Imo, that sort of mindset is what has led to the problems GOG is facing now (and often does for large corporations): not listening to their customers. Although, it would seem consistent with GOG's recent shift towards China, i.e. not tolerating dissent.

So, by that logic, you are perfectly ok with other DRMed games being sold on GOG, as long as they aren't 'being shoved down your throat'?

In what sense is it a 'forced boycott'? All I have done is said I am boycotting for this year; stated my reasons; and asked if anyone else is doing the same.

same
yep , samuraigidin and similar people not only fine with a totalitarian censoring system but looks like they demaning it

forced :D
natural boycotts ... omg this clearly doesnt make sense at all
these clearly cant when stand some people have morals and actually acting on those

Dude, we are way past the point where reasoning takes any plausible effect.
We need to take radical steps.

If you are not getting sick of a premise of one country censoring entire outside world while simulatenously you are getting sick of people who are trying to fight it then I don't know what to tell you. It almost sounds like you are embracing it. And that's sad :(

Oh really? Remind me how GOG brought the Devotion release down. Oh, it was "messages from many 'gamers'".
And since it happened (the "information" about refusing to fullfill already signed contract with a developer) basically the same time as GOGs announcement about game's release - well - those "gamers" surely achieved what they wanted through, let's face it, SPAM.
So talk about bias.

But you do realize that more people on the forum active simulatenously generate higher load on their potato servers and subsequently costs them more money? :P :D

Playism (beware tho - not a big selection of games - mostly Japanese indies since that's what that platform was meant for)

Devotion on Steam was taken down by developers themselves, and for officially other reasons on top of that.
There's a big difference between that and a platform itself backing off from already signed contract (GOG).
Steam did not do that.

On top of that all the allegedly offending content was REMOVED from the game in question LONG BEFORE GOG's announcement of release.

Guess what Steam does when CH does not like something in a game? They sell it everywhere except there.
There's plenty of examples.

Count me in ;)

And yet, this is how things really get done. For example, ownership of user data on the internet didn't really matter much until the EU put its pants on and imposed regulations.

This is also how China has more leverage on the Devotion issue than a fraction of GOG's user base.

You want real changes? Don't lobby GOG. Lobby your government.

Nope.

But I am on a strict China boycott now.

You do realize that Steam was supporting China long before the whole Devotion incident ? yet you don't seem to have issue purchasing there.

I imagine that's pretty hard (and sometimes expensive) to do. Good luck, this is the right way, also because of the companies that closed their factories in their homelands to profit from cheap Chinese labour and less strict environmental laws.

Please, enlighten me how allegedly Steam was bending for CCP at allegedly some point.
Because both as a HIGHLY technical user as well a person involved in gamedev I KNOW for a fact that Steam, if CH has some "issues" with some games, just does not release the game there while retaining international release.
I don't see how this is supporting CH.
And btw, PLEASE read my post again, I did NOT say "I have no issue buying there" - I pretty clearly stated that there ARE things I don't like there - but I don't see that platform nor company responsible as bad.
Don't compare Steam to GOG directly in this situation because there is quite a difference between them.
GOG here pretends to not be involved in CH.
They also refuse to make official statement, they are refusing to fullfill a contract with a developer based on non-proven "gamers feedback" - they refuse to release a proof - plus what they released as alleged reason doesn't hold up since the content in question was removed long ago.
Steam did not lie about being DRMed store. While GOG openly lies to our faces (remember, they have clear marketing stating that EVERYTHING on GOG is 100% DRM-free, which is a LIE, thus this is false advertising).
The situation of Steam is nothing like the situation of GOG.

And I am not defending either.
Both are doing some things wrong.
But Valve isn't openly lying into our faces about things such as DRM.
While GOG clearly does.
I clearly see flaws of Steam - to the point where I got involved through feedback enough to force them to change some things.
Meanwhile majority of my feedback towards GOG gets ignored.

Honestly if people want to take action against the Chinese government boycotting GOG won't do anything because the CCP could care less (if it went under CCP would probably just take credit showing how much influence they have).

If you want to actually hurt China you need to put pressure on you governments as they are the ones who are either ignoring the problem or profiting off of it through trade deals and such.

that's not enough , you have to push ccp back everywhere

In short? Yes, I won't be buying more games from GOG, probably even if they "redeem" themselves. My usage of their store will be limited to grabbing free games (like I do with Epic) and organize all my digital library with Galaxy for now, until I redo it in Playnite or something. If this sounds rather extreme to you, continue with the long version.

- I've never been a fan of putting old games for sell again. (This applies to all stores) Most of their dev teams are dead, the rights are probably owned by some publisher that doesn't deserve the money, and I bet some of the profits fund those remaster cashgrabs that remove the existence of the original releases, like Beamdog's. I don't get the point of "supporting" old DOS games bundled with whatever version of DOSBox GOG has put, either. I am of the opinion that all these abandoned games belong to a public library of some sort, for people to enjoy and improve as they see fit. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a company trying to release an updated version of some game..., as long as they don't believe they suddenly own the work they're fiddling with, and that the original release is completely obsolete even if they didn't bother bringing back old artists, designers and programmers as advisers.

- Fighting for DRM-Free media is commendable, but I've come to the conclusion that it isn't a fight fit for corporations. I'm pretty sure the big men and women at CD Projekt S.A. don't give a damn about DRM-free games, and neither do their investors. It started as their differentiation strategy in the past, but now it's nothing but a risk, because imposing a DRM free policy means rejecting juicy, modern releases by equally greedy publishers.
GOG hasn't been "Good Old Games" for a while. I know this kinda contradicts my previous point, but there really isn't any risk selling old games DRM free. (even some of those old games, like FEAR 1, have SecuROM leftovers they've actively refused to remove!) They played us like a damn fiddle, and deep down we knew their revolutionary stance wouldn't last forever.

- Curated stores are a joke. Following their half-assed or straight up silent excuses for not accepting certain games is comedy material. I was dumbfounded to learn that they didn't want to accept New Blood games at first for some reason (one of their employees literally said this on their Discord server), or that Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls didn't meet their "standards"... despite having all the f*cking series for sale. I can't imagine how it must feel to get your game rejected without a clear answer.
That's why, in a weird way, I respected Steam's approach of accepting literal hot garbage, instead of pretending they'll "curate" their store... Of course, this has changed in the past few years for Valve, too. Now they awkwardly reject, sometimes with no option of resubmission, whatever game the employee deems as "problematic". If you're lucky, you'll be able to cut "sensible" content of your game as a separate DLC, or just modify your work to try and please their random guidelines. This brings me to the question: has Valve rejected games for political reasons?

There HAS been at least a case at the end of 2019: https://gamerant.com/hong-kong-protest-game-china-ban-steam/

I don't know if it was in the middle of their plan to build an exclusive Chinese Steam storefront, but it doesn't bode well for them.

Honestly, at this point I don't feel like spending my money on games, period. Feeling good about validating the work of an individual or a group of people only seems to be possible in music, physical series/movies, or the rare self-publishing game studio. The middlemen always manage to ruin media.

Wrong.
JUST STOP ALREADY.
You are jumping to wrong conclusions and abusing the fact that my wording isn't 100% clear at all times and atm I lack patience to fight somebody's wrong allegations.
Also you keep stepping on me PERSONALLY for some reason...

You know what.
I was actually totally correct in my judgment imo. I just lacked patience to bring this up properly when originally writing it.
There is a HUGE fundamental different between:
1.Creating a containment platform specificly for chinese market where chinese games can get promoted, sold and so on.
Market mostly for chinese games in fact. Where some international games can also potentially be released on some "preferential" rules of chinese market.
A seperate platform created partially to retain "main" Steam platform international independence. A "lesser evil" if you will.
That's a joint venture between Steam and some chinese company which name I do not remember atm.
That is not directly supporting CH gov. It's directly supporting CH game's market. This is just doing business in china. It doesn't automatically mean supporting CH gov.

2.Bending to arbitrary censorship request just because it offends 1 person and it's supporters.
GOG Devotion case.
Instead of creating arbitrary CH region lock based on arbitrary CH feedback allegedly from CH - we can see how it went with GOG instead - GOG just refused to release game internationally.
It is hard to not see this as endorsement to CH gov requests.

This is how I see it.
You are free to have a different view.
But if you will keep stepping on me personally I will not hestitate to report you.

There is a pretty big difference between accidentially using wrong country denomination and using self proclaimed abbreviation.
It is generally clear that I in this thread by "CH" mean "China".
I NEVER implied I mean Switzerland.
In fact it never crossed my head until now when I reminded myself that CH is a domain code for Switzerland.
I want to make clear once and for all that I indeed meant China everywhere I used CH in this thread.
Are you happy now?
So stop stepping on me personally people!

GOG made an announcement that they will distribute the game.
You can only legally make such announcement after having already singed contract with developer / publisher for a product distribution.
There was a GOG product page live briefly.
So get your facts stright before you attack someone personally.

Do your own research before posting.
Devotion got pulled from Seam BY IT'S DEVELOPERS. Developers. NOT Steam platform.
Here is the official statement by the developers:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1006510/discussions/0/1796278072845376475/

Speak for yourself.

I wonder what will happen when you MAYBE someday see your own behavior.
What you are saying is hypocrisy. No hard feelings.

I for one am not writing anything breaking forum code of conduct in this thread.
So certainly if my posts would get removed all of the sudden then I would pursue support to give me a reason.
If they would get deleted because of GOG platform constructive criticism then that very well would be reducing my free speech rights.

Are you seriously comparing people seeking true DRM-free software with software pirates?

I am not sure how this can be twisted and where to staart.... first of all to trade inside China offically, you must follow DPRC rules and regulations, if not you are not allowed to trade, so there is that. Off course, taxes made from the sales also goes to DPRC, sales outside China does not, so having a specifc client inside the Chinese market is part of funding the Chinese governmen as well. When the Steam China client starts, it starts from splash screenss showing messages from DPRC. Game times are limited, so you stay 'productive' and have a healty lifestyle. They can not sell games which are not approved by DPRC. In the alpha, the social functions where limted, there where only Steam id's (the string of numbers) as usernames first have to be aproved by DPRC... and so on....

But I guess none of these can be seen as supporting DPRC. And it is not only about supporting the Chinese gmaes market, there are many (approved) western games as well.

After brief research I am not versed enough with these cases to comment on that directly.
I will say just this: Steam has advanced content rules, some are debatable, it's execution is afaik strict tho.
I cannot comment if Valve's decision in regards to those 2 games was right or not since I simply don't have enough data and will likely not have insider data ever (not because I couldn't, just because they would not give me a reason for refusing another developer, for legal reasons I guess).
I am also having some trouble finding those 2 games in DB. Would you mind sharing at least their developers names? (I am having doubts if the names cited in the linked article are 100% correct, it may be that these are english translation of titles, I don't know).

Look, we live in a time when there is not much pure left.
People need to actively choose the "lesser evil" all the time.

While I recognize "Steam Platform" (official chinese name) to be not perfectly good thing I know that it's nowhere near the GOG case.
How I see it is that Valve just created offbranch to deal with CH in an contained manner, like I said before.
And according to wiki that's the intent:
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(service)#Steam_China]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(service)#Steam_China[/url]
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_World_(company)#Collaboration_with_Valve]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_World_(company)#Collaboration_with_Valve[/url]

Germany has "awkward" censorship laws? Steam makes developers release "special" versions for Germany.
China has some ludicrous censorship laws to the point where "containment" is needed?
Well Valve has stepped up and decided to put out a fire in early stage and decided to literally make a separate offbranch joint venture to contain that fire in it's source - they created "Steam China" that is implied to operate completely independently from Steam itself.
Is that a bad thing?
That way Steam international remains independent and there is far less possibility for such BS like GOG now.
Literally whatever CH wants gets contained within "Steam China" while normal Steam remains fairly independent.
That's my take on the case.

Meanwhile GOG literally assists CH gov by bowing to their arbitrary WORLDWIDE censorship request.
They had all the technical means to just region lock the game in CH. No. Instead they chose to not release the game INTERNATIONALLY.
Let alone the fact that the "offending content" was removed long ago.
I really don't understand how people could not see the distinction between the 2 cases :/

In current situation I personally see Steam as more faitful to it's principles than GOG. Therefore lesser evil.
It's not perfect. But imo lesser evil atm. At least they don't do what GOG currently does.
This Devotion debacle, along with EGS ordeal, CP2077 "my rewards", spitting in the face of Linux users, lack of access to historical builds for 90+ % of games, and a bunch of other stuff made me reevaluate how I see GOG as a platform and where I place it in hierarchy compared to Steam.
Steam at least doesn't openly lie about it's principles. And at least for me right now I feel better treated as a customer ON STEAM.
I deeply care about DRM-free. But if a platform CLAIMING to be 100% DRM-free just up and lies about it I may as well back off to a platform that is OPEN about it's DRM or lack thereof (or if there are errors on Store page presense in regards to that I can still verify manually if game has DRM or not through console commands, DB queries and other technical means, it is possible on Steam while not on GOG [the tools may exist but they sure aren't public]) where I can make majority of games DRM-free by "other means" such as Steam API emulators and such.
I don't intend to buy ANYTHING on GOG at this point.
GOG has burned their reputation in my eyes.
That's just my 2 cents.
Nobody has to agree with it. You are free to have a different opinion. There's free speech internationally. But please don't step on me personally or I will start reporting every attempt at that.

It's been a while since they perished.

Dude, it's a public forum, you made a post and I answered to your post, nothing more nothing less.

Sorry but that's some heavy mental gymnastic here, "private" companies in China have strong ties to the government, it's not like in the west, when a company decide to work with a Chinese company to do business in China they are working with the government be it indirectly. And it's even worse here as we are talking about video games that needs to be individually controlled and censored by several government agencies before being available officially for sales.

That you want to boycott Gog because you don't like how they handled the Devotion situation or that you need to use Galaxy to unlock an in game T-shirt that's one thing, and it's fine it's your choice, but saying that you boycott Gog because you don't want to support the Chinese government while at the same time continue buying from Steam is silly to say the least. At least the OP is consistent in the fact that he don't purchase from Steam nor Epic.