Video games have become quite the social event these days. Even if you don’t play Monster Hunter: World or Fortnite with your friends every night, they still can view your Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or Steam profile to see how many hours you’ve logged and how many achievements you’ve acquired. At long last, the champion of DRM-free gaming GOG.com is joining the social fold with user profiles.
GOG.com’s new user profiles are split into four sections: feed, profile, games, and friends. Feed is described as “the centerpiece of your Profile” and is a smorgasbord of activity. Gamers can keep track of playtime and achievements, post Facebook-esque screenshots and thoughts, and monitor forum activity — which is a useful addition since many games available on GOG.com are older titles that might not work well with modern operating systems. Not to be confused with the feed section, the profile section of the new user profiles is “all about you and your gaming accomplishments.” This section keeps track of game time, achievements, and what your friends have been doing on their games. Plus, you can customize your profile with special wallpapers, ranging from simple colors to pictures of your favorite games.
The games section, as you might expect, focuses on the games in your GOG.com library. Like the feed and profile sections, the games section keeps track of your playtime and achievements, but it also includes a list of all available achievements and monitors how much progress you’ve made towards unlocking them. Likewise, the friends section is self-explanatory. It provides a summary of your friends, the games they’ve played, how long they’ve played, how many achievements they’ve unlocked, and if they’re online and available/willing to join you in a multiplayer game. That is, of course, assuming your friends don’t use the new privacy settings to make their profiles invisible.
The only downside of the user profiles is they are dependent on GOG.com’s standalone downloading platform GOG Galaxy. You can post random thoughts/screenshots and GOG.com games without the platform, but your profile can’t keep track of playtime, achievements, and other milestones without GOG Galaxy.
If you don’t own a GOG.com account, now’s as good a time as any to make one.
