Sincere thank you, friend. As I said, I don't blame anyone in particular. I have only myself to blame. What did I expect will come out of this?

And yes, think I missed that this particular thing is a part of something bigger, which I do not follow. Maybe because my country is on the verge of third world and I never thought about privacy in online things that hard.

Nowadays there seem to be something going on all over the internet that is trying to get us to stop actually talking and sharing things with our friends in person, and instead turn us into stalkers :( I feel very uncomfortable with all this spying on people that we are supposed to do. I remember a time when you'd get together with some friends and go "Hey, have you tried game X? I played it all day yesterday and it's awesome!" Now people assume you know every little bit about their life already since you can see it all online in your various "feeds" and therefore it doesn't matter if you just want some alone time and have gone home to quietly play a game, there will be a bunch of people standing right behind you peeking at what game you are playing and how long.
Personally when I sit at home alone, I want to be alone. If I want to tell a friend something I have done or are doing I want to personally reach out to that friend and tell them myself.

And a question:

If my friends have public profiles, can others see me in their friend lists against my will? If so, that would defeat the whole privacy settings we have for our own profiles.

Unfortunately: Yes, they can.
At present the only defense is not having any friends listed here at gog (or only having friends who've explicitly set their own profiles to non-public).

So how long until GOG has achievement whore threads now?

Silence is also another form of communication.
I'm pretty sure we'll be getting something on the front page soon.

I think I've become aware that a 'friend' of mine thinks I don't want to do anything with her because she keeps sending me invites to events on facebook and I just ignore them because for me, if I want to actually invite a person to an event that I am also going to, I talk to them like a person, and this other way of doing things just seems wrong on a fundamental level and I won't participate. Now, if one of the events looked like something I REALLY wanted to go to regardless of if the other person were going or not, I might contact them and be like "that looks cool, I'm thinking of going, want to coordinate going together?"

Aww that's disappointing. I'll make sure to not add any more friends then, and perhaps cull those without the right privacy settings :(

Thank you for informing me :)

I was going to say the exact same thing, and I'm willing to bet it was even the same posts. :) It was more about attitude than content. EDIT: We're all passionate about this place...even divided, it's something we all have in common. We're all kindred spirits in a way. :)

We can definitely agree on that! :)

I feel with you. There are a few, but very vocal, people here who are like that. I can only speak for myself, but I don't see myself that way.
I have embraced Galaxy since the alpha version. I like the client and the idea behind it.
I wasn't pissed at the dropped "one world one price" principle - it sounds good but there are people out there in countries who couldn't afford the "regular" Dollar price otherwise - and for all others there's the "fair price package".
I was annoyed when the German page went up and with it all that censorship that comes attached when catering to the German market - but I could understand it, since it's a big and important market.
I'm sad that the movie section didn't work out - on the other hand I didn't spend much money there either...

And regarding the profiles - I actually like the idea, and would have embraced it - if it were done right and protected the privacy of my friends who don't want to be part of it. This time GOG made a tiny mistake that is actually a huge mistake. Leaking data is no small thing, esp. nowadays when heaps of data are accumulated and joined from many different sources. You know how the Nazis managed to round up so many Jews in the European countries they had conquered? Census - including religion and ancestors. Nobody thought including that could do any harm...
Nowadays the heaps of data are by dimensions bigger than what the Nazis had. Or the 'Muricans during the Communist craze... And it's good people are sensitive about it.

Even with everything else aside, you just know that there's going to be major thread derailment in the future when people are going to the profiles of someone that they didn't like a post from, just to look for ammunition to use against them. It's just so easy to see that happ--

xXGokuForSmashXx says: "I'm going to stop you right there, Irenicus73, and say that your opinion doesn't really matter here, because I can see that you're a dirty CASUAL GAMER, with your list of only 60 games owned on GOG!"

Irenicus73 says: "Well, actually, that's because these past few years I've had to be careful and selective with my money, because I'm trying to both pay my own expenses, and also help my family with their considerable debts that leave their ability to pay electric and water bills shaky, so I haven't been able to purchase m--"

xXGokuForSmashXx says: "Or maybe you should go back to FARMVILLE instead of participating in this thread for actual, experienced gamers. Come back when you have 800+ games on GOG like the rest of us, and you can prove that you're a REAL GAMER!"

You all know it's coming. :P Goodness help you if you do leave your profile set to public, and people try to use that to call you out on how many hours you've spent on a particular game to try to discredit your opinion because you've enjoyed playing something obscure, unpopular, or casual. I do hope that I'm wrong about that, but it's not hard to imagine in the near-future, is it?

Not looking forward to that.

^upvoted

Great to see you do understand it now.
I am also amongst those who have downvoted your comments, but only those in which you seem to belittle people who are enraged at GOG for violating their privacy without consent.

Please compare:
(just for demonstration purposes, these are not meant as quotes):
1. I don't know what the fuss is about, I'm OK with sharing my game information
2. Hey crybabies, this does not impact your privacy at all, stop fussing about it!

Response 1 will give you responses to your comment explaining why people think that their privacy is indeed violated, but no downvotes.
Response 2 will evoke downvoting because people feel belittled by your comment.

Thank you for returning to civil repsonses, so we can have a meaningful conversation, even if we might not agree with each other.

I like this idea. Now we just need a steam like chat client, and then there'll be little reason to use steam over gog.

Right, who needs all that AAA games on Steam anyway. We got oldies and indie...

Long time GOG customer here.

I just found out about Profiles earlier today and came here to see what people were discussing. I skimmed through the very long thread a bit to pick up the highlights but didn't read every post. My apologies if I'm repeating something that's already been discussed, but here's my initial reaction.

I have a business relationship with GOG. This business relationship allows me to legitimately purchase games I am interested in so the game developers are compensated properly and I can enjoy them without guilt because they were not obtained through questionable means.

The business relationship between myself and GOG is between us alone and should not be shared without my permission. That includes purchase history or games owned. This information should not ever be public by default and only shared with my permission or upon the request of law enforcement, the same as any other purchase I make.

I make the distinction above because my identity as a GOG community member is in my mind a separate situation and my public interactions with other GOG users should not be conflated with my business identity. I understand they are related, but they are not one and the same. As such, information such as which games I own, how long I have played them etc should not be public information by default merely because I have an account here (necessary to be a GOG customer in order to purchase games).

There needs to be a clean separation conceptually and technically between the business identity (GOG customer) that pertains to things like payment info and methods, game ownership, account control etc. and the 'community identity' that pertains to social interactions with other GOG members (via forum posts or shared profile information, ...) or the public.

The basis for this is privacy, certainly. That's important. But as many other long time GOG customers, I made a significant financial investment in my game purchases here that are put at risk by making too much information public by default. My purchase account and 'social' account need to have some sort of firewall between them to protect that investment and my privacy.

tl;dr: While I don't have a fundamental problem with the concept of Profiles for those who find them useful in their social gaming interactions, I don't think they should be obligatory and public by default in order to purchase and enjoy Good Old (and new) Games. Conflating business and social identities is a conceptual and technical mistake, IMHO. I hope GOG sorts this out soon as they gather and digest feedback on this matter.

I'm grateful that GOG provided controls in my account settings to allow me to manage my information, though I'm disappointed that the defaults are public and opt-out, rather than opt in.

Actually there is also another side of the coin that has been seen on steam forums for ages (no idea what it is now when the friends-only became the new default): "There is no point of speaking with you, private profile, honest gamers have nothing to hide" :D
Cursed if you do, cursed if you don't.