You're not fooling me, I just know you were having binge sessions of Hitman Lame of the Year Online and browsing the finest in Epically DRMed games on the new Galaxy 2.0 store app.

I'm still in for the boycott. Never stopped, actually, and will continue until customer support is 48 hour response time, max. Why anyone would continue buying here under these conditions is beyond me, but I sure as hell aren't.

Hope your travels were enjoyable.

+1, Fuck CCProject for bending the knee to china.

It's funny how pandering to consoles screwed CDPR not once but twice plus the activities of that guy.* People have been complaining about trolls and the half assed moderation that's gotten as bad as the CDPR forum and now we have secret political censorship which is either forum staff breaking their own conditions or being told to from their bosses or "shareholders".
Discussing the science of the wu-flu isn't inflammatory unless they are a troll trying to stifle debate.


*

Happy New Year, everyone!

Ok, I have checked the results of the voting and, after taking into account the transferable preferences, option E seems to be the clear winner. That is to keep this thread going and change the title to include the current year (i.e. "Boycotting GOG 2021-22").

So, if everyone is happy with that outcome, I will ask one of the forum moderators to change the title and I will update the first post accordingly.

With regards to the 'state of the boycott', it seems that not a lot has changed since where we were a year ago. If I recall, there were some signs of GOG updating some of the offline installers. Does anyone know of an up-to-date list of which ones are still out-of-date?

The Hitman debacle came and went. It was good to see GOG listening to their users and doing the right thing to remove it; however, it is still not clear how a game with so much locked content got released on GOG in the first place and what, if anything, GOG is going to do differently to ensure similar releases don't happen again.

There was also a statement in CDPR's recent financial report that GOG is intending to go 'back to its roots' and refocus back onto DRM-free. This sounds encouraging on the face of it, but it is not clear what that really means and what concrete actions those words are going to translate into.

So, I personally don't see any reason to let up on the boycott. I am planning to buy a couple of things before the winter sale ends, to cut GOG some slack and offer them an 'olive branch' (probably around $20 max). Otherwise, I intend to carry on boycotting GOG for the rest of the year, like I did last year.

As always:
https://airtable.com/shrldLsErlUf3eHqS/tbltXjS8fxEGG11eD

Time4Tea, I agree with the overall gist of your assessment, however, I somewhat disagree on a couple of points.

Those being:

1. Your "updated" post for 2022 is quite underwhelming and unfulfilling IMO (but I don't mean any offense to you when I say that), because it neglected directly to re-address most of the big issues that are still outstanding, such as GOG's refusal to address the Devotion debacle.

By not re-naming those issues by name, and instead just vaguely citing your past posts about them, that is helping GOG to obscure the issues and, with the aid of much time having passed, (GOG hopes) to erase them from the public's memory.

Whereas the Devotion debacle was front & center at the beginning of the original boycott, now, as of 2022 with that "boycott update" post, it has been completely erased from getting any attention or discussion in the 2022 boycott, other than as a vague, obscure, ambiguous reference that could potentially mean anything.

That's not good.

Instead of completely burying the issue in obscure references, GOG needs to know that we still expect them to address the Devotion debacle, and the mere passage of lots of time since it happened does not, and will not, ever absolve them of that responsibility.

In other words, GOG doesn't get let off the hook, metaphorically speaking, solely because they've spent eons of time pretending like the Devotion debacle never happened, and ignoring its existence.

2. What you describe as "GOG listening to their customers" in regards to the Hitman GOTY debacle...I find that phrasing to be overly-generous to GOG. I, instead, interpret GOG's semi/pseudo response to the Hitman GOTY debacle to be:

...they realized they were bleeding money, and they also realized that they literally could not afford to outrage their customers on a mass scale yet again, and then ignore that same mass outrage yet again, like they did with the Devotion debacle.

Therefore, GOG semi/pseudo-responded to the Hitman GOTY debacle out of sheer desperation, and not out of any desire to "do the right thing," the latter of which is the incorrect positive connotation that the phrasing "listening to their customers" carries.

3. If GOG were really listening to their customers regarding the Hitman GOTY debacle, then they would have publicly answered all of the hardball questions about it that myself and others posted on this board, such as:

a) why did GOG release the DRM-infested Hitman GOTY game on GOG in the first place?

b) why did some GOG staff initially defend its DRM, saying things like GOG believes that gaming has evolved and devs should be able to sell games in the way how they want. And they also made similar comments saying that DRM is okay so long as it doesn't affect gameplay too much. GOG needs to give an explanation as to why they said those things, and if they believe those things still.

c) why did GOG take weeks to remove the game after it was released in it's DRM-infested state?

d) what, exactly, was GOG trying to negotiate with the devs during those weeks...was GOG attempting to negotiate a fudge, where they would have allowed a certain amount of DRM to remain, but not all of it? Yes or No?

4. When you say "the Hitman GOTY debacle came and went"...that implies like it's done & finished and resolved. But no, it isn't...because GOG deliberately ignores, and never answers, the types of questions which I've just described. Until they do (which they probably never will), then the Hitman GOTY debacle remains open, as it has not been fully resolved.

5. I find your concluding statement also to be overly-generous to GOG. That statement you cited from GOG does not actually sound "encouraging on the face of it" at all, because it's clearly just meaningless PR speak fluff talk, of telling the customers and shareholders what GOG thinks they want to hear.

If GOG really meant that statement, they would have, for example, removed the DRM from Cyberpunk 2077 between the months when they made that statement and the start of 2022. And they also could have announced cancellation of the EGS-DRM deal.

Instead, GOG did absolutely nothing to rectify any of their current DRM issues, nor even making any announcement that they plan to rectify their current DRM issues.

GOG's utter inaction on that front proves, and makes abundantly clear, that they are not actually re-committing to DRM-free, but rather, they were just regurgitating their main motto, "a curated selection of DRM-free games," because talk is cheap, and it doesn't cost them anything to say that (other than a further tarnished reputation, once most customers who care about DRM-free realize that GOG isn't ever going to deliver on their promise).

Hopefully they'll get the name changed some time before it becomes necessary to change it to 2023 ;)
(side note: imo ya should've asked for it to be changed to "Boycotting GOG 2021-"[with no end year]....that way you wouldn't need to get it changed every year)

If you're going to do business with them then I think you should end the boycott. Seems pointless and weak to be flipping it on and off like a light switch.

Probably would have been quicker and easier to just start a new thread for 2022, instead of waiting for staff to change this one.

Says something about how sloppily this forum was put together when you can't even rename your own threads.

Eh, that's how I do mine....I am on the sympathetic list here, and will also sometimes boycott for a short time when GOG does something stupid/wrong(which is getting more frequent as the years go on, it seems).

Addition: I am more into "buycotts"(i.e. buying more from better companies/services)

=-=-=-=

Also with a thread that criticizes GOG so heavily, I could easily see them possibly "missing the PM/support ticket request" to change the title for a period of time.

^^^------------THIS------------^^^

Just to clarify, I haven't yet requested the name change for the thread. I was going to hold off for a day or two, to make sure everyone was good with the way the voting was done first. So, let's hold off on the guns - I'll request it now.

I have been saying for several months that my plan was to buy a couple of things in the January sale and then continue my boycott for the rest of 2022. I spent almost exactly $20 on GOG yesterday, for the first time in over a year. Over the past 12 months, I have spent almost $200 on Zoom Platform, which if not for the boycott I probably would have spent on GOG. I'd say a ~90% reduction in spending is still a pretty effective boycott.

Thread title change has been requested.

If I understand this correctly...

Some of you don't want to use GOG anymore.
You create a lot of noise in the forum about not using GOG anymore.
Now you want GOG's help to make more noise about not using GOG anymore.


Does anyone else see the irony here???