Fair enough. I'll readily concede that i'm not an expert on Polish law.

It doesn't really change my stance on anti-consumer practices that much. If at any point I have good reason to suspect such things, I'll be doing my part to leverage said maximization of profit by reducing that profit a teensy bit.

Your argument is void since product page was clearly live for few hours before the "many gamers" happened.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201216100054/https://www.gog.com/game/devotion

It's especially void since you used that argument to compare GOG to Steam - which is hilarious - since in THIS CASE Steam actually had it for sale for around 6 days - and in Steam case it was brought down by developers themsevles and NOT Valve - so Steam case is nowhere near comparable.

edit:
Ladies and gentleman I found another flaw (cringe) in this ancient forum software of GOG. Apparently it refuses to properly parse webarchive link and behaves like there is nothing before last " https ".
Ergo, you have to manually copy paste the link I posted as otherwise it directs stright to GOG and not webarchive (enirely fault of forum software used here).

This has been posted before but Steam has been accused of blocking games for political reasons

https://gamerant.com/hong-kong-protest-game-china-ban-steam/

and they have remained quiet just as GOG has.

The best part is that the game page shows that the devs put enough effort into this release they even enabled Galaxy achievements.

I sure hope gog compensated them ROYALLY for all this wasted effort.

Everything about this miserable affair pisses me off so much I can't really find the proper words for it...

There is a differene between shaky-ground accusation and a fact.
As well as "refused to list it at all and didn't make public statement" (which btw, any store can, and since stores different than Steam ususally don't accept "just about everything" you just don't get to hear about it most of the time in other stores, like, you never officially know what for example Origin refuses and such, I'm not saying it's good that Steam refuses, but they also have specific content guidlances and if a game is going too far they can just refuse it, also without having access to official Valve reason stated to developer it's still just speculation) and "signed a distribution deal, made product page live and pulled out few hours later stating no-proof highly questionable reason".
I have read some articles on your linked Valve case and so far I have not seen a solid evidence or even hint that that could be DEFINITELY due to "censorship" or anything close to it.
All these articles basically go by "we made yet another controversial game, got rejected on one of distribution platforms and we got upset so we decided to publicize it without providing details so people can speculate and publicly shame Valve while our games get free publicity".
If developers bring it to the public while refusing to give exact quotation it's basically biased fearmongering and it's hard not to see it as a form of "let's make it controversial so it gets viral and our games get promoted for completely free".
If there would be legitimate concern why not just publicize quoted proofs? Think about it.
Valve blocks a lot of games for a lot of reasons. 99% of the time nobody but the developers and perhaps small community interested knows about it.
Also I would like to point out that Valve didn't make a statement. And apparently both developers refuse to directly quote Valve reasoning provided to them - it's almost like developers could shame themselves by proving their games violated some existing policy - of course without knowing the Valve reasoning this couldn't be proven, but so couldn't be "censorship".

Meanwhile GOG made one of the greatest "hold my beer" bad moves while being carefully watched and with evidence being collected.
The Steam behaviour just cannot be compared to GOG's case at all.

Considering that you cannot put a product page live nor announce a planned release (especially just few days before planned release) without signing distribution contact before first GOG should be held legally responsible for this whole ordeal by developers / publisher.

Just posting here to add my tiny bit of support to boycotting GOG.

They better have... though who knows. Why do I get the feeling that if Devotion came from a AAA studio, or simply one with the funds to pursue legal action against GOG for screwing them like this, the game would still be coming here.

Like CP2077 which is being technical-standpoint-wise hot garbage but did not get pulled from GOG distribution? :D

Good thing GOG has curation, otherwise bug infested games would be released here. ;)

You know GOG could have dodged a lot of the backlash if they'd launched CP2077 as an 'in-development' product instead of pretending it was done.

early shitty access like every other game now ...

Order total: € 184.25
Date of purchase 2020-12-01
Refund asked on 2021-01-02
Refund denied on 2021-01-26

Thank you for contacting us. My apologies for the late reply, our services are currently overwhelmed.

I'm afraid that sale is considered final 30 days after purchase. You have requested a refund after those 30 days have already passed. I am very sorry, but a refund for your order is no longer possible.

I will mark this ticket as solved, but if you have any further questions, writing to us will reopen it.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
GOG Customer Support


Replied them with this

"Hey,

Very much disappointed in GOG, yet again, but what else is new. Sigh.

I was couple days late asking for this refund, never downloaded any of
the games purchased in this transaction. However, that doesn't matter
apparently. But it would have been perfectly ok if I had downloaded all
those games, played them and even kept the installers, and asked the
refund few days sooner. I guess it was a mistake allowing GOG some time
to explain the "Many gamers" bullshit (which still hasn't been
explained).

Oh well, my other refund request was made in time, but it was just one
cheap game, so it is much less feeble protest against the GOG
collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party. I hope the Chinese pay
well, I am not planning to spend any money on GOG anymore
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/boycotting_gog_2021/page1

Thanks a lot,

Leevi"

well this was clearly your fault imho

I've been doing a "soft boycott" (limiting purchases to a few games I really want, when they are at 70%+ discount) for a number of years now. This started when I found GOG was sending purchase data to Google (they stopped doing this, unannounced, a while back but have effectively resumed by requiring purchasers to allow scripting for pay.google.com) and has continued with the steady erosion of GOG's initial values (fixed price points, no regional pricing and now increasingly DRM). Having CAPTCHAs on various parts of the site (support pages and I have encountered them even on logins now) is an added insult with the potential to block access to offline downloads.

I see a parallel with Electronic Arts - when they released Dragon Age: Origins it was going to have online activation. Following a protest at the Bioware forums, they relented and just used a CD-check, but brought in activation for the "optional" DLC (including items provided in the base game). Not such a big outcry there - so in came online activation for subsequent releases.

in essence, I believe GOG is "testing the water" trying to see what they can get away with. If there isn't enough protest - or if the loss in sales from boycotts is countered by an increase in sales elsewhere (from the, shall we say, more DRM-agnostic users?) then they will ditch their DRM-free guarantee completely. Maybe they will offer a short-term sop like a Wallet credit as they did when introducing regional pricing.

So making a protest here is no guarantee of success - but mute acceptance is a guarantee of failure.

I could have asked for the refund sooner, true. Not a huge loss for me even though I didn't get it, maybe just asking for a refund with that reason was enough of a message to GOG. Or could be that reason won't get reported forward since it got declined. Also possible that the reason won't get reported forward even with successful refund requests and GOG leadership might not even care if they would be reported. But have to try and hope that maybe GOG improves things.

And barely late refund request from an old loyal customer (my first refund request even) works as a test too. They could have refunded if they wished. Clearly they don't care about old customers.