Hello,

"StormLord1975" reported that with v1.7.06_(45686) there occure popups (while playing) who ask to create an asmodee.net account to a. play online and b. (optional) to receive a newsletter.
You can remove this by clicking on an "x" button - but the message appears irregularly in different places in the game (see screenshots attached).

It seems only downgrading to v v1.6.85 or v1.7.04 solves this unpleasant behaviour. I played both versions and was not able to reproduce this issue. I don´t state that it won´t happen to others, but i just can report what i experienced during 3 hours of gameplay with & without galaxy and also with & without an online connection.

I opened an ticket Gog support (#1032538): they told me that they can not much do about it; i should get in touch to asmodee support - which i did today & opened ticket [937487]. As asmodee support desk is not working on weekends i will keep you posted on that.

I also opened a discussion at steam community hub, but (less surprising) did not receive an answer there (so far).

So as i do not want to raise a discussion whether or not this is drm i just want to give you the possibility that you are now aware of this & can choose (if your are using galaxy or stored the older versions elsewhere) to downgrade, so that you can play without this imo annoying popups.

I will - if somebody is ever responding from asmodee - update this thread.

What we can do is boycott Asmodee products.

As a very small information for those interested - this is what i wrote today (was busy last couple of days) as an friendly reminder on steam community hub (in the opened thread for this topic):

"one week - no reaction. not even the usual word sleeves to address the topic at least superficially.

for the customers who might be interested: i opened a ticket at asmodee.
apart from the automatic replies, I have not yet received any response.

Overall, I think it's strange that nowadays as a customer you can expect such practices when buying a pc game at full price. Imho much more should defend themselves against such methods.

One could expect that at least this issue is recognized by asmodee, that they may have implemented this function very poorly and that they consider to correct this. But it seems not to happen.

Sure: that's asmodee right to do so.
but my right as a customer is to take this behavior into account when making future purchases from asmodee."

Sad. I guess Asmodee doesn't want any more money from us. (I was planning to buy the digital version of Terraforming Mars, but not when they treat us like this.)

Where did you open the Asmodee ticket?

Gog Support suggested this link for opening a ticket (which i used):

https://asmodee.helpshift.com/a/scythe-digital-edition/?p=all

I am still waiting for a response from a support engineer, but opening ticket & also automatic reply is working well (i received a ticket number). So let´s see what will happen. I certainly will update this thread. :-)

Received the first answer from Asmodee Support a couple of minutes ago:

"Hello,

Thank you for your feedback!
We are deeply sorry about that. Please note that our teams are working on it.

Best regards,
Asmodee Digital"

I am glad they answered - let´s see if in an future update these screens will be implemented less offensive. :-)
I´ll keep this thread posted if there is any progress.

Any updates on this? I'm looking at buying the game but not a fan of this.

Hello basler04,

i asked them on april 21 on "how to proceed with the ticket" - but did not get any answer.
Due to your question i asked them again for feedback.

I´ll keep this thread posted.
Thank you
Cheers

P.S.: also, so far there was / is no update for Scythe installers that adresses this issue.

Today i received an answer from support: they are "understaffed and doing their best in this complicated period".
They also said "they do not ignore our feedback, but can not give preicse dates and timelines to when an issue will be resolved".

So i guess we must be patiently waiting for an upcoming feedback from Asmodee (which i will do, of course).
I like, that they keep responding & being honest.

I´ll keep this thread posted if there will be an reply from Asmodee support.

Today asmodee released an update. Patchnotes did not address, if this "feature" is handled (or not). I will play in the next couple of days (don´t know exactly when, but i will) & provide an impression (here) for this topic.

Also: i still did not receive any response from asmodee support since may - i guess, after playing the new update i will sent them an mail; maybe they give an status on that (i did not receive an mail, that my ticket is closed, so....).

I just tested it. Unfortunately, the popups are still present in 1.7.12.

Hi StormLord1975,

thank you very much for your efforts & information. I appreciate. :-)
Ok, i will go ahead for writing them an email.
Hope dies last (although i am not too convinced they will ever change that).
If they give feedback, i will reply here.

Thanks again.
Best regards

Thanks for letting us know the last good version and trying to get them to change it. I played last night with the previous vesion and I think it was bugging me twice a game to register (my game system is fully offline so even if I had an account I couldn't use it from that system). Now with 1.7.12 it is bugging me FIVE times per game.

While I hope they will fix it, unfortunately I suspect it is intentional to get as many people as they can to give them their email address. It would be trivial to fix (most likely just revert the commit that caused it to happen in the first place). The first time I saw it I didn't notice the X and attempted to cancel a few times (the cancel button doesn't actually make it go away) before I figured it out, so likely some people will not notice and make the account thinking they have no choice if they want to continue playing. Additionally, they don't even include the rules PDF in the offline installer, even though it would only be an 80MB addition to a 620MB install (and I'm guessing most people will want to save a copy of the rules anyway since it is complex). Again, my guess is that this is intentional because they want the traffic analysis.

I don't think GOG should just ignore this or a bunch of publishers will add annoying popups all the time to get you to sign up for their games. Knowing that games work single player without internet is one of the major advantages of buying games at GOG, unless they let stuff like this go then it won't be.

These popups are really annoying. I'm thinking of asking a refund because of them.
Fortunately Terraforming Mars, also from Asmode, doesn't have this annoyance.

Hello,

on june 11th i contacted again asmodee support regarding the suspended ticket (for the in-game popups).
So far i did not get an response.

It could be, that they may answer in the future or that they improve the notification system. I am willing to let time decide whether they do so or not.

But i am not willing to invest more time in tracking down support for further updates, because i somehow have the feeling that they don´t prioritize this critizism at all & keep being radio silent on this.

So thank you ALL for your input and support. I was a little surprised, that various people were supporting this topic - I would like to express my deep admiration - i appreciate.

If you want to discuss further on topic, feel free to do so. :-)

Thank you
Best regards