what is telemetry?

Telemetry is an automated communications process by which measurements and other data are collected at remote or inaccessible points and transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring. The word is derived from Greek roots: tele = remote, and metron = measure.

Thank you. :D

Probably stuff like time-tracking and such. But I do not know why he is asking the community and not GOG directly. BTW I do not understand also "Galaxy, Non-Galaxy and Galaxy-compatible."

EDIT:Ninja'ed again.

NP :)

Well you can always ask them. Or you could do your own research. CTRL-SHIFT-DELETE in windows and analyze network traffic of processes and group galaxy related processes and watch their network traffic when your idling the client. Also, check if your modem/router has logging features. Turn off every other device using that network and only have a computer with galaxy client idling and watch the websites the IP of that device running the client is accessing, making sure to turn off any background downloads and system updates. If you get anything unusual you could then trace the path to a website your modem/router logs and see if it goes through any telemetry servers. Try running a singleplayer game and seeing what happens if you unlock achievements or shut down the game to log playtime in the client.

Judging by this they're OK with it.

Was playing Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky, single player game, with Wireshark running in the background. Noticed things were being sent to Europe with "GalaxyService" as message. Galaxy not installed on computer.

Emailed XSeed about it. Said GOG needs it for achievements (latest update) and can't do anything about it. XSeed says it doesn't do telemetry stuff and it's GOG. Emailed GOG about it. Reply back to just set firewall. Problem is, wouldn't have known about it unless I had Wireshark running that day. What happens on next update if they change the IP address?

Looking for better clarification and transparency on which games does this and will GOG require future games? Maybe at the very least, a FAQ updated with IP address to block. It would be nice though if GOG went further than the bare minimum.

Don't want others to know when I'm playing a game. Just want to relax without worry.

GOG updated Galaxy a while back to disable the Microsoft CRT telemetry in VS which was enabled by default IIRC, but I'd have to do some research to confirm it.

As for Galaxy itself, it talks to galaxy-client-logs.gog.com over SSL, and over syslog UDP port 514 which I find rather odd and potentially insecure, but I haven't researched it at all to see what is going over the wire. I intend to dig into these more in the future unless someone more curious than I beats me to it though.

Here is a fairly complete list of all of the domains that GOG Galaxy connects to under normal operation:

UDP ports: 514, 30013
galaxy-log.gog.com

TCP port: 443(https)
auth.gog.com
cfg.gog.com
chat-broker.gog.com
galaxy-client-update.gog.com
presence.gog.com
www4-static{1,2,3,4}.gog.com
images-{1,2,3,4}.gog.com
gameplay.gog.com
content-system.gog.com
menu.gog.com

TCP ports: 80(http), 443(https)
gog.com
api.gog.com
cdn.gog.com
content-system.gog.com
embed.gog.com
images.gog.com
users.gog.com
www.gog.com
gogcom.tumblr.com

There may be additional hosts contacted depending on what functionality in the program is accessed as well, but this is a good well rounded list of what I've found so far. If anyone runs a strict default drop outbound firewall, you can get Galaxy to function by allowing it to connect outbound on the above ports. They are not all absolutely required however, so some can be safely blocked, such as galaxy-log.gog.com for example.

I'm maintaining a local list here for myself for Galaxy, as well as for Steam client, Origin, Uplay and tonnes of other programs, games etc.

If anyone spots it connecting elsewhere, please share as well. It may connect to some 3rd party resources that I currently block also. Also note that this is strictly Galaxy client itself, however games launched through Galaxy will have their own set of hosts they may connect to unrelated to Galaxy.

I see. Thanks for further details, this is indeed quite interesting.

First time seen that list. Sickening how often devs/publishers want to farm info' with no good reason.

Anyhoe, Grim Dawn also possibly wants adding, as when you first start (or re-install) it asks to send data to the makers too. I've had something dodgy happen too in the past.
A game I was playing popped up achievements (fucking huge ones at that...) right in front of the game.
Problem was, I didn't even have galaxy installed :/

sorry but had to come back and chime this in

the Telemetry thing reminded me of this

https://youtu.be/smvjynoF9uA?t=35s


Love the song when in forza 6 loading menu :)

The IP is hard-coded in the shit Galaxy.dll file. It won't change unless GOG has a patch or new installer that you download & use. Here's an old thread about SC discussing it. They backported some engine enhancements to the first game. It "gained" Galaxy achievements & this behavior as well.
Workaround is to block the game or run it with a user with no net access.