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.

It's likely those from at least two groups: those who are fervently loyal to GOG(or don't mind what they did/do), and those who dislike "clutter" of threads in the forums who enter threads just to downrate them.

=-=-=Yet somehow "many gamers(Tm)" on the net got them to drop Devotion.
(and supposedly LESS than the number who "signed" the wishlist here)

"Many messages from gamers" could mean two gamers that sent thousands of messages. How many gamers and messages are we talking about?

You mean like some skins from 2077?

=-=-=

Might just be coincidence, but I have noted a higher than average number of those who support GOG on this have been posters from Canada.

It's most likely mainly GOG apologists, those who dislike such topics on "their" forums, and possible some chinese citizens(and ex chinese citizens) as well.

=-=-=-=

If GOG delists a game due to some random comments by "many gamers" on some small social media site, then anything is possible...including bringing the game back here due to things like YTer videos and forum posts.
(unlikely, but possible)

Big question: If GOG didn't want to attract unwanted attention, why did they post to chinese social media about the devotion release?

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
-
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.

I have a theory or two about it, but its pure conjecture on my part.

Two factors come to mind:
- Baseline degree of polarisation against China (ie, how likely you are to jump the gun about anything China does out of general principle)
- The importance one attributes to the state vs the importance one attributes to corporations (especially as it relates to the amount of control the general populace is expected to have on them)

I don't expect companies to behave democratically via their user-base. Therefore, this does not ruffle any feathers. It makes a certain kind of strategic sense really. Small obscure game vs Chinese market. Its a no brainer.

I had a similar theory that it's some of that......plus possibly(no offense meant by this bit) some ex-chinese citizens who like/agree with the decision.

I would expect they'd follow the money, though....and it seems a good number might stop buying or buy less due to their decision.

Also, they likely could've achieved the same thing by blocking the game in china.

I'm not, but either way, I wouldn't be too quick to label all Chinese expatriates as ardent loyalists. People leave their country for a reason...

They made their decision, customers will make theirs and we'll see. I think that in terms of the bottom-line, they probably made the right call. The Chinese market is huge and I think most GOGers don't really care (the forums are not a valid sample here).

Of course, the best decision here would probably have been not to agree to the release in the first place, but it is what it is.

For banning the game only in China, I have no idea, though it seems like the Chinese government wanted to scrub the game off the face of the Earth.

Oh I wasn't(sorry if it came off as such btw)...I was just musing on whether or not the higher than usual number of canadian users seemingly defending GOG's decision was(at least in part) due to ex-chinese defending GOG's move.

And that is one of the saddest things about all this, imo.

Gog did a bad thing; not really even by not releasing the game but how they handled the situation and treated their customer base about this non-release. The amount of white-knighting is surprising (in an embarrassing way).

"But Gog always stuck their heads in the sand when the community get angry!"

Yeah, so what? Does not made it right back then, and still is pathetic. Thats an interesting compilation. I already saw Yongs; Joes and Jims takes but these combined together was a nice idea. Seeing ppl like Jim Sterling and Quartering on the same page on something is a bit weird but should be all the more alarming to whomever made these PR decisions.

And it is a university that swept in to preserve the game which is as it should be.

I would not trust most companies with the business of preserving culture (really, they have been quite non-chalant about it over the years, many works have been lost due to carelessness).

This is part of the reason why I think having things being DRM-free when possible and putting a reasonable expiration period on copyright are necessary.

I think authors should get paid for their work, but I also think that once a work is out there and part of the culture, we have some collective ownership on it. An author (or nowadays, whichever entity owns the content) should not have the freedom to make the work disappear.

At least the ones being honest about supporting GOG's decision I can somewhat respect.....but then you have some others(in general) acting like they're "just stating facts" by mentioning what we all know already(that GOG is a company and does as it wants, etc). I wish such users(the ones actually doing such) would come out and say "I support GOG's decision" and not hide it behind "just stating facts on how corporations work".

(note to all: I am not talking about anyone specific ITT, but more users posting on the topic at hand across the forums in general)
=-=-=-=

They did? Which one? Also have a link to the story by any chance?

Or greed(also agree with this 100%).

Agreed as well