So at this point, GOG is actively trying to make everyone hate them, right?

Whilst its good that GOG have said they are cracking down on moderating, as there have been far too many political and nonsense threads that have been posted in recent months that seem to have gone unchecked.

It saddens me that one of the most useful threads on the forums gets locked as GOG can't seem to tell the difference between advertising and informing users of deals on games that are not yet on GOG when they go on sale.

I assume the Epic DRM-free thread fell victim to the same rule, which is particularly weird since GOG has a deal with Epic.

If the intention of the rule was to crack down on actual blatant advertising then banning links to external stores outright is far too blunt an approach. I suggest devising a more nuanced rule.
Unless of GOG's intention is for the forum to be a fantasy world in which we don't acknowledge the existence of competitors. If that is the case then the rule is working as intended.

good

hope next ones will be the forum games

The Kickstarter link and mention would have been the conversation starter since I thought the community here would have been interested in it. But since Kickstarter links are seen as advertising, and describing it without linking would be seen as trying to skirt the rules, I'll just be removing the post. I don't think I'm able to remove the whole thread, so you may want to clean it up.
Thank you.

Sure feels like it, how long til it's just toadying sycophants and people with the 'correct' politics in here? Ever since the CoC was rewritten so you can't even question anything a blue does it's been getting progressively more stifling and hostile to anyone who doesn't suckle at GOG's teat.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if all the downvote bots were actually run by GOG themselves.

But please GOG, keep stomping those boots down harder and harder on your fanbase until there isn't a real one left.

It seems like something of an overkill move, if it was only done to ban links to Zoom Platform.… You ever heard about Barbra Streisand?

and good these personal pointless topics are closed too , like i have a covid .. who cares, that is clearly a facebook post and shouldnt be on gog

even this got a hit : Epic Store games you can play without the Epic Launcher :D

This is a really surreal thing to do.

Edit: actually its complete shit.

Well, it all depends on your (or rather GOG's) definition of "advertising". Linking to a certain store now ... after how many years again? .... is suddenly considered to be advertising - because GOG said so - not because that's actually the case. What's next? Will we be be censored if we mention Steam, Epic, Humble, itch, zoom or other stores everybody already knew about anyway? (we will see if this post wqill be censored as well). Oh, GOG, what have you become? One reason I loved to support you was the freedom you offered but it seems those times are over.

And really? You are talking about "being fair"? May I remind you that you still did not lift a finger to do something against downvote bots? Hey, it would be fair if a bot would not vote me down every 5 to 6 days ... I mean, it could be considered mobbing - but GOG is so FAIR that they just don't care at all.

In law enforcement there's "the letter of the law"...

... which is any and every infraction -- no matter how "small" -- is a chargeable offense...

... and...

... there is "the spirit of the law"...

... which is where intention, motivation -- the "size" of the infraction -- and the ultimate outcome of the infraction are all factored in to determine whether to charge someone with an offense or let them of with just a warning.

The letter of the law is often used by authoritarians to keep people in line under the written law by using the text as a weapon. The spirit of the law is used by community-minded policing to keep people of the community understanding the role of law enforcement -- and respecting it -- by allowing some leeway when the offenses are "small."

One builds community.

One does not.

Which has GOG chosen?

The moment when moderation itself becomes toxic and starts to eradicate established community.threads

"We’re constantly improving our moderation in the efforts of making our Forum a better place for our community."

Keep it up, perhaps you'll be at your best, when this forum is a barren wasteland of nothingness.

The irony here is that gamers concerned about DRM are going to continue these discussions, they just do it elsewhere, other sites, private forums, Reddit, Facebook, and what have you.

So when previously GOG's concern was how to convert people visiting those discussions into paying customers here, now GOG's problem will be how to get those people to visit GOG's site to begin with.

I wonder if they have actually gone through the numbers here with a calculator and spreadsheet, but it's their business, so it's their concern, not ours.

Could a moderator please clarify the rules in detail for this? I mean, if people reference the Steam page of a game not to compare prices, because perhaps there's a discussion on the related forum of how to patch a game (that GOG doesn't come pre-patched with), or whether achievements / Linux version are missing or not, or whether a game has DRM or not, or to quote someone who clarifies that a "W10 only" listed game does actually run on W7-8, etc, is this regarded as "advertising" or not?

Edit: Are conversations that mention "I bought the disc version of x game from Ebay" also banned? What about charity bundles (eg, itch.io's "Bundle for Ukraine")?

Edit 2: Given that many updates on GOG come with no changelog at all (that are often posted on the Steam forum), is linking to these advertising? Example - Dusk, the latest changelog on GOG is Nov 2019, yet there have been 5x newer ones since on Steam's Update Page.