When has GOG ever been transparent about anything? Why would you expect them to start now?

As for believing them, the alternative is that they're lying. Why would they lie about it? What exactly would that achieve (other than annoying some of their customers)?


I don't see how you read their tweet as putting the blame on us specifically, nor do I see how it's obviously a lie.

"Many gamers" includes the Chinese market and it's a huge market, so I don't really see what about the tweet is untrue.

Perhaps wishful thinking on my part. It seemed to me the relationship they used to have with the community was more humane, if that makes sense. As of late it is more corporate and forced than ever, with a few exceptions.
They could be obfuscating the reality of the facts for their own interests, that I can't rightly say, which is why I mentioned transparency, especially in a situation like this. As for achiving something, perhaps they see potential in the Asian market, much like Steam does. Expanding the business outside Europe and the Americas (which, let's face it, is mostly North America) seems plausible. Perhaps in reversing their initial decision they see potential in a specific market. If I remember correctly, GOG's share in Asia is relatively low.

A lot of clues are found in their 2020 Board Report.

- p.48: China is 25% of global market share in revenue. 23% is the rest of Asia, so China is 52% of Asian market. Meanwhile, US represents 24% of global market share. In a separate source, PC gaming in China's revenue decreased 4.9% from 2019 to 2020, but PC gamers grew 1.4% with slow and steady CAGR of 0.6%.

- p.52: CDP is promoting GWENT in China.

- p.56-57: 73% CP2077 sold through digital distribution. 20.2% total copies sold in Asia. 10% PC copies sold on GOG.com. Linear scaling says 10.5% copies sold in China and 0.3% of total copies sold for Chinese GOG users.

- p.59: Witcher 3 sold 24.7% copies in Asia. 12.8% sold in China by linear scaling.

- p.72: China is 3% of GOG's market share.

- p.87: specifically mentions games for closed platforms needs certification from a certifier citing China as an example. CDP notes how regulations and laws affecting their partners in China are a significant business risk and can delay or terminate their contracts to impact their revenues. Their business solution is to cooperate with "local partners" familiar with these laws to secure certification. Absolutely agree.

[Speculation] CDP executives threw GOG and Red Candle under the bus to protect their CP2077, Witcher 3, GWENT, and other future IPs' revenue in China. Similar to how some people here can't differentiate between CDPR and GOG, it's also likely some Chinese gamers can't tell the difference either and would've boycotted their IPs if GOG published Devotion.

It's pretty clear "many messages from gamers" referred either directly to Chinese gamers here and not Western gamers. Disingenuous to say only "gamers" from CDP, but singling out "Chinese gamers" would've been another risky controversy itself. (If you were a CDP exec, would you have risked your seven-figure job when the board can fire you for causing two controversies in a row?) And while not the exact same demographics, it's easy to see how effective Chinese boycotts are on foreign companies capitalizing from their markets. For example, Dolce and Gabbana's Asian market contracted by 12% back in their 2019 earnings after their racist ads controversy. Not the exact same as offending an entire people versus a head of state, but similar.

Yeah, the Chinese government and their diehard patriots need to grow thicker skin if they want to be taken seriously in global dialogue. But the depiction of GOG being in bed with the CCP isn't exactly accurate either. If a global business relies on the Chinese market directly for revenue, then this appears to be a strictly business decision to me.

EDIT: misquoted, thanks joppo.

@Canuck_Cat: thank you for pointing that out.

Why should anyone care about their market? Don't reward their bad behavior. If Jinnie the Flu and others go out of their way to try to punish someone over a little harmless art in a videogame then I don't care what happens to them.

Let's imagine they told the truth. This means that Gog received A LOT of messages in just a matter of hours from their chinese customers. (Let's not beat around the bush, the only people who could have had a reason to request that game release to be canceled were from China.) Those chinese customers who currently make up only 2%* of Gog customers somehow organized themselves in a matter of hours to mass message Gog? Because it took Gog just a few, maybe 6 hours to issue the controversial lie-... errr, I mean tweet. You should also take it into account that those thousands of messages must have arrived long before the 6 hours mark because Gog's directors would need some time to panic and run around the building like headless chickens before finally deciding that Devotion shouldn't be released anymore.

* (I tried to find the source for this number but couldn't. I thought it was in the "Check these facts and numbers about Gog" thread, but I was mistaken. I still remember seeing it here. Maybe in the board report Canuck_Cat linked? I don't dare open it as there have been some firewalling of gaming media in my office recently)

Or maybe a lot of those messages do not come from Gog customers but from other chinese sources? In that case how does Gog knows if any of those massages came from a gamer? Did they attach receipts of game purchases and personal high score screenshots to their raging demand emails? Well, how sad it would be if Gog capitulated to a plain regular angry mob of CCP supporters. But either way Gog decided to call them "gamers".

It also defies credibility how fast Gog reacted from messages of supposed customers. We're talking about the moment when their support team was at their worst, swamped in refund requests, yet they miraculously hear all those complaints and communicate their bosses in an incredibly expedite fashion that is completely different from everything we know of Gog in recent years and particularly at that moment. How come? I could believe in several of those chinese customers sending messages to Gog asking them to reconsider it, but I can't believe that they would even be able to do it in time, much less be heard.

So yes, I'm calling it insulting us and putting the blame on their customers because they don't dare say it was the threats of chinese sycophants (understandable), but also want the coward way of saying it's not their fault.

"It was not the CCP shills, it was you the gamers, our customers, that demanded it". Yeah right.

TBF, you misquoted me. JakobFel said that. But I also agree with the part selected.

Indeed. But they could just say that after some extra reviews they realized that publishing the game would lead to risks they were not ready to take (or something like that) and leave it at that. There was no avoiding some blowback of course, but it would have been a hundred times better.

Fixed, thanks.

That was heavily implied and well understood by everyone. Though I definitely agree that could've been more clearer.

I don't think they were blaming the players, I feel like you may have mistaken their statement for something they didn't actually say. I mean, on Steam, the game DID get review-bombed and thus, it would definitely look like a mob of players were the reason.

Fair enough, I can agree to disagree. :)

:-) Of course.
But just so you know, I didn't mean that in the sense of shutting down the dialogue but in the sense that repeating myself with the same arguments is pointless, even more because you're perfectly capable of just reading above and continue from there. It's perfectly fine if you refute/argue/agree with them just as if they were a direct reply to you.

You're right. I'm new to this discussion and failed to do my research. However, now that we are here...

Look up the chinese social credit system. Citizens carry a permanent record of past behaviour that's condensed into a single number, a score. It's supposed to be your 'trustworthiness' score. You get points added or subtracted when you do something the Party likes or dislikes. EG: Reading an unauthorised news website loses points. Posting complaints about games that might upset the Party gains points. It's a little like the Rep score they have here on this forum, except the points are only awarded by the state.

If your score falls too far, you will find yourself restricted from many things. Travel, Schools, Jobs, the list is getting longer all the time. It's social engineering at its dystopian worst. (Black Mirror, eat your heart out.)

It's perfectly possible that GOG received 10000 complaints in two hours from all over china.

I'm more than happy to give GOG the benefit of the doubt. But until GOG weighs in, we'll just have to speculate.

Reminds me of an episode of Sliders.

"Reports in 2019 indicated that 23 million people have been blacklisted from travelling by plane or train due to low social credit scores" <--- Two years ago.

"[i]score-lowering actions include:

An individual not visiting their parents on a frequent basis
Jaywalking
Walking a dog without putting it on a leash
Smoking in a non-smoking zone
Cheating in online videogames[/i]
"

https://nhglobalpartners.com/china-social-credit-system-explained/

It's not just your own score that effects you, but also the scores of family and friends. (Yep, hang out with the 'wrong' friends and get stuffed by the government, potentially for the rest of your life.)

Or maybe some of them feel they have a legitimate complaint and want to express such? An entire market that provides GOG less than 5% of it's revenue.

Btw, that's all of Asia providing that share.....china's chare of that 5% is likely even less.

And no, GOG wouldn't be cut out of the market....there's things called v-p-n which many chinese/etc can(and do often) use to "temporarily move to another country" so they can buy games/etc. "All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men/women to do nothing"

At some point, people/companies have to decide...what's more important: the goods/services/markets of places like china, or their integrity

- And have GOG or someone else complain about necroposting?
(I agree an old thread should've been bumped, but we all know GOG/goggers would've most likely complained about that)