ah, this one. it's a bigger project of gog to add cloud saves to all DOS games, so they add it to every DOS game automatically because they found a way to pass save files to/from dosbox. definitely kudos to gog for reviving old DOS games, it is more than just galaxy update, most work went to dosbox scripts I believe.

notice how in changelog the added this feature only for Windows - that's because they have no Linux client. It is hard to find more useless feature for Linux user than this one, we run DOS games with own system dosbox.

The mechanism to separate the save files of DOS games from the game installation has been implemented into DOSBox itself and is quite ingenious. In the opposite to the Galaxy implementation for Windows games it leaves the DOS games untouched in their original state and does not modify them. So it can be disabled or removed at any time with no harm for the game. It also allows to use the mechanism on your own, in your own private "cloud", completely independent of Galaxy and GOG servers, which again is much better than the Galaxy implementation for Windows games, which only works with GOG servers.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/what_is_gog_stance_on_telemetry

First of all, sorry to join years later and bother you... but, what's the status on this?

The URL is gone (Error 404). Is there a list somewhere of games with the telemetry "feature"?

Meanwhile, I voted+ Gekko_Dekko proposal. Regards

Which one URL?

This is the one that doesnt work:

https://www.gog.com/mix/games_w_potentially_telemetry

My bad, I put another URL on my original post

Don't really understand this... if you disconnect from the internet will the game run or not? If it won't then it has DRM and shouldn't be on GoG.

With a working software firewall, the game is completely unaware that the computer is even connected to the internet (though launching with galaxy might be an issue, galaxy is connected to the internet and so many programmers don't do proper error handling these days.)

it can try to open a web page in your browser and send data that way

@cryware

Here you go man: https://web.archive.org/web/20180716174123/https://www.gog.com/mix/games_w_potentially_telemetry

Thank you sir

You are welcome.

I wonder if anyone thought about "black box reverse engineering" some of the DLLs and replacing them to get rid of the telemetry.

That would be a never-ending job. As I mentioned in post 19 of this thread a couple of years ago, we're past the stage at which playing "whack-a-mole" with unwanted telemetry, online connections, etc, is desirable. If most games you play are single player and you use offline installers instead of Galaxy, then the best option is to switch the firewall from the default "allow by default, block by exception" to "block by default, allow by exception", then whitelist the regular applications you use (web browser, etc) and the whole lot gets blocked (telemetry inside offline installers, telemetry inside games (Unity Engine), telemetry inside applications / office programs, etc.

Unless they tunnel it through legit connections. Most people are unaware of it or would know how to block it and windows built in firewall wasn't the best.

After checking the list, seems most of the offenders are Unity games.
"According to unity's privacy policy, it "phones home" on 1st launch. Unsure if you can disable it, aside from blacklisting the game in firewall"

And searching into the forum, I found this post,
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/unity_engine_telemetry_killer/post1

Seems there is a possible solution replacing DLLs

Also, wikipedia provides a list of unity games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games

If anyone could test and let us know would be greatly appreciated!

More so that the windows default firewall doesn't have a popup for every connection made, and many programs will attempt to add exceptions for themselves when you install them. As a firewall and basic network access control software, it's very efficient (just isn't user friendly).

If a game calls a program that does have permissions then windows default firewall can recognize this is happening and block the new program. (As in trying to open the browser). You can block specific ports / protocols associate with a program, or specific ip calls if you actually hunt down what the telemetry addresses are.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's the best firewall, just that it's a fair bit more capable than people realize. I also am very aggressive with the firewall and have several system processes blocked, only allowing needed ports to be open. So I white list instead of black list, and I don't give broad permissions to applications.

The reality is, most people would prefer to go around with the system just automatically handling all this, which is why telemetry is so easily accepted. It takes effort on the user's part to get familiar with how their system works and lock everything down, unlocking when things are needed but still.