Have to say they're making the boycott very easy on us in 2021, with nothing so far that I would consider a big release (let alone a must-have one). The closest they got to that was the free wallpaper pack for Ghost Warrior Contracts. What is going on with this company?

Obvious disclaimer: tastes vary and I am not intending this as an insult to any of the releases this year/the fans of them.

For me, there's Everspace 2 coming this Monday, the 18th..and then Silksong some time after that.
Otherwise, agreed.

Yeah, I am in the same camp of "I bought a license to play a game, and i'm gonna use that license".....so i'd likely make use of that license via 'backup copies' & not rebuy the same game versions again and again.

Btw a bit of GOG trivia(which some may know or may not know): afaik, many of the original gog users were former pyrates and etc.

"... strong incel vibes."

Well, I guess we're done here then. You resorted to doing the same thing I just said you would do. And for the record nope, I'm not an incel. I've been helping those men to get out of inceldom and to seek alternative relationships. It is not easy. From my research and observation, most of these guys just want families. That's it. Nothing else. They have no other goals in life and admitted to it because "the purpose of life is reproduction."

You can DM me if you want, but we will probably have differing views.

As for the sake of the conversation, we will stop. Though I am a content creator for alt-tech platforms and helping these men to self-actualize is a big part of my work.

Aside from this, I mentioned a more pressing topic, like lack of transparency. GOG should let us know when publishers or developers have chosen to no longer support the platform, so that we are not left wondering if a certain game will ever hit the platform. The Arkham Batman games were a big surprise, to be honest. I never expected all of them and that is one great thing GOG has done so far in my book. More of that is what I'd like.
This. What the hell is going on? Pardon my French, but this is odd and people should be talking about it. I may even make another thread to address it personally. Where are all the games for 2021?

Good question! I think I will see how things go and reassess at the end of the year. If there are no signs of GOG changing for the better, I probably won't stop buying altogether, but significantly reduce. I might just buy 1 game a year that I really want on a deep discount. Certainly, I will stop the 'goodwill' spending: buying games I haven't got time to play; paying full price to support GOG, rather than buying on sale, etc.

As far as Zoom Platform, I think right now is a fantastic opportunity for them to take some market share from GOG, which they need to take advantage of. I have heard rumors they are planning to revamp their website and they have a backlog of games to release. So, I will keep an eye on them and hope to see some progress. If they take off and grow and stay DRM-free, they will probably be my store of choice.

I agree! So far this year, I haven't seen anything I have even been tempted to add to my wishlist. I'm guessing maybe they shot off many of their pending big guns before the end of the year.

(first post updated to post #500)

Why, thank you for confirming a creeping suspicion I've had.

I'm 100% convinced that the majority of people still defending gog are either more casual users who have no idea how bad things with this company really are. Personally, I've grown quite tired of the boiling frog treatment where they gradually phase out everything that set them apart from other digital storefronts. They've clearly been testing the waters with the cosmetic singleplayer content that's locked behind their precious Galaxy client, and the negative feedback has been nowhere enough for them to reverse course.

Or, in your case, they're doing it out of some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where you defend a company - no matter how shitty it has become - because it's holding your entire game collection hostage. We're entering proper "No Steam, no buy"-levels of blind, deluded brand loyalty here, folks!

I've also seen the argument that if gog fails, DRM-free gaming fails - which is a somewhat valid concern since I don't see any other platform being able to step up to the task. Zoom Platform? Don't make me laugh! The thing is: Just because gog have aggressively promoted themselves as the saviours of DRM-free gaming, should we have to put up with whatever abuse, whatever nonsense, whatever plain idiocy they can throw at us?

Of course not. The Devotion cancellation (and gog having the gall of putting the blame on "gamers") was one major misstep too many for me. So I'm gladly putting my name down on the boycott list. And I applaud everyone else who does (especially the people who got refunds for all the crap that was still covered by their warranty). You can still rebuy stuff you're vaguely interested in at a later point when they've smartened up. As it stands, this is a company not worth spending money on.

You're right. Most companies start up again proper in the spring. At least here in the US. That's how our record labels work, we have a spring season of major releases and a fall season of major releases. Summer usually is peppered, but full of tours. I am not sure how it is in Poland, but the start of the fiscal year is normally in the spring.

So yes, not that odd at all.

I would be wary of Zoom. I looked through it and I just see a lot of potential for disaster there. I don't think they're ready for the big time, but am fully aware of the situation. One thing that you just aren't considering (and has been true of everything I've observed so far) is that the more popular and mainstream something becomes, the more likely it is to jump the shark and fall prey to corporatism. I'm a proud capitalist, but even I can see when corporations become too big for their britches and fail. Perhaps this is going on with GOG.

Let's look at the past couple of years. First Bethesda, then EA, now Warner Bros. These are some pretty powerful corporations, far removed from the little game store that just sold Messiah, Baldur's Gate and other games from yesteryear. GOG is definitely trying to be a mainstream competitor for Steam and Epic. But they decided to partner with Epic in order to stand up to Steam. So of course, the Devotion thing happened. When you partner with a company that China owns 38% of, don't be surprised when they start kowtowing to China. And I'm betting you that the only way to get Devotion on this platform like you all want, is for GOG to de-partner with Epic. However, we don't know what that partnership agreement offered to GOG. Maybe Epic made them a deal that they found far more enticing than whatever putting Devotion on the platform would have offered. I know for sure that Mortal Shell is coming to this platform, and it was primarily an Epic Games Exclusive for example. They may value the money made from that more.

And let's think of it like businessmen. Out of the 8,427 people who spammed requests for Devotion, how many people will actually buy it? There may be a few games that GOG feels will make more bank than Devotion if they had put it on the platform, and a lot of people are all talk. For example, if GOG released the game tomorrow, they would post it all over their Twitter feeds and there would be videos from YouTubers and all this - so you would have support buys. Unfortunately, a lot of people would just post the fact that they're happy but not actually buy it. This would be a major fail for the company. In fact, out of the nearly 9,000 people who requested it, only about a quarter of that would actually pick it up. The rest would just move onto something else to get upset about. Another game, movie, television show, exc - whatever the internet tells them that they need to be upset about this time. And that's the truth. That's more or less how GOG feels about this situation. They probably think that they have more to lose from Epic and the partnership there than to post a game that threatens Epic and Tencent.

Devotion is only one of the problems here, but it is most brought up by boycotters. Almost every post I have read has featured it. So it really is seeming to be the big issue here to these people, whether they are actual GOG customers or just angry internet people who are bored during a pandemic.

At the end of the day, GOG is going to have a tough decision to make. They will either have to sever their partnership with Epic and Tencent, or they will lose customers and support worldwide. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And at the risk of running my yap one more time, I will say that I am at least sympathetic. I get it. But if they ever get up something I want to buy here, I'll buy it. If they ever have a sale on something I've been waiting on a while, I'll buy that too.

However, I only have about 500 games. That's over the course of eight years. That's because I stopped random buying and checked reviews and whatnot. I had a bad history of buying crap games in the past. So maybe buying less games is good overall for gamers, because I think that many of us end up buying too many games that we won't ever have the time for. It's a bad habit. You have to look at your collection and think,

"How many of these have I actually played?"

And that goes for all platforms. I'll bet that at least a quarter to a half of those random games you bought, those good deals you found, will end up being uninstalled after five to ten minutes of play. Maybe a half an hour. Maybe a full hour. You'll think, "Man I should not have bought this." and yeah, you shouldn't have. Maybe save that money up and start investing. Just an idea.

I am not satisfied either with the general course GOG has taken, but while I understand your dis-appointment over the The Devotion cancellation then I think that GOG directly or in-directly were threatened by China or Chinese (government ?) hackers and didn't dare cross them. And we should not underestimate the power of indirect political pressure.
Of course they shouldn't blame 'gamers' for their decision.
As for the Cyberpunk 2077 discussion then I really do not care as I were not pre-ordering but quality wise then maybe GOG were impacted a lot more by the Corona/COVID 19 situation than management initially understood,
Personally I believe that Marcin Iwiński is honest in his apology , though I do not see that calming the 'general population' , but at least he takes a managerial responsibility rather than blaming staff !
Ref. :
https://www.dailyesports.gg/cd-projekt-red-co-founder-apologizes-over-quality-of-cyberpunk-2077/
and :
https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/1349462362764537862

ah again chinaflu excuse , like they only have a stopwatch and no quality testing and feature set to decide when to launch the game
honest? he made excuses and lied how they didn't know how bad the console ports are , even said pc version is very good , it is not

Completely with you on these issues. GOG is phasing out DRM-free, that has been obvious for years, and is continuously devoting resources to hiding installers better in your account. It's pathetic.

Don't put me on that list though, because calls for boycott are not the way, and you're mixing in unrelated demands that weaken your argument and can never sensibly be met ("Cancel the deal with Epic"? What's next, "Close down the store, declare bankruptcy, then sit in the corner and be ashamed of yourself"?).

Pah.

You think the Chinese government has nothing better to do than sending threats to fledgling digital distributors over obscure indie games?

Here's what actually happened: Gog shat the bed. Plain and simple. Some really bright bulb decided to release one of the most controversial titles of recent years within a week of Cybahjunk 2077 launching. Then some even brighter bulb decided to ADVERTISE this imminent release on a social media platform in a country where said title is de facto on the black list. Seeing their precious Cyberpunk sales threatened (and facing a potential firewalling), the brightest bulb of all decided to cancel the release and blame this cowardly move on "gamers". This last part in particular, this trying to twist your complete and utter lack of cojones into some type of pro-consumer move is hands down the most sickening thing of all.

All this is 100% on gog.

Damn, too many bulbs in GOG. The definitely need to start to hire actual people instead.