's go out for buckthorn tea and have awkward make-up sex. Sincerely, me.

Can a blue please change this to a NEWS post, so people have some hope of encountering it?

Or do a global PM - regardless of user settings - to let everyone know that this setting was changed?

Because when this thread drops off the first few pages and someone comes back from vacation and doesn't notice that the setting has changed, then he or she won't be getting any PMs from people not on the Friends list and likely won't know why. Or even know to check.

I don't know what GOG can tell and what can't. It's for sure a problem of UX they are creating for their users. Shitty UX is a shitty UX. No excuses.

And you are wrong, there is the third option:
Ask a user whether he wants to keep his current settings or set new one due to security reasons next time he logs in and if he ignores it for some times in a row then (and only then) change back something in settings for him/her.

Or as you mentioned at least notify users via in-site notifications or by email if you did this shitty move for whatever reasons.

P.S. GOG mods didn't even make forum topics about it in other languages except for English.

GOG's policy right now seems to be to intentionally inform as few people as possible about any change they implement. Just look at the whole thing with the new installers. The forum threads would be woefully insufficient even if they were marked as news or made a sticky, and they don't even do that. Obviously they want these things to remain unknown to most, and these bare-minimum threads are just to cover their asses so they can be like "well, we did inform you, there was a thread. Not our fault you missed it". It's like the Vogons in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

At least there was some poetry to what they did ;)

At least I'm not the only one who had to think of the Vogons when the whole offline-installer thread happened.

I don't really like this "let's change all the user settings" like earlier with the two-step auth and now this.
Well, turned it back to anyone.

Microsoft does it too, so its a complete legit method. ;)

But I'm on Linux.
I guess that just shows again how GOG doesn't care about us Linux users. :P

Oh, this is rich.
Y'all remember how I said that GOG is likely to screw this up so badly to the point that the friends-only thing also affects the staff accounts? Well, look alive, boys. That's exactly what happened. Let's see how long it takes them to notice.

Fables be like:
"Talk to the hand!" ?

:D