"After receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store." - GOG.

9050 gamers have signed the wish list for this game so far. I take it that GOG's agile response to messages from 'many gamers' works both ways?

More votes than Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and many other good games...
It's fascinating how politics can attract the masses.

I would argue that sociological issues (i.e. someone is assaulting you because you are Spanish) shouldn't be confused with political issues (a person with de jure power indicating I should not prevent someone from assaulting you because you are Spanish).

There is a difference!

Edit: oh crap, are we discussing this serious shit again? let me deploy some humorous yet distracting fart noises.

*prrrrrt**prrrrrrt**prrrrrrt*

(how do you even spell a fart?)

Want to support the devs?

https://redcandlegames.com

I'm supporting GOG. They clearly decide to list or withhold a game based upon gamer requests. 9050 gamers want it, so more than that number must have asked GOG to not list it. Simple. GOG wouldn't lie to us, would it?

The literal only reason so many signed that is because they're looking for reasons to whine. Even a child would be able to understand why they can't sell the game. I guarantee you that probably ~2% of those signatures would actually buy the game if GOG ended up reversing that decision.

And no one give me the "simp for China" argument. I despise the CCP, though I love Chinese history and I pity the people to have to suffer such negligent, evil governance. It's just common sense, though: thanks to the CCP's ridiculousness, GOG was forced to choose between selling a game that has a rather small potential playerbase or risk losing out on an entire MARKET. Would it be awesome if GOG were able to stand up to the tyranny? Absolutely, but that's not how business works. People complaining about this really need to have a reality check because, as I said, it doesn't take a genius to understand why they did what they did...

I bought both games and the soundtracks at Red Candle's store. If they showed up here, I might buy them again but only to support games I want to see here. Unfortunately, Devotion is still censored. Wish they'd allow us to toggle the censored art.

I'm all in favor of bashing GOG over their lies about "many messages from gamers" in the Devotion scandal.

However, there's no need for a new thread on the topic when dozens of other ones already exist on this board, any one of which you could have posted in rather than make a new thread here.

Devotion is on sale DRM-free on the Developer site https://shop.redcandlegames.com/

From Wikipedia: /wiki/Devotion _ (video_game) [for better understanding of what has happened]
"Controversy
On February 21, 2019, two days after the game's release, players discovered a fulu talisman decorating a wall in the game contained the words "Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh" (Chinese: 習近平小熊維尼) in Chinese seal script, referencing a recent Chinese internet meme that compared the Chinese general secretary to the Disney character. Also on the talisman were the transcribed words "ní ma bā qì" (呢嘛叭唭), which sounds similar to "nǐ mā bā qī" (你媽八七) in Mandarin. "你媽" means "your mother (is a)"; and "八七" (peh tshit) sounds similar to "白痴" (pe̍h-tshi, means "moron") in Taiwanese Hokkien. Taken together, this was interpreted by Chinese gamers as an insult to the Chinese leader. As a result, Devotion was heavily review bombed by Chinese gamers on Steam, and the game went from having "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews overall to being "Mostly Negative".[19] Red Candle Games responded by patching out the offending art material, replacing it with a talisman that reads "Happy New Year" (恭賀新禧), explaining that the original talisman was a placeholder that was supposed to be replaced, and apologizing for the oversight. Nevertheless, other aspects of the game were analyzed as insults to China, leading to the game being removed from Steam in China on February 23. Publishers Indievent and Winking Skywalker cut ties with Red Candle Games, with Red Candle Games being liable for their losses as a result of the controversy.[20] On February 25, Red Candle removed the game from Steam globally to fix technical issues, as well as to confirm that no other hidden messages remain.[21]

Taiwan's Vice Premier Chen Chi-mai spoke out in defense of the game regarding the "Easter egg", saying: "Only in countries with democracy and freedom can creation be free from restrictions." Red Candle's Sina Weibo account remains blocked, and posts containing the hashtag #Devotion, which had hundreds of millions of views before the controversy, were hidden by Chinese censors.[1] The episode has raised concerns about the future of the Steam platform in China, which did not gain official approval to operate there but remains accessible with up to 30 million users from China.[1]

In July 2019, the Chinese government revoked the license of Indievent. The official statement from the government stated that the revoking was due to violating relevant laws.[22] Red Candle Games released an apology later in the month stating that they have no plans to re-release Devotion in the near term in order "to prevent unnecessary misconception", but would reconsider re-releasing the game in the future if "the public would be willing to view this game rationally".[23]

In June 2020, Red Candle announced that it would begin running pre-orders for a physical edition of the game, available only in Taiwan from June 8 to 15.[24]

On December 16, 2020, Red Candle Games and GOG.com announced that the game would be available on GOG's store on December 18. However, a few hours later, GOG issued a statement on Twitter[25] that "after receiving many messages from gamers," they had decided not to move forward with the release.[26] The statement rapidly garnered thousands of comments and retweets, the majority of which came from fans who were angered to see the store cancelling the release.[27]

By March 2021, Red Candle Games opened their own digital storefront to sell Devotion as well as their prior game Detention and future games. The games were offered as DRM-free versions. A macOS version was released alongside this.[28][29] "

Buy the games DRM-free here: https://shop.redcandlegames.com/

By the current rules and modding, the thread would then be locked for necro. This is why flat 'necro' rules are kinda stupid

Have you any idea how big the Chinese game market is?

I'm not defending the PRC regime, but a large number of Chinese citizens do. It's entirely plausible that GOG's announcement attracted a lot of negative attention from them. Whether they are "gamers" or GOG customers isn't something that's easy to know, but I can very easily believe that they were bombarded with messages.

Would transparency be such a bad thing? I'd like to see some of those messages, yet we have nothing besides words from GOG's PR.
Also, I wonder what kind of percentage of the market GOG holds in Asia, let alone China. So I'm not buying this theory. See, when there is a lack of transparency all we can do is speculate.

While I agree with a good part of your post (including the contempt for the CCP while respecting and wishing the best for the chinese people), you forgot to touch a very important point that pissed a lot of us off in this whole display of Gog messing up.

I understand Gog backpedaling on their contract with Red Candle Games. As much as it would be better if the game could see the light of day here, the risk (after Gog foolishly announced the game's release on Weibo) was high enough that canceling was probably their less bad option by then. My problem is with their insulting way of pushing the blame on us, the customers, for the decision. With that tweet being such a painfully obvious lie they also made it clear that they must think we are incredibly stupid too.

I may not like their decision, but I can see why they took it. But they managed to find the worst possible way to communicate it to us and have only doubled down since then. Combining that with other unrelated issues (like CP2077's DRMed content) they have pushed several formerly faithful customers like me into boycotting them and calling them out on every possible BS.