Wow Xi's CCP warriors downvoting my last comment much :D lost 6 of these "precious" reputation points I am shocked :D

Back to the Winnie Pooh Avatar topic, nobody would use the Winnie the pooh avatar here as a statement if the leader of one of the biggest countries on earth, wasn't butthurt over a stupid winnie the pooh meme and butthurt over a game using a texture with winnie the pooh on it as a placeholder texture, leading to "many gamers" complaining about it and stopping a release of the game on gog, steam and other platforms.

Thats true. Sorry Winnie and also FREE CHRISTOPHER!

Well, you take them serious enough to whine about it.

I bet you a jar of hunny the real reason he's butthurt over the avatars is he is still panicked about his games being "threatened" by the boycott and the Pooh Brigade.

I've endured the Pooh brigade with the Blizzard controversy. And I thought I was safe here.

But seriously, this is all just a surge of anti-China/CCP rhetoric at the moment. Its essentially Red Scare 3.

What a poor thing you are. Inconvenienced at you mindless worship of video game companies by people who dare to remind you of important freedoms being infringed. Why can't everyone just let principles erode in silence so you can play World of Warcraft in peace?

People with avatars that annoy you! Will you ever be safe again? Oh safe space, my safe space! Where art thou?

Let me put this bluntly - fuck communists. Fuck the CCP. And if you think there's anything wrong with "anti-CCP" rhetoric... well, you get the picture.

And if you seriously think that Winni-the-Pooh memes are somehow the equivalent of the "red scare" then your ignorance is simply staggering.

And that annoys you why? Do you have stock in major Chinese businesses? Are you best buddies with Xinnie? Or do you just enjoy whining?

The CCP exerts control over things it should not have any control over. They may censor everything in their own country. They have every right to prevent the release of as many games as they please in their country (until their people have had enough). But if they control what people in other countries may or may not see or play, then those people will be rightfully annoyed.

So no, this is not a Red Scare. It's just annoyance at a powerful government overstepping their territory. If Germany would threaten to cease business with anyone who doesn't follow our censorship laws, people of other nations would be annoyed with Germany too - and rightfully so.

So what now then? Keep at it until GOG re-sells Devotion? Then what?

Well, to be fair, that is kind of the whole idea of the boycott. Did you think we would give up and go away after a month and a half?

If they do the right thing and release Devotion, as well as addressing some of the other listed issues, then we start buying games again. DRM-free gaming and free speech win!

Mabye I never got to upset with all of this because I honestly don't care about this Devotion game.

If this was a game that I did care for, yes I would have been on your side.

But this outrage has already led to positive change.

GOG no longer sells the products I want to buy. For a long while, I hoped they would change their mind, but instead it got worse and worse.

So what did I do? I stopped buying here (i.e. I'm boycotting them). It's a very positive change for me because I no longer waste money on products I am not fully pleased with.

If they improve, I will return to buying here. If they don't, I won't. Either way, it's a positive outcome.

There are some here boycotting for reasons completely unrelated to that game. Myself, for instance. I care about the shift away from DRM-free offline installers...that is it. I know at least one other user has specifically said they are boycotting for similar reasons and do not care about Devotion. Devotion may be a big thing for a lot of people but it is not the be-all end-all of this boycotting.

No don't add me to the list. I am giving up responding to this thread.
I don't support the Boycott. Delete my name from it.

I blame this shift on the market in general and the ever increasing connectivity to the Internet. Despite having DRM-Free options, I'm still seeing people buying games that GOG has on Steam anyway. I fear there might be more people that owned Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam then GOG users. And I think its all due to the convenience of having your games in a client, instead of hording a bunch of installers in a folder or something. Especially that updating games via clients is a smoother system then updating Offline Installers.

But then what the hell GOG Galaxy offers if they don't offer DRM Free Offline Installers anymore? (Which you can get via Galaxy as well) What I can play installed GOG games from Galaxy without having to turn on and log into Galaxy?

Because other Game clients forces you to activate the client even when you click on the desktop icon of a game.
I take it your like me? You wish for more Classic PC games of yore here like Mechwarrior and Half-Life?

I'm not so sure that anyone really thinks that will ever happen, or at least that the chances for that are favorable. Regardless, what happened is extremely wrong and worrying (out of principle - I'm not interested in Devotion either) and people are simply voicing their abject disagreement to it / signalling that they're boycotting gog. It's either that or leave gog completely, which I'm sure several people already did, and many others (myself included) are still considering.
It's just not that easy after all these years, so I think most are somewhat reluctantly giving gog another chance, in the meantime trying to make it clear to gog that they're seriously pissed off. The ball's in gog court, and of course so far they've picked the easy way out by staying silent (unless I missed something?). However it's only a matter of time before the next 'scandal' in gaming will force publishers and storefronts to decide if they want to again pander to the ccp's sensibilities. Then we'll know where we stand.

It's a really nasty situation, and I'm quite pessimistic about it. Especially if you want to be consistent with your boycott outrage, seeing as how widely tencent has invested by now. But we try not to be like the ccp here - you'll have to make up your own mind :)