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General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(2385 posts)(2385 posts)
(2385 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 30, 2018
Activity Feed • Gameplay Stats • Personalization


UPDATE: We've added a new option to the Privacy settings in GOG Profiles - from now on you can turn off your profile on GOG entirely, so no one can see any kind of information that is shown on the profile page. This also means that when you turn off your profile, you won’t be visible on your friends’ friends lists, even if they decide to keep their profiles visible.
The option to enable/disable your GOG Profile can be found in your account „Privacy & Settings” options, under „Privacy” tab.



We just introduced a new feature on GOG.COM: User Profiles – a social way to share what you and your friends are up to. See what your friends on GOG are playing, achieving, and sharing across four sections – Feed, Profile, Games and Friends.

Your Feed is the centerpiece of your Profile. Here, you’ll see which games your friends have been playing, all sorts of achievements and milestones, as well as general thoughts, screenshots, and forum activity. You can dispense your approval at whim and share your own stuff as well!

Your Profile is all about you and your gaming accomplishments. It's a summary of your activity, like the time you've spent in your games , your latest achievements (and just how rare they are among other users), as well as a glimpse at what your most active friends have been up to.

If you want to know more about your Games, you need to hit the the third tab. It contains a list of all the games you own on GOG, together with stats like time spent in-game and your progress towards unlocking the achievements. Sort the list, compare stats with your friends, and get some healthy competition going.

Finally – your Friends: get a general summary of their achievements and hours played. Here you'll also see which games are the most popular among your friends right now, so you can join them in multiplayer or find something you might enjoy yourself.

Of course, your profile comes with some sweet personalization options, choose a wallpaper from your game collection and share a few words with the world.

User Profiles are available for all GOG.COM users. Your personal gameplay stats like achievements, time played and milestones depend on GOG Galaxy, but if you’re not using the optional client you can still use the feed, post in it and interact with your friends.

Launching profiles also means adding new privacy settings on our end. You'll find three new Privacy options in your account's „Privacy & settings” area. These settings allow you to set the visibility for your profile summary, your games, your friends, etc.
So what are you waiting for? There's so much room for activities!
Posted April 24, 2018
Ok. I don't know if this has already been written. But how exactly did GOG manage to spy on people all these years. I have playtime activities on games I played years ago and which I didn't install through GOG Galaxy ?

Do users install spyware with every game ?
Posted April 24, 2018
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Chiteki: Interesting. People went and deliberately downvoted my every goddamn post in this thread, regardless of it's content. More proof about toxicity to people with unpopular opinions.
FWIW, I downvoted two (I think) of your posts early on, where it seemed you were taking the piss and deliberately misunderstanding arguments which had been rehashed several times already. I upvoted one or two later posts where you acknowledged points that had been made. I at that point remember actually considering going back to those earlier posts and undoing my downvote, but didn't care enough.

Don't assume one homogeneous mass of people acting in concert, and being out to get you. Rather imagine lots of individual people, disagreeing and/or disapproving of your posts for individual reasons. If there's enough disagreement/disapproval, the end result looks the same. And of course, as gog's silence lingers, and those of us who care about that are getting more upset about it, it's going to be harder not to "lash out" with some gratuitous downvotes for people who seem to be standing in for the missing blues. It's not nice - and I'd hope we'd all be better than that (I'm trying to be conscious of it myself), but all the same, it's probably realistic.
Post edited April 24, 2018 by gogtrial34987
Posted April 24, 2018
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Posted April 24, 2018
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The_Hampton: I notice that in the "Privacy" section there is a checkbox for "your visibility". This was checked by default yesterday and said "NOW PUBLIC - Others can find me by email or username". Does this mean that people could have seen my email address before I unchecked the item? I assume this isn't the case as this would surely have been the greatest violation of privacy, and I haven't found anything mentioned about email addresses being exposed on this thread. Any input would be appreciated.
My understanding is that you can search for users via username or e-mail address (whichever you happen to know) but that only username is displayed openly. In theory that check box should cause people to be unable to use the search to pull up your profile... except if they know how to combine your username and the base url then they can do it manually anyway, or they can check the profile of any of your friends if they have that information (or can figure it out).
Posted April 24, 2018
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lostwolfe: while true, this also makes that situation somewhat worse. at least you were just hanging out in the forums then and it was someone maybe who wanted to ask you something about what you were talking about.

now, just randomly, some person can click on you, discover you're online and harass you for no reason at all. [of course, they could have done that before, too, but...]
You may look at it this way: anybody can check whether you are online or not by checking your random post, but only logged in GOG user can browse your profile and check your online status.
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gogtrial34987: Rather imagine lots of individual people, disagreeing and/or disapproving of your posts for individual reasons.
Yet there is almost no doubt with what those individual reasons are with posts like "This is awesome! Good work!"
Post edited April 24, 2018 by Olauron
Posted April 24, 2018
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lostwolfe: just to add to the weird stalk-factor, the bits you can see also tell randoms that you're on/offline.

good going, gog.
Not to mention that even if user set his "Friends" part of the profile as private, if the main "Feed" of the the profile is NOT set as private it will be still merrily showing the total number of your friends, along with the list of (first?) 5 names, containing avatars and your friends count of games, achievements, playtime...

The lack of QA before implementation of these profiles into GoG ecosystem is simply unbelivable.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Something else to consider with regards to the online/offline status appearing on profiles: only 10% of any userbase ever posts on forums (and only 10% of those will be doing so more than a handful of times).
That means that up until now, the online/offline status of only 1% of users would've been easy to check, and the online/offline status of 90% of users would've been impossible to check. (not entirely true, since the chat user search functionality also displays online/offline status as long as you can be found through it, which goes for everyone who doesn't have toggled off the "can be found" checkbox - so let's say for 30% of all users it was impossible.)

Now, the online/offline status of 100% of users can be checked, with no way for users to fake being offline as they can on pretty much any other service which offers such an indicator.

Since most users reuse their username, this is an incredibly powerful tool in any stalker's arsenal, which is going to get ever more powerful as gog gets ever more popular. If they're a gamer, check their gog profile for up-to-date information for when they're online.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Mueslinator: I'm going to somewhat echo SpiderFighter here: This sounds to be more about your preconceived notions than about what is actually observable in this thread.
...
But they have to be completely optional, and the data that accumulates on GOG about us has to be handled responsibly (so default has to be opt-in, and if we're opted out completely, that should actually translate into complete invisibility of the profile to third parties). And those are my points of critique about the change.
This thread is just a tip of an iceberg. It's been observable in the news (games and announcements) threads for years.

There is nothing wrong with this critique.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Taro94: I'm pretty positive GOG will change the controversial parts regarding profiles.

...if only so many users cared about DRMed multiplayer in games sold on GOG. :(
That may be a case of the demographic, at least if there are a lot of people (like me) who don't really play multiplayer much in any game. I can't point to a single example of drm multi on gog, partly because I'm not sure I could even name 5-10 examples of multiplayer games on gog (even though I'm pretty sure I own more than that) simply because it's a feature I don't interact with.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Chiteki: Interesting. People went and deliberately downvoted my every goddamn post in this thread, regardless of it's content. More proof about toxicity to people with unpopular opinions.
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gogtrial34987: FWIW, I downvoted two (I think) of your posts early on, where it seemed you were taking the piss and deliberately misunderstanding arguments which had been rehashed several times already. I upvoted one or two later posts where you acknowledged points that had been made. I at that point remember actually considering going back to those earlier posts and undoing my downvote, but didn't care enough.

Don't assume one homogeneous mass of people acting in concert, and being out to get you. Rather imagine lots of individual people, disagreeing and/or disapproving of your posts for individual reasons. If there's enough disagreement/disapproval, the end result looks the same. And of course, as gog's silence lingers, and those of us who care about that are getting more upset about it, it's going to be harder not to "lash out" with some gratuitous downvotes for people who seem to be standing in for the missing blues. It's not nice, but it's probably realistic.
You know, I already fail to give a damn. Yeah, I guess with that phrase I just expressed my bitterness and upset. I never was against anyone in the thread deliberately, on the contrary, I'm against negativeness. All this was just from some kind of exhausted feel like "can't we all just get along" kinda thing. And it's an old feeling. I didn't exaggerate, that I see outright negative and hostile posts toward anything GOG does in every thread they create. Update? "Update is shit, I don't need that, never asked for this, screw it!" Discount? "Nothing I wishlisted is discounted. And discounts are too common. And prices are shite." New release? "Another [insert genre]? I'm tired of this crap. And when you're gonna bring [insert game] instead of this?"

It's just depressing. And I always refrained from taking part in such disscussions. Today I did. Got bombed to the Mars and back. Whatever. I'll stick to playing games and leave the shitstorms to other people.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Moonsorrow.331: Ok. I don't know if this has already been written. But how exactly did GOG manage to spy on people all these years. I have playtime activities on games I played years ago and which I didn't install through GOG Galaxy ?

Do users install spyware with every game ?
That's strange. Are you sure you didn't play them with Galaxy? I never installed Galaxy, own more than 1000 games and everyone of them shows 0 minutes played and 0 achievements.

So there's definitely no secret spyware.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Chiteki: You know, I already fail to give a damn. Yeah, I guess with that phrase I just expressed my bitterness and upset.

It's just depressing.
For whatever it's worth - you have my apologies for my role in contributing to this and making you feel like that. I can wholeheartedly agree with that general sentiment that too much negativity is depressing, and I'd like to believe that in general I refrain from such.

This instance here, though - this really hit hard. We're so close to finally having some real privacy protection in the EU, to having a law with teeth that has the real potential for clawing back some of what we were powerless to prevent being stolen from us at every corner of the internet, right at a time when the consequences of that are starting to become scarily clear. And then comes along gog - you know, the good guys? - and they flaunt it all like this, despite our rather loud warnings and entirely reasonable requests in their pre-announcement thread.
Posted April 24, 2018
It's a shame there has been no response towards the people that feel affected by this privacy issue. Though some people (not all) on this forum really do come across as the tin-foil hat kind with the way they talk and convey their worry.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Olauron: But it may be assumed. Actually it is assumed as it is the very reason for the additional work to implement something new. There is no use of doing extra work for the existing customers especially the ones that are known to reject everything new coming from this business.
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Mueslinator: I'm going to somewhat echo SpiderFighter here: This sounds to be more about your preconceived notions than about what is actually observable in this thread.

I can, of course, only speak for myself: I have not rejected anything GOG introduced outright in the past. In fact, there are some features I would not miss for the world, like the wallet - because it lets me buy without having to give out any information about my bank account. I even found Galaxy useful, especially because it actually lets you opt out of pretty much everything, unlike Steam: Playtime tracking? You can shut that off. Achievement tracking? Gone if you do not want it. As a bonus, it keeps my games up to date. I appreciate Galaxy for that.

But the current issue has little to do with "it's just people rejecting new things". This is not about New Stuff, this is about starting on a course that I do not want to follow.

I mean, I'm not opposed to profiles: I can see why some people want them, and I would not dream of wanting those taken away from them.
But they have to be completely optional, and the data that accumulates on GOG about us has to be handled responsibly (so default has to be opt-in, and if we're opted out completely, that should actually translate into complete invisibility of the profile to third parties). And those are my points of critique about the change. Not that it's new.
I have to agree here. It's the handeling of data and the mistake of having it be opt-out not opt-in as it should be.
Well, that's assuming there was a full opt-out, which there currently doesn't seem to be (and that's another problem).

If profiles were opt-in and totally optional I would have just said "hey, that's a new feature someone will enjoy and get use out of" then gone about my day.

It's also in no way having a problem with "new", I back things on Kickstarter that are so new they don't even exist yet, and I opted in to the Galaxy beta and have gotten use out of the client.

Up to this point I have gone out of my way to reccomend people try GOG and have made nearly all of my game gifts via GOG even to friends who didn't have an account here to begin with. However privacy matters, control of ones own data matters, and personal agency matters. Thus the handeling of this new feature set causes some - very legitimate - concern. So rather than end my association with GOG, or start badmouthing them to other people, I have voiced the concerns that these recent changes caused. They should be rather easy to address from a technical standpoint as well, simply make profiles opt-in (deafult to all settings private) and ensure that the default displays no user data whatsoever in the public sphere. It's simple, compareitively easy, and it allows all users choice (which is an improvement of service), I honestly don't see any reason why anyone would object to allowing customers a choice about this.
Posted April 24, 2018
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Mueslinator: I am not a regular here.
Well you should be... you seem like a polite and reasonably person :-)
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionUPDATE: Introducing GOG Profiles(2385 posts)(2385 posts)
(2385 posts)