Upon launching IG2 my firewall made me aware of an outgoing connection with update.pocketscientists.com, port 192.64.116.166:80.
Blocking the connection didn't seem to do any harm.

But I wonder what this connection is doing (or attempting to do), and why IG2 doesn't inform me about this connection - without a firewall I wouldn't have noticed.
Normally, outgoing connections are sending data somewhere, sometimes they serve some multi-player purpose. I have no intention to play IG2 as an MP game, and I haven't accidentally touched any MP functionality of IG2, so there is no reason to establish an outgoing connection, and even less without letting me know.

Unless I get a better explanation I have to assume that IG2 is trying to send data from my PC to an unknown destination, and this fits my understanding of spyware.

By the way: According to whois.com, the IP 192.64.116.166 belongs to Namecheap Inc, and appears to be located in Budapest, Hungary.
According to their webpage pocketscientists.com, Pocket Scientists is a "mobile entertainment company". They don't bother to state an address on their webpage, and I have not been able to find any information about Pocket Scientists elsewhere.

Great job, GOG! That I can play the game with the connection blocked is nice, but GOG shouldn't publish a game which sends data to a suspect IP address without asking the player for approval and even without informing the player.

Thanks for the heads up. I just checked over at pocketscientists.com and they claim to be a publisher or developer of entertainment software, but they also mention analytics (AKA spyware) and their site has an overall tone of pitching their branding/marketing services. They seem to be heavily involved in pumping out adware/freemium and shovelware content. Very shady.

I was going to purchase this game, but I think I'll hold off and see if something is done about this issue first.

This isn't good to hear. I am pretty sure it goes against GoG vision so I bet they take a look at it if they notice this or at least clarify what exactly is going on.

At first glance it does an HTTP GET to update.pocketscientists.com with the query string p=net.gyrogames.ig2&v=1.0&d=windows&n=WindowsPC&l=en&r=0&i=(serial?).

It seems like a way to gather usage statistics based on game starts. (This behavior wasn't observed in the Linux version.)

Thanks. Would GOG mind to comment?

Apparently not lol!

Worse - nobody else seems to mind. I have also not seen this issue mentioned on the Steam forum of IG2 (or is the Steam version different in this respect?).
Well, I have blocked ig2.exe on my PC from accessing this IP, and I have learnt something about GOG ...

I am wondering if this has something to do as a carry over from the mobile port.

It probably has. I don't believe for a moment that GOG has invented this or is interested in collecting data from my PC.
It may also be difficult to change the code - and the data collectors themselves have no interest in disabling data collection.
What I criticise is that GOG customers are not informed by GOG or the game that the game software is also collecting data (and what data), and that this can be disabled. Normally I would expect it to be a configuration parameter of the game with the default "off", which I can switch on if I want it to happen.

Yea. I am with you on that. Would be nice to have the option to turn such stuff off....I assume you blocked it via firewall settings? Which, I assume means multiplayer will not work? Not that multiplayer is that big of a deal..I tried it...very laggy.

Correct. When i launched ig2.exe, a firewall window (I use Norton) popped up informing me about the attempt to connect with said IP address, and had the options to accept it or block the attempt (both for one sssion or permanently).
T choose to block it, first once, then permanently (I wanted to make sure that the game itself runs without that connection, which it did. Of course you can unblock using a firewall menu, if ou reconsider.
I'm always playing on my own, so I'm not interested in MP functionality, but I don't think MP is blocked automatically, too, unless it uses the same IP (which is possible, I have no idea).

This should be investigated..

Hello all,

I'm the dev of the game. The behaviour you're seeing is a feature of the multiplatform framework we're using for all our projects, and it dates back to when Pocket Scientists published a lot of mobile games. The connection is basically looking for a patch file, and if there's one, it downloads it, and overrides original content with it. We never actually used it in desktop games, so it will never do anything else than trying to check if there's a patch, and move on, because there isn't. It's not malicious, but the whole functionality will be removed in an upcoming update.

We're sorry for any alarm caused.

Thank you for the explanation. Once this has been removed in the update, I will purchase the game.

Good news! I accept your explanation - and thanks for giving it.
Let me repeat that the issue is not what the software is doing, but that it's trying to do it behind my back and without my approval.
I'm looking forward to the patch you announced - it's coming soon, hopefully.