GalCiv4 Forums
Will it be possible to run galciv iv as a normal standalone program without having to launch through or connected with some totally superfluous privacy busting client from epic/steam/gog et al !?!?!?
Don't know about Epic, but Steam & GOG don't really invade your privacy. They only collect stats on your gameplay.
The devs will answer the rest with certainty, but I guess that, at some point, you will be able to buy the game through Stardock's store, at which point maybe it won't go through a 3rd party.
Epic allows offline play also
Neither of these services that allows "offline mode" means they stop collecting data on your gameplay. They just send it in a burst when you connect instead of as you play. Not that it matter anyway, I don't see this as privacy invading (data is not shared with advertisers for Steam and GOG, not sure about Epic) and it won't record anything outside of the app.
Steam's privacy policy is here:
https://store.steampowered.com/privacy_agreement/
GOG:
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632109-Privacy-Policy?product=gog
EPIC:
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/privacypolicy
EPIC specifically notes marketing partners.
EA:
https://www.ea.com/legal/privacy-policy
UBISoft:
https://legal.ubi.com/privacypolicy/en-CA
GOG has the best privacy policy of all, imho, short and to the point.
EPIC seems on par with EA&UBIsoft.
Probably not. It's just not viable for developers to maintain independent downloaders, managers and various apparatus to handle payment processing etc.
It should be noted right now on EGS you can launch the game without launching the EGS client. But you do still need the client to download the game and update. The same is true of our games on Steam and even GOG has its limitations.
This is just the way games are sold and distributed these days.
Thank you all for your replies.
SchismNavigator. Stardock 'appears' to "maintain independant downloaders, managers and various apparatus to handle payment processing etc." for it's other software but not GalCiv ?
Falconer. I remember being shocked in my early days at Steam at somehow receiving a readout of the information Steam had collected on me. Which included the exact hardware and ALL installed software details of every system I had ever logged in with. This is a total security risk so colour me paranoid.
Gone are the days of "standalone" games that are launched without loaders ... it has been over 10 years since I purchased my last cd/dvd game and even then I didn't need a cd/dvd drive as they gave me a steam key to download the game! 
If you use a web browser such as IE, Chrome, Edge (how do you visit this forum?) they are also collecting all specs of your machine.
I'm sure your "privacy" concerns are valid but i'm sure most people have better things to do than to analyse the amount or type of memory you have on your PC, or the screen resolution you run at !
There are a couple of reasons for the difference there. The software market is different from the games market.
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