What? Saying that there is some controversy regarding the game and the Chinese market? That is public knowledge! Saying they are not releasing the game is just the truth, and saying they have no new release date in sight is also true. What "violent response" could they possibly get?

People are blinded by this "China stuff = I'm scawy". Yeah, they are 1 billion. Well, India is another one. US and Europe is another one. Well, you know, there are 5 times that number outside of China. Another crazy thing is people thinking all of those are middle class. Most of them are "out of poverty" because according to the UN you can earn less than U$ 2,00 a day and you're already "out of poverty".

So yeah, you go on pissing everyone off because China is "danzelous".

F* China and f* Xi Jing Poh.

Devs pulled the game from Steam. GOG banned the game.

Totally agree with you!

So you have never been affected?

Not when the dumped the classic installers and only introduced installers that automatically installed Galaxy without informing anybody, then lied about it?
- That was a blast on the forums and seeing people who never post just post a new message about it as every second post.

When they said they no longer had the classic installers, but they did (because who would be stupid enough to delete perfect files as a backup in case new ones got corrupted?) and finally relented and put them back up?

The fact that they then hid the classic offline installers and you had to dig to get to them because the galaxy-included installer was set as the default and with download including galaxy as the default so if a customer never unclicked they could take up massive amounts of gigabytes of storage by downloading galaxy with every game?

When killed the GoG downloader?

When they said they would be a DRM-free only store, but they sell games locked with DRM?

When they said Galaxy would be optional always, but they put single-player content for CP2077 locked exclusively into Galaxy?

When they announce and then cancel games on customers and developers leaving them screwed and hanging?
- But this doesn't bother you because it isn't a game you wanted, well keep waiting, a game you want and will buy will get killed one day too, but you will have no right to comp[lain about it then because you're too busy sucking up to GoG now.

It's not that they are a Billion, it's that their hacking is extremely aggressive. Governments in the US and Europe are attacked all the time by Chinese Hackers, and those are Governments. What can a smaller company like GOG do in the face of that!?

I agree that GOG should NOT have blamed their base (gamers) for this decision. It could be they got slammed like STEAM did (with fake Chinese accounts, but in this instance a bunch of emails and such from fake outraged Chinese acting like they were gamers) and thought the emails and such were legit...they should have just said that they were not going to release it at this time and left it at that...but I can understand WHY they would be hesitant.

They are in the middle of another crisis (not GOG specifically, but their parent company) and I really don't think they can expend the resources to fight off or be defensive against a Chinese internet assault right now.

Which would make you angrier...what GOG did, or to have them hacked by the Chinese and all your information to be in the CCP's hands right now? I'd probable be even MORE upset if the latter happened then the former.

And, as we've seen in the past, even if some accept that it was the hacker's fault, the company still takes a majority of the blame. I'd think GOG would have deeper problems if that happened than doing what they did.

It's an infuriating situation to be in. I don't think we should give in to the demands of a Red China in things like this. If you submit to what they want, who knows how far else they will go.

On the otherhand, they ARE a threat in these instances. They are a BIG threat and they have shown they are not afraid to push their weight around. if it's a choice between what GOG did, and having China unleash it's electronic resources to punish GOG...

It's a rock and a hard place situation...how far do people want GOG to go. Are they already on the Hill that they want all their information taken by a possible Hack because GOG's parent company is currently placing most of their resources into the Cyberpunk situation and can't expend anymore on building up GOG's defenses against an easily offended China...because my feeling is that if that happened many of those here wouldn't be commending GOG on taking a stand, but instead complaining about how GOG didn't do enough to protect their information or try to do anything in their power to keep it safe.

GOG HAS done something to keep it safe here perhaps...which is another facet to consider.

People aren't giving China enough credit for how hostile China gets with those that defy them...and what that type of hostility can lead to. I'd imagine people would blame GOG even moreso than China if a Chinese attack was successful. Losing people's personal information in that way probably would hurt GOG FAR MORE than their decision on Devotion has already...and could possibly hurt it more than the Cyberpunk situation has.

(Edit: Because...when if that happened, people would REALLY not buy things on GOG for fear of it being insecure...it's been a deathknell to many companies).

This is not to say I like this type of choice, but I can understand it. Once again though, GOG SHOULD NOT have blamed the gamers for it's decision, just state that they are not able to release the game at this time or something like that.

And it puts a foul taste in my mouth as well, being dictated by an overwrought bully of a Nation like China is not a good indication of how things are going in the world. We need more pushback by our governments to defend companies against things like this.

So the fact that GOG seems to completely ignore their customers doesn't directly affect you as a customer?

For all the money you spend on GOG as a customer you can't even get an honest statement from them as to what happened, while no effort is spared to placate every random on Weibo.

What to do about it is your call but you're deluding yourself if you think this doesn't affect you.

Did China say CDPR must release a broken game and watch CDP, CDPR and GOG unravel?
No, that was the company's management. It all is the company's management. It's not China's fault I got scammed here.

very likely , once it gave in it will give in again

I think the main difference here is that you are not boycotting China, but a company who got scared about getting in a middle of a political "crisis", and would rather keep political issues outside of gaming. I don't see this as GOG's statement "we approve and promote what China is doing", rather than "umm no, better stay the hell out of this". Maybe "cowardly", but at the same time understandable.

Similarly, I am not boycotting Norwegian salmon just because they keep pumping and selling oil to the rest of the world, neither am I boycotting German cars because Germany is not blocking Nord Stream 2. Since I understand their decisions, I don't feel like boycotting them, even if deep inside me I might be wishing they decided the opposite. Heck I think even the Finnish government is also taking part in Nord Stream 2 through the Fortum energy company, and you don't see me boycotting Finnish products, do you?

(Well, for Norway selling oil, I don't really have any issue with that, heck if they didn't do that it would just rise the price of oil which is never good; climate change schlimate schange, Greta Thunberg is an autistic lost child whose activist parents are using her for their political ends)

I think I know pretty well what happened, without any statements:

1. GOG was like "Ok some Taiwanese horror game, sounds cool, sure we can release it".

2. Later they were contacted by 200 million angry Chinese patriots that wrote "我们不同意您发布的游戏嘲笑我们亲爱的领导者" which roughly translates to "we don't approve that you are releasing a game which ridiculates our dear leader".

3. GOG be like "Oh shit what are we getting into? Why does this game make Chinese so angry? Backpedalling now!".

4. They sent their new PR intern who had been working for GOG only for two days to write a statement about not releasing the game after all.

The only way to keep politics out of gaming is to stand up to China's demand for censorship.

Do you know who does boycott Norwegian salmon? The Chinese government when the Nobel committee gave the peace prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident who was jailed at the time.

Each time we let the Chinese government succeed with their bullying tactics, we're only making it worse for ourselves.

You're right, this is probably what happened.

The problem is, if this wasn't in the context of China and Taiwan, this would have gone quite differently, I am sure.

Imagine GOG was about to release a game made by Russians, let's say. And let's say the Russian game had some anti-Biden meme in there or something. A bunch of angry American patriots write GOG a message, saying that they are incredibly upset that GOG would sell this problematic Russian game.

Would GOG have reacted this way and said "Oh God, controversy? Better back out of that one!"

Never.

Not only would the game not have been removed, but GOG's PR would have a field day posting on Twitter about how virtuous they are for not censoring games and bowing to this group of people, even though that's common sense: Racism bad, censorship bad, extreme nationalism bad, no matter the money.

But now it's a game by a Taiwanese company.
And the people complaining are Chinese.
GOG says "Sorry about that please don't stop doing business with us, we don't care about anything but your money"
There is no tweet boasting about doing the right thing, but the complete opposite. A tweet lying to the rest of the world.

That's not going to fly. I know you think boycotting is a worthless gesture since all companies are to some extent guilty for doing business with China. But I am fine with that. What I am not fine with is when China says "Jump" and they jump.

You aren't wrong about anything, but this comes down to simple human nature. If someone does bad, I want them punished and I want justice carried out in some way. I'd rather stop playing computer games than make this our new reality.

The point is not whether you can guess it yourself but whether they're being transparent to you as their customer.

They take your money and then take you for granted. Your voice with all your purchase history matters less to them than some social media noise. They will consider the social media when making their decisions but they will never consider or even acknowledge what you post here. Random outsiders get an apology and customers get nothing. If you're genuinely OK being treated like that, congratulations. On the plus side, I guess it makes life easier.

I posted a similar thread to this yesterday, and it was deleted within an hour along with them issuing me a warning. I said it then and I'll say it now: I own over 400 GOG games that I've bought since I joined the platform 8 years ago. I won't be spending another dime here unless and until Devotion is reinstated to the store.

They are capable of region locking, you know making a game available on in certain regions and not in other.

I dont understandy why they dont just leave it unavaialble to China and make it avaialble to everyone else.