Agreed

I get what you're saying and I do understand the sentiment. But somehow for me this was clear enough. The excuse smelled enough for what it was. Any additional amount of dressing and glitter would just be superfluous. And all the 'we are sorry but the CCP's business deal made us do it' without actually trying to mend the wrong done even more egregious. Yes, it would be more transparent. But it wouldn't make me feel any better.

On the contrary, I love watching the defenders squirm as they desperately try to defend GOG with conspiracy theories like it was the banks faults in spite of GOG's own official statement. Oh, so you want to defend them but agree that they lied about why they aren't listing it. Very high brow smart people we are dealing with. Question is, why would you willingly want to do business with a corporation that lies to your face, for any reason, let alone defend them.

When are companies going to learn that remaining silent in situations like this only pisses people off more? SAY SOMETHING!

Im not convinced % of chinese customers is significant. if anything its smaller than some make it out to be. Im going to assume many games dont even have a chinese translation. Im going to assume there is a very healthy pirate community (probably bigger than many think) over there as well considering how not well off the majority of the population seems to be.There was a breakdown of the demographic a long while back ....anyone remember it?.
I dont know much about Devotion but i'd buy the game out of spite vs way China bots (whatever probably bots linked back to CCP in some way or form) and promote the crap out of the game to friends.

This is not a case of Karens complaining on Facebook. It's a country - a totalitarian regime - wanting to apply their laws when it comes to international relationships. Its a legal situation, not "censorship as to not offend anyone"

Similar with how the middle east, australia, japan, the us and germany ban or modify games, for several reasons, all based on legalities.

the middle east one is obvious. australia hates excessive violence and small tits. you can't talk about taboo subjects in japan, like how fallout is altered for japanese audiences. they are extremely hardcore with their censorship sometimes. you can't put references to drugs. sometimes it's enough to say "hypodermic needle" to have you censored. germany only allows nazi imagery for documental reasons and when its part of works of art, and the extremely based german govt does not consider games as art, legally speaking. indiana jones, the movie, can have swastikas, but the game cannot. they hate violence too, in fact a lot of people talk about games as a "school shooter hobby", or at least they did in some papers. i love it when gaming events in germany have huge marketing for like Anno games instead of your boring american action game.

so yeah. this is not gog bending the knee to social pressure, this could eventually have had legal repercusions.

i mean, let's start with the fact that the game is taiwanese, which is a rather touchy subject for the chinese

You seem to be implying that political censorship is normal and acceptable. It's not, and never will be. You also seem to be implying that China is just like other countries. It's not.

America specifically absolutely does not have legally required censorship. We have strong free speech protections. The only things that are not allowed are child pornography, copyright infringement, and slander. With the exception of those you can publish literally whatever you want, with no license or permission or legal repercussions.

Australian here - when our government acts on having games banned here, they don't insist that said games be banned across the whole world. BIG difference.

Furthermore, generally, when games are refused classification here, they are given the chance to try again after removing the offending materials... Which Red Candle HAS ALREADY DONE! This is nothing like the situation in Australia, this is just China holding onto a childish grudge and GOG playing right into their hands for monetary gain; it's disgusting, it's unacceptable. And from CD Projekt in particular, it's beyond disappointing.

You are wrong on both accounts. The post I was replying to implied that this was a case of people being offended and wanting to take something down, and that is not the case. It's the law in a totalitarian state. You don't want to mess that up.

And while America has this supposed protection of free speech, not every country does the same. Totalitarian or not.

That is exactly true. The game was "lèse majesté" and even if they removed the content in question, that "crime" was committed and that doesn't go away.

Well, that's what companies do. And must do if they have to answer to shareholders, like CD Projekt. It's simply capitalism.

With the gray status of GOG in China (no license...) and the - from what I hear - good sales of CP2077 there, they're in no position to piss off Chinese authorities in any way. And they can't even openly talk about it, because their sales there aren't completely legal.

Of course, pissing off their customers by blaming "gamers" was beyond silly. My guess would be short circuit panic reaction when the shit hit the fan.

What primarily bothered me about your post was that you bundled the US in with the middle east, Japan, and Germany when it comes to legally required censorship. The US does not have legally required censorship. We do have game ratings, but they are performed by a private company and are completely voluntary. If a publisher doesn't want to have their game rated, they can still publish it. Though Walmart probably won't stock it on their shelves in that case, which gives companies a financial incentive to be rated and self censor.

Also, Dycaite was absolutely correct in that countries like Australia and Japan do not try to perform censorship outside their own national borders. This is a big difference from the way China behaves. (And Germany in some cases.) They seem to think that if they are banning something, it needs to be banned everywhere, not just inside their country.

(The US does push their standards of Copyright on other countries, which is actually a form of censorship. But that's a completely different topic than censoring political speech.)

Anyhow, sorry for assuming you feel censorship is acceptable based on your post. But you didn't say it isn't.

If their excuse is answering to shareholders, they should have a vote in their next shareholders meeting that says "Do you want to engage in censorship in order to appease the Chinese government?" That would show how the shareholders really feel. In general I think companies doing reprehensible crap and blaming it on the shareholders is only a valid excuse if they actually asked their shareholders what they think.

Out of interest, can you give an example of such a case with Germany?

I do not profess to know all of the specifics and will not even try to weigh in on them, but I will say...

... a few years back I played Medal of Honor (2010).

In that game's multiplayer, you could play as the Taliban. You could effectively "kill" US soldiers.

Was there criticism and outcry? Yes.

Was the game taken off the market? No.

A few months back...

... a game here on GOG glorified rioting (Tonight We Riot?). This was while there was rioting -- or on the eve of rioting -- in many communities.

There was criticism.

The game was not taken off the GOG marketplace.

Censorship -- and monopoly -- look good to the board rooms... but not to the people. But what do I know?

EDIT:

I would also say... CDPR and GOG are businesses. While businesses -- in some countries -- might legally be considered citizens, they do not -- for the most part -- act with an ethical compass. So I would caution thinking too "lovingly" about companies and corporations. Where your neighbor might help you in crisis, a corporation probably won't... unless it helps their image or makes them money. With that said, recent events are severely hurting CDPR and GOG's image. So, let's see how they move forward...?

That's not an excuse, that's the reality. Do you know who generally the shareholders are, for the most part? Investment firms, banks, insurances, who have their own shareholders, who again are, for the most part, money-making constructs. At the top of the food chain are companies like BlackRock. When Bayer bought Monsanto it was Blackrock on both sides of the table. A joke, when you think about it.

And yes, asking those shareholders will always yield the same answer: "Do whatever protects our ROI, make us money". Because they answer to the next level or shareholders, who don't even know or care about the issue.

Yes. Germany attempted to censor "hate speech" on Twitter and Facebook even for posts that originate outside Germany. There are many articles about it if you would like to research it. Here's one I found with a quick Google search:

https://newrepublic.com/article/147364/verboten-germany-law-stopping-hate-speech-facebook-twitter

I really don't want to derail this thread off of the original topic though, so I otherwise yield when it comes to discussion of this.