Stop watching the BBC, things are not nearly as bad as it appears on your TV and many people, including me, live very good lives here - and I have been abroad so I know what I am talking about.

That, and it is not that it was censored by China, it was censored in the entire World because of China and THAT affects me, get your facts together, dude.

I agree at this point it's a matter of opinion. We (and especially the shareholders) will just have to wait and see.

However, I also need to point out that my perspective as a customer is fundamentally different than that of the company's shareholders.

I am generally not a supporter of any business I happen to be a customer of. I did make an exception for GOG, and convinced more than a few people to give it a chance, so this is perhaps why I'm a bit invested in what they're doing to themselves now: by extension, they are making me feel like an idiot.

However, in general, my interest is just that (1) good games continue to be made, and (2) there is a place to buy them, DRM-free. It would be nice if good games continued to be made by CD Projekt, and I could continue to buy them on GOG. However, good games are ultimately made by great, talented people, not by management making one mistake after another, and investors with more money than sense.

In the good times, shareholders took their profit, and didn't share any of it with me. (Of course. Why would they?) So then, if the company is facing tough times now, why should I be concerned for the shareholders' well-being? If anything, I'm only interested in that the great developers and artists behind The Witcher 3, and the good portions of Cyberpunk 2077 continue to be paid to create, and enjoy their creative freedom. Perhaps under other arrangements they would even be able to do so without having to work 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week, which would actually be a net benefit, at least to them?

Ultimately, my perspective is the customer's perspective. The company has the right to do as they please but they have no right to my (or anybody's) continued custom. Their shareholders are about as important to me as I am to them (i.e. not important at all).

You (alongside many others) posit that there is the dichotomy between (broadly) serving the Chinese market, or serving the Western markets. That the two cannot be reconciled. But it's a specious argument. There are thousands of examples to the contrary. Disney's very own Winnie-the-Pooh is not banned in the West after all.

The predicament that CD Projekt/GOG have found themselves is uniquely of their own making. Businesses should steer clear of political activism. They should not have promoted the game in China, and they should not have banned it outside of China. One misstep cannot be cancelled by another, the mistakes only keep compounding.

It didn't have to be this way. But that it is now, is the problem of the company, and their shareholders, not mine.

It's possible but then it's also not that much money to spend on principle. Also, the game is supposedly good, and there were apparently many people waiting for it to be released so that they could buy it. Broadly though, I agree: the Devotion controversy alone would mean mostly reputational damage for them. But given all the other Cyberpunk 2077-related problems (and I'm not saying that with satisfaction, some of the game's criticism is exaggerated, just like the hype before its release was), where they're headed is quite uncertain. Separately, there is also the long-term trend of GOG only getting worse and more alienated from the user base. For many people it could be the last straw.

That's the Streisand effect, it worked like this for me too.

If only because of that, how the situation has been developing isn't beneficial for China either. I think in banning the game earlier their motive (if there was one to begin with, other than some regional-level bureaucrat trying to placate the superiors), was mostly to set an example by hurting the developers financially so that nobody else ever tries putting any covert messages in any domestically-marketed game again. That all of this has spilled abroad, bringing to light some inconvenient topics, is hardly what they could have wanted.

That's the problem. They have a history of bad moves, and being even worse at communicating their decisions and motives. They willingly walked into this problem this time. How much longer before they find themselves between a rock and a hard place again? If I were a shareholder, I'd want changes.

im already sorry for all the down voting haters who wont be able to do this after gog forum is closed :(

They didn't even do that, the announcement was made on Twitter, which - afaik - is great-firewalled.

But of course there are enough Chinese users outside that easily can tell their friends on Weibo (or however their social network is called)... and that's how shitstorms start, sometimes.

They posted the announcement on their Weibo (Chinese microblog platform similar to Twitter), as Mori_Yuki mentioned earlier in another thread.

The message was deleted since but I was able to verify it independently, and also found a screenshot (attached). On the screenshot you can also see some people celebrating. The second screenshot is the retraction.

GOG themselves started it all by posting about it from their official account. The consequences are purely on them.

Whoopsie... that's indeed... stupid beyond believe... I only knew about the Twitter announcement.

That's almost sabotage from the person who posted this directly to China.

Of course the game has a lot of fans in China too, but, with all the drama around the game from before, this was of course like starting a fire in a gunpowder factory...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahrBOvz1jzA

Goodness gracious. Did they really not know about the controversy?

That's... unbelievably stupid. Just what kind of morons did they hire to do manage their Chinese social media accounts that they didn't think announcing Devotion on Weibo was going to be a bad idea?

Not that their decision making has been otherwise stellar either so it fits with the general lack of competence and common sense they have shown recently.

This thread is a textbook example of the term "shit-post"...

I thought it might be worth it to have it a separate top-level thread for it, so I posted it with a summary of my thoughts. Feel free to have a look and disagree:

Devotion: GOG brought it upon themselves by tweeting into the lion's den

GOG sells IGI 2, a game that got banned in China for political/military reasons. Steam doesn't, neither any other store.

But of course, all the whiners screaming Devotion - a game 99% of you don't actually ever intend to play - never heard of this game.

謝謝你讓我們注意到這一點。 許多遊戲玩家很快就會採取行動。

I think you mean this game:

https://www.gog.com/game/i_g_i_2_covert_strike

Thank you for providing this example. I guess it's been released a long time ago, so nobody in China remembers it by now, and (most importantly) GOG also didn't remind anyone about it from their official Weibo account.

This is how Devotion could have coexisted with GOG's presence in China as well.

Personally I'll be getting it the moment it's finally released somewhere but it's equally valid to be concerned about the precedent it sets without being interested in the actual game (to which some people can say they don't believe there is a precedent). This was discussed in detail in an earlier thread: None of you actually care about Devotion

Hearts of Iron 4 is banned in China too, presumably because it allows you to play out an alternate history where the Nationalists won the Civil War.

Ni Hao.
The fact that your sensible post was down voted, is a living proof of the toxic anti-China propaganda in the west.
Thank you for the effort to inform the western imbeciles about a reality they refuse to see.
Sadly your efforts were in vain, but at least you tried.