( part 2 / 2 )

>> Let me make something CRYSTAL CLEAR to everyone in the community. <<

I have ZERO ISSUE with you
you
you
even with YOU
which you have MISTAKENLY interpreted as me having an issue with you - believe me - I DON'T. I just happen(ed) to respond to your argumentation in less than patient manner, but alas, have no issue with you.

Let alone you ( zero issue at all ),
and pretty much most of all the others in here, I have zero issue or beef with.

My grudge is exclusively towards HIM
and a certain highly unprofessional somebody ( btw, constantly breaking his own rules ) who then took his side, in extreme show of far fetched BIAS and renowned HYPOCRISY, and proceeded to outright ban me from THEN-his-controlled edition of giveaway, back then, because he 'didn't like me pointing out giveaway then-rules to people breaking them', he 'didn't like me writing a lot of text in our private exchanges', and because I did NOT and would NEVER agree with the SHADY "work ethics", but he agreed with, of
Which by the way, despite data loss around the exact same time, I probably do still have somewhere all screenshots of all related PMs with the related parties from back then.

Including, a PM to
all the way back in may 2021, asking him to remove my ID from the then-post ( btw, STILL not removed as of today, and yes, I indeed rechecked to be sure ) - bc MY ID has no business being made example of ( WHY wouldn't he use his own? Think about it ) WITHOUT MY CONSENT. PM which is STILL VISIBLE, yet he 100% ignored it, did not even respond to it at all.
Because he never had "good will" to begin with. This was his blatant provocation to begin with.

When I saw his post recently, I had thoughts akin "Wow, he REALLY HAS a bloody cheek!".
Like, holy s**t. You really have to have some real AUDACITY to pull the EXACT SAME STUNT 3 years later - when the case was already filed as "unresolved" ( he ignored my removal request ) and shelved by me - and now you RE-opened it, in a "I DARE YOU" way.
And you know what? This proves my point from 3 years ago PERFECTLY,
YOU
have ZERO WORK ETHICS.
If you see NO PROBLEM sharing such information - you'd THINK you'd LOGICALLY use YOUR OWN ID as an example you are making - but noooo - this isn't YOUR LOGIC.
No no, it's best to make an example of someone else. PERFECT LOGIC am I right?
You are a COWARD, a HYPOCRITE, and UNPROFESSIONAL.
In a high security facility workplace, you would get FIRED over something like this, or worse.

But this is the internet, and especially a hypocritical forum so you probably assumed "tHiS iS gOg sO NoOnE wIlL CaRe".
You are PATHETIC. Get a life.
And most importantly, I wish you to never work in IT field, and that you never find your way into said industry, you would be an inside job or a 'security breach through negligence ( or EGO tripping )' waiting to happen.

...

He... FLAILS information around. Information HE HIMSELF cannot PROVE with 100% certainty was MEANT by GOG to be seen at all.
When confronted about this fact, he either runs away from the conversation ( cue ignoring PMs ), or rubs it in and doubles down.
To nobody's surprise ( at least not to people who have been around "all kinds of places on the internet" ) there tends to be 1+ person who takes his side blindly, outright failing at common sense.

I am a PROFESSIONAL ( not to be confused with TEMPER ), and I would LIKE all people to be professional too.
A case of "this isn't correct, let me make example out of YOUR INFORMATION, information that I CANNOT prove was even meant to be seen" is NOWHERE NEAR professional.
It's in fact a provocation attempt, rage bait. Testing people's patience, logic and morals - which admittedly - plenty of people lack, and they blatantly take his side by misreading the situation and failing at logic.

Hey, let's dig deeper into GOG's insecure backend, maybe we will someday find there are card numbers, names, and shit, somewhere in the code - through GOG's negligence, brazenly outdated IT sec practises, or otherwise. Let's maybe share that information to, shall we?
WHAT'S THE HOLDUP? "It's publicly VISIBLE" after all!
This is the logic you guys are attempting right now.
There's a DIFFERENCE between:
A. EXPLICITLY MEANT to be visible. ( cue Steam )
B. Visible. Ambiguous status. ( cue GOG, as well as any accidental data breaches by any random parties online )

You guys FAIL AT LOGIC.
Without OFFICIAL STATEMENT ( provided by Valve, but not by GOG ), we CANNOT prove what was MEANT to be seen and what wasn't.
Furthermore, in NO WAY can we confirm this works the EXACT way some people here BELIEVE it works.
There are NO official publicly visible docs in this regard that I know of.
This is a BLACK BOX, and some of you are choosing to RELY on it BLINDLY - while seeing apparently no difference from Steam's case - which to me is just perplexing.
These aren't even remotely close to "same" cases.
We are talking about "100% confirmed info" vs "a guess AT BEST".

There's a HUMONGOUS difference between:
A. Having a DIRECT CONFIRMATION by platform developer ( Valve ) that the information is EXPLICITLY MEANT to be seen, and works the EXACT specific way ( Steam )
B. Having ZERO OFFICIAL DOCS and making ARBITRARY ASSUMPTIONS on system that may or may not work like you think it doe ( GOG case ).

You are absolutely free to use what you THINK is "GOG ID", but you would be absolute FOOLS to outright RELY on it.

You know what's funny?
There would have been NO PROBLEM if you would use YOUR ID as an example. But no - you are a hypocrite and a provocateur.
If you'd just have used your own ID - none of this anger would take place - I would STILL write what I wrote, that this is indeed UNRELIABLE BLACK BOX design that NONE OF YOU **TRULY** know how it works, you are just making blind ASSUMPTIONS about. I would not be angry.
But no - it would be TOO MUCH for you - if you are so eager to make examples out of people, why won't you make example out of yourself? Oh that's right! You don't operate on COMMON SENSE.
You had ONE JOB - use YOUR OWN ID. You failed.
You reached for a low hanging fruit instead.
I am 99.(9) % certain you did this DELIBERATELY, you KNEW, you REMEMBERED *your* stunt from 3 years ago, and you did this to SPITE me after 3 years from doing EXACT SAME SHIT.
You are incredibly UNPROFESSIONAL and pathetic.

This is information mishandling.
I NEVER CONSENTED to "serve as an EXAMPLE"!
Neither 3 years ago, nor now.

Ethics are very important to me ( enough to become angry over something like this ).
You SHOULD HAVE asked for consent, which you likely wouldn't have gotten.
You could've always ( since 3 years ago, since the very beginning ) used YOURSELF as an example, which wouldn't have led to anything 3 years ago, nor now.
But you LACK the ethics, therefore here we are. Your unethical behaviour has netted you my angry response yet again.

That is a cute cat ~(^__^)~
I deeply appreciate your wholesome attempts <3
That's really cute of you <3

I'm feeling that moral hasn't improved so....

Oh, one more thing, because after proof-reading my msgs after posting I realized I left some room for reality bending for some less than logical responses:

To all those people who called me a hypocrite 3 years ago, and all those who would like to do that now.
I am NOT one.
And let me explain why.

I am not an English native speaker, and even tho I have been learning it for past 20+ years, I'm not an expert on it.
It wasn't in constant use throghout my life, there were periods of time when it somewhat degraded, and others when it improved. I live in a country whos native lang ISN'T English, thus I don't generally get to have "all time Eng usage" experience.
3 years ago I lacked a lot of English usage finesse I do possess now ( more of anyway ), back then I had some linguistic issues conveying the messages the EXACT way I wanted them to be understood.

To put this in simple terms:

Steam has system put in place by Valve ( the underlying company it belongs to ), it is EXPLICITLY PUBLIC ID system, it is DELIBERATELY SO, it is also WELL DOCUMENTED, in docs that require NO LOGIN, no "dev portal", it's all public. It's been known for YEARS how it works.
And it's known for a FACT this ID is literally unchangeable no matter what you, as a user do on the platform. No matter if you change your nickname, your avatar, your vanity url, the ID will FOREVER stay the same, and it's not reused.
There's an OFFICIAL API, also well documented, with which you can query this information, and which API is utilised by the likes of SteamDB and SteamRep, among many other places. It is generally very easy for an average end user to get to know this ID for any user out there.

What we currently have on GOG is a "there's this mysterious string of numbers, in the page's html code, that SOME people here BELIEVE to be 'the equivalent to Steam ID'", but in REALITY noone knows what this is, and knows nothing about this, let alone whether this TRULY is unique.
Let me take the "user friendly" aspect out of it, I think I talked about this enough for now.
GOG's API is not publicly documented. GOG's website protocols aren't publicly documented. GOG generally seems to take more of a "security through obscurity" approach. There's little to no information about any of this online, let alone OFFICIAL.
Generally, this is IN NO WAY comparable to Steam's case.

I have an IT certificate on webdev ( among some other IT certs ) - believe me - web developers have ZERO STANDARDS in reg to html element naming conventions ( ids, classess, etc ). There's ZERO consent on ANYTHING. It's all guerilla tactics, and people being high as kites ( from tiredness, and overworking themselves ), coming up with "their thing" on the spot.
It DOESN'T matter that the thing is called "gog-user" in the code - you CANNOT prove what this string of numbers is for EXACTLY, without having official docs.
I know many of you would go into the mode of those ladies vs cat meme, but face it, you CANNOT. Without official docs, this is SOME string of numbers, which you can neither prove what this IS, what this DOES, how EXACTLY this works, whether it is or isn't PERMANENTLY unique, and whether this was INTENTIONAL ( to be visible publicly ) or a slip up / bad design.
You may ask "how can it be a slip-up?".
Now you see, that's the beauty of the web development :P
Close to noone ( else than the original coder ) validates the code :D Usually people are getting paid, some mid to none testing is being done, and then boom, pushed to production, no questions asked :P
If you go review html code of lots of different websites, you will find all kinds of shenanigans, lapses in logic, leftovers, SPAGHETTI CODE, etc, that shouldn't be there.
The code of the GOG website is written as if a bunch of INTERNS brain stormed ideas for poor pay. It isn't exactly great. Also their forum CMS is ANCIENT and impressively BUGGY. The servers sometimes go entirely offline, for unknown reasons, and they can be out for even HOURS. If you look into GOGs technical insides, you quickly get the idea that GOG IT infrastructure is UNDERmaintained and outdated, it also has lapses in IT sec procedures, among other issues.

It CANNOT BE RULED OUT that this "gog-user" wasn't supposed to be shown publicly, and that it MAY indeed be an oversight.
There are NO PUBLIC DOCS disproving this theory.
If you can find any, I would be more than happy to review them!


My PERSONAL STANCE is that I advocate for, and want "Steam like implementation", and I PERSONALLY BELIEVE current GOG's implementation SHOULD NOT be used for the purpose I proposed ( tracking users in rel to giveaway rule violations, etc ).
Additionally, since there's no official documentation and noone here ACTUALLY knows how it works ( vs EXTREME GUESSING ), it's UNRELIABLE system, with possible loopholes that we don't even know about ( again, NO public docs! ).
ADDITIONALLY, since it isn't clear whether this was ever MEANT to be seen ( cue amateur hour html code ), IMO we SHOULDN'T be sharing this around, let alone in public posts, since it MIGHT fall under TOS violations ( of sharing internal GOG's information ).
This is MY stance.
I hope things clears things up even further ;)

Therefore I am neither a hypocrite now, nor was I 3 years ago. Simply, 3 years ago I sucked at linguistic skills and patience and I failed to convey my message clearly enough.

Thank you for attending my Ted talk /s

Can I get more cat pics kind sir? ^__-

In case you didn't realise, your method of quoting doesn't flag response notifications. So I didn't actually know you said anything to me until I re-read this thread out of boredom.

It is a THEM problem. It is clear in today's society there are far more people who want people to carry them to a location than those willing to use their own legs to get there themselves. Their inadequacies to find something this easily is not my fault, nor the fault of GOG who decided to design the forum as barebones as necessary. Maybe that was an intentional privacy measure to hide the IDs? Who knows. But I don't go blaming the manufacturer of a car for not having a gauge on the dash just because the steering wheel attendant doesn't know how to check the oil level under the hood.

Well I'm not an expert on the buggy mess that is GOG forum CMS :P I only know SOME things about it, evidently not all...
Care to provide more details of the problem ? And perhaps how to avoid it ?

Really? Have you ever coded anything? Even a simple shell script that a "non tech savvy" user is supposed to run without supervision?
Are you SERIOUSLY expecting "averge user" to be tech savvy and know how to use web dev tools?
And then, for them to know what to look FOR? For them to know how to interpret things?
Perhaps the knowledge YOU have appears "granted" to you, but I assure you not everyone has it.
For companies / developers for whom it is IMPORTANT for the user to have a good experience, they generally all go in the direction of making things EASIER and more ACCESSIBLE to the end user, instead of making it HARDER "because you can handle it, so SURELY they can to".
You just CANNOT gauge your userbase with YOUR proficiency. You are supposed to find lowest denominator, the lowest of the low, the rock bottom, and design with that in mind.
Steam has this feature implemented accessibly, GOG doesn't. Steam has this well documented, GOG doesn't seem to have this documented PUBLICLY at all.

"this easily". Once again, I disagree...

Well then they FAILED at it. Didn't they?
IF, and I want to stress this, IF, they would ACTUALLY CARE about privacy and IT security, they would have:
- updated the CMS, and kept it updated at all times ( Im almost certain this old version is vulnerable to SOMETHING )
- re-written the website code
- sanitized and verified all API calls
- maintained their servers better
- a rapid response team for server issues, which they definitely don't have, since servers can die down and stay like that for HOURS at a time, sometimes longer, indicating there AREN'T people in the company to watch over them 24/7
- actually active moderation, and UNbiased one at that, instead of having festive-rare heavy-handed one
- properly disclosed all telemetry
- listened to community feedback at all times
- not bait and switched the whole userbase on their ( GOG ) promises
- fixed numerous technical issues with the whole frontend, backend, and their infrastructure, which they CLEARLY HAVE NOT DONE.

I don't think GOG cares about these 2 things all that much...

I really don't get this analogy. Sorry.
Also, the "christmas lights" on your car dashboard are more like, you know, for emergencies, not for routine maintenance...

For those "special few" who passed a driving license exam without knowing how to do this - there's a MANUAL with every NEW car.
And even the thinnest manuals, most scandalously short ones, generally contain info such as this.

Could you please make a dedicated thread in the General forum to continue your discussion? This thread has its own purpose, and your discussion has long since veered from it.

Welcome to running a big, long running giveaway on gog. Always gonna have the public bashing, regardless of how tight a ship you run. Always gonna have people run rampant in the comments the same.
Especially gonna have those people that never ran a giveaway tell you how to do it, and those that break the rules expect to be the exception.
Fugg em!

NO. And stop trying to police a thread not belonging to you.

And actually, not only is my opening argument ENTIRELY on topic - the topic being IMPROVEMENT of the giveaway system in place, and what I'm adressing is specifically ensuring it's higher security, and to lower chances of fraudulent key obtainment; I ALSO remain ENTIRELY on this topic within my further messages.
To quote myself:
This is for the purpose of HOPEFULLY lowering the chances of those people getting away with it.
Something that is in the interest of this community, therefore fitting this thread - which is about discussing changes, feedback, etc, regarding the giveaway thread.

If you don't like it, that's okay, but you cannot tell me what to do in not your thread.

Peace.

Not THIS giveaway. And not on GOG forums. But you cannot prove I "never ran a giveaway". You are throwing things at the wall, hoping something will stick, and in hopes noone will think clearly about what you're saying.
But in your attempts to discredit me and my legitimate feedback, you failed at logic.

1. It is not up to YOU who can post in THIS thread. Maybe calm down your raging justice boner ?
2. If you would know the full context of my THEN-ban ( no longer binding btw ), you wouldn't have said this. But ofc the full context isn't public, and the then-administrator of the giveaway would never provide said context bc it would prove the ban to be baseless and hypocritical.
3. If you think valid feedback cannot come from ME of all people, I find it somewhat perplexing...
4. If you don't like reading, don't read my "long" msgs. It's that simple. Bashing valid feedback makes YOU look bad, not me.

You can always expect people to be fully professional on such occassions! Such grace! But of course...

Peace to you too ;)

So you are a smart person, congratulations!

I have a confession to make; I haven't actually read most of your rant. I make a point of not reading walls of text where every other word is written in caps. But, I've skimmed enough of it to know that it has no place in this thread anymore.
However, if you want to be the immature baby who just want say whatever they want say wherever they want to say it, wherever they think they get the biggest audience I suppose, then please, go right ahead.

I'll just stop instead. Like you said, it's really not the place for it.

If you want to emphasize any word in your posts, I'd recommend you to use bold instead of capital letters. It looks way less... aggressive.

I have read only really very few of your rant, since I've got more productive things to do in my day, like finishing games for example :D. But you radiate so much toxicity. You don't have to reply to every single sentence one writes! Where's a moderator when you need one?

Alternately, I support a new giveaway rule where if the person who is currently hosting the giveaway (BenKii) asks people to discontinue an off-topic discussion in this thread that hurts morale and they fail to do so, then there will be repercussions such as being put on a six month cooldown for a first time offense. Repeat offenders may be permanently banned from the giveaway.


Also.... Happy Cat Day, Everyone!
(Note: Everyday is Cat Day.)