They could be doing it in the hope of drawing gog's attention to the issues without wanting to harm the business or, as in my case, they could simply not want to spend any more money here.

Edit to add that I didn't read the "supposed to" in Breja's post as literally meaning *supposed to* but something more like "it's assumed we do".

I think the idea that 'if you are boycotting something you must HATE it' is a little silly. You can boycott in protest and still like the thing you're boycotting. It's not that hard tp understand. People are frustrated with GOG for many reasons. Their constant slide into accepting DRM, the poor commutation from the company to its users, bizarre moderating in forums, spotty offline installer upkeep, Devotion etc etc there's plenty of points covered in this thread, the ideal of the boycott is to be heard, not to hurt. If anyone at GOG feels the users are trying to hurt them...then frankly that's their problem and they need to reconsider working in any form of community relations.

Of course, some use boycotts to try and hurt something, but I don't think this is the case with the one we're talking about here. If you build your ideals so proudly, only to constantly move away from them without a word, then of course the reaction you garner from your core users will be negative. You can see examples of this with the recent backlash a number of football clubs faced with the super league. The fans love the clubs, but they will still express disdain towards bad choices.

I know right! Not everything is black and white! a shocking twist!

Sure. There's one small problem though: in order to draw GOG's attention to the boycott, the boycott has to show consequences.
Consequences of a boycott against a business are always financially.
Said financial consequences are always of the harming sort.
Thus: to boycott a business means to harm that business. Period.

And in what way exactly is "not wanting to spend any more money here [on GOG]" not harming GOG financially?

See - people have to learn that they can't have their cake AND eat it.

You either boycott GOG - thus harming it financially in the process, or you don't harm them financially, but then you aren't boycotting them, also.

There's no "I can have it both ways" - way, when it comes to boycotts.

I don't see why. That would make the whole thing rather pointless, no?

It's no surprise to me, so not really in my case. On the one hand, there is plenty of incentive for them to give an impression of being well off. On the other, it is natural that a boycott like this starts out too small and the company too well-off for it to take immediate effect.

Nah. It's sufficient for the situation to be dire enough that their business would or could do poorly if they were to continue along the undesired trajectory.

This part is fairly phrased, though.

As a boycotter I have to trust that GOG are not so stupid that they will allow things to go that far. If it does, it's a failure on both ends.

Me not spending here will harn them financially (albeit a very small amount) but my main intent is to not buy from a shop that I feel has been dishonest. It makes no difference to me if I'm *technically* boycotting them or not.

This is exactly what's wrong with the world, people get bored and apathetic, an unsolved issue doesn't stop being an issue just because some people are sick of hearing about it. That's how problems not only never end, but how they become normalized.

I disagree. Regardless of whether GOG listens or not to the boycotters (they most likely will not) and regardless of whether the boycott has any noticeable effect on GOG's bottom line (it most likely will not), the boycott is in no way a waste of time for me.

1) It allows me to feel good with myself for not buying at a place that I feel has been mistreating a fair number of its customers (myself included) for a long time.
2) It saves me money which I may or may not spend in other video game stores.

I still hope GOG gets "better" and will do my bit to help it happen, but I am no longer willing to waste my money while waiting.

You summarized it correctly, and I am not just "kinda correct" :)

It's only been ~5 months, people aren't likely to move on so quickly if they're invested here. To be blunt, I don't think boycotters will be satisfied in the end (so energy put into this might work better spent on building up a different store like Zoom), especially if the forum really is a minority of people and/or most users use Galaxy, but I understand them keeping at it.

For that to happen, Zoom would have to show some initiative and demonstrate to me that they're willing to do things better than gog, rather than worse. The easiest way to gain some quick street cred would have been for them to release Devotion. They didn't, instead they released a boatload of shovelware nobody cares about. While gog's website is a disaster, Zoom's website is a worst case scenario (or close to one, I suppose they could include some more google Craptchas to make it even worse). The only improvement I noticed is that they are now selling the Postal 2 DLC, which implies that their Postal 2 build is now no longer 7 years out of date. Yay?

I was banking on itch.io becoming an alternative once more higher profile indie publishers release their work there. But I'm involuntarily boycotting them as well since they now require me to provide my physical address when I want to buy a game there.

I think this is well said. The intention of the boycott is not to cause GOG to fail, it is a protest that is designed to send a message, provide feedback and push for positive change. People protesting about social issues outside the US Capitol don't usually consider their protests a failure if the US government doesn't go bankrupt as a result.

Besides, @qwixter: I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that CDPR doesn't publish separate financial figures for the GOG store. So, do we have reliable numbers that GOG is seeing record sales?

This is new. I've not had this problem before. Are you sure it's not a payment method thing?

I just tested. I can download games from itch.io without providing my physical address - or anything apart from my login. What payment method do you use? I guess Time4Tea is right and it might be a payment method issue, rather than an itch.io issue.

Every quarter the cdprojekt group (a publicaly traded company) publishes it's financial figures, they are split by each company in the group (cdprojekt red and gog). Each company has detailed financial results.

The user OldOldGamer is listed twice as #85 and #96 in Time4Tea's opening post.