It appears that, since June, this setting default has been changed. My chat privacy now says "friends only," whereas it used to be set to "anyone." As a result, I can no longer reply to anyone in the several casual conversations I'd been having, either through the website or the Galaxy client (I get the message in the title of this post).

Please look at this, GOG. I feel rude, as I'm now forced to ignore people I was actually talking with. I've changed my setting back to "anyone" but, of course, theirs has been changed as well. Either that, or this is an incredibly remarkable (and statistically improbable) coincidence.

This was intentional to stop people from receiving scam messages. Rather than fix the problem, they fixed the symptom. Your non-friend friends need to change their chat settings.

It's almost as if they should inform people about such changes better.

Don't hold your breath- it's hopeless. It's been weeks since I've been asking and asking and asking why there can's be a simple information about the classic downloaders on the download page, and no blue even bothered to answer me with PR bullshit. GOG isn't just terrible with comunication - they actually want to give as little information to the customers as possible. They want people to download the galaxy bloated installers instead of the classic ones and they want people to keep their chat set to "friends only" because it's the easiest solution to the problem of spam.

If you're stunned by that solution, you need to read This Thread. Warning: may cause blindness, heart attack, or brain damage.