You attacking me just proves that I am correct in my assessment of your faux boycott. You either should hold to actual convictions and stop buying games from GoG while you "boycott" them, or you should just drop your charade since you aren't actually boycotting GoG.

That's insane!

That is another great reason to boycott GOG.

If what you are saying is true, then that means GOG has an "unofficial" censorship policy, whereby GOG is being complicit in allowing their most ardent fans to censor the posts of GOG's critics, since the posters who are critical of GOG are always the ones who get "low rated," and even worse, they also often get specifically targeted by bot-using GOG users, and/or a mob of GOG users (either is just as bad as the other) who stalk all of their posts in order to downvote them 100% regardless of anything that that particular post says or doesn't say in it (in other words, this nefarious behavior is the downvoting equivalent of so-called 'review brigading' where users negatively review a game en masse for reasons that aren't directly related to the content of the game).

Even though GOG is not embracing this as an official censorship policy, GOG allowing it to happen while looking the other way is just as bad.

This issue of censorship on GOG needs further attention, above & beyond just inside of this boycotting thread only. All GOG customers need to be made aware of this censorship.

I believe Richlind meant that those of us on the lists could do more to ensure the thread shows some positive results, which I agree.

That said, it's of course up to everyone how much effort they want to contribute to the "cause".....though, of course it doesn't hurt to try encouraging people every now and then :)

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I'm guessing most of those successes were for more pressing/serious issues.......with regards to issues around things like games, a number of people are more often too comfortable with their bread and circuses and/or busy with other matters to want to/be able to do much.

Yes, similar to what Syndrome said in The Incredibles
(relevant bit at 45 seconds, but the whole clip is worth watching)

Essentially: when so many are low/neg rated, then one of the low rater's goals(to make said users look bad via rep score) is essentially undermined by their own overzealous efforts.

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Actually, those things(low rated posts hidden by default for new users and those who didn't change the setting, and greyed out thread titles even if the thread has new posts if the OP post is low rated) have been like that for a long while now.

Still, I agree that it's likely that the higher ups/etc of Gog either don't give a care about the forum and/or might even want it to fade away into obscurity.

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Speaking of looking the other way.....i've heard (over the last few years) that Gog has had meetings/talks about things (including) the rep system/it's manipulation, and that they essentially decided to not do anything about it.

Your own metrics appear to be "#1, and at least a couple others". I'd say getting GOG to publicly acknowledge this boycott would be a success, but that doesn't seem to be much more likely than a Devotion release, which at present seems extremely unlikely.

Exactly right, which makes it a very tough sell given that GOG's products are nonessential. Success/failure rests almost entirely on being able to convince a significant number of people that GOG is no longer trustworthy, in an industry that has almost none to speak of.

(bolding mine)
And to convince those who already feel/think such to do more(writing posts on other sites/forums outside Gog, etc) about it.

We can infer from past as well as existing controversies that GOG is reluctant to comment on controversial matters unless absolutely necessary, and if they do comment it seems typical to primarily "cover" themselves rather than specifically address user concerns per se. For example, they seem to believe "Hitman game was delisted" and "many messages from gamers" are complete statements, and why would anyone want additional follow-up!

You are free to believe that "GOG commenting = boycott success" but I hope you are not concluding "GOG lack of commenting = boycott failure" as this seems more something related to GOG procedure than to what we boycotters do or don't do. I have earlier addressed the idea that "if only the boycotters were all 100% pure..." as, along similar lines, I feel GOG is unlikely to comment then regardless, for the same type of reason.

I think I was being generous. Since you disagree then feel free to use the metrics I cited from the OP: relisting Devotion + 2 other demands. If those aren't going to be used as metrics then maybe you ought to delete them? o.O

I'm not sure what you were being :D ... I'm trying to understand your point. You are the one making claims about success and failure. What I am saying in response here now is that it is going to be virtually impossible to get direct answers out of GOG, so absent that, the best we can do is guess, if even that.

In some instances, offline installers have been updated with more promptness than in the past, but to conclude that is directly because of the boycotters doesn't seem possible. Say that GOG did relist Devotion, but some other outside factor was why...it wouldn't be realistic to try and claim the boycott was a "success" in that regard.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm just not sure what you want/expect out of us in here to make things any different.

Are you interested in knowing if you're having any success, or is this protesting for the sake of protesting?

Yea, combination of factors. Most older lot like me will not go near social media. Also, the downvote bots (gog owned or elsewhere) simply downvote anything not liked and it apparently gets hidden for most users (or like this thread people jump in and deliberately try to derail any criticism). Another factor is most people are simply not bothered, it’s just not worth the effort to struggle against it all.
It’s been obvious for quite some time who the target audience is and who the future target audience is (oh look new year is late this year…), so it’s highly unlikely that this message, or in fact any message over the last few years gets anywhere.
Anyways, that being said, I have still not brought anything since Nov 2020, and have no intention of putting anymore this way as things get worse and worse.

<Plays Xfiles theme>
Talk about conspiracy theories.

I am interested in knowing if the boycott is directly impacting anything, but I do not believe the answer to that is something that will be revealed to us one way or the other.

I believe I have identified the source of our talking-past-one-another; your earlier comment about all that matters is results (or similar, not trying to misquote you). A flaw with results-oriented thinking is that in the absence of knowing the future, it can't tell us now in the present what the right course of action is or isn't.

Think of a sports league in which a team has to draft a rookie player. They do not know if this player will be the next great superstar, or a total bust. But, the draft is happening, so they can't "wait," they must use a process to pick one (simplified example; they could also trade the pick but that would also be using process-oriented thinking in that moment).

Also, it can be "protesting for the sake of protesting" as well; that is a valid means of expression here on the forum and not a bad thing as long as everyone remains relatively chill.
This is probably the best suggestion in terms of how to improve the "process" (also was suggested to me by GR in this and other topics). That said, I have made the counterpoint in the past that GOG should - in terms of economic rationality - care what their customers think, so if people are on their forum complaining, this should in theory be "good enough" to get GOG to make changes, particularly if GOG verifies these individuals are among the longer-tenured and/or bigger-spending users. I also share nightcraw1er's concern, paraphrased, that a lot of people simply don't care about these issues. Think of a big youtuber...what is the "hook" for them to run a story on old GOG customers being upset? Their audience probably doesn't care thus it is unlikely it will get covered unless it is a passion project or somehow sponsored by GOG users themselves to get the person to make it.