Anakin-Skywalker: I am communicating my frustrations. You are free to ignore this thread just as I was free to ignore this and move on.

Seems that we are all hipocritical in some way eh?

Anakin-Skywalker: I literally say ' When the game is delayed'.

Anakin-Skywalker: I am communicating my frustrations. You are free to ignore this thread just as I was free to ignore this and move on.

teceem: Sure, in the broadest way. "If I punch you in the face, am I not "communicating" my feelings?" You seem to want to shut down any reactions/feedback/... communication from others.

Anakin-Skywalker: It's hilarious that the people criticising censorship are the ones calling for it, when the thing in question disagrees with their views

Tinqer: Opening a thread by lumping people who care about the political aspects of games with those who send death threats is a little volatile.

At some point all people die and all empires fall. I may be a silly progressive, but there's no financial bottom line more important to me than standing up to powerful bullies wherever possible.

Being afraid of "provoking them" or "breaking [their] rules" just gives them more power.

Anakin-Skywalker: My intention was not to come off as trolling

Anakin-Skywalker: This post will probably be negatively rated to hell, but I want to lay it out there.

CDPR was silly to offer Devotion a spot in their storefront. This is a game that was highly controversial because of its inclusion of a stupid meme that offended a overly sensitive idiot that is the brutal dictator Xi. The developers of Devotion were stupid by hiding this meme that was going to be found sooner or later purposefully provoking the CCP and the hordes of online trolls the party has at its disposal and the outcome was going to be predictable - they were going to suffer the consequences. Their excuse that the meme was just an asset placeholder is embarrassing and it is clear that it was put there as a hidden easter egg.

China has an oppressive and dictatorial approach to freedom of speech, this is not going to be resolved by purposefully provoking it into a reaction especially when you are a small developer, this is done through social, economic and political pressure. It was a stupid move by the developers that will no doubt cost them their studio, it is a sad but totally avoidable situation - they got cocky and paid the price. The game was removed from steam and immediately became toxic waste that no one wanted anything with it, because sponsoring this game was going to be seen by China as an endorsement of this meme, given that the meme became more talked about than the actual game it was in.

CDPR thought it was going to be brave and empowering and it opened its doors to this toxic waste and the results were predictable by anyone with two braincells - the troll factory from the CCP disguised as GOG costumers inundated their inbox showing outrage or they received a serious call from one of their major investors and was told to cut it off or lose a large percentage of their investment money. Even coming anywhere near this game was always going to be a bad decision, and CDPR seems to be keen on making those recently. So obviously they backed off and people got pissed.

Now it's the pissed part for me that really grinds my gears - despite the fact that CDPR's leadership should look to have its leadership removed and replaced by someone that is actually competent or at least less subservient to investor pressure and whoever made this stupid decision should be fired, the fact people are upset at the actual removal of the game demonstrates the level of hypocrisy and immaturity from this community.

How many times have we heard that games and other media should not be politicized, how many games were review bombed on various platforms because they included overtly political messages that offended the large majority of this community, especially those around identity politics, sexuality, etc. I agree with this message 100% - video-games are not political outlets for your beliefs, regardless of what they are, they are means of entertainment. They should not bring us to a reflection of our world, but allow us to escape it, whatever message we obtain from that escape is our own to interpret. No game will ever bring down a political or ideological view, and the idea that it can is simply absurd. So why the outrage with this move from CDPR that removed a game that had an overtly political message just like the others you probably took the effort to sign in Metacritic to give a 0?

Well first its because it's popular now to shit on CDPR. They fucked up their Cyberpunk release and the game was miles away from what they promised, it was an interesting game certainly, even a quite fun at that, but it was not a mind blowing next-gen RPG that blew our minds - My brother and I played about 40 hours of it and have already moved on. Besides that it was horribly optimised, buggy and for some impossible to play on consoles. To add insult to injury it has been removed from the PlayStation store, review bombed on Metacritic and all of the youtubers that got free event passes to CDPR's events and free early access copies have turned on them because its what the audience is asking for and as the slime that they are even they started shitting on the company they couldn't simp enough for a few weeks ago. So it's funny and popular to shit on CDPR so the community petulant that they are are perfectly happy kicking another one for shit and giggles.

Secondly, the community is a toxic hypocritical mess - despite the fact that 90% of players (the term 'gamers' is pure cringe') are sane and normal individuals, its the small but vocal minority that call themselves the community that are pure petulant children that shout at a game when it becomes overtly political but only when the politics are against their views. These are the same individuals that will literally send death threats to CDPR's top brass when the game is delayed and send them messages saying they are going to chop off their heads, but then cry on Metacritic that the game doesn't run well on their toaster. These individuals have now taken interest in a small unknown developer in Taiwan that though they were going to change the world and free china from Mista Chi by provoking and insulting them, as if the result wasn't perfectly predictable. Didn't you popularise the term 'get woke, go broke' ? Where is that energy then, that developers who put their political views on games will eventually go broke - isn't that what's happening right now?

Then those slimeballs youtubers start asking you to support their company - bro, they had their licenses revoked, they are done, dusted and will probably never be able to work again in that industry due to the dystopian social score system they have, do you really think its going to be 15 dollars at their game that will save them? Your activism has as much worth as a Facebook like. They could leave their activism at the door, publish a game that by all account was quite good and then proceed to do their activism as a separate activity, it would probably cost them their lives, but that is the price to pay in current China, sadly. You cannot purposefully do something that is illegal in your country and then cry about having repercussions.

All of you that keep spamming these forums with this shit topic, shut up and go play a good old game

Anakin-Skywalker: When you provoke someone you are expecting a reaction or at least know that a reaction is possible. They broke their rules and provoked them and the CCP reacted. How is that anyone's but the ones provoking responsability to deal with the consequences?

AmethystViper: Fuck you and your mother who birthed you too, bitch.

Anakin-Skywalker: (carefully worded wall of text)

MichaelD.965: Xi is a pathetic sissy-bitch who is literally "provoked" at the visage of a century-old teddy-bear; literally anything he doesn't like should be encouraged at every opportunity, especially Muslims getting to keep their dicks.