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So i still don't understand why GOG is not officially supporting steam, uplay, origin integrations. How does it make sense to have THE big feature of 2.0 not be a proper and above board, highly secure part of your client? And, will those community integreations be as fast and reliably updating to changes to those other services as the officially supported fronts?

Thing is; the way it seems to go now, there is no real benefit over using steam's "add non steam games" function, but a good deal of privacy/security concerns with Galaxy 2.0. Yes, if you really use the various friends chat functions on uplay and origin, then that alone might be worth it. But the handful of contacts i have on those clients are all on steam and gametime tracking is not the killer feature that outwheighs the current design flaws.

But again, why would officially adding the option to integrate your uplay, steam and origin accounts result in more bad blood than releasing a client that inteds to do just exactly that, but doing it in a more failure prone and risky fashion? Hell, as a developer intending to pull off what GOG tries with Galaxy 2.0, i'd be making damn sure it was as secure as can be!
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sc_neo: Hell, as a developer intending to pull off what GOG tries with Galaxy 2.0, i'd be making damn sure it was as secure as can be!
I can't find multiple +1 for this post, or I'd give them all to it.
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sc_neo: One qeustion; as i understand there are two ways for all this to work. Either go the official api route, or do it the "proper steam website login account crawler method".

Now, the problem with the api approach as i have read here and on reddit seems to be with the privacy settings of one's steam account. I for instance, have set everything in my steam account to private and only visible to my steam friends. Does this really preclude an via api authorized website or service to read any of my steam account data? If that is so and the only way of devulging any of my accounts data to Galaxy 2 would mean i needed to lay everything on my steam account bare to the world wide web, than this would be another no go.
I believe there are actually three ways for this to work:

1. Use the official Steam API. The user explicitly consents through Steam to give certain data to the GOG app.
2. Have the user log into the Steam website inside the GOG app, then scrape all the user's private data from the Steam website. (This is what the current plugin does.)
3. Have the user tell GOG the user's Steam profile ID, then scrape all the user's public data from the Steam website.

You are conflating numbers 1 and 3 here. If they went with number 3, there would be no privacy issue at all because the plugin would only be able to access information that's publicly available, however, as you say, this would only work for users who have made their Steam account public, so that might not be a good option for privacy-sensitive folks.

If they went with number 1 (which I believe is the best solution from a policy standpoint), I don't think you would need to make your Steam account public. This is a separate, legitimate channel for granting limited third-party access to certain parts of your Steam account.

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sc_neo: BTW; do Ubisoft and EA have apis for granting access to you accounts like the steam api, or is doing a proper login that crawls your account like on a website the only way of doing this?
I don't know, but I think at least Steam should have this since it's by far the biggest of the stores.
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LightningYu: Not saying/arguing i wouldn't also prefer to have other Integrations as official ones either, but you are pretty ignorant PC-Master-Race if you think there aren't people who Use Xbox or other Consoles as well(and yes even as a PC-User i'm a happy Xbox owner).
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xKazerike: Nice bro, but u have to agree with me.
The xbox is the most useless integration they could have choose to become ''oficial''.
Whatever, gog is a PC plataform. :D not console.
AS a PC plataform the focus is on PC GAMERS.
We wan't mac/linux/windows port's, (2 of those also have).
We wan't OFICIAL support OF PC PLATAFORMS.
Steam, twitch, origin, epic, uplay, battle.net, nc soft launcher, trion launcher, Bethesda etc etc.
The marketing throught this is 'all your games in one place''
ALL, A - L - L.
Not XBOX GAMES AND GOG IN ONE PLACE.
Fuck that console bro, honestly. No one gives a shit about that console xD.
Guys, if you want Twitch game library integration, please help me to support this request at github.com/Mixaill/awesome-gog-galaxy/issues/1
Very much in favor of what has been said, its a no brainer to use for instance the Steam API key as the preferable option for synchronizing information and have similar solutions for other platforms and the fact that Steam and various others are considered a community addition and therefore it not their concern is ridiculous as its part of the clients main selling point.

Granted this is a closed beta and things are very much a work in progress, these concerns are legitimate and should be spoken about.
"If they went with number 1 (which I believe is the best solution from a policy standpoint), I don't think you would need to make your Steam account public. This is a separate, legitimate channel for granting limited third-party access to certain parts of your Steam account. "

If indeed the api way would not mean i needed to set my account fully open to everything else, than this would be the best and only real option to go with. And it wouldn't be much of an api if it could not differentiate as to it's level open openness. So, it then baffles me why GOG does not go this route at least with steam. I mean, how many hundrets of websites hook into steam via the api? This is a pretty common thing now and GOG feels like this would mean bad blood if they contacted valve about getting api access? Besides, they do something similar with GOG connec, so they do work with Valve already, why stop here?

BUT; a quick search for Ubisoft resulted in them not having an api hook in system like steams web api. So in all likelyhood, we need the web crawler method for pretty much every service we'd like to see integrated into Galaxy 2. Which reinforces the two points made here before:

1.) It needs to be done officially by GOG as a vanilla part of Galaxy 2. I usually trust free and open software being developed by communities behind it, for instance everything that is being done in the linux space. But i simply don't see why a company like GOG needs to go that route with such a sensitive issue like account security if account integration is their main selling point. It's like they are selling the super duper new mega upgradeable car without offering any upgrade lines themselves and telling you out right, that if you do upgrade anything, you'd better not expect any support from them. Kinda bad business strategy in my book.

2.) This steam, uplay, origin 'web-crawling' needs to happen absoultely locally, on your installed client only! Not on GOGs server infrastructure. And all the info gathered by the web-crawler must not be transfered from the local client to GOG either. I know this sounds like i am hating on GOG, far from it. But if there is no absolute need to share data, a company and its services should not request data from you or go 'eat or die' if you want to use at least some parts of a service.

Ha, i don't even know why i am putting so much thought into this here. I have the steam client setup as my main gaming hub with my games from GOG, Origin, Uplay and my older disk versions added via the non steam game function. And this setup works pretty flawlessly. Yes, no integrated non steam chat and game time tracking, BUT not many security and privacy concerns either. So, i guess GOG needs to get cracking and integrate access to more than the Microsoft stuff officially to convince me to make the jump over to Galaxy 2 as my main hub.
Post edited August 02, 2019 by sc_neo
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sc_neo: 2.) This steam, uplay, origin 'web-crawling' needs to happen absoultely locally, on your installed client only! Not on GOGs server infrastructure. And all the info gathered by the web-crawler must not be transfered from the local client to GOG either. I know this sounds like i am hating on GOG, far from it. But if there is no absolute need to share data, a company and its services should not request data from you or go 'eat or die' if you want to use at least some parts of a service.
This way, if you use Galaxy 2 on different machines, you would have to perform the crawling, tagging, etc. multiple times, and this is very annoying (I know this from multiple Kodi setups I have). Your libraries would never be in sync.

The data should definitely be shared with GOG servers to keep all Galaxy 2 installations always in sync and up to date.
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sc_neo: 2.) This steam, uplay, origin 'web-crawling' needs to happen absoultely locally, on your installed client only! Not on GOGs server infrastructure. And all the info gathered by the web-crawler must not be transfered from the local client to GOG either. I know this sounds like i am hating on GOG, far from it. But if there is no absolute need to share data, a company and its services should not request data from you or go 'eat or die' if you want to use at least some parts of a service.
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Fonzman: This way, if you use Galaxy 2 on different machines, you would have to perform the crawling, tagging, etc. multiple times, and this is very annoying (I know this from multiple Kodi setups I have). Your libraries would never be in sync.

The data should definitely be shared with GOG servers to keep all Galaxy 2 installations always in sync and up to date.
or you can copy your data from one PC to another, it's not like you "would have to" crawl everything if you can just copy-paste couple of files. Steam also stores all of your game categories in one file and you can back it up, move to another PC if cloud sync fails.
I believe sharing data with gog servers should be optional.
Post edited August 10, 2019 by djoxyk
Wait, so these community-integrations are literally just random code GOG pulls from github every now and then, with no vetting or anything? That looks to be an excellent way for someone to quickly spread malware once Galaxy 2.0 has been out for six months or more.

I dun' think I'll be installing any community-integrations.
Yeah i am unsure of the entire community integration thing as well. I guess they are of course looking at the code and commit changes on github all the time making sure it is what they intend Galaxy 2 to be, and in all likelyhood they are at least contributing to that code...at least if i was GOG i'd do so.

Still, this begs the question, why not do this themselves officially and properly at that. Anyway, at this point i take a pass and sit and wait 6 months and see how things develop. Right now, i am a bit irritated with the lack of communication concerning the various concerns that have been voiced. Or did i miss some statements made by GOG over the last couple of weeks?

And one more thing: you can say what you want about steam, but the whole workshop and community boards with all those sections like guides, manuals and stuff. I think that is a great system and i really like being able to quickly check there if i have an issue with a game instead of hoping to find a dedicated website or reddit board.

BUT; it really is pretty unlikely that GOG will support the others services natively,....otherwise they would have not launched galaxy 2 with the community integration being a thing at all.
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sc_neo: Yeah i am unsure of the entire community integration thing as well. I guess they are of course looking at the code and commit changes on github all the time
Unless they explicitly say that they check the code every single time, then no, it's not a good idea to assume so.
Just to have this here for reference; the gog privacy policy states under point 5.4


"
5.4 GOG GALAXY 2.0. If you use GOG GALAXY 2.0 and decide to connect your accounts from other platforms with GOG GALAXY 2.0. using GOG official or community integrations, then we may also collect personal and non-personal information via such integrations (see section 4.3 above for details). This feature is totally optional. Please know that community integrations may be governed by separate private policies and we are not responsible for their use of your personal and non-personal information (see further section 5 of the GOG GALAXY 2.0 Licence Agreement)

"
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WereCatf: Wait, so these community-integrations are literally just random code GOG pulls from github every now and then, with no vetting or anything? That looks to be an excellent way for someone to quickly spread malware once Galaxy 2.0 has been out for six months or more.

I dun' think I'll be installing any community-integrations.
Then I guess it's only for gog and xbox for you then. :P
The issue here isn't a potential lack of future support, or the like. The problem is that the current approach based on web site scraping is a huge security risk. Because
(1) you have to give these "community plugins" FULL ACCESS to your account and
(2) you have no idea who's behind these plugins,
(3) you have no idea if these plugins store your account credentials on your local drive securely and what else they are doing with your credentials (like sending them across the network).
(4) you do not know how to delete your credentials if you want to stop using a particular "community plugin".

Also, I'd be surprised if using these "community plugins" didn't violate the Terms of Service of Steam etc., because usually these terms disallow giving out your account's password to third parties.

The only proper implementation would be to use some API mechanism based on app-specific tokens. But probably Valve, Ubi, EA do either not provide enough functionality via such APIs or they have no interest in providing them at all (sadly).

I, for one, have uninstalled Galaxy 2.0, for now.

Having said this, Galaxy 2.0 looked great in every other respect!!
So now we got a GoG 2.0 update and there is STILL no word about more official integrations. This really kills GoG 2.0 for me because that IS the most important part of GoG 2.0 in the first place