@JMB9: As already stated in your thread: keep your reviews a review, not a mission statement for your brand of ideology. No wonder GOG did remove this.

edit: please, please don't derail this thread. do it in your own thread.

I like the bunny, @coffeecup_GOG is dead. Do you have any irl bunnies or any pets?

Since there is still no word on the Devotion issue I'm still not purchasing but I've run into a dilemma.

There are games I'd like to buy but I've stuck to my guns and purchased nothing. Now though my fiancee is interested in a game on sale. Gabriel Knight Anniversary Edition. She doesn't play games much but played the entire Blackwell series with me about two years ago and loved it. She's interested in this specific game (Gabriel Knight) so it's not a matter of finding "similar" games.

I would like to buy this DRM-free. Still not buying GOG. I could buy it on Steam (full price but whatever) though I'm not sure if it contains DRM and Steam has it's own issues. I had a Steam account before I heard of GOG and until now have tried to purchase at GOG whenever possible. So the question is do I have a viable alternative store that sells it or do I just buy it through Steam (several things I'd like to purchase there like Sekiro anyway)?

According to this https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
"Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition" is DRM-free on Steam.

Is that positive or negative?

Done!

Are you joining the boycott? Should I add you to the list?

Thanks for sticking to your guns!

Time4Tea, I appreciate the information you have set out and the others who have gave their information. I hope you may all have a rested week from whatever it is you do and are doing. May you all stay safe during these chaotic social media, and physical times. I wish you all the best. Time4Tea great work of keeping this an organized boycott, props to you for your quick words of spreadness to warn everyone about the current situation. I wish you all well.

I'm guessing that you're aware that this is currently on sale (65% off) at GOG - not trying to add to temptation or anything...

An alternative approach could be to point your Significant Other towards this RockPaperShotgun (negative) review which may delay any "purchase pangs" until GOG changes its position - or has its next sale.

Just to let you know I share your pain to some extent, ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery) at 35% off (it's rarely discounted) looks pretty darn tempting from my angle, along with a couple of the SNK items. But so far, no purchase. *shoves credit card away, looking guilty*

That people typing down this kind of lists never do themself a favor, checking if some of those games are already official freeware. And this way won't make it to any "store".

You know, like GTA1/2, whole Marathon series, and C&C up to Tiberian Sun (official downloadpages are gone, but many sources).
And that are just the games I know about.

Then just add a list of games know for big licencing problems (Riddick for example, and better not to talk about Mechwarrior 1 and Macross) or scattered rights, that make it hard to impossible to bring them back (NOLF), but we all know GoG tried in the past and still tries (Riddick, NOLF).
Publishers who don't want DRM-Free at all (Sega).
And don't forget to add MP-Games the publisher has pulled the plug years ago (BF 2142) to make the list a little big bigger.

Now just removing already freeware and publishers who strongly refuse to work with GoG in any way....

Am I the only who who has to smirk when such a list starts with " games that should have been here ages ago"
Btw, Riddick was - got it in my bib. Just saying...

I'm having a difficult time understanding this movement and its reasoning.

GOG Finances

Look at GOG's 2020 annual report. GOG only controls < 2% of the PC market excluding CD Projekt Red's IP, having made $92.8 million USD from sales / $5.6 million USD in net profit in 2020. Their net profit margin is 6% in 2020 as opposed to 1.8% in 2019. And only 3% of its users are from China (PRC). In comparison with CD Projekt Red, their total revenue is 5.5x more and net profit is nearly 55x higher than GOG.com. With how much more successful this division is and how difficult the political zealots are, there isn't much of an economic incentive in the short term to support the platform.

Boycott's Economic Effect

Let's be conservative with calculations by assuming all boycotters are Americans who pay higher premiums for their games. If all 95 people on the list spent an average of $250 annually, that's $23,800 in total revenue / $1,430 net profit GOG.com is losing out on. Divide it by however much you think other lurkers agree with your idea. However, with this known info, that's only ~0.026% of their total and net income. It's a drop in the bucket if we're talking about a numbers game. Red Candle Games Has Already Moved On

Red Candle Games has already respected GOG's decision on the matter. They've already set up their online store to sell their games independently. Why would they want GOG to take 30% of their cut when they can keep nearly 100% of the revenue it already gets from its store? Urging GOG to publish their game now makes no economic sense. It's all water under the bridge now. Valve and Epic Are Already in Bed With the PRC

If you already own GOG games and are boycotting them out of spite, you're shooting yourselves in the foot. If GOG goes down, not only will some of us casual users lose access to our games because we don't backup offline installers, it is more upsetting for competition in the video game industry. Less competition means less incentive to innovate for increased market share, which is bad for all consumers.

If GOG did go down from this boycott or social media efforts, this forces everyone to go back to alternatives like Steam and EGS. Both companies that already in bed with the PRC in some way or form. Steam already delisted Devotion after a week. Epic has never listed the game at all.

Furthermore, for Steam, it's through Steam China andnearly 38% of its user base. For Epic Games, Tencent still owns 40% of Epic Games. You can argue for Zoom Platform, but after skimming their platform, the newest game they have is from 2009. I personally don't want to seek refuge in a platform carrying only games made before 2009 or Itch.io's pit of uncurated shovelware.

Corporate Autonomy

Lastly, GOG as a company can do whatever it wants. It doesn't care about politics, it only cares about its bottom line, which is how companies should be running. If China is where all the money is, companies will kowtow before them as per the natural design of capitalism. We are all slaves to money in some way or another.

Same Means Hypocrisy

Forcing a company to do something it doesn't want to do by threatening economic retaliation is the same tool of the PRC itself. It's hypocritical for your movement because you're using the same means as the PRC / alleged Chinese gamers GOG are appeasing. If you think that action was wrong, why are you doing the same action you despise?

If your movement is more principled and noble, the right move would be to respect GOG's decision and leave the platform in search of others that share your political views. By continuing to drag GOG's reputation through the mud, your movement negatively reinforces pro-GOG factions to support the platform even more. There's a good reason why people are coming in here and boasting about their recent GOG purchases because they know it pisses this echo chamber off and it works (see the post ratings).

Everyone Makes Mistakes

That being said, I agree with a previous poster who said companies aren't infallible and yes, they do make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect. I initially was offset by their decision to pull Devotion. But what matters more is how they deal with their failures.

So far, I'm pleased with what I'm seeing with GOG and the addition of more games to the platform very frequently. We are seeing plenty of unknown game developers making their name on this platform and I applaud them for doing so and for GOG for bringing more variety. For every Devotion, there are many more games that have political critique. Examples include: Political Animals, We., Democracy series, Freedom Fighters, Freedom Force, Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Wolfenstein II, Irony Curtain, etc.

Summary

In summary, we've established how Red Candle Games has no incentive to republish on GOG and has already moved on, your boycott having little direct effect on GOG's bottom line, the catastrophic event of an effective boycott working and hurting yourselves and everyone else in the long run by fleeing to known PRC supporters Valve and Epic, the freedoms of corporate autonomy, and the hypocritical nature of forcing a company to do something that is unreasonable.

If you really want to fight back effectively against China (PRC), boycott ALL of its products and write to your federal politicians to oppose their foreign relation laws and efforts, not bully a small digital distribution platform that is powerless in the grand scheme of things.

Look at it this way - if your boycott doesn't work, it's not doing anything but make you guys look bad. If your boycott works, you've effectively cancelled a relatively small platform that has done more net good for DRM-free movement, niche game developers and publishers, and video game preservation.

Just joined, no games, probably a spammer. But just in case, try reading some of the other threads before posting rubbish. For some this about that game devotion, however for others it is not. For many years now GOG has been becoming a mere ghost clone of other stores. Galaxy is the main reason why, but there are many other things. DRM creeping in, online only games, selling epic titles, broken website, lack of change logs/old versions/means of downloading, lack of parity with other stores, declining support, the list goes on and on. To me, it doesn’t matter any more if GOG survives, they have made it plainly clear they do not want their old customer base, do not want to provide a service which in any way differs from other services, nor particularly care what anybody thinks or does about that, and yes, this thread is a good example of it being ignored.
As for your other points, not having your own backup for your products is your own problem. It simply shows (and this goes for the majority of the userbase now) a clear lack of understanding of what DRM free actually means and why you would want it. Relying on them to hold your content is no different from buying on any other store, and is exactly why all these have arisen in the first place.
“Steam and epic do it” - yes an example of follow the leader and shows again why the is nothing “different” available anymore. Everybody must do exactly as steam does. Don’t want to have what steam has (client, online rubbish, profiles, social media) tough, you will have it on every store.
So yes, all being said, zero point in GOG even existing at this point it is so far removed from what it was originally and no different to other stores, so as you say, just accept what is and go buy on steam for cheaper prices, larger catalog, and actual working functionality.

Didn't read most of that because it didn't look relevant to me. I was buying games on GOG because they said they were fighting against DRM. Now they are no longer against DRM I am no longer buying games from them. Even more so because they seem to be being dishonest about it.

It is a spammer for sure. I couldn't care less about the game Devotion, i do care however that GOG treated me like an idiot with their many gamer bs excuse. Atleast Steam never even pretended to be Gamer friendly. GOG on the other hand has shown that they are nothing but spineless cowards and liars.

Are you from an alternative universe by chance?