And there is a difference between actively blocking something and lobbying for all media outlets to boycott it + banning it from the internet and banning meetings/protests?

I agree that this is a problem and I am against it but I wouldn't call it censorship.

Yes, there is one, albeit very small. And as I stated above, I do not agree nor approve of such practices. But I wasn't talking about an organisation being lobbied into not hosting something but simply about not wanting to host it themselves. I think there is a difference between these two cases.

And how many of those preorders would have been for GOG? I am not saying the game is not going to sell at all, and I obviously can't work on actual market share if it is not released here, but my opinion and what I was trying to explain is that perhaps GOG doesn't find it profitable HERE.

In practice, the function and effect is the same. You cut a certain discourse out of public debates or awareness. You force it underground, or to the margins. Another exemple is the selective distribution of rationned press paper during dictatorships: you prevent or limitate the print of opposition journals. It is another form of management of limited mass media support (limited airing time, limited paper, etc) at the expense of the views you wish to silence.

I am not against censorship by default, i don't make of "free speech" an absolute value (i think that referring to it as an absolute value is necessarily short-minded, manipulative and hypocritical). I do think that some discourses should be stigmatized, hindered and marginalized, and that others shouldn't. And that all societies issues with that is in the arbitrary choice of which ones. But once you remove the knee-jerk moral charge around "censorship" or "free speech" (moral charge that often stem from a specific implicit content : censorship of what), then you lose the stakes in denying or forcefully proving that the naughty word applies. It becomes something more ordinary (and good or bad in context only).

From that perspective, it gets easier to, for instance, admit that self-censorship is censorship, even if it's due to climate and social pressure, and not to legal sanctions. When politics/journalists relations become complicity for various reasons (adhesion, identification, selective promotions, career calculation, shaming, gratitude, etc), then you achieve a state of censorship without censorship laws. For instance.

So, delicate, complex matters. And in practice, effective censorship can take many many different forms. Including the ones presented by this xkcd strip. Which doesn't mean that this strip is wrong in all contexts. It's just too general.

Oh fuck... I just found this on gog's facebook page.

It all makes sense now!!

Ugh, the C word. A new simplified term is needed to point out when something is suffering the effects typically associated with censorship without necessarily being censored. Or maybe that would just confuse things further.

In any case, Hatred will be sold on the largest digital distributer Steam, which practically has a monopoly on the PC market (bending the term monopoly? We're really deep in it now!) Hatred isn't being blacklisted en masse by the retailers it signed up for. What remains to be seen is if it’ll be blacklisted by disgusted gaming sites.

First of all, "it's just a [whatever]" is such a weak defense of [whatever] that there must be an xkcd about it.

As to the matter itself, the view of "Congress Shall Make No Law"-style infringement of speech as a Kantian evil, and private infringement of speech as an inalienable moral right is immensely out of touch with reality. Because some private entities exert greater control over the media than any government, and other private entities can collude with governments and provide a privatized facade for de facto state censorship.

For example, in rural Africa, more people use Facebook than the internets. Because Facebook provides free Facebook there, as a means to establish a stranglehold on communications in a booming region. If you're banned on Facebook, it's curtains.

Now consider Russia. In Russia, state censorship reigns supreme and there are multiple laws prohibiting just about any sort of speech. But the way individual cases of censorship actually play out is this:
if you host a formal event, the venue will be raided by multiple inspections in a row;
if you organize a private gathering, you'll be jailed for holding an illegal formal event (two or more friends going out for a beer is against the law);
if you (well, I) try to create an NGO, it'll be banned as a subversive agent of foreign influence, and/or the businesses which donate to it will suffer;
if you try to get elected, your supporters' signatures will be mysteriously replaced with blatant fakes, or the e-polls will be flooded with bot votes.

There isn't really a deep conceptual difference between not selling a cake to a bigot and not selling a telecom plan to a bigot. The practical distinction between state and private speech infringement hinges on private entities, unlike the all-powerful state, being unable to actually present a threat to free speech -- and that's not a world we live in. If you can be disparately impacted by a private entity shutting down your speech (regardless of its content -- remember, a private entity is free to refuse hosting you for any reason), all that First Amendment grandstandng flies out of the window.

Hadn't seen that post because of the change of page, but we are not talking of 'hatred' anymore here. KEEP UP. We completely derailed about censorship in general and how globally true or false a given xkcd strip is.

As for the 'hatred' thing, that is "oh noes, wallmart is censoring my favorite chocolate biscuits" (an oppression i am very often victim of in switzerland, i should add in hope of gaining the support of the gog crowd in my everyday struggles), i think that it would have applied if all shops had been rejecting the game, and i do not think it would necessarily be a bad thing no matter the game.

You are right about "ack, censorship" being an insta-ennobling status for many people, just like "aha i probably offended you" is for all those who face the facepalms of the non-sexist non-racist public. And you are right about all these mighty anti-censorship militants being ravenous censors whenever it suits them (derepping you or treating public criticism as an intolerable aggression). But if all shops were refusing this game, it would be indeed a form of censorship. With two nuances at least.

1. It could be indeed the rejection of a bad product (many would justify some bad product not being widely distributed) instead of the censorship of a discourse. But just like it's too easy to assume that the game is a magnificent jewel of gameplay victim of politics, it's also naive to assume that it's necessarily a more boring game than the topdown alien/zombie shooters sold on gog. I for one admit that what keeps me away from this game is my antipathy for its setting and premise.

2. It would still be available on its website, so it wouldn't be a forbidden game, but still, in practice, it would be forced into confidentiality, as opposed to all the mainstream games greenlighted into highly visible mass distribution.

In my own point of view, from my own subjective prejudices, I'd say that if that game was censored like that, it would not bother me. I would be happy to see so many distribution channels go "yeah, no, sorry, your game idea stinks a bit, as far as we're concerned". It would say something about our world. Balls-wise (cause it's the main criterion in so many rhetorics) it also takes some to reject a monetizable product with its already fanatical followers just out of personal ethics. I am happy that it happens with rape simulators and nazi propaganda games, and i assume that a good portion of hatred fans would also draw a line somewhere. Still, the main assumed logic seems to be purely financial ("y u no want my monies" vs "you cowards afraid of losing money in sjw backlash"). The assumption is very possibly true, but I'd be reassured by more direct 'cultural' drives.

Still, my point is, it would have been a form of indirect censorship, and it wouldn't automatically (like, by mere definition) make it a bad thing (certain games warrant it, i have no strong opinion about this one). It is a censorship that could be driven by "eww, lame, not for us, not wanting to support it" more than by "seek and destroy seek and destroy", but it still would be. And it would be hypocritical to deny it just because censorship is a bad word, just like racists deny their racism just because racism is a bad word. And this raises the question of why talking of censorship only if it is global, as if every individual actor refusing the game was 'censoring' it only if the others did too. As if gog's decision would have only been 'censorship' if steam had rejected the game too. Because, would gog have accepted the game (out of some free speech duty) if it wasn't available on steam and desura ?

Hatred is not 'censored', because it is widely available. This makes the term very ambiguous when used on the limited gog scale. But how much different does the global context make gog's decision ? It does change something, but what, why, to what extent ?

The word 'censorship' is rhetorically poisonned. But if we check what it means in practice, without assuming it's necessarily a good or bad thing (and thus without needing it to apply or not apply in order to strenghten our righteousness), then actions and responsabilities become a tad more blurry.

In all cases, this xkcd thing simplify them way too much.

I did mention Harvester in another post about the topic.
While I do think that it's an absolutely brilliant and often very underestimated game, it seems to be mostly about satirizing the moral panic about violent videogames in the early 90s, with the serial killer element being more of a framework for that. The whole thing is very over-the-top and absurd, albeit with a lot of quite disturbing moments. Additionally, the story is more about him - possibly - becoming a serial killer and not so much about him actually being one.

DreamWeb, on the other hand, is just a gloriously dark descent of an unhinged individual in a cyberpunk dystopia, murdering people because some mysterious dream beings, who may or may not actually exist, told him to do so.

Quality post right here.

* checks Licurg's forum title *

It's a fairly simple thing in this case...
IF GoG refused the game because of its content (in terms of being immoral or unethical), then this is a case of censorship by definition. This isn't to say all censorship is necessarily bad. Compelling arguments can be made for why games such as Rapelay are censored. But usually such discussion is never reached as uninformed people get stuck on spurious claims about this being absolutely not censorship if its available anywhere else...

For the moment, we do not know the reasoning behind GoG's decision. Always possible GoG did not like the price point vs. the quality of the game. Also possible, they found the game too buggy or incomplete. Or just too low of quality. I know I read somewhere of someone complaining the game had great visuals but would bog down and become unresponsive. None of these reasons would constitute censorship.

Who let the dumbler fags into GOG?

Censorship has NEVER been only when the government does something. That's just a very easy go to example.

WTF is a 'dumbler fag'?

If GOG was to blame, then Painkiller should be pulled from GOG too. It isn't.
https://www.gog.com/game/painkiller

You go back to reddit. :P