The more China can get away with, the more they will attempt to control in the future.

I'm less worried about a single game being censored, more about the fact that GOG is allowing their store content to be moderated by a hostile dictatorship which over time is going to influence what games are available here.

Once they start to say Yes to the censors, it's not going to become easier saying No in the future.

I would not be remotely surprised to start hearing this stuff in a few years time:-

- "Due to another border skirmish, "Many Gamers" demand all games made by Indian studios be removed from all foreign stores or you won't be able to do business in China".

- "Due to the Spratley Island dispute, "Many Gamers" demand all games made by Vietnamese studios be removed from all foreign stores or you won't be able to do business in China".

- "Due to the Senkaku Island dispute, "Many Gamers" demand all games made by Japanese studios be removed from all foreign stores or you won't be able to do business in China".

- "Due to the South China Sea dispute, "Many Gamers" demand that games made by Filipino studios be removed from all foreign stores or you won't be able to do business in China".

- "Due to protests from foreign Buddhists over treatment of Tibetan monks, "Many Gamers" demand that all Cambodia, Thai, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, etc, game studios be removed from all foreign stores or you won't be able to do business in China".

- "Due to protests from foreign Muslims over treatment of Chinese Uighurs, "Many Gamers" demand that all game studios based in majority Muslim countries be removed from all foreign stores or you won't be able to do business in China".

And there will be the same useful idiots / '50 Cent' trolls here saying "but, but, but, have you sold your fridge and condemned GOG for curating unfinished Steam asset flippers yet? Because that's what really counts!"

I'm from Mainland China, and I'll say that the worrying on Cyberpunk 2077 is a complete nonsense.
1. Cyberpunk 2077 is still on the shelf in China, and it has Chinese native voiceover! How could it be censored if a game has Chinese native voiceover?
2. The content of "Taiwan Independence" is from Cyberpunk 2020, not 2077. Those Chinese netizens are attacking the wrong target.
3. I don't mean to negate the existence of censorship in China, but our administration is still not that Orwellian. Also, if a game is "offensive", it would have been banned from the beginning, not now.
4. Trolls are trolls, even they're '50 cents', and even inside our Chinese community. Their radical demands don't represent the voice of Chinese community.
5. Please, please stop your baseless depiction on a censorship on GOG.com. The Chinese government is unable to influence the platform based outside their border. Also, I have never heard of any official boycott of a single category of products from any country after 1978 here.
6. The problem of Taiwan is merely an internal affair, not an international problem. Please bear in mind that even in the constitution of Taiwan, they claim the territory of Mainland China. This is not the same with border frictions with India, Philippines, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Japan, or any other countries.
7. GOG.com is a platform for creating pleasure and happiness, not a platform of creating villains and enemies, nor a platform to clash with political controversies. If you insist to do so, show your proof instead of merely criticize. Oh, the Chinese community won't use English in their daily discussion, so learn Chinese or consult a native Chinese before you want to express your objection.

Censorship of anything making fun of any CCP leaders was never uncommon in China. For instance, Jiang Zemin was always said to look like a toad, which is why an entire meme about 膜蛤 (Mó Há - toad worship) exists. This was censored too.

The thing that is very important to remember is that what happened to Devotion is only the very tip of the iceberg.

So it's easy to create yet another angry thread against Gog but it's also very important to remember that they are not the first to bend the knee to no offend China, not the worse, and sadly they won't be the last.

Steam removed some game (not to mention that Devotion is not back there despite the devs seemingly wanting it to be sold)and works with Chinese authority to create a China friendly Steam, Epic is partly owned by Tencent, and while good old Tim assure us that it has no impact, you usually you avoid needlessly offending your business partners, and let's not talk all the others companies or even governments.

So while I agree that Gog handled it extremely poorly, especially in the middle of the whole Cyberpunk controversy, and I am very annoyed by it, it is still important to remember that in the grand scheme of things it only a water drop in the ocean, so getting all offended at Gog while ignoring that it's the norm and not an exception, that nearly everybody does the same, is not helping.

But I want to, and have always enjoyed to, support GOG. That's the worst of it all. I have never made an effort to support Steam, see? I have never decided to buy a game I already own in any other store but GOG. I have never decided to wait to pay MORE for a game because it MAY be released in this platform.

That is what they chose to throw away and that infuriates me.

It's forbidden in China to question and/or mock and/or insult the leader.

So it's not so much that they "care about an indie game" as it is that they care that the game once had content in it which mocked and insulted their leader.

Interesting. According to the article, these people were complaining because the wiki article said "Taiwan is not really a country and is not actually a part of China." But as a matter of fact, in the Cyberpunk board game Taiwan is a completely independent republic, and if anything more aligned with Japan in many ways. They're notable for the top-tier weapons manufacturer Kang Tao.

For Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt made Kang Tao Chinese, and (as far as I know, haven't played the game) left out the inconvenient details about Taiwan but I bet "many gamers" would not be pleased if they found out the full story.

Refusing to release a game which is politically a hot potato because of its content is quite different from not releasing any games from a certain country.

As I said elsewhere, I consider this similar as if GOG refused to release a game which ridiculates Mohammad, or merely has a picture of him. While je suis Charlie, at the same time I'd also perfectly understand GOG's decision.

Then what is it, if it is not either a country of its own, nor part of China? Something in between?

That reminds me of a comic strip recently where two "extremists" were arguing whether the earth is round or flat, and then a third person, supposedly a "reasonable" guy, enters the argument and says "You are both wrong, the truth is somewhere between those two extremes. The Earth is oval.".


Why not? Do you hate Chinese game developers? Should they all be boycotted because... why exactly?

1.Your occupation zone is well known for both blatantly pirating western works, and falsely claiming copyrright of others' works.
2.It's actually a real world fact that the communist ursurpers refuse to recognize that Taiwain *IS* the lawfully elected government of China.
3. Your terrorist controlled occupation zone's so called "leadership" has literally executed people for sharing humorous memes on the internet.
4. Whether they do or not, they're state actors carrying out state orders to push censorship and threaten citizens of actual countries instead of occupation zones.
5.That's a blatant lie on your part given the very long and consistent history of communist demanding censorship of works abroad for literal decades, and periodically achieving it.
6. The existence of the communist occupation zone and it's false claims to be a government remains a global problem. I and many others look eagerly forwardto the restoration of lawful government to the mainland, not the least reason being it'll prevent the deaths of over 100 million people occuring in the mainland again.
7. You're in an English language forum of a Polish software developer with significant numbers of English speaking employees. It is clearly not much of a burden to you to actually speak a language of a free people, perhaps because English *IS* the global lingua franca and I suggest you do so. Noone on the planet owes you anything for simply existing, much less to use a language more then a third of your own people don't speak simply because the occupation zone never standardized one.
Like most totalitarian regimes, their so afraid of loss of power, they're willing to do anything no matter how asinine to keep it.
One drop can make an ocean. And one person can on occasion stop a flood from destroying everything, though it's always easier and better if the whole community gets involved in building the dam.

1. Believe it or not, I'm a copyleft supporter. Copyright has been abused for long, I think.
2. Election doesn't make a government lawful, power does.
3. Our government won't execute people for just sharing memes of the "leadership". They dislike them, they ban them, but they don't execute people for it.
4. '50 cents' are quite spontaneous. The state supports them, but it don't order them.
5. I know it demands censorship of works abroad. But it seldom succeeded outside its area of control.
6. You just don't understand that we were a period behind western civilization that time. Most of our people do criticize and get angry at what it did that time, but they won't bring it down for now.
7. I'm not intended to say "Please speak Chinese when you want to express objection to me here". What I'd like to say is "go to Chinese internet community, learn what they say, and analyze what they really think, rather than using information from English community reporting the Chinese community". I'm not negating English as lingua franca in GOG.com or in any international community, I'm emphasizing that the difference of recognition based on language barriers can be significant.
8. I'd like to extend this topic a little. In Frostpunk, Chinese players often ignore the protests or pursuit of freedom. They just go to totalitarian and make the most of productiviity. The final screen of this game says "Was it worth it?" Of course! We survived! Do you think that Chinese people are out of the period of worrying about their survival? If you want to judge a regime, make a thorough research, imagine if you're the citizen of that country (or go there and live for three decades), and avoid simply using "good/evil" as a final word.
9. Since the forum is filled with hostility towards my home country, this will be my last reply in this community. There are many things I want to explain, but they're too deep or too hard to understand for anyone outside China. The Communism is not the main reason for today's situation, the hostility towards it is.

For the record, nobody here is "worried" Cyberpunk 2077 would get banned in China. People are just pointing out there will be attempts to delist other games from now on. "Objectionable" material can be found anywhere if you keep looking hard enough.

If Cyberpunk 2077 got banned that'd be CD Projekt's problem to worry about. A problem of their own making may I add.

You've made some good points, like:
I agree. For me the Devotion release problem is primarily a GOG issue. GOG inflicted it upon themselves by announcing the release in China. They likely shouldn't have tried to release it there at all. Nobody forced them to put themselves in this position. But since there is no reason for the game not to be released it in other countries, and yet they didn't release it, people are right to criticize them for this (as well as for how they have communicated it).

However, it's also difficult to take what you write at face value if you say something like:
This has been happening all the time: Japanese car dealerships, Korean supermarkets, European fashion brands, etc. Surely you must have heard about all this? So I guess you would say these weren't "official" boycotts but what would an "unofficial" boycott be then? Any "official" boycotts could be challenged under WTO rules, so in practice it's always done under some invented excuse (not just in China).

Not really sure what kind of proof you would like to see but the second part comes off as quite arrogant, and is likely why you got this kind of response. I understand you clarified it now you didn't mean it so it's just a heads-up.

Don't worry, you're in good company: CD Projekt tells everyone they can get a refund "if you are not willing to wait [for the patches]." This also doesn't sound very good, and I'm quite sure they didn't mean it like that either.

What you wrote later sounds a bit better:
But then what follows is quite an exaggeration: Especially if, following your advice, we look at some of the comments in the Chinese forum now: As a native speaker, would you care to translate it for everyone? If you don't want to, I understand.

Of course it's not the majority there with such opinions but neither is it the majority here. Still, you can't just complain against hostility one way but not the other. If anything, widespread hostility on the Internet is one thing that unites the whole planet.

The whole point is that this isn't going to turn out good for the company, and thus the shareholders either, in particular because:

1. Requests for more delistings will keep coming now that one of them has been proven to be successful with so little effort.

2. Every delisted game is not only reputational damage but lost revenue. At this point it can be estimated that GOG lost at least $20,000/€15,000 over just a couple of days from their 30% cut in Devotion sales that didn't materialize.

3. The handling of subsequent delisting requests will take additional resources from the company, and is bound to result in further controversy.

4. Devotion could have been the differentiating factor in luring new users to GOG. People would flock here to buy it since it's not available on Steam, and then stay to buy other games as well. This multiplier effect is not happening now, meaning further opportunity cost.

So there is a purely business case why GOG's handling of the situation should be different.

Their Chinese market would not have been at risk if they handled it well. Lots of international companies successfully do business in China without jeopardizing their Western customer base.

Conversely, since they mishandled the situation this time, it's just a matter of time before they do it again, and next time it'll probably more serious. Meanwhile, they're ruining their reputation in China too by treating their Chinese customers atrociously over the refunds.

And the share price isn't exactly doing well already, for other reasons, so shareholders have precious little justification to believe the management saying "trust us, we know what we're doing" any longer. If some of them want to sue they might as well do so now.

Imagine living in a country where organized crime practically controls large stretches of your cities and murders and trafficks sex slaves at will, where the vast majority live in squalor, and somehow the fact that an ultra-obscure Taiwanese horror video game got censored by China is the biggest issue you can think about. I mean no offense but lol dude.

Stop watching the BBC, things are not nearly as bad as it appears on your TV and many people, including me, live very good lives here - and I have been abroad so I know what I am talking about.

That, and it is not that it was censored by China, it was censored in the entire World because of China and THAT affects me, get your facts together, dude.