GOG.com gets more social (and more like Steam) today by introducing user profiles. Players can now see what their friends are playing, what games they own, what achievements they have, forum activity, and many other gaming details. Profiles can also be customized with wallpapers based on the games players own, and unlike Steam’s wallpapers, they don’t have to be bought.
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User pages now have four tabs – Activity Feed, Profile, Games and Friends. The feed shows what games you and your friends have played recently, any achievements earned, comments on forums, and all other activity on GOG.com or their games client, GOG Galaxy. ‘Profile’ chronicles your gaming accomplishments, including the time you’ve spent playing.
‘Games’ is a list of all the games players own on GOG, and if relevant, how many achievements can be earned – and how close players are to unlocking them. ‘Friends’ lets you browse the profiles and achievements of your GOG friends list.
GOG make it very clear that they have new privacy settings to deal with this new feature, so if you don’t want to share your gaming details, you don’t have to. These are the same privacy settings that Steam were recently forced to implement, which sadly had the unintended consequence of shutting down SteamSpy.
It’s good to see GOG implementing social features – especially since Steam has had them for a while, and there is a clear resemblance to Steam’s own profile pages – though the GOG Galaxy client is a key part of this and is still an optional install, which raises questions about the likely uptake.
The profiles system is now live, so you can head over to GOG now and check yourself out.