I'm pretty sure you don't get to decide what's important for me or not, thanks.
For me, it's extremely important. GOG can decide to remove a game from their store because they dislike the developer, because they think it's not economically viable or any other reason, but if an external influence pushes a developer to be taken off the store for blatant political reasons, it's a specific thing that doesn't sit well with me. I think it's amoral.
YMMV.

That's what i'm talking about! Imagine if China will initiate process of transition from Communism to Democracy, but will fail at that and will turn to Fascism: opposition's underpants will be poisoned and who knows what will happen else?

In Soviet Russia people's underpants were secured like Fort Knox! And in Communist China there are no problems with poison in underpants as well.
Communism is awesome!

Man what the hell is going on??

I just got here. Now where am I supposed to go? I already renounced Steam.

fml

Many people have posted good stuff.

The thing that I don't get though, is how people are portraying this to be an issue of a vindictive, petty dictator concerned so much about some tiny gaming dev studio crossing the line and likening him to winnie the pooh. I think it betrays a fundamental cognitive bias - that this must have all happened due to the leaders and higher ups demanding it be taken down and it couldn't be anything else. Or more relevantly here - that GOG succumbed to the pressure from China at an authoritative level, like being their lapdogs and doing their bidding.

Nope.

If we know anything about China at all, we know that there is huge support for almost everything the government does. Of course people will say 'brainwashing and propaganda will do that for you' , and you would of course be right. Still not changing the fact that the real reason China has such an impact, isn't because of the authoritarian government - it's because of its people and what they demand. It's the will of the 'many' chinese gamers that love their country, who say that game should be boycotted wherever. And companies of course listen to the market powers that be, they don't want that kind of trouble and heat and boycott.

So you see, it's silly to blame it on one and not the other. The other being the actual cause. Though you can ponder the causes of that cause too, of course.

Sure they can.

It's real simple. GOG can a) not bend the knee to the CCP and b) release Devotion on GOG.

There is literally nothing that China could do to prevent that from happening, should GOG choose to do that.

There is zero proof of that whatsoever.

Just because someone is from China, that does not automatically mean that they support the CCP. On the contrary: many Chinese people pro-actively oppose it. Where I live, there are large protest marches comprising of thousands of Chinese people who are marching specifically to abolish the CCP.

And they also constantly ask everyone to sign petitions for the same cause.

There is also no proof that GOG received any messages from gamers about this. And if GOG did receive messages, then there also is no proof that they were from actual people rather than government bots...much less GOG customers.

And anyway, all of that is a moot point as it relates to Devion: because even if GOG did receive messages from "many gamers" from China, that's still no excuse for GOG to ban the game anyway. If they were going to ban it, for that reason, then they could ban it for China-region customers only, and let everyone from every other region buy it.

...except push and move things around in the global market system to ensure gog goes down
or even worse things, i dunno, they are a totalitarian state and they practically control the world's economy at this point

Actually what I was implying has nothing to do with 1. That there are chinese gamers who like the game and/or do not boycott it and/or do not like their government (which is likely of course true, though says nothing about mainland Chinese support of their government), and 2. That GOG actually received little hand written hate notes from China stating they will boycott them if they release and sell the game (ha). Like, a mountain of them. An avalanche.

No. What I meant was that blaming this on the authoritarian government of CHina is misguided considering there are millions of potential customers ready to boycott anyone who criticises their country and/or government, and willing to influence others do it too.

Once again, let me re-iterate, there are millions of people that apparently of their own freewill (though of course influenced by upbringing, propaganda etc let's not go there) want this to happen this way, regardless of their leader. Or actually, in support of him. Consider for a minute how much staunch support a leader like Trump had/has - with barely denting his base popularity despite hundreds of scandals, major and minor. Now amplify that sentiment and effect by millions, if not billions. And thus you get today and today's predicament.

It's easy to pin the blame on the head of a nation, especially one that exemplifies values other than our own. But you forget what the people/customers/the mob demand. So enough of this 'GOG bends knee to China dictatorship!'. No, you lost respect for them due to them showcasing market economy capitalism, and catering to the demand of a huge amount of lucrative consumers, in China or outside, influenced by the mob's fickle nature and whim.

GOG decided to remove the game because they felt it is not economically viable to piss off one of the biggest potential markets with releasing a controversial game in the store.

They might make a similar business decision if some publisher wanted to release a game that includes a picture of Mohammad.

I didn't misrepresent what he wrote, which was vague: "That said, one thing is to do business with China, a complete different beast is to actively boycott a developer because they ask you to, for political reasons."

That sentence can easily be understood in two different ways:

1. China asked something "for political reasons".

2. GOG actively boycotts a developer "for political reasons".

Either way, to me, as a GOG customer, it is only important why GOG made the decision, as this discussion is whether "we" should boycott GOG over this decision. This discussion is not about whether we should boycott China. It wouldn't hurt the Chinese government one iota if we all stopped buying any more GOG games, it would only hurt GOG.

And as I have said, if GOG was my company, I would have probably made a similar decision in this case, because I have common sense. Some snowflake probably thinks differently as he thinks he has the whole world figured out.

That is GOG's problem, not my problem, to figure out, as it is their business, not my business. If I wanted to boycott China, then I guess I would avoid buying anything Chinese and not go to China on vacations.

You certainly have the right to boycott GOG over this if you it makes you feel important, but realistically I don't see you achieving anything useful with it. And GOG has a right to boycott developers who make it into headlines by "accidentally" adding controversial easter eggs to their games.

Everyone has the right to boycott whatever they want, wheee!

So then they can have their money but not mine, how about that?

The bulk of their customers are in the West and elsewhere, it makes very little sense - the only thing that encourages them to do what they have done is their firm belief that Westerners are all talk and no action.

Sounds fair, just like GOG having the right to "boycott" a publisher who adds politically controversial material to their games, that might cause problems to GOG's business in some bigger market areas.

I could be wrong of course, but from my point of view you are grossly overestimating how many "westerners" really care about such tiny debacles as this, especially when they understand why a company might make such a decision that e.g. GOG did (ie. they simply try to stay out of such debacles)

Hardly, he was Jewish after all. And Jews are superior race and God's chosen people, after all.

You appear to have joined in December 2020 only, so you might not know how many times already GOG has done something ill advised or messed up and failed to deal with it in an appropriate fashion afterwards, mostly glossing over it instead. Admittedly, this is a new low, but we've been disappointed by them so many times before, and those of the forum veterans who are still here today and care have already given them lots of chances without really seeing any change for the better in recent years, on the contrary. They just don't learn, and don't really seem to make honest efforts to improve their communication either. Whoever those gamers are that they listen to and are friendly with, it doesn't seem to be their old fanbase anymore. Like others, I am still waiting to see how they will react this time, if at all. We've seen many community members from the old days leave GOG already for various reasons, and we've still stuck around and kept giving them another chance, but I'm wondering if this might be the straw that finally broke the camel's back for me.

Not sure whether it really makes sense to stop buying games here or leave the community for good - the games are still DRM-free, even if offline installers are not a priority anymore, and the forums are entertaining -, but I definitely won't speak highly of them or recommend them over other stores anymore. It's one thing to engage in anti-consumer practices, but even worse if you do it while pretending you're pro-consumer and better than the rest. They got big on this pretense, with the help of a gullible fanbase who did free promotion for them because we actually believed in their supposed "mission" and core values. "Truly gamer-friendly" and "awesome community" my ass. The actual community is mostly a thorn in their side, now that their old "principles" about doing things differently than the big corporations are standing in the way of getting a piece of the pie, too. Real Cyberpunk shit.

That being said, I feel kind of bad for the people who possibly wanted to do something good with the release of Devotion and probably got shut down by the top brass in the midst of the Cyberpunk 2077 release crisis. I believe there are still good people working for GOG, they just aren't in control, and maybe not always that far-sighted, because if that's what happened, in the end they did more damage than good. But I wouldn't want to see them punished for it. Apparently internal communication isn't GOG's forte either.

Sincere question, but are they? I've only seem a few games here that are more expensive than a few centavos if compared to Steam.