Edit: This is actually opt-in as result of claiming a free game, but is hard to notice if you expect the same text to be there for every giveaway.


TL;DR: With a new marketing communication option selected, you agree to share your email address to Google and Facebook (Meta) as a unique identifier.


I don't normally post here, but I just noticed this silent addition in "Subscriptions and communications": "Marketing communications through Trusted Partners’ services". * The article is at support.gog.com/hc/articles/13109718168733

What this means: Even if you don't have an account on either of these services, they will be able to uniquely identify your behaviour on GOG even if you don't have an account on either of these two services.

What you should do: If you claimed a giveaway, untick that option. Right now. And use a content blocker. It's 2023.
"Subscriptions and communications" is here: www.gog.com/en/account/settings/subscriptions

What GOG should do: Stop with the spyware already.

It's already opt-in. You opted in when you claimed the game on giveaway on the home page.

I'm not interested in debating whether the note on the banner that nobody bothers to read is enough notice. Anyway, we already have another thread about this:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/when_do_you_transfer_my_personal_data_to_google_and_facebook/post1

I'm going to guess you claimed the giveaway. You agreed to this in order to claim the game. The setting is off by default, at least on my account.

Thank you for pointing it out, I will correct my post.

Still, I doubt that many people check there, so I wanted to bring some noise to this issue. A very slight difference in wording can be hard to notice when the last time that text was read was weeks ago...

"Trusted partners" has worked its way into the vocabulary I see. Well, GOG's already collecting a ton of telemetry about their user's buying and gaming habits, so now why not make some money from that as well, eh? :P

To be fair I sort of saw this coming and it's, sadly, a common practice in this day and age. Just look at the telemetry collected by almost all Unity games if in doubt.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Although I think a good idea would be to add a TL;DR statement to the start of the OP in order to summarize the info for all readers in very simple, easy-to-understand terms.

My takeaway from this is that GOG giveaways have now become toxic and never worth accepting, so long as this new spyware-esque trait remains attached to them.

And also I would encourage the GOG community, en masse, to start a massive backlash over this, as it deserves to receive, just like the Hitman GOTY debacle did.

Agreed.

You can make it up to use by getting more games from Triple A Publishers here. When was the last time an Ubi-soft game showed up? Or an EA game, would love the Mass Effect series or Dead Space 2 to show up. :)


In all seriousness though I do despise this form of information sharing.

Without getting into politics, I couldn't think of less Trusted Partners, than Google and Meta. >_>

What! Ah, no, no, no, unchecked immediately.

Claiming "free games" (not free anymore) is now a risk sport.

Wow, good catch.
Thanks.

I'm sorry, but that notice is not enough.

I would tolerate a checkbox in that notice that was selected, that I could deselect before grabbing the game, but that's it.

Man I wonder how much that shit pays.
I know just one person's info is whatever, but tens of thousands adds up.

Hopefully enough to keep them running. And hopefully there will actually be some partners.


This only applies to freebies btw, as far as I can tell. Normal purchases don't opt in.
But I must say that Epic does it better. Even for freebies the checkbox is not selected when claiming them.