Time4Tea: I would like to announce that I have decided to boycott GOG for 2021. This is in response to several decisions the site has made over the past year that I believe have been deeply misguided:
Firstly, the continued slippage of GOG's DRM-free values. The promise of 100% DRM-free is what the site was originally founded on and yet GOG seem to be allowing this principle to be increasingly eroded. The games No Man's Sky and Absolver are two examples of games that include single-player DRM, which GOG is aware of and has failed to address. CDPR also seem to continue to believe the rules on GOG don't apply to their own games, firstly with Gwent and more recently the DRMed single-player rewards built into Cyberpunk. In addition, GOG's recent deal with Epic appears to be a cover for GOG to start selling DRMed games.
Next, the continued heavy pushing of Galaxy and the lack of maintenance of the offline installers. Several times in recent months, GOG has given incentives only to Galaxy users in the form of bonus content or free games. This has the effect of making non-Galaxy users feel like second-class customers. Also, there many well documented cases of GOG neglecting to update offline installers, even though they are updating the Galaxy versions, so they clearly have the updated files. This is not acceptable - offline installers are the core of the DRM-free concept. All of this points to a worrying trend which may ultimately lead to GOG abandoning offline installers entirely and making Galaxy mandatory.
Lastly, the recent debacle with Devotion. I won't repeat everything that has been said about this in other threads, but GOG's decision to be complicit in imposing Chinese censorship on non-Chinese users is simply unacceptable. The game needs to be released on GOG immediately.
Actions I would like to see GOG taking:
1) Release Devotion immediately.
2) Remove Gwent, No Man's Sky, Absolver (and any other DRMed games) from the store.
3) Remove DRM from the bonus cosmetics in Cyberpunk.
4) Cancel the deal with Epic.
5) Stop providing free games/incentives only to Galaxy users.
6) Assign adequate resources to maintenance of the offline installers.
For me to make any purchases on GOG this year, #1 needs to happen and at least a couple of the others. I.e. I want to see clear signs of a change in trajectory of the site, away from it's current misguided direction towards being a weak Steam competitor and back towards the principles it was founded on. I had been planning to spend $150-200 on GOG this year, but instead I will be spending that at
Zoom Platform, to help build up a viable DRM-free alternative store.
Is anyone else intending to boycott GOG? Who is with me?
Edit:
People who are boycotting, to whatever degree they're comfortable with: 1) Time4Tea
2) Lifthrasil
3) mrkgnao
4) joppo
5) kdgog
6) Ancient-Red-Dragon
7) ReynardFox
8) Seceroth
9) TencentInvestor
10) pearnon
11) Leevi
12) gloombandit
13) fronzelneekburm
14) MajicMan
15) Chaossaturn
16) john_hatcher
17) Grahor
18) Orkhepaj
19) rjbuffchix
20) B1tF1ghter
21) _Auster_
22) HappyPunkPotato
23) llamas
24) rtcvb32
25) Setilla
26) fr33kSh0w2012
27) Hexchild
28) GreasyDogMeat
29) GlorFindel
30) Vendor-Lazarus
31) DevotedTitan
32) Zegpi
33) gargus
34) DrearierSpider
35) WeirdoGeek
36) Zorzy
37) Kohleran
38) plagren
39) Lesser Blight Elemental
40) Captainchicken84
41) dycaite
42) Amiko Novich
43) gloombandit
44) Agent-94
45) evilprotoss
People who are sympathetic to the concept: 1) Breja
2) TerriblePurpose
3) morolf
4) DukeNukemForever
5) McMicroDonalds
6) WinterSnowfall
7) flanner
8) Dogmaus
9) GamezRanker
10) PirroEpirote
11) Paliper
(current as of post #414)
This list is a great initiative. Glad to see more names there!
