You can add my name to this boycott list, TIme4Tea. I've left my reasons why in the devotion wishlist comments section, but it's much the same as others have covered. Censorship is bad, bending the knee to insane dictatorships is bad, blaming gamers for GoG's cowardice is bad, ectra, ectra.

My email to GOG just now:

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Ever since GOG pulled Devotion and lied about the reasons (blaming "gamers" even though the thousands of comments about this on social media, from gamers, for weeks, are all asking for the game - obviously GOG was lying about the reason), many of us long term customers and supporters have been angry at GOG for the decision, the lying, and (on top of that) the continuing silence.
GOG has not replied to any of the thousands of social media comments and posts about this.
That actually goes against your own policy on your website:
Direct contact with GOG Team
"Have a question, need help or you just want to talk about great PC games? Reach out on GOG forums, tweet at us or drop us a message on Facebook, and we'll get back to you."
GOG has not got back to any of the thousands of commenters, so that's a further lie to your customers.
As with many others, I have changed my policy.
- I refunded any orders from the last 30 days (first ever refund)
- Deleted my GOG wishlist
- Didn't buy anything in the sale
- Made sure I spoke about this on social media.
I won't be buying from GOG again until you sort this out (nor will I buy CD Project games like Cyberpunk from another store).
As others have said, I have enough games to last me a lifetime already here, on Steam, and on Itch (probably hundreds that I haven't played yet). For the first time in two years I bought games in Steam's Winter Sale (and none in GOG's). Steam is shit and I know it, so I have low expectations and am not disappointed. Gog seriously disappointed me.
Unless this gets resolved I'll go back to how I was a few years ago and get all my games on Steam (if heavily discounted, to make up for the DRM) and Itch (full price if indie and DRM-free).
(Oh, and to top it off, GOG threatened me with closing my Forum account because I posted about the Devotion issue and they vaguely said it broke their forum guidelines.)
It's weird how a company can have a super-loyal customer, and via a number of bad decisions that they double down on, make that customer so angry that they lose all their goodwill and will no longer recommend them or support them.
I've no idea how to get all this alienation noticed by the people at GOG who have the power to change anything. If those in charge of GOG were doing their job properly they would be aware of all this already, and would have resolved the situation (and if they were competent they'd have avoided it in the first place). But, just in case the decisions are made by people who don't pay attention to the public mood, this really needs forwarding to them. The board and senior directors should be passed all the comments, emails, posts, blog posts, forum posts, Tweets, Facebook comments etc on this issue so they can see how much they have upset people.
It's still not too late to fix it.
All they have to do is release Devotion (as agreed);
give an honest explanation (not the disingenuous tweet) as to how it happened and who was responsible for the policy and ensuing silence (since it is obvious GOG staff have been told not to comment, by someone higher up who just wants the issue to go away) and apologise for lying about "gamers" when the obvious real reason is adoption of Chinese censorship; and make sure you have policies in place against lying to your customers.
Please pass that on to the senior GOG staff. At present I can't tell if they are oblivious to the situation (which would suggest a huge level of ineptitude and unsuitability for the role), or if they enjoy lying to and insulting the intelligence of their long-term customers (which is reprehensible).

To be fair, my main issue with GOG is based on the same type of reaction. They had their own status quo with which I strongly agreed, and which they themselves are now challenging. And among other things the potential threat of having to deal with DRM and being force-fed their Galaxy client is indeed very inconvenient.

No one in the whole world sells Devotion. Where do you buy games? (if you pirate, I respect that.)

Go sell it yourself. Seriously, contact the rightholders, set up a store and take like a 5% commission on top of everything else. You don't even hate to set up a pretty website, they can embed a widget. I'll buy 50 copies.

But see, for whatever reason, no one did this. Not Elon Musk, not the gay slaver, not anyone on the so-called left either. Itch took donations to fund burning of American cities (which continues to this day), but they aren't selling Devotion. Did Red Candle reject them perhaps?

The truth is people get cut from electronic payment processing for political reasons all the time. It happens to Iranians and Cubans, it happens to residents of occupied Crimea, it happens to law-abiding Americans.

There was money lying around and they picked it up.

This is a legit complaint. I'll also add CP2077 has preorder exclusives, too.

This I don't care about if I don't have to see it.

You're completely right to do so. But other people react as if all of these are objective moral failings (but for whatever reason they only choose to boycott now, not when GOG betrayed a community member to suck up to pedophiles on twitter.) (The runner-up for me was the shuttering of the Brazilian forum.)

"to make a formal promise to do something"
(Cambridge Business English)

GOG pulled Onizuka > Urumi "murder by bu*t blow" move.
Where Onizuka picking up THE coin represents GOG company and Urumi represents loyal GOG customers caring about true DRM-free as well as preservation and proper execution of human rights.
Except we GOG customers / Urumi never wake up / we just die.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQkGJXo3cVY )

( Ironically "Urumi raising from the grave and haunting Onizuka" is basically us on the forum right now :P )

I intentionally used the word "selling". It is not free, it simply has a variable price (as low as zero, as high as hundreds of dollars or more). If they wanted it to be free, they wouldn't have added in-app purchasing to it. Calling it "free" is like calling galaxy "optional".

Of course they didn't. That would be too risky for the business in China. ... actually I don't blame them that much for making that financially motivated decision (regrettable as it may be). But I do blame them for their ridiculously dishonest justification for that decision. That was just cowardly and shows that GOG is going to great lengths to avoid open communication with their customers. ... A point where they used to excel in, many years ago.

What happened there?

Ill continue to use the site just to check stuff out, use the forums, etc. But I wont buy anything else from them unless they release devotion.

Its not even about me wanting the game, Ill buy it though, but its about censorship and cancellation. No one ignores it or fights it anymore, all it takes is a couple pussies complaining online to get something removed, canceled or banned. And censorship in any form is a heinous crime in my book.

So as long as gog or any company really is pro censorship to the point of removal or banning I wont support them.

Hard disagree. The base price is zero, meaning free. Period. You can't sell anything if it costs nothing.

There is no admission price or obligation to pay for anything and you can access the game and anything in it whenever you want (as limited by progression). Which by all definition of logic means free (monetarily). The fact that you can pay for faster progression/cards or whatever doesn't change anything since you don't have to do it. World of Tanks is free. Warthunder is free. World of Wacraft is NOT free.

Well as usually the first item mentioned on a list is the most important one, and that this thread and others have been seemingly kicked off by sentiment related to Devotion, that is what I focused on.

Just for the record, I agree with items 5 and 6 on the list and most of item 2 ... removal of GWENT is just unrealistic, and who cares really. The other two items don't really matter to me at this stage, and Devotion is just one game that some are misguided about.

Unless GOG get seriously bad with Item 6, I see no decent reason to even consider a boycott.

So it seems to me you are just punishing yourselves really, and not GOG. A lot more people got upset about the removal of the old GOG Downloader, including myself, and nothing has been done about that. I am also seriously annoyed with the website bloat and the bloat in Galaxy ... so much so, that I don't even use the latter. I also refuse to visit all their sales pages and just rely on my wishlist programs and keeping them up-to-date. I also use a script or two to improve other things.

At the end of the day, so long as GOG keep providing plenty of DRM-Free games, I only have things to get annoyed at them about, but nothing worthy of boycotting.

And in my own way, I have boycotted them to some degree at times ... been choosier with my purchasing, put a price limit on my spending, etc. But I have also tried to make sure I am not penalizing myself.

GOG really are the faceless beast, you really cannot impact very much. They can and do choose to ignore you, and for all intents and purposes that strategy works for them. So don't throw the baby out with the bath water with your angst.

And despite the seeming promise of the ZOOM Platform, there is really only one store like GOG right now, and if we lost that, all of a sudden your/my issues would become petty ones for the most part.

Well what I said in that regard, wasn't really for those people.

I don't pirate. Right now the only place I am buying games is from Zoom Platform. It's true that they don't sell Devotion either, but a couple of points:

1) It's not just about GOG not selling Devotion. It's about the whole way they have handled the situation. ZP might not be selling it, but they also haven't promised to release it and then backtracked on that on the same day, citing 'messages from gamers' as a reason, without showing any evidence of that. They also did not proceed to completely ignore several thousand actual messages from their customers, who are requesting that the game be released.

2) This isn't just about Devotion. As I mentioned in my original post, that is just one of many issues I have with recent GOG decisions that have led me to do this. Hence the list of 6 items. For me, Devotion is like the last straw that has broken the camel's back, which has prompted me to feel the need to take action.

So that makes it ok? We should just turn a blind eye and accept it, because it 'happens all the time'? That's just the way the world is now?

No. You can do what you want, but I don't accept that. I know I can't personally fight every battle on every front simultaneously. I'm not a 1-man army. But, I am going to fight this one, because it's an issue where I feel I can do my part.

(updated first post to #268)

And the ZOOM Platform is another store. Until they actually provide the game, they are only slightly better than the other stores in that regard ... maybe ... and maybe they are just seeking to get attention or take advantage of animosity toward GOG. If in the end they don't sell Devotion, are you gonna blacklist them accordingly, as what could their possible excuse be. At least GOG were open, if perhaps not fully truthful ... that's more than you can say for the other stores silently ducking the issue. Parents tell white lies to their kids all the time, so don't be so quick to judge GOG in that regard without indisputable proof.

What happened with Devotion, shouldn't even be a straw. At least GOG entertained selling the game. Whether the reason given for changing their mind is true or not, you don't know the reason behind giving that reason or what the real reason might be.

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By boycotting GOG of course, you are doing much more than that, and that should really also be part of your considerations too. I and many others here, have some sympathy with your reasons, and even some sympathy for the DEVs of Devotion. However, there is a bigger picture, and there is the stark cold logic of reality.

If you don't buy the games you would have at GOG and don't buy them elsewhere, you are penalizing their providers. You could also easily be sabotaging the DRM-Free movement, especially if those providers don't get enough sales at GOG or are borderline like many are when it comes to DRM-Free. The offset of doing such, could well weaken GOG, and maybe precipitate what you fear, what all of us DRM-Free lovers fear.

While I am sure that controversy for GOG keeps them in the spotlight and potentially provides more sales, the same may not be said for those who provide games to GOG, who may wish to stay away from the negativity etc.

If GOG fail, they won't be the only losers.

I really think you should preserve boycotting for if and when GOG do finally go too far, where you will have many more, including myself joining you, and have some chance of making a difference. Right now it is like farting into the wind.

Actually, they are willing to sell Devotion and the Dev said, they'd reach out to zoom-platform. We will see.

But, again, this ist not about Devotion. For me, this boycott is about DRM. GOG had '100% DRM-free' as their last remaining principle and 'Galaxy always optional' as their last remaining promise. Now they have started to sell games with DRM and have made Galaxy mandatory for some parts of single-player games. That is a development that I won't support with my money.

The Devotion thing is just another demonstration of how little GOG thinks of their customers. They didn't dare to say: "we can't sell the game after all for political reasons". Instead they opted for the 'many gamers' lie. Which is about as ridiculous as their 'too niche' excuse - only more insulting to their customers: "Hey, it's your own fault, 'many' of you wanted this and you're stupid enough to believe this!" (GOG rephrased)

But again: this is not my reason for the boycott and it was only one reason among 6 for the OP. So it doesn't matter that no one else sells Devotion. What matters is DRM and the way GOG treats their customers.