I'm not gonna lie: I sometimes feel unable to fire up a game on Steam exactly because of the social features. I sometimes don't want people to know that I'm playing or what I'm playing - at the same time I want to stay available to my Steam friends. And unless I am mistaken the only option I have on Steam is either being clearly visible along with information on the game I'm currently playing or cutting myself completely off from the community features. Also while some people may use information about their friends' game library to find out who they can play multiplayer games with and stuff - I say it's nobody's concern which and how many games I own. I don't want that stuff and it's another reason while I feel pretty "free" when using the GOG site and playing GOG games.

I'm actually fairly sure you can hide the info about purchased games somewhere. As for the display of currently played games, it would be great if you could hide that, and I would actually like to see such a feature implemented. Still, I don't believe displaying of launched games is exactly what OP had in mind, rather integration of the user profiles into an interactive community software (probably in-browser)

Yeah, I've hidden my profile (although it's stupid I had to hide everything, not just my game library and playtime etc.). But I think when friends browse the store my name will popup on every game I own.

Well, he did say: "would love to be able to follow friends and see what they're up to - which games bought recently, which there are playing?" And being followed is the friggin' last thing I want. :P

What he said.

Or, in other words: As long as everything remains optional and unobtrusive, I don't care. The only Steam features of this kind I really like and use are the chat function which is easily available ingame and the "invite a friend" function for multiplayer games - saves the hassle of finding the other person's game.

I think I have only one friend in Steam, and even he hasn't logged in to Steam for like 7 years, or more. I think he stopped playing games too, more mature than me even though he is considerably younger.

And I feel it is fine as it is. I prefer playing on my own time and not because someone asks me to play, or even having a dedicated schedule with the "guild", or the rest of the guild damning you to hell just because you wanted to log off of World of Warcraft.

I guess that is the reason why I played Quake TeamFortress and TeamFortress Classic so many years (and even becoming quite an expert in it, I'd say), without ever joining an TF guild, and only playing on public servers. I just want to have some fun, when I want. If I want to be social on the net, there's still these forums, Facebook and Skype.

Having said that, I am not really against optional social features on GOG. Up to them, if they have the resources to do it (on top of more important things). I just hope there won't be endless trading card and snowball topics then in GOG forum. Maybe they should have a separate forum.

Also, I'd say e.g. these forums fulfill my "social GOG" needs quite well. Ok so I have to write down manually to forums what I've played and finished, but in a way I feel this is more fulfilling than just having some statistics on my profile how many GOG games I've played and how far I've played them. Why should I advertise it to you that I've been stuck near the end of Wheel of Time for like half a year?

As a matter of fact, I consider GOG not having "social features" less of a problem, than e.g. Humble Store or GamersGate not having a discussion forum. Or do they nowadays?

The goddamn forum is as good a social feature as it gets.

No no no, that's not what the elites want though. On this forum you have anonymity, they want everyone in the world to be forced to put their real name and personal details alongside everything they post on the internet.

"Social features" are basically the way governments and corporations are trying to get verifiable personal details of as many people on the planet as possible, because of course you can't track the online activities of anonymous individuals, so you can't control them. Fecesbook, Twatter and all that garbage is basically the wet dream of every wannabe autocrat in the world. They want to eliminate the entire idea of privacy.

Why do you want privacy, anyway? Are you plotting something?

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