It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
"China" returned 29 posts
Clear search criteria
high rated
avatar
Genocide2099: They can start by making that Devotion game available on GoG. I won't buy it but it will bring back at least a small amount of trust and respect.
They can't and it has been explained several times why they can't. But, ok, another time.

Nobody denies that announcing the game, and retreating a few hours later blaming "gamers" of all people. That was... incompetent beyond any measure.

Devotion is a (muleta) red cloth to the Chinese, even if the content in question is now removed, the fact stands that the devs "insulted" their "great leader". It may be laughable, but that's simply how authoritarian regimes are - they have no humour, they love to make examples, and we can't change that.

Now GOG/CD Projekt are operating in a grey area in China - officially they are not there, and don't have a license (which could be revoked anyway, see the original publisher of the game). But they also are not blocked by the Great Firewall.
That means, currently GOG is making good money in China, and from what I hear, CP77 sells well there too.

That means they can't afford any negative attention from Chinese authorities at all, and can't even openly admit that - because officially they are not doing business there.

And: CD Projekt is a publicly traded company, which means they are first and foremost responsible to their shareholders. The botched CP77 release already made those irritable, releasing Devotion and getting banned over that from huge and lucrative the Chinese market probably lead to a class action lawsuit against the CEOs of GOG and CD Projekt for harming their own business out of spite.

The only chance I see for Devotion is to find a home on some smaller time store independent from business interests in China. I hope that can happen, because it seems to be a good game, even if the devs pretty recklessly destroyed their own publisher over a silly joke.

It's hilarious how all those couch freedom warriors here whine about "GOG being in bed with evil communists" when it's good old capitalist greed that dictates business decisions, and that has never cared for human rights (see our Saudi best friends when we want oil, or sweatshops and slave labour all over the third world for cheap clothes and resources) or freedom other than the freedom of making money for a upper few percent.

Expecting a smallish Polish company to make a stand against the fickle rulers of China AND their own owners over one single game is delusional, to put it mildly.

If people want to complain about outdated offline installers, DRM-like features in Galaxy, the Epic partnership (also with China in the back...), way too little manpower when the customer base has exploded, the broken website, and finally abysmal incompetence when it comes to communicating with their user base and in general intransparency - I'm all with you. But in the case of Devotion their hands are tied, and probably very tightly, and apart from the initial fuck-up with the announcement and retreat from that I can not see how GOG can be blamed. If you want to blame anybody, blame "the system". Or Xinnie, but I doubt any of those care.
high rated
avatar
toxicTom: They can't and it has been explained several times why they can't. But, ok, another time.
Basically, your post can be summed up as follows:

China has lots of money and influence, so the rest of the world simply has to bend over and accept whatever they want. And we all have no choice but to accept that, so we might as well shut up and wear a smile on our faces.

Well, I don't accept that. I have a choice as to where I spend my money and I will vote with my wallet, which it is my right to do.

Besides, the question being asked is: "What would GOG have to do to restore the lost trust?". I gave my honest answer as to what they would need to do to restore my trust in the store. Whether those actions are likely or not is irrelevant.
low rated
avatar
toxicTom: They can't and it has been explained several times why they can't. But, ok, another time.
avatar
Time4Tea: Basically, your post can be summed up as follows:

China has lots of money and influence, so the rest of the world simply has to bend over and accept whatever they want. And we all have no choice but to accept that, so we might as well shut up and wear a smile on our faces.

Well, I don't accept that. I have a choice as to where I spend my money and I will vote with my wallet, which it is my right to do.

Besides, the question being asked is: "What would GOG have to do to restore the lost trust?". I gave my honest answer as to what they would need to do to restore my trust in the store. Whether those actions are likely or not is irrelevant.
he is just one of those people without morals
no wonder his name is toxic
low rated
avatar
Time4Tea: Well, I don't accept that. I have a choice as to where I spend my money and I will vote with my wallet, which it is my right to do.
Of course you have that right. There is a long list of companies I don't support if I can help it in any way, each and every one of them a thousand times worse that GOG, because those made their billions over dead bodies, including children. Sadly some of those companies are extremely successful, buying out the competition and smaller businesses left and right, which in some areas really limits my options already. But I'm trying to do the best I can not giving those any money.

If you want to find products made and/or sold by companies with a clean slate - good luck, and I'm always open to suggestions, because it's really hard to find any, except for little local produce and craftsmanship.

And yes, China has a lot of money (and even more economic power as the "workbench of the world") and thus, influence, and the rest of the world has already bent over out of greed, just like it did over Arab oil before. Expecting small Polish GOG to make a stand here is simply ridiculous.
high rated
avatar
Genocide2099: They can start by making that Devotion game available on GoG. I won't buy it but it will bring back at least a small amount of trust and respect.
avatar
toxicTom: They can't and it has been explained several times why they can't. But, ok, another time.

Nobody denies that announcing the game, and retreating a few hours later blaming "gamers" of all people. That was... incompetent beyond any measure.

Devotion is a (muleta) red cloth to the Chinese, even if the content in question is now removed, the fact stands that the devs "insulted" their "great leader". It may be laughable, but that's simply how authoritarian regimes are - they have no humour, they love to make examples, and we can't change that.

Now GOG/CD Projekt are operating in a grey area in China - officially they are not there, and don't have a license (which could be revoked anyway, see the original publisher of the game). But they also are not blocked by the Great Firewall.
That means, currently GOG is making good money in China, and from what I hear, CP77 sells well there too.

That means they can't afford any negative attention from Chinese authorities at all, and can't even openly admit that - because officially they are not doing business there.

And: CD Projekt is a publicly traded company, which means they are first and foremost responsible to their shareholders. The botched CP77 release already made those irritable, releasing Devotion and getting banned over that from huge and lucrative the Chinese market probably lead to a class action lawsuit against the CEOs of GOG and CD Projekt for harming their own business out of spite.

The only chance I see for Devotion is to find a home on some smaller time store independent from business interests in China. I hope that can happen, because it seems to be a good game, even if the devs pretty recklessly destroyed their own publisher over a silly joke.

It's hilarious how all those couch freedom warriors here whine about "GOG being in bed with evil communists" when it's good old capitalist greed that dictates business decisions, and that has never cared for human rights (see our Saudi best friends when we want oil, or sweatshops and slave labour all over the third world for cheap clothes and resources) or freedom other than the freedom of making money for a upper few percent.

Expecting a smallish Polish company to make a stand against the fickle rulers of China AND their own owners over one single game is delusional, to put it mildly.

If people want to complain about outdated offline installers, DRM-like features in Galaxy, the Epic partnership (also with China in the back...), way too little manpower when the customer base has exploded, the broken website, and finally abysmal incompetence when it comes to communicating with their user base and in general intransparency - I'm all with you. But in the case of Devotion their hands are tied, and probably very tightly, and apart from the initial fuck-up with the announcement and retreat from that I can not see how GOG can be blamed. If you want to blame anybody, blame "the system". Or Xinnie, but I doubt any of those care.
Translation: We can't let morals and standards get in the way when there's lots money to be made! That's just stupid! Money is too important to consider anything else! Money is supreme!

Where does this even come from? Have you no backbone? Are you that tied up in stuff? I don't care if they have a trillion people ready to throw down Saudi prince levels of cash. I will never respect them for letting serious, pervasive human rights violators dictate their business practices. There are still 6 BILLION people that aren't under the oppressive thumb of the CCP. Or, rather, we used to not be under their thumb until people took the very attitude you're espousing.

You and everyone else here are certainly free to justify it, explain it away, whine about what I say and tell me how I just "don't get it" but in the end I'm right. And no amount of down votes or mental gymnastics are going to make your position hold water with anyone that isn't already deluded. It's just the truth.
high rated
avatar
toxicTom: even if the devs pretty recklessly destroyed their own publisher over a silly joke.
That's a very subjective view on the issue, depending on whether you believe the claim about the meme being a placeholder that was unintentionally left in or not. It definitely was careless and stupid at least on the part of the person responsible for it, maybe not the whole studio. But from what I've read they immediately tried to avert all blame from their publisher, to no avail.


avatar
toxicTom: If people want to complain about outdated offline installers, DRM-like features in Galaxy, the Epic partnership (also with China in the back...), way too little manpower when the customer base has exploded, the broken website, and finally abysmal incompetence when it comes to communicating with their user base and in general intransparency - I'm all with you.
But that's part of what makes this so sound so hypocritical, the claim that they listened to "many messages from gamers" within hours, while failing to listen to our valid criticisms about all the things you mention above, for years.
low rated
avatar
GordanShumway: Translation: We can't let morals and standards get in the way when there's lots money to be made! That's just stupid! Money is too important to consider anything else! Money is supreme!
That's how the capitalist world works. That's what it's founded on. It's kinda sad no one ever told you that.

But of course, feel free to shoot the messenger in your holy fury of righteousness.
avatar
Leroux: That's a very subjective view on the issue, depending on whether you believe the claim about the meme being a placeholder that was unintentionally left in or not. It definitely was careless and stupid at least on the part of the person responsible for it, maybe not the whole studio. But from what I've read they immediately tried to avert all blame from their publisher, to no avail.
Well they certainly owe their publisher (the people who worked there) a big apology. And idk, as a Taiwanese company they should now they have to tread very carefully when dealing with China. "Mistakes" like that can't happen, otherwise "head will roll", at least in a proverbial sense.

avatar
Leroux: But that's part of what makes this so sound so hypocritical, the claim that they listened to "many messages from gamers" within hours, while failing to listen to our valid criticisms about all the things you mention above, for years.
Yeah I agree. Worst reaction possible.

But that's so much GOG, it'd be hilarious if it weren't so sad. Remember "we listen to your feedback"? The Warsaw community expedition? The "you now all have profiles" desaster? Shoving the Galaxy 2 beta down everybody's throat, when Galaxy 1 was finally stable?

They are completely inept at dealing with their user base. I mean, I also wouldn't want to have a company with a huge PR department glossing and sugar-coating over every mistake with silver tongues - we have enough of those already... but, seriously... it has stopped being kind of cute a long time ago.
Post edited December 22, 2020 by toxicTom
avatar
Genocide2099: They can start by making that Devotion game available on GoG. I won't buy it but it will bring back at least a small amount of trust and respect.
avatar
toxicTom: They can't and it has been explained several times why they can't. But, ok, another time.

Nobody denies that announcing the game, and retreating a few hours later blaming "gamers" of all people. That was... incompetent beyond any measure.

Devotion is a (muleta) red cloth to the Chinese, even if the content in question is now removed, the fact stands that the devs "insulted" their "great leader". It may be laughable, but that's simply how authoritarian regimes are - they have no humour, they love to make examples, and we can't change that.

Now GOG/CD Projekt are operating in a grey area in China - officially they are not there, and don't have a license (which could be revoked anyway, see the original publisher of the game). But they also are not blocked by the Great Firewall.
That means, currently GOG is making good money in China, and from what I hear, CP77 sells well there too.

That means they can't afford any negative attention from Chinese authorities at all, and can't even openly admit that - because officially they are not doing business there.

And: CD Projekt is a publicly traded company, which means they are first and foremost responsible to their shareholders. The botched CP77 release already made those irritable, releasing Devotion and getting banned over that from huge and lucrative the Chinese market probably lead to a class action lawsuit against the CEOs of GOG and CD Projekt for harming their own business out of spite.

The only chance I see for Devotion is to find a home on some smaller time store independent from business interests in China. I hope that can happen, because it seems to be a good game, even if the devs pretty recklessly destroyed their own publisher over a silly joke.

It's hilarious how all those couch freedom warriors here whine about "GOG being in bed with evil communists" when it's good old capitalist greed that dictates business decisions, and that has never cared for human rights (see our Saudi best friends when we want oil, or sweatshops and slave labour all over the third world for cheap clothes and resources) or freedom other than the freedom of making money for a upper few percent.

Expecting a smallish Polish company to make a stand against the fickle rulers of China AND their own owners over one single game is delusional, to put it mildly.

If people want to complain about outdated offline installers, DRM-like features in Galaxy, the Epic partnership (also with China in the back...), way too little manpower when the customer base has exploded, the broken website, and finally abysmal incompetence when it comes to communicating with their user base and in general intransparency - I'm all with you. But in the case of Devotion their hands are tied, and probably very tightly, and apart from the initial fuck-up with the announcement and retreat from that I can not see how GOG can be blamed. If you want to blame anybody, blame "the system". Or Xinnie, but I doubt any of those care.
I agree. Sadly, it is what it is. They shouldn't have announced it in the first place as to not set people's expectations. I believe there are people that are genuinely excited for the game. I for one only found about it recently and I think it's a cool game. This is a really bad time for CDPR and GoG.
Post edited December 22, 2020 by Genocide2099
low rated
avatar
gargus: Easy.

1 admit they rushed cyberpunk out the door and that they will fix their mistake. They don't even have to apologise, just admit it and move on to fix it.
They already did.

2 put devotion back on gog and promise they won't let censorship get in the way of their games again and promise to take a firm stance against censorship of any kind in gaming.
Then they and ALL other companies should start allowing games where you can go full on trashin', smashin' and bashin'
those LGBT and other "protected" groups, allowing mildly racist jokes etc-etc. Because not allowing is also is also a censorship.

But... states and public entities without any censorship exist only in dreams of libertarians and anarchists, not in real life.

But let me remind you that main goal for commercial companies is to make profit, not political statements. Chinese market is big so between trendy outrage on "bad China" and money from Chinese customers they will choose the money. Same applies to bunch of kids who want to ban all trade with China. Imagine that happening. China won't be going anywhere because Asia will be trading with them as usual. Also China working on making internal market bigger.
So if that will happen those kids will have a surprised pikachu faces when they will go to buy a new PC and will see $6999 price tag, $3000 phones etc. Like it was 35 years ago. When average office PC was about 2500-3500 of *those* dollars.

Because a huge part of why consumer electronics prices went down that much is because China has a HUGE deposit of rare earth elements which are required to make electronic components. (other part is cutting costs here and there, that's why stuff doesn't last for 30 years anymore). And if they will stop selling those to the West... oops.

On a side note some extra things they could do is work harder on releasing old defunct games on gog and give updates and time frames on when cyberpunk will get ps5 upgrades. I'm not interested in cyberpunk till it's fully supporting ps5.
Сonsole version should have stayed in the oven for a few more months, PC - for 2-3 at least.

And what people don't realize is that the only way to make companies to stop selling unfinished versions on release day is passing the law that forces companies to refund any products with serious bugs/faults as soon as user requests it unless it's marked as early access before release and start of pre-orders.

That will make releasing unfinished products unprofitable so shareholders etc. will stop pushing developers to release stuff on specific date (holidays, whatever) but when it's actually ready for release aka in case of games - no game breaking bugs and adequate performance on hardware that meets minimal system requirements.

Or else it will be going on and on and we'll be getting situations like this one or worse - Fallout 76, Sonic'06 (long list continues) all the time.
Post edited December 22, 2020 by Thunderbringer
high rated
Do a barrel roll!

Release Devotion, keep it blocked in China alright.

Bugfix and optimize Cyberpunk 2077, first upcoming big expansion free of charge.
low rated
avatar
Steamisbetter: Stop bending knee to wastelings.

Stop selling incomplete packages of games (expansions missing) / censored games (ex BFG Doom 1/2) / DRMed games (ex No Man's Sky).

Stop pushing Galaxy so aggressively and promoting gifts/extras through it exclusively.

Stop wasting money on first floor office parties, like the Witcher 3 Prima Guide shamelessly reveals and instead, invest them wisely in proper work/polishing tasks. Reinvent marketing and PR protocols, closely oversee curation (them and their excuses overdid it already, plus they never consult the community wishlist), become transparent again and confront their followers/supporters openly, with all due honesty. And stop it with those deception tactics; people aren't stupid, that simply annoys them more.

Reinstate good old policies that brought stability and prosperity before, instead of modern gifts-barrage, big sale-discounts and damage control emergencies, in general. One sided, fickle tactics of the smokescreen variation, a.k.a. "sweep under the carpet", aren't half as solid, trustworthy and reliable on the long run like honesty, as far as mutually beneficial relationships go.

Optional:

Reverse the entire stockmarket and going public, situation. I myself, never liked outsiders dictating how things are run. They don't care about quality, inspiration, passion, but their only concern is vying for profit... Even if it means opening holes in their own ship. Looks before the contents and self interest in the epicenter, never ensure the general good. Stop. Being. Greedy. And goody-two-shoes.
avatar
Shiznown: This, also state the real reason why Cyberpunk is being more censored with each patch. Put back the nudity in Cyberpunk, Apologize for the whole situation, release mod tools and donate to a charity; donate preferably to a Hong Kong charity, even if it's a neutral charity like a historical monument charity. Oh, and add Devotion to the damn store.
Lol nice troll, why would someone donate to hong kong? China is the shittest place
Well for starters

4. Officially announce that Cyberpunk is in early access and cancel it for last gen.

Cyberpunk is unfinished. Come clean about it and admit more work needs to be done. De-release it, if possible or change it’s status to early access until everything is sorted and then say “okay, here it is” when it’s done.

Cyberpunk had no business being released on older gen. Consider canceling it on those system which are holding it back.

3. come clean about their relationship with China.
Blaming gamers for what is clearly a move from China to censor Devotion is just rubbing salt in the wound. Had they said something like "unfortunately due to outside pressure we are unable to release Devotion on our platform." Would have gone a long way. Gamers would still be upset but the way forward would have been a lot smoother.

2. allow open discourse
Stop removing threads and suspending people for talking about Devotion and criticizing their actions.

1. Release Devotion
avatar
toupz111: What lost trust? Cyberpunk is an awesome game, consoles always sucked and nothing wrong on pc, lots of people i know beat the game and enjoy it
Kinda where my standing was... until they started censoring like crazy and showing their hand. They might as well have sold the games with codes for the physical consoles, and had 'This will officially release on consoles in Febuary/March, you could download it early but it will be buggy, you have been warned! You will get a better experience in a few months, we promise! Thank you from the CDPR team and we hope you love the game as much as we put into it.'...

I think it's a bigger kick of trust to bow to China with the other game being removed before it even got here. That's where i think the real problem is.
Post edited December 27, 2020 by rtcvb32
Honestly, I'm not too concerned. Maybe I should be, maybe not, but I only buy from this company because they're the only ones around offering DRM-free games on PC. I hate DRM so much I'll gladly do business with a company that does business with China just to avoid it.

Cyberpunk never really interested me anyway. Not my jam.
high rated
avatar
FilthyCasual523: Honestly, I'm not too concerned. Maybe I should be, maybe not, but I only buy from this company because they're the only ones around offering DRM-free games on PC. I hate DRM so much I'll gladly do business with a company that does business with China just to avoid it.

Cyberpunk never really interested me anyway. Not my jam.
It's not just Devotion though. It's their whole attitude around it. Blaming gamers, closing threads and suspending people for "constructive criticism" and of course, Cyberpunk.