you assume the message wasn't from gamer, I assume there's a possibility that it is

I agree internet in china is heavily cencored but you made it sound worst than most likely what they experienced, and using that as your argument. We both don't know how bad, or how loose they are.

Weibo is a replacement for twitter in China. That's the "heavily cencored" part. The users, are still normal people in china.

Don't tell me you have a weibo account and so whatever you're claiming about their social media is legit. FYI I have QQ, WeChat, and couple of other china-based social media accounts for years. So what happen with the "heavily cencored internet" in china then?

Didn't the game offended the chinese goverment? How is it able to have such overwhelmingly positive review everywhere from actual Chinese gamers?

Wouldn't that make it a possibility that the message GOG receive come from actual chinese gamer too? Just because there's no objectionable content anymore, the store owner still not obliged to sell every stuff that was submitted to them.

Marvel CAN,ABLE and ALLOWED to stop the issue altogether, IF they want to. It's their IP, it's their comic. While that might cause backlash, but they have all the right to not to publish the issue altogether. Or you have different take on this?

Again the analogy : if I have a store, I wouldn't like it if somebody came to me forcing me to sell their stuffs no matter how excellent the item's quality were. What about you?

I wrote exactly the same thing, in different words It's difficult to read, and it's difficult to write as well. It took effort to create one.

And yet the art direction is consistent with the rest of the game artwork.

So placeholder? Mkay.

I'll let someone from outside the US respond to pippin15 on that one.

I could comment on more than just 2 things, but i see 3 things that are terribly glaring.

1. You admit it's heavily censored, but then you're implicitly 180ing.

2. I'm not too sure that he's referring to Chinese in China. This could be Taiwan, US, UK, Poland, etc. It can refer to the people of a specific descent as well as people living in a country. However i'm not going to claim to know exactly what he was claiming, just something to keep in mind.

3. This is what chinese users have been using to use skype since it's illegal, there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server

I'm just explaining the "heavily cencored" part. For example, you cannot access twitter there (because the internet is cencored) but they got replacement for it, Weibo. The users? Still regular chinese people.

Is that really difficult to comprehend?

The guy I was replying was also 180ing. Said it was heavily cencored with some secret government agents lurking on every corner of the internet, yet the game which have anti chinese government can have overwhelmingly positive review from chinese gamers. Ahhh okay. So what those chinese descendant living in the Poland have anything to do with critics targeted to chinese government? Lol. That makes it even more absurd.

FYI I'm a chinese descendant myself and I have negative reaction to this debacle. Not because of the critic towards chinese government, I couldn't care less about jinping and the governemtn, but because the devs are bunch of arseholes. You sure each and every person from that 1,4 bn in china knows how to use proxy server?

Because regular people on a different platform are exactly the same as regular people on another platform? I don't see how it influences the argument that the users are regular people. We would expect as much. Proxy. And i don't give a damn about British history, either, like the Magna Carta and so forth, or my Christian heritage. Nope, not at all. It's all just drop and replace. Thanks for the full disclosure, though: it certainly explains a bit.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying you inevitably would be biased, but, well, let's just say that the muslims that turn terrorist in a country that's not their home country tend to be second-generation immigrants. I'm not about to buy that there's no influence at all. Not that it makes a difference in your personal arguments, as they should be evaluated independent of the speaker (except in cases of personal opinion), but boy is that interesting. No, but i imagine a much, much higher percentage of citizens of china do, because, well, great firewall of China. Necessity is the greatest motivator, which is why i see more people knowledgeable on how to use them in schools, but for some reason they don't know how to use them outside of schools. I'm finding children now who are using "VPNs" to watch netflix exclusive children's content. A young person recently informed me that it's alot easier to watch Spongebob on UK's netflix than US'. I'm not sure what that's about, but that's what i've been told.

I don't see any proof that the weibo users are government spies as a majority as well. That's just plain absurd.

Twitter and weibo users are different, sure I agree with that. That's just common sense, because people in china can't use twitter.

So let's not derail from the very problem that caused this backlash yeah?

How is it not possible that the message was come from chinese gamers? So he's talking about chinese gamers in China, not in Poland then? Oh so you're saying I'm pro china/jinping? Just because I'm a chinese decendant?

ROFLMAO

Boy can this arguments be more absurd than this. Okay I'll play your game. So it''s a possibility as well that the backlash was caused due to the political tension between the western (United States) and China? I'm not about to buy that there's no influence at all. LOL.

Or yet even better because you blame the pandemic situation to china?

Let's reverse the political issue, say, instead of the pooh thingy, the devs slip anti semitic message as an easter egg, got their publisher's business license revoked and tried to sell the game to GOG. That still make the devs arsehole, wouldn't you agree?

And also, to educate you a bit, Taiwan consist of Han majority. They speak mandarin, hokkien and hakka. In case if that have any influence within this debacle at all. Imagination as an argument. Well done sir.

I'm not saying it's not. Instead, i'm saying that if that's the case, GOG should be taking notice that it's most likely, if not exclusively, them. In other words, we have a very specific group of customers trying to censor a product they don't like from another group of customers. That's giving GOG the benefit of the doubt. Worst case scenario, it's not even customers, but i don't find the point particularly relevant. Might be for your discussion with him, but, that's neither here nor there. No, but you might be biased by your heritage. In this scenario, you're not defending Jinping, but China itself. Yes, you would be right. At the end of the day, this is a nice little proxy battle between the two ways of thought, which are dominantly espoused by both china and the US. You could say the same thing about garmant regulation disputes between westerners and middle-easterners. However, the whole reason we tolerate and can trade is because we continue to respect one anothers' borders. I couldn't care less if regulation were restricted to China. What happens in China stays in China. I'm not one of those people that argues we should be involved in everyone else's business, unless they invite us. Assholes, yes, but I would defend them, either way. Advocating for free speech also means you have to advocate for ideas that you might not particularly like. To extrapolate from a point Jesus made, if you only respect the speech of those you agree with, how can you even say it is an ideal? As opposed to what? You have some numbers? Strike the sentence out and the rest stands on it's own.

Oh joy, it looks like the reply disappearing bug is at it again. Hopefully someone posts again so this shows...
*POKE*

Nope, still too early.

still you're not adressing the main issue : GOG owns the store. THEY decide what to sell in THEIR store. So what about the majority of taiwanese people? They consist of han chinese as a majority, so they're biased by their heritage eh? ROFLMAO

And I'm not defending china BTW, I'm defending GOG decision. And perceive the devs as bunch of arsehole. Is that really hard to comprehend? Agree. But just to remind you again. GOG owns the store. The got to choose what they sell in their store, and what they don't. That's the whole point of this debate right? Sure let's use imagination as an argument then demand numbers from the opposing side. I imagine cows flying around so your argument is basically invalid. You have numbers to counter that?

And after making an offer, which very well could have been a contract, they backed out. Fortunately for GOG, the devs are too desperate to sue. Then again, they don't seem like the type that would. Possibly, and likely, to some degree. I only ever reacall talking to one guy from Taiwan, and he was, well, prideful. I've never met a man with a bigger ego in my life, surpassing that even of Donald Trump. He took everything personally, especially any possible allusion to culturally derived bias (ironically, he ended up verifying that he had some, by how offended he was when i wasn't even referring to him). But, that's a sample size of one, so it's not exactly scientific. And I'm only standing up for devs, and i perceive GOG staff as a bunch of arshole who've joined a group of other bullies who have been bullying this purely innocent dev who did nothing wrong, aside from making a scandalous comparison to a leader winnie the pooh, kind of like how alot of other people regularly make comparison to Donald Trump and various orange objects. Is that really hard to comprehend? There is a cutoff point, however: this isn't about making a choice, but a failure to commit to a choice. We could argue that, given the controversy of the game, GOG got a bunch of new accounts as a result. The devs could run a case on that, but likely won't. They wouldn't win much, but, hey, there is grounds for argumentation, there. That angle aside, though, it's about commitment. If GOG was genuinely disintersted because of the controversy, you'd be hard pressed to find people to blame them. It's the fact that GOG was interested, and suddenly became disinterseted, and then turned around and implicitly blamed it's international customer base, rather than taking responsibility for their own cowardice. I am not a marketing tool for GOG, and GOG is not permitted by any contract to speak on my behalf. As opposed to what? You have some numbers? Strike the sentence out and the rest stands on it's own.

We both don't know what the whole contract content in details and that's not our concern, the legal matters are just between both party. There is even a possibility that there's no contract at all

Have you even read any digital distribution/platform agreement lately, or even sell any digital items on digital distribution platforms? No? So yeah, that's that. Mkay. I recall working with westerner, the type of know it all but turn out he did nothing but a mess. Another day when I was in Bali I almost got into a fight just because I accidentally bumped into one. I also saw youtube videos some caucasians harasses asian woman, called her chink, go back to your country etc (she's Korean btw).

But that's just small sample size of few, probably even the same guy, I don't know they all look similar. And some videos on youtube, so it's not exactly scientific. Hey that's fine it's your right. You can perceive GOG as whatever you want. I don't care.

But you quoted me first and blab about proxy, racial issues and such. So I responded. As a business, I can understand their action. That's all I'm trying to say. If each of that 1.4 billion people bought 1 game from gog, priced at $5 that's 5 billion dollars. China is a sexy target market, like it or not. And yet, GOG is a business. Even hollywood movies now prefer to kiss China's bottom.

And this specific topic has been discussed earlier. Just because GOG said they got messages from GAMERS? And you got offended? LOL.

I have talk about this before, it's not impossible that they do receive the message from chinese gamers right? Still, the sentence comes from your imagination. And as opposed to flying cows in my imagination I still don't see numbers in this reply of yours. So obviously your argument is still invalid. lol.

What's difficult to comprehend is that you are Chinese yet somehow pretend not to understand how things work in China.

And you are saying it yourself but failing to make the obvious connection: Twitter is banned, Weibo not. Why is it the case? Because the government cannot control what's on Twitter, and on Weibo they can control everything, and they do.

Criticism was from angry jingoistic comments in government-controlled media. How exactly these comments are manufactured is beside the point.

Positive reviews I mentioned were on Steam, which is not moderated by the Chinese government, and a relatively niche website, frequented by real gamers, people who would actually play the game.

Since you can read Chinese feel free to check yourself what the reviews were for the game.

But wait, in fact you do actually know about the game after all:

Making a claim like this you should at the very least substantiate it. Although many people, myself included, would still think it's irrelevant because a work of art should be judged on its own merits and not based on who made it. Throughout history dozens of sculptors, painters, writers, actors were "assholes" but our culture would be so much poorer if we had all their work thrown away. So even if we accept this claim at face value, what does it matter?

Enough of this anyway. It is now obvious you were arguing in bad faith from the start, in particular by:

1. Pretending you don't know about the censorship and how social media work in China only to admit you have several accounts on them.

2. Pretending you don't know about the game and don't know the reaction it got (including the positive reaction from actual Chinese gamers) but now you know for a fact "the developers are assholes."

3. Pretending the object in the game was some big issue in the first place when as a person who can read Chinese you clearly know what was written there in seal script was hardly even noticeable.

At this point it makes no sense to keep indulging you, and we have strayed too far from the topic anyway. The problem here is not about China but about GOG.

I summarized my thoughts in a separate thread earlier, if anyone cares to read it: GOG brought it upon themselves

*facepalm*

Please tell me you're joking.

I'm chinese descendant, not chinese citizen. In case you don't realize that's really huge dfference. I wasn't born in china.

And yes I don't understand how things work in china because I DON'T LIVE THERE. And I don't think you live there too. How is it that when you don't experience things there you know everything about them? You don't. You make assumptions.

Oh my god. This debate has become more ridiculous on every replies.

First a guy using imagination as his argument and now this? So you're a long time weibo user, know everything inside out about each and every one of social media available there? ROFLMAO

You do realize that steam have region lock right? 1. Oh my god. Can anyone have even dumber remark than this. WeChat is available on Playstore. You can get QQ ID easily from their website. The app is also avalable on play store. I don't know about your region. But most Tencent products are available in appstores.

2. I don't. I heard the game from this controversy. From Yong Yea to be exact.

3. That's one of my point. Hypocricy. Why hid it in an easter egg? Why not being up front about it? And then said it was a placeholder while the artwork seems polished. Hey I don't ask anyone to quote me further, and I'm not the idiot who said about being a chinese descendant automatically makes you a chinese government fanboi.

And I've said it multiple times in this thread already. GOG has the right to refuse to list the game whatever the reason is. It's their store. If you're really dying to play the game, there're other places to buy the game. Or even contact the developers if you want to, you probably can buy the game directly from them.

You want to hate gog, fine do whatever you want. I've said my mind about the matter anyway.

Got this email after requesting account deletion a week ago:
"Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and its impact on our daily operations, our Support is currently facing an increased number of tickets, so anyone waiting for a reply may expect some delays. If you submitted for a refund request, we will process it based on the submission date. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience and understanding."

Gotta love how these guys blame Devotion on "Gamers", and now blaming their huge influx of support requests on Covid-19, what an absolute fucking joke of a company :D not even mad about this one

My only point is that since you can read Chinese, a lot of the questions you asked before you could just answer for yourself. Maybe you could even link to some interesting find for everybody else to see.

I've never said anything like this.

I just pointed out that you know a lot more than you were initially willing to admit.

It's a valid opinion to have. In the end it's a matter of whether you believe their explanation or not. You're right it doesn't look like a typical placeholder. My personal guess is that it was never supposed to be replaced, they just didn't expect anyone to read it. Why not be upfront about it when it was discovered? It's just a typical face-saving excuse.

However, you could also reverse this question: why punish the developers for what is at most a minor infraction when they already apologized and removed it over a year ago? At this point, what do the people who still keep bringing this up and complaining about it want?

Because what is all the criticism of this game really about? At the end of the day, it was just an innocent joke. It can't really be construed as seriously trying to criticize the People's Republic of China. You can see some claims that it is "insulting to the Chinese" ("辱华"), or that it advocates Taiwan independence ("台独"): now I haven't played the game but I've never seen any of this substantiated. As far as I know, it showcases the Chinese culture (which is one of the reasons why I'd like to play it), and other than the fact that it's set in Taiwan in the 1980s, it steers clear of politics.

You're certainly right whoever put it there didn't do everything they possibly could to avoid any controversy (which would be not to put an object like this in the game in the first place) but that doesn't obscure the fact there's no rational justification for this witch hunt. I think your point of view can be summarized as "you shouldn't poke the bear," or "they played with fire, and got burned." In my opinion we are all better off in a world where artists have the freedom to poke the bear and play with fire.

In a way I agree that the current situation is a result of poking the bear, only it was GOG that did it by announcing the game's release on their Weibo, as I outlined in that other post I linked to earlier. For the record, I'm not saying that the game should be released in China if there is still significant controversy surrounding it (only that it shouldn't be banned elsewhere), but since we're discussing the nature of the controversy itself, I have to say I don't think there's any rational justification for it.

You're right you've said it multiple times already, and I agree. In fact I recall I already agreed about it in my first reply to you. I don't think anyone is disputing that really.

It's just that since they were ready to release it, the game had obviously met their curation standards. And when they abruptly pulled it claiming that was what "gamers" asked for without providing any evidence, there are valid questions to be asked. Even more so considering they have gone completely silent about the whole issue afterwards.

It's embarrassing they'll pull the game for China, but won't even dignify the rest of the world with a response. Pretty cowardly.

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