By the time this game comes to GOG, China will probably have already invaded and occupied Taiwan and liquidated the devs anyway.

I'm imagining a vat of acid.

This is key to the whole thing. The Chinese citizens (in general) feel very strongly nationalistic when it comes to Taiwan's independence. GOG's PR department, like the complete muppets they are, shared it directly to Weibo. It will have gone viral with people sharing how angry they are at this little Polish company "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people".

Thanks but no thanks, I hate fighting people, let alone entities.
If I see a cause worthy I can do that, otherwise I don't want to waste my life resources for it.
Also, life experience forced me to be "legally tactical" and "know the speech" to make some entities "f off".

Poland probably if we are supposed to take GOG's TOS legal clauses for granted (tho these may be totally different from what is written in that regard in a distribution contract).
Not sure where you got California from...

I think if one cares about a cause one should wipe their a** with statistical chance.
Pretty much everything is "historically unlikely" until a breakthrough is made.
One must just have a will to set a precedent.

2 things:
1.Not sure how much fees would take. So I won't comment on that.
2.You seem to openly be taking into consideration only "initial customer batch interest" ergo only those who already wanted to buy the game. You don't seem to notice the longterm losses in potential sales - as the number of sales post release is neither linear nor flat post first-week.

They don't learn. As evident.
They have a tact of Joker saying "good news everyone" through a speaker system.

That is, of course, unless they (GOG) were tipped by unknown entity to do that.
Or they got lured in by "pie chart promising mountain of treasure" by some, perhaps same, entities.
Your "obvious financial decision" trope.

Oh, is it really?
GOG does not even have nickname history visible publicly.
And it's possible to even disable profiles altogether.
All that while GOG has some forum tags screwed and external robot engine searching (example Google) is kind of a pain often.

Would you be, for example, able to distinguish a short piece of literature written by exquisidely fine-tuned "novel writing AI" from a short sample of literature written by an actual person in same language?
You may try to say "yes" but you have no guarantee and majority could find out that "no" can be applicable in practise.
Even better example:
if you wouldn't know any better completely made up new AI forged paintings could be impossible for you to distinguish.
On the same premise you could have trouble distinguishing between "genuine people who suck at english language and use machine translation which in turn spits awful to read nonsense" from "AI that was deep learning trained to fake badly translated native Cn with some variability controled by cvars and commands".

GOG has an API running on their servers and they can script automation of "account age / products owned / account creation timestamp" checkups and cross-referencing.
Such should be employed in case of a "major backslash influx" for the sake of ensuring validity of the claims, in order to rule out a fake-out by lesser amount of individuals than suggested by gross of messages.
***
(see bottom of the post)

Oh, I don't know, because it's THEIR JOB?

There's quite literally a special branch in Cn dedicated to filtering and control of IT communications flow.
They do exactly that.
And they cooperate with censorship branch, together they form a sort of command and control branch that can take down sh*t, forward it, and so on.
There are certainly gov people in Cn who's job resolves entirely around manually veryfing social sh*t.
So yeah, suggesting otherwise just means you are pretty uninformed on the matter (no offense).

Actually, to my knowledge social sites (actually most sites for that matter) operating in Cn have pretty impressive content filtering and auto-detection (detect and forward for manual analysis by a special IT gov branch afaik, ergo those people who have to manually sit through "special cases") employed.
So, technically, Cn gov KNOWS when sh*t hits the fan on social media.
They know pretty much instantly.
Therefore there's no need for "gov higher-ups to sit on social media".

FYI:
Wishlist entires on GOG barely ever show actual interest.
They almost always represent heavily undervalued numbers.

It is quite certainly a possibility that some percantage or all of those alleged "people" were Cn non-gov-related citizens.
But frankly there's no proof for that.

*** Hey, on Steam the "offending content" was removed AGES before GOG distribution announcement. For all I know the GOG version was the "cut" one already.
If there would be genuine backslash pre-release about the "offending content" then GOG could just tell everybody "prematurely offended" that the content is removed in GOG release. What's the problem with doing that?

Thank you, yes this is a legitimate societal phenomena with general nationalism. This paper suggests from 2015 a remnant of 10-25% of young Beijingers being nationalists through surveys: believing China is better than most countries and supporting your country when it's wrong (strongly agree + agree). Nationalism has been in general decline for younger Beijing generations compared to the older ones, but is still not an insignificant portion.

GOG User Agreement, Section 19. Governing Law states for US residents: Also in GOG Galaxy Applications, section 11: Therefore, I have reason to believe it's possible to undergo legal proceedings under Polish / EU law or California / US laws, whichever method they think is better shot at winning for them.

Not sure if you know this, but all legal cases are crosschecked with previous similar legal cases to assess if this is a new legal precedent. Your idea inherently assumes this is a new precedent in the first place. GOG has had delisted games since 2017 and presumably has access to a very good legal team. Therefore, I have great reason to believe that this conflict would fall under some sort of termination clause already in the contract that Red Candle would've agreed to when they signed contracts. If CD Projekt's legal team never had the foresight to write their contract to favour GOG in this scenario, they should probably get a new team. Good point. The alternatives are Red Candle's own economic estimates or newly corrected estimate after the fact for GOG only. Could they try to sue for the amount of copies they've sold since then on their digital store? Probably. Could they find a way to link all those purchases back to GOG? Maybe, though not sure how they'd go about doing that. A mistake also seems likely, which seems to have been the case when they posted about it on Weibo.It was to also address anyone with intentionality bias. There is no practical reason GOG benefits from intentionally shooting themselves in the foot like this. Who is this unknown entity? Businesses always operate on financial decisions, that's literally what upper and middle management usually does.

I just think some CD Projekt exec overreacting to the news and/or their Chinese product distributors contacting them are more likely than the Chinese embassy in Poland visiting their HQ in secret and demanding they pull the game. These are all valid points. Has there been an example of a regular forum user, who speaks eloquently and has invested a nonzero amount into the platform, turned out to be a bot? This assumes Chinese GOGers messaged GOG directly instead of through Weibo where it was initially shared. If only 3% of GOG's 2020 revenue came from China, then I can rule out these users going up in arms about this entire fiasco. Did you read the BBC article I posted? Back in 2013, to achieve the same LOS in censorship rates, Weibo would've had to employ > 4000 people to read at max speed to delete 90% of content within 24 hours without autocensor tools. Yeah, there are probably teams that do reporting and process some of those reports to enforce penalties. But to think they'd be sitting in their offices all day browsing social media is still a ridiculous concept to me. Already addressed above. If you want to be really pedantic about the point, my estimate also disregarded discounted prices and regional pricing (i.e., every vote is a US buyer at regular price). I don't have Red Candle's economic assessment and neither do you. So the calculation I have is the best one both of us have access to unless someone else can come in with better numbers.

To anyone else making this more exciting than it already actually is - we live in the real world where Occam's razor should be applied in speculative situations like this, not some psychological, political drama, thriller where anything can happen and extreme minima scenarios have a strong likelihood of possibility.

Hold on. NO.
That's not how it works.
First of all, for CITIZENS, ergo customers, one is picked depending on their country of residence/citizenship, NOT "what GOG thinks is better for a situation".
Second of all, like I said in the past already - this may not reflect at all what is written in the contract - therefore, unlike you, I did not cite this at all knowing this may very well be indicative of all nothing in regards to distribution contracts.

No, actually, the wording I used hinted heavily I was making a general statement applicable to any case and not actually directed towards THIS case.
I merely stated in response to what you originally wrote, that probablitity and historical success rate are worthless denominator for someone truly caring about their desire to win/do something.

Name even just ONE example (other than the game discussed here) of a game that got announcement of a release, got store page live, and got delisted before availability status on the product card changed from "coming soon" to available price+purchase possibility.

Don't confuse "mistake" with "incompetence".

To my knowledge to this day GOG has no official business presence in Cn market as a store, let alone gov approved one (which basically every one officially present there has to be).
"Chinese Gwent version" does not count - not sure 100% but it could be distributed by CDPR themselves.
Either way, a store with no official business presence in there should not even be "officially" making announcements on their social media sites.
It's kind of awkward and bizzare what GOG allegedly did.

Some people believe bad publicity is better than no publicity.
Some PR departments engrave this bold statement into their working principles.

"Unkown entity" was my way of saying "a long list of possible entities" while avoiding calling any direct examples that I had in mind.

I think you should stop such direct accusations before someone accused by you officially accuses you of accusing them.

I don't know. Do I look like world's collection of all GOG posts' info combined in one storage facilitator for an easy and fast reference?
I am not personally aware of any example because I don't crawl the entire forum looking for bots specificly.
Also when I see accounts I suspect are bots I then don't check them *, also as a user (not GOG's admin) I have no way of knowing if products appearing on GOG user's publicly visible game list were paid for by said user or someone else, for example originating from giveaways.
* I don't do such checkups because noone pays me for it and I have better things to do in life than aimlessly burning my life time in a free service of a company whos actions I don't agree with.
But feel free to keep asking around all other the forum, perhaps eventually you will get a positive result.

You seem exceptionally fond on bringing up awfully dated researches.
6-7 years is eternity.
Technology progressed a lot since 2013, automated censorship capabilities followed.
Oh, and 4k people is a drop in an ocean of Cn population btw.

To bad.
There are literal job positions across the world aimed at doing exactly that.
Expecting some gov branch in some country to have such responsibilities isn't unthinkable, especially for non-democratic country.

Also, you misunderstood, I specificly said that automated software is at play that filters and forwards.
That means that whatever gets a higher internal filtering system rating can be forwarded for additional manual inspection.
I did not mean "ALL OF IT".

No. This was in direct response to you CONSTANTLY going on about how allegedly "the messages" came from GOG accounts and not other communication means (you speak in a way as if you would be certain about that).
It's YOU that either goes on with no end about how this was either originated from Weibo or GOG accounts while there's plenty of other methods that might have been utilised in that hypothetical "many messages" incident.

the... what?

If Red Candle has a US subsidiary, I don't see why it's not a realistic option. I don't know if they do. If they don't, then it's going through Polish or EU courts. Maybe I was incorrect in applying Canadian contract law in this scenario by studying historical cases. As always, If the legal cases have unique features that make it different enough compared to similar historical cases, then results could be different. And this is a worst case scenario because litigation is always a last resort in cases where companies can't see eye-to-eye and mediation / arbitration has failed. Not on GOG, but some similar examples out there:

1. Rule of Rose (2006): pulled by 505 on UK release day, gamedev Punchline seems defunct and 505 still in operation today having cited issues with retail and publishers
2. Hatred (2015): pulled by Valve and later reinstated with an apology (for completion's sake)
3. Standoff / Active Shooter (2018): pulled by Valve before its release date
4. Super Seducer (2018): pulled by Sony before release

In cases #1 and #3-4, I couldn't find any reports of a lawsuit by the gamedevs against these platforms or any successful cases against them. Therefore, I can presume with good reason that these cases do exist and there are resolution clauses in GOG's contracts for these type for this highly situational events like these. There's a difference between negligence and incompetence. Repeated negligence leads to incompetence. The 2018 social media staff was terminated IIRC. Sorry, what does this have to do with intentionality bias? 3% of their 2020 revenue came from China; in 2019, China wasn't even listed as part of the GOG market share below Sweden's 2% (p.66), so it could've grown there. So does that somehow stop them from having a social media page on Weibo? Also FYI, CD Projekt also has a subsidiary in Shanghai. Some people and some PR departments? Who? Bad publicity is bad for established companies based on this 2010 paper and the only time it's actually useful is to increase the public awareness (and thus sales) of relatively unknown products. And a good example of alienating the Chinese market was D&G's advertising gaffe that saw their 2019 total revenue contract by 12% in their Asia-Pacific market. If there is anyone who thinks they threw Red Candle under the bus to give them more clout in China for GOG while risking their CDPR sales in China needs to provide a good explanation for anyone to take them seriously. You're not providing any specifics or answers nor any good reason to believe in them. All I'm hearing is that China's censorship is quite robust and they have a lot of people. That's the entire premise of your argument. You do realize if there was more recent information on this stuff, I'd be linking to that material instead? Where are your sources? But to browse social media and censor in realtime, which is what I originally meant? TV I can understand because it's happened before. It seems you're the one who initially misunderstood what I was saying considering I already brought up the autocensor tools point first to Ancient-Red-Dragon. I didn't say the messages came from Chinese GOG accounts. I said these "gamers" were from Weibo users given the current data we have. I'm not sure where this accusation came from. You're accusing me of doing the same thing you're doing except you don't even cite articles to support your points. Just 100% speculation-fueled opinion, which makes your grand accusations seem weak. At least my opinions are sourced and therefore has a basis rooted in the realm of reasonability. Occam's razor is a scientific and philosophical rule where the simplest explanation is the most preferred when there are too many uncertainties to work with. You know the principle where all problem-solving flowcharts start with where you eliminate the most common likelihoods first before you start giving plausibility to improbable causes and problems?

If you want to believe in uncertainty and unknown entities, all the power to you. I just think the likelihood is extremely small given that there are more reasonable course of events that have more believability. No negative externalities to the rest of society, so you're free to believe whatever you like. I don't think we'll ever get the answers to this fiasco for years or even ever until someone breaks an NDA on it.

If it's not on GOG then it is 100% irrelevant. We are discussing GOG's actions, not other platforms'.
And fyi: Valve has different content guidelances, just for starters.

There's a difference between "mistake" and "negligence" too fyi.

Not neccessarily.

Great. Is it in your opinion related?
GOG =/= CDPR.
Also: GOG / CDPR =/= CDP Group.
GOG + CDPR = CDP Group.
So CDPR having alleged subsidiary in alleged place has nothing to do with GOG's presence there.
CDPR may officially be conducting business there (Gwent chinese version) but to my knowledge GOG is not until proven otherwise.

For example GOG with their past controversial PR, example being the "GOG dead" predicament.
If you can't see it as being a PR attitude of the very kind I desribed, it's not really my problem.
It was not a f-up. It was intentional. And to do something like that intentionally you have to have certain attitude and work principles permitting such actions (which for this kind of behaviour does not come by default).
Of course you are free to ignore the relation between the event and what it says about their PR, you are free to choose and pick your argumentation and ignore facts when it is convenient for you at the moment, nobody is going to stop you from choosing to do so.

2 things:
1.GOG belongs to same mother company (CDP Group) as CDPR but is to a degree independent from CDPR. That level of independence gives GOG room for mistakes that could screw the other party belonging to their mother company - that would be CDPR (getting screwed).
2.Do you even realize what you just said? It's YOU that said something about "logical financial decision" implying if potential income is better then company should go where the money goes while not looking at casualties. Now, do *you* have the proof you oh so demand?

REALLY?
Oh, remind me, what is said "argument" you are talking about?
Because as far as public posts go all I do is try to coldly calculate and take into account what is currently publicly known, including, but not limited to, lack of certain crucial details.
And even tho I am in favour of certain theories I still remain fairly neutral in public judgment.
I said repeatedly that there's no proof for yours truly convenient theory about the, in accordance to you, "solid" proof for messages both existence and source.
Whereas I keep pointing out how the tweet left too much room for interpretation, provides no details, no proofs of any kind, and therefore there is no solid indication of what actually happened, not even general direction, let alone any specifics.
The original PR statement/tweet was so vague and with so multi-meaning wording used it left enough room for interpretation for certain theories to instantly rise from the grave of "zero % possibility" to "not out of the question".
I am but a cold calculated spectator in this, looking at what is officially known.
Whereas you claim to KNOW where the alleged (not even proven thus far) messages come from and instead of proving it you attack me for *providing non-zero-possibility theories* that don't match with your designated "truth".

I somewhat doubt that, but that's just my opinion.
I'm pretty sure there have been quite some researches since 2013...
There's plenty of books for example, which have been released post that year.

I'm sort of tired of your "spider-man-meme"ing...
You ignore my argumentation and dismiss it trying to say you meant something else - in such case you should pay more attention to the wording you use - as people reading your posts aren't going to read your mind and they don't have to always guess that you meant some less obvious meaning.

Oh, you have a proof!
How gracious!
Let's see it!
After all you must surely have some other data than "we have". So please, by all means, blast us with your "superior knowledge" of "facts".

Anyone, even without GOG account, can read your past posts in this forum thread.
I'm sure "some people" would quickly note your belief of one specific source and your subsequent repetition of that reasoning.

I don't need articles to *provide* theories.
Whereas when YOU are stating something as if it is a fact (for example "I said these "gamers" were from Weibo users given the current data we have") it is you who has to defend said statement.

You have opinion (TLDR: "it all came from Weibo") oh so provable that you "forget" to provide sources.
You seem genuinely forged with the belief where these alleged (not even proven existing so far) messages came from, Weibo of all places.
Please, let me and others humbly experience enlightment from your sources of utmost reputation!

Well, I frankly can't give a single S about what is the most common explanation as I don't live in lucid dream and I know that "common" does not equal "exclusive".
Settling on a "simplest explanation" is but a lazy excuse to not bother one self with further research.

And dismissing a possibility entirely just because it is "improbable" is a fools game.

If you want to publicly state convenient (for GOG, for you, and for some "entities") defense without actual proof.
Go ahead. See what happens.

Yeah, sure, whatever /s
Dude, every change starts small, but of course you are free to let such things fly and "see where that goes eventually".
Have fun with that attitude ;)

At the time of writing, Devotion is the 89th most-voted-for game in GOG's Community Wishlist (which I just noticed still says it's in beta) with 9,287 votes. Of the 88 games with more votes, 35 have been marked as completed. This nearly puts Devotion into the top 50 currently missing games, as far as the wishlist goes.

I wonder if Red Candle is even willing to consider GOG after what they did. I can't personally speak for Devotion since I haven't played it, but Red Candle's "Detention" is fantastic. A shame to think it could have been here if GOG hadn't messed everything up.

Just fyi, you may already be aware but Red Candle have their own store now. Zoom-Platform was willing to publish the game but I think Red Candle decided to just stick with their own store.

https://shop.redcandlegames.com/games/devotion

Backing out of bringing this game was cowardly, but the worse part for me was GOG basically lying to us with that bulls--t "messages from gamers" response.

8more days nice

China can't neither invade nor occupy Taiwan. "Occupation" means denying same rights to the citizens and not integrating them into own country. Because Taiwan IS China, China can't invade nor occupy it - it will just take it back. Liquidating also means converting into money, selling. I think they will jail or charge them for breaking the law, which is fully correct. Y ou don't break the law, you change it, if you find it inappopriate. China is democratic, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I also bought both Detention and Devotion from the Red Candle Store. Detention is a really good game and I enjoyed it a lot. I haven't played Devotion, but am planning to some time next year. Red Candle are a great developer that really deserves some attention.

I'd rather buy it directly from them though.I did buy Detention, which is a great adventure horror game, and more my type of gameplay.It has depth to it: history, culture, art... not just scares. I like games that incorporate their local culture in some way.

The double standard on GOG struck me in hindsight:

Devotion: a peaceful protest (poster in a game) against actual oppression - > banned on GOG and elsewhere.

Tonight We Rot: violent anti-democratic protests (destruction and murder) against imaginary oppression, where sales from the game directly supports to bring said activities into real life - > allowed and supported by GOG.

I've become increasingly annoyed with GOG lately; this, Hitman,... lies and f-ups.

I agree, it's a disgrace this agitprop piece is sold on Gog. If you haven't done so, you can make your disapproval clear by voting on my wishlist entry against that game:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/gog_remove_tonight_we_riot_from_the_store