They claim gamers clamored to prevent the game's release on the GOG platform, but I have to ask, "what gamers?"

If they're referring to government-sponsored bots and agitators who are compelled under threat by said government to harrass its enemies, such as the poor indie developers who made Devotion, then let's just say I have my doubts.

I will be sharing this with friends and others as, after all, if GOG becomes another arm of an intolerant government who, by the way, is currently running actual concentration camps and other horrors within its borders, then maybe GOG isn't the platform for independent gamers anywhere.

At least in some places, this is attracting some game news media organizations, as I found this out via such an article, so let's hope this brings in more attention to the subject by actual gamers.

Of course not, that's not the way to go, just like CDPRs developers/artists (and mods neither) are not responsible for what the upper management/CEOs/shareholders decides.

Good to know you guys are the CCPs whore

To be honest I can understand that to a degree. I think GOG don't want be targeted with aggressive DDoS Attacks from a totalitarian government.

But still a weak communication move from them.

I'm very disappointed, CDPR.

Jokes around China seem to be a big no-no here.

Earlier this year, in the thread celebrating Chinese new year (of the rat), my corona joke got removed by a moderat :( There's a couple quotes left though.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/whats_your_chinese_zodiac_sign_check_your_gaming_horoscope_with_gogcom_e3e68/post47

Well, this has disappointed me. I was going to buy this on rerelease, I've been looking forward to it.
Politicians who can't take criticism are total Pooh, regardless of what country they are dictators of.

Oh deary me. The stuff I have missed lol. This isn't looking very good for them, is it?

I was going to hop on the sale, but nah..forget it.

Well someone suggested that this move was to distract from the CP launch... (I admit it: I like the game so far, even on my lowly machine, so there's that), but I don't believe GOG is that clever.

I think
a) Maybe Tencent put pressure on Epic who in turn put pressure on GOG (Epic store in Galaxy) or something like that, and/or
b) GOG in all their glorious competence we've all experienced really somehow didn't know about the controversy surrounding this game in China and when after the announcement the first million complaints came in someone quickly googled the issue and went all pale, and/or
c) CDP group has a lot of chinese investors (more than 60% are publicly traded) who were not amused, and/or
d) They are genuinely afraid to lose something on the Chinese market - which is huge, but I don't how much of a foothold GOG had there. There are a few active Chinese users here on the forum, and there could be a ton of customer who might be pissed off by the game.

Fact is, this is one of the worst cases of "handling a situation" GOG ever pulled. Headless chicken could have done it better.

Fact is also that the Chinese, who went through a lot of suffering, but also achieved a lot in the last years and decades, are genuinely proud of their country and leadership, and lack a sense of humour in that regard.
And they're not the only ones. Post "DRM-free #wontbeerased" on Twitter and watch yourself get turn apart, in the o so free "West".
Make a few jokes about Trump and be the rest of your life afraid some crazed Trumpist shows up at your front door with a gun.
We're different, but we're not better.

[deleted]

Ironically this issue will have been boosted by those people as a way to attack gog.
These people are the same that completely ignored blizzards bad behaviour and censorship towards customers but suddenly appeared after some chinese incident.

I can't even make the sarcastic joke. This just guarantees that China is once again going to get trolled with Winnie the Pooh memes and that this is going to cause way more of an uproar than simply releasing the game could ever hope to accomplish.

Welp, looking like I'm gonna be doing ALL my game shopping on Steam now...

So GoG decided to show they're not gonna suck chinese d*ck, and then two minutes later they changed their minds and not only they started sucking chinese d*ck, they also apologized for not sucking it sooner?