Actually, two reasons why

1) Out of all the Digital Distribution services, I actually like GoG. I like the fact that I can digitally download my favorite games and backup the Installer WITHOUT having to be online to install it. I'm also glad to re-buy much of my Steam collection onto GoG because of its DRM-Free status. I'm still proud of it, and nothing is going to change my mind(In fact, I've bought less games on Steam lately compared to GoG)

2) On the whole China thing, remember that this same stunt was pulled on Steam as well with Devotion. In fact, both Steam and GoG are beholden to China BECAUSE of how huge the market is there. Epic Games is owned by Tencent, a company that's apart of China. And I believe that EA and Ubisoft want a piece of the Chinese Market. Hell, even your favorite video game consoles were ether made in China, or had their parts Made in China. The Switch, the Playstation, the X-Box. Hell, even Androids and iPhones are made in China because they are cheaper to make there. Not to mention that's where most of the rare earth metals are.

So yeah. Those two reasons are why I'm not saying Adios to GoG. Hell, if I did do that, I would have to swear off gaming, and get rid of my smartphone and computer. But even if I did that, to be truly free of anything made in China is impossible, because our nation enabled this.

Actually, things on Steam were different. The devs themselves pulled the game out of Steam due to it being review bombarded by chinese players. It's a whole different deal.

And that's not even mentioning the real reason people are protesting this. It's not merely that "something was made in China", but that it's being forcefully censored by government intervention. No one cares if a piece of hardware was made in China. The problem is when they try to force their draconian, medieval censorship laws on us.

Regardless of what happened on Steam, Steam is making changes to the client to conform to China's guidelines and there are reports that they pulled other games for similar reasons.

To be honest just about every form of entertainment has bent the knee to China, even sports franchises have gone out of there way to placate China when someone has said anything negative about China (so think about that when you are supporting your favourite team).

It's part of a bigger problem that we may be 5-10 behind on.

It makes me wonder how much influence China does have on western politics. How much is out there to make us look stupid to their people so they look superior? How much is it to undermine our culture and society so that it's easier for them to take the reigns?

Not sure why you're talking about stuff being made in China and how it can't be avoided. This is not where the problem is at all. It's completely unrelated.

Briefly, the two main issues are: (1) Chinese censorship being applied globally. That's only possible because GOG allowed this. There is no evidence that either China or any Chinese people actually demanded the game to be delisted abroad. (2) GOG's betrayal of their customers' trust: lack of any explanation except the evidently false, condescending statement about "many gamers," and silence ever since (5 days now). Separately, GOG's treatment of the developer was also unbelievably bad: they too only found out the game was being delisted from GOG's public social media.

GOG was supposed to be all about ethics. Their professed values include "utmost care about customers" and "respecting game creators." Everything that happened in this situation speaks to the contrary. Perhaps there's some truth to the "curated experience" claim, only in the twisted sense that external actors get to "hand-pick" what is listed and delisted, while customers can't even get basic transparency regarding the decision process.

So the issue is essentially between GOG and the customers. Many people aren't even as much aggravated by the decision itself but by how it was communicated, and the handling of the whole situation. If you're fine with being treated like this then that's your prerogative but from what you wrote it looks like you might be a bit misinformed what this is actually about.

Regarding some other specific issues you brought up:

- You can get DRM-free games elsewhere too, and GOG hasn't really been fully DRM-free these days. That's one of the other promises they broke earlier.

- GOG is supposed to be the better experience, and doesn't shy from reminding us about it, so it shouldn't be surprising people hold them to a higher standard than, for example, Steam. But even then the situation on Steam was not comparable: Steam did not remove the game but the Chinese publisher lost their business license.

- For the record, rare-earth metals are not really rare. There's an abundance of them all over the world. Like many other things, it's just cheaper to get them from China. It helps a lot that nobody cares too much about environmental protection there.

Same here i plan to stick with GOG

Out of the 193 countries of the UN, 14 recognise Taiwan as a country, because China insists, you can either have diplomatic relationships with them, or Taiwan, but not both. The biggest country of those 14 is Guatemala.

Which, given Israel's history, and how much israel is villainized in the west, the fact that it is recognized and Taiwan isn't is a a huge, huge indicator of something. Taiwan is certainly more popular than Israel, yet Israel is the one recognized, and i don't believe it's some Jewish boogeyman that magically makes it so, especially given how jews seem to be universally hated by those on the poles of the spectrum. it's definitely chinese influence holding Taiwan back.

However, my bigger question is how much of the garbage politics like the anti-police riots and the like are the doing of Chinese influence, especially with all the corporate support?

It's not the same thing, though. In Steam, the developer pulled out from the platform. In GOG, the platform didn't allow them in. This makes Steam even better in this regard. Plus, there's also the way in which they did it, which was an insult to the intelligence of everyone out there. GOG also stands the least to gain from the Chinese market, as their entire library is DRM-less.

Your first point is really the greatest, but do understand that this isn't an isolated incident. There are internal meetings about the working conditions by CD Projekt RED employess and their concerns regarding the Cyberpunk 2077 release and the facts that Cyberpunk 2077 has had to be pulled out from the Playstation platform and its refunds have had to be fasttracked that hint that these hints are not isolated, but directly correspond to an increasing disregard by the board of directors for its company's reputation and commitments. This isn't boding well for GOG.

they just elected the usa prez so that much at least :D

Unfortunately for you, hardware being made in China gives them the power to force their censorship laws on the world.

The certainty might have a little to do with the developers themselves saying as much within their own forums on Steam, which haven't been removed. It isn't about Steam deciding whether to communicate or not, it's about choosing to communicate deliberately flagrant claims.

Steam hasn't been placed in the same situation, and they've done more for the developers by having hosted Devotion, continuing to host Detention, and continuing to host forums for both games (and devotion's has been spammed with anti-China (it would be more appropriate to say anti-Xi Jinping) messages without Steam removing them). GOG said they were hosting them, then backed out with a clearly false claim that gets made more evident every vote the wishlist continues to receive.

I have no idea what the future will bring. GOG are unique, sorely needed and to me the best thing that's happened to PC gaming over the past decade. But this is the lowest point I've ever seen GOG at. Not any one thing, but everything all happening at once:-

- "The Devotion to China" issues. If they didn't want the game for "political reasons" (bad enough) then the two obvious "escape" solutions would have been : 1. Don't acquire / announce it, 2. If they announced it but backtracked say it was due to "unforeseen circumstances". To actually welcome them in, then throw them out and then blame a flood of demand from "Many Gamers" though in the extremely short space of time between announcement and backtracking (when it normally takes 10-50x longer for GOG to respond to complaints on any other subject is simply not believable...) It also sends an unbelievably bad message to other game developers here of "we've proven that we can and will throw your game out on a whim due to foreign politics even if you uphold your end of the contract"

- CyberBug2077. Such a mess, and yet so many things could have been done differently had it been managed differently. Like not hyping too hard too early which inevitably led to feeling pressured to release too early after the third delay. Or the very obvious gaping mismatch between expecting to run it on 1.5GHz Jaguar (Intel Atom class CPU's) of decade old consoles whilst the minimum PC requirements are 2-3x that just for 30fps. You didn't need to be a game dev to spot the 10-15fps outcome of that one.

- "Going from Best to Worst Customer Service in 1 year". If your store increases in size 10x from selling 400 to 4,000 games and you are on the verge of potentially selling millions of units of your own flagship games, it's pretty obvious that lockdown or not, you are going to need to hire more support staff, even if you have to outsource it. According to GOG's own post here, they received more support tickets in a DAY from Cyberpunk than they normally get in a month (which itself was already overstretched). What could have been a great opportunity to showcase a high-quality support experience, has instead lead to so many people new to the site saying "this is the first - and last - GOG game I'm buying" due to like 12x people trying to handle tens of thousands of refunds...

- Outdated / buggy games. You all know the issue and this should have been fixed long ago. Divinity Original Sin's skill book bug was reported 14 months and still remains unfixed. Lack of awareness is a zero believable excuse given how much attention has been brought to it in the forums.

- Over-pushing Galaxy / 2nd Class Citizen Offline Installers. Gating offline single-player 'bonus content' in DRM-Free games behind Galaxy online checks, deciding pre-loading is Galaxy only, giving out free games only if you use Galaxy, etc, is doing little more than artificially dividing GOG community and still failing to fulfill that utopia of everyone using Galaxy as a Meta-launcher. People can argue what they feel is technically DRM or not, but the bottom line is many of us know full well why we shop here and that isn't it.

There are many more issues here, but I'm trying to keep this relatively short. After a couple of great years where we've had more AAA's come here than ever (after a mid-2010 drought of them), I hope GOG do turn this around and succeed. For things like ongoing "2nd class citizen" treatment of offline installers, the question isn't "are we leaving GOG", it's "is GOG leaving us"?...

Just look at Canadian politics, our current PM has more or less fallen flat with China despite his claims of being a huge supporter of human rights (look up the "Two Michaels" case for more context)

Correction: It's actually the United States, which even has an embassy in Taipei, the capital city of the Republic of China. Carter tried to recant on diplomatic recognition in the 1979, but aside from that, it's largely been one of the most
consistently stable diplomatic relations in US politics.

Where it gets kind of weird, is the United States doesn't consider the Republic of China (what people here keep calling Taiwan, even though it's technically not the country's name, more the island it's located on) to be a seperate country, but the legal government in exile of China. For good cause, I might add, given it's founders were literally the surviving lawfully elected democratic governmen officials Mao started a civil war and even briefly allied with Japan against that government to overthrow it to allow himself to take power.

The United States also maintains a pretty much permanent naval presence in the area, and has conducted joint training exercises with the Repubic of China in the past.

I guess we could sponsor them joining NATO or something.