“Many gamers” makes it sound like many gamers, not all gamers including you or me. I imagine that there are many gamers in China, so again, it’s not a lie. It is vague, but again, I’m not sure why you feel that they need to justify their business decisions to you personally. Or why you are taking this so personally to begin with. These threads come up every time gog decides not to sell a game for whatever reason and they always come off to me as entitled people complaining about how the company they buy things from doesn’t bend to their every whim. If Walmart decided to stop selling dirt devil vacuums would you start a letter writing campaign over it? Would you be personally offended by it?

Letting things like what slide? You're outraged because GOG decided to pull an obscure game by a small company because a group of gamers from China was upset? And this is somehow a big political issue? This outrage about bending to China's will is almost laughable. I guarantee every one of the outraged protesters have houses filled with products made in China, yet they're convinced they're somehow fighting the good fight against evil China by vilifying GOG for not selling a game.

Yup, not getting into that roundabout of an argument again - I'm here about Devotion, that's it. And anyone with half a brain can see that they are being insincere with their reasoning. THAT'S what I am sad to see people letting slide. If you honestly see no problem with the statement they released then God help you.

I would be happy to read an official statement containing a reasonable explanation as to why GoG decided not to release it to the rest of the world. There can't be a reason for this. They do it to Australian customers, Drakensang, they don't get access to this game. So if they are able to block games in certain countries they could very well do it for Devotion in China.

They can't say Oh, it would offend Chinese [i]netizens/gamers and they would boycott us over it[/i] so we can't release it on our worldwide store and expect any reasonable person to believe it. Unless GoG thinks of the Chinese netizens/gamers residing in other countries all over the world, who might be offended over this game, asking their fellow citizens to boycott Cyberpunk or the whole store. Not a reasonable explanation for their move.

So there really isn't much left they could possibly say to smooth things over. They could still release it, without statement, and block it for China. If they do feel offended, so be it, this isn't going to hurt GoG as much as they think it would. Reason being that while many may boycott CP or GoG, the urge to buy and play their games will be stronger. Making assumptions here, if it is anywhere like PC police, or minorities with hundreds of thousands of like minded (or mindless) followers, bots, etc. threatening to boycott, there is even less reason to even consider their threats. Why? Because in updates to the story on some HK and Taiwanese sources, it doesn't seem that any official parties had been involved in this, or orders from above.

Whatever they decide to do or say, if anything, could work for or against them. Saying nothing or not reacting to anything on the other hand seriously doesn't them any good even if there is little to say.

Add: There is one other thing to consider for GoG in this situation. Games containing the word kill and blood are forbidden there. If GoG now started to censor all of them, not only for China but for the rest of the world, because they can't reasonably ask developers to censor their games for one market only, this is a greater thread to their existence over there than any pressure from gamers/netizens who may not even be actual gamers/customers and their demands.

You mean: many gamers?
Some of which probably coming from the most populous country in the world, aka: China?

Not to mention the country where the majority of Cyberpunk pre-order originated from despite not being officially sold there.

I wasn't even aware of that. But it's sure nice to know.

As you have demonstrated yourself, "many gamers" is already the most charitable interpretation. It's definitely not to GOG's detriment that it has become the prevailing one.

In fact the biggest problem starts with the word "gamers."

Most often it was being paraphrased for entertainment value rather than quoted.

I find it nitpicking.
Can you state your source for this claim?

Quick google :

https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/cyberpunk-2077-conquers-china-highest-pre-sale-figures-in-the-wor/zb1f31
https://nikopartners.com/cyberpunk-2077-off-to-a-strong-start-in-china/
https://wccftech.com/cyberpunk-2077-is-off-to-a-strong-start-in-china-too-according-to-niko-partners/
https://www.essentiallysports.com/cyberpunk-2077-has-turned-out-to-be-a-huge-hit-in-china-even-without-an-official-release-cd-projekt-red-esports-news/
https://www.pcgamesn.com/cyberpunk-2077/sales-china

If it's so well-substantiated surely you won't have a problem coming with an exact quote that corroborates what you claimed, and a link to it?

I'm a real gamer (busy with my career, but I do game on my spare time) with more games here than I care to mention.

Maybe its a Canadian thing, but I don't really care about this issue either.

The developers of Devotion made an error in judgement, took a cheap shot at China's leader (whether or not you agree with their actions, I find name-calling actual living people to be of bad taste) and antagonised an economic juggernaut which is now making its displeasure known.

Many many other countries have applied economic pressures to get their way, probably less successfully than China it seems. As long as they limit themselves to applying economic pressures and don't send legions of hackers, its all fair game.

GOG is a privately owned company out to make money. It is not a vanguard of free speech or democracy (this is what the public space is for and this is why we need it... never assume that voting with your wallet is a substitute for real voting). As long as they are offering me the service that I want (ie, DRM-free games) and they are not killing puppies as part of their operating procedures (in this regard, I care about the big crunch their parent company imposed on their staff during the making of Cyberpunk way more, I'm a software developer too), its fine with me. They can have my money.

If it's so easy to substantiate this claim, why make it so difficult to check the references?

Well, maybe because if you actually look into any of them, everything boils down to 1 tweet by 1 guy, which, if true, only says that China was the #1 market for pre-orders on PC at one point.

That's a long way from what was originally claimed:

For someone who is so very careful to make a distinction between "many gamers" and "many messages from gamers," conflating the two above must obviously be much more disingenuous, right?

Also, you seem to be criticizing me for simply asking that the claim be substantiated, while a moment ago you were saying yourself (to another poster):

Weren't you able to locate the original tweet yourself? But then it appears you had known what was in it all along.

"Why make it so disingenuous?"

The thing is that the Chinese PC market is in a very weird state, on one side you are supposed to have your game approved and censored to meet china requirements, but on the other side, at least for now, they don't seem to really care that much about Chinese purchasing "un-approved" games from online platforms and most of them are not even blocked there from what I understand. Added to that the China PC game market is one of biggest in the world and un-approved games included Cyberpunk which sold incredibly well over there and is very popular despite it's issues.

So it's easy to understand that, given the circumstances, Gog didn't want to attract any negative attention over there, they probably naively thought that everybody forgot about Devotion and were scared when they discovered it wasn't the case.

To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if those messages they received (if they are real) were not even from nationalist or CCP shills wanting to erase Devotion from the face of the earth, but from genuine Chinese gamers who were just afraid that releasing this game would attract the CCP attention and would result in Gog and Cyberpunk being banned over there.

This is just a private company that pulled back when China exerted its economic muscle (and I would probably have done the same given an obscure game that overstepped boundaries of proper behaviour and China being a huge market).

Countries do that all the time (maybe not due to insults on their president, but for issues that can still seem quite petty when viewed from the outside). This is small potatoes not worth my time (though I find the objection to it fascinating to watch).

If China had hacked the problem away, that would have been strongly objectionable to me.

Fipa (the treaty Harper made with China where he sold out his country for a period 31 years in exchange for political capital) is extremely objectionable to me.

This is nothing compared to the above.

Yes, I can see
-
how much disinterest
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you seem to have
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in the matter.

=-=-=-=

Might be partially coincidence, and i'm not saying all canadians are against this for the same(or even bad) reasons....still, it does seem rather odd to me that so many canadians seem to be okay with this.