GOG store becomes more social, introduces user profiles

GOG, the one-stop shop for all DRM-free PC gaming needs, is now home to user profiles, giving everyone the ability to set up a customized profile and share their gaming feats with friends, very much similar to how Steam profiles work.

These new profiles are split into four separate sections: Activity feed, Profile, Games, and Friends. Although pretty straightforward, here are the descriptions given on the announcement page for all of them:

Your Feed is the centerpiece of your Profile. Here, you’ll see which games your friends have been playing, all sorts of achievements and milestones, as well as general thoughts, screenshots, and forum activity. You can dispense your approval at whim and share your own stuff as well!

Your Profile is all about you and your gaming accomplishments. It's a summary of your activity, like the time you've spent in your games, your latest achievements (and just how rare they are among other users), as well as a glimpse at what your most active friends have been up to.

If you want to know more about your Games, you need to hit the third tab. It contains a list of all the games you own on GOG, together with stats like time spent in-game and your progress towards unlocking the achievements. Sort the list, compare stats with your friends, and get some healthy competition going.

Finally – your Friends: get a general summary of their achievements and hours played. Here you'll also see which games are the most popular among your friends right now, so you can join them in multiplayer or find something you might enjoy yourself.

Note that since the store does not impose users into using its GOG Galaxy client, stats such as hours played and achievements will not reflect on profiles unless the optional launcher was used while playing games. The rest of the features in user profiles are still usable by everyone regardless.

In addition, alongside the profiles, GOG has introduced several new privacy settings to help users manage their data. Users are able to individually set who can see their profiles, their game libraries, as well as their friends lists, to private, friends only, or all GOG users.