Your unicorn analogy is faulty. If evidence of unicorns existence was published and you then asserted "No evidence of the existence of unicorns has ever been presented." then I was expect you to prove that claim.
i.e. I would expect you to explain why the evidence that has been presented doesn't count.

No, it's not. If you knocked on my door with that claim and also claimed that evidence supporting the existence of unicorns has been published, I would expect you to be able to direct me to that published evidence. If that evidence turned out to be weak and unconvincing, I would be justified in dismissing it and asking you to provide a better example.

I think part of the disagreement here may be that we have differing interpretations of what we consider 'evidence'. You seem to be including anything that has been proposed as evidence (regardless of quality). However, when I talk about 'evidence', what I mean is 'convincing evidence'.

As joppo mentioned above, that thread about the Weibo posts to me seems like weak and unconvincing 'evidence'. All that is evident there are a small handful of posts from Chinese users, which does not indicate anything like the sort of large scale backlash from 'many gamers' that would have justified GOG's rush to remove Devotion from sale. I find that to be highly unconvincing; therefore I don't really consider it to be valid 'evidence'.

You have a point though, in that 'something' has been put forward and proposed as evidence. So, perhaps it would help if I clarify my position (to try to avoid further confusion):

I have not seen any convincing evidence to support GOG's claim that they had received 'messages from many gamers' that would have constituted a large backlash from Chinese gamers.

What I would consider to be convincing evidence would be screenshots or sample messages showing that at least several dozen messages were received, if not several hundred, over a short period of time. Remember, over 9000 people have signed the Devotion wishlist request and GOG have not graced them with a response, nor even acknowledged them. So, I would expect there to be a damn sight more than 5 measly Weibo posts from Chinese gamers lying around somewhere, that would have constituted a backlash large enough for GOG to do a 180 on Devotion within a matter of hours.

And here is the thing (which joppo also mentioned): if GOG's claim is true, then they should easily be able to provide convincing proof of these thousands of messages from Chinese gamers, because they should have the records of that on their system. Therefore, my expectation for GOG to prove their claim is reasonable, since they should easily be able to prove it. (and this forms a large part of why I don't believe them)

On the other hand, your demand that I prove that no (convincing) evidence exists is not reasonable, since I don't have access to GOG's records and so for me to prove that sort of negative is going to be nigh on impossible. It should be understandable that I am not able to prove something that is intrinsically very difficult for me to prove, but it is far less understandable (imo) that GOG is not able to prove something that should be very easy for them.

Again, the burden of proof here clearly rests on GOG:

- they are the ones who made the initial claim of 'many gamers'
- they are the ones who are able to easily prove their claim (since they have access to the records)
- ultimately, it is their credibility that is on the line here (so they should have an incentive to provide the proof)

Any proof that GOG would provide isn't going to be accepted unless identities of the "gamers" can be verified. GOG's not going to give any of us that kind of information because of privacy reasons. You think they're going to allow for a potential witch hunt against the "gamers" and then get blamed for that, too?

I'm fairly sure the majority here wouldn't go on a witch hunt. We're not RetardEra.
Even if anyone would want to attempt that there supposedly are too many "witches" so going after a small bunch of them wouldn't achieve anything useful, so why even bother?

Also, if these messages are private like emails it'd be trivial for Gog to anonymize them, and if they are public like tweets, well they're public. Gog pretending they forgot where they are wouldn't change much, they would be found eventually... (if not for the fact these messages are all make-believe, of course.)

Whether or not GOG could prove their claim, why would you expect them to want to? They've never been known for transparency about anything, even when accused of all kinds of things. GOG's standard tactic is to stay quiet.

However, I consider them innocent until proven guilty. With the evidence that is available to us - that the game is highly controversial in China, the fact they announced the release directly on Chinese social media thereby skipping a few steps towards it going viral and the expected negative responses - I see no reason to disbelieve that they got a very large amount of negative feedback in a short space of time. Everyone is a potential customer, thus 'many gamers'.

The number of wishlist votes is somewhat irrelevant. The important numbers are:

- How many sales will be lost due to not releasing Devotion? I'm not talking about sales of Devotion, I'm talking about lost sales in general from those boycotting.
- How many sales would be lost if they did release Devotion? At the very least there would be a much larger boycott in China than the one they're currently experiencing. There would be even more sales lost if they were actually banned.

I'm not normally one to defend GOG, and I think they've handled this situation abysmally at every stage but being stupid and being a liar are different things. I still haven't seen anything to convince me that GOG are lying. For all this talk about burden of proof, I think if you're going to assert that they lied you're going to need proof. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
My defence of them is not due to having proof that they're not lying, but due to not having proof that they are.

What exactly would need verifying and how? The gaming community, as diffuse as it is, has for a long time been guilty of terrible gatekeeping and "no true Scotsman" arguments. How the hell do you decide whether someone is a gamer or not?

And aside from that, in the context of a company that sells games, "gamers" is nothing more than buddy-buddy PR speak for customers (both current and potential). To assume that it means anything more specific when coming from the PR channels of a games company is naivete itself.

Anyone could type up a seemingly authentic demand to remove or withhold a game and then reword it many times. That kind of "evidence" is sufficient?

What, do you expect GOG to run background checks on people now? They're a small games store, not the CIA.

You guys were arguing about evidence. What kind of evidence is good enough for you?

"Yep. That sure is a lot of messages that could have come from a few people or only one person. I'm convinced."

They could do what many do online to show proof of things people said: post edited(screennames/etc removed)
screencaps of said comments for all to see

That way, people would see the proof of "many gamers", and none of the commenter's identities would be known.

That could still be faked easily.

This day and age anything can be faked easily, what is worse is when people do bring in credible evidence and people decide to dismiss it as fake and continue with there propaganda, and this can be said for both sides of an argument, it just seems people are more interested in winning than having an honest and in depth discussion.

They can be, but I doubt GOG(who can't even invest much time in it's own forum) would be very likely to waste time making fake social media posts & screenshots of such just to make itself look better(especially when they save a good deal of time/effort by not saying anything.

Also for some(like myself) it'd at least make GOG seem a bit more trustworthy/credible/etc re: it's stated reasons for the rejection/removal & etc.

-

Very well said

I disagree that 'identities would need to be verified' to prove that messages from many Chinese gamers had been received. There is no identity verification required for GOG's community wishlist voting, which GOG supposedly takes into account when deciding what new games to prioritize. Identity verification would be practically impossible anyway, since anyone can send an e-mail and it's easy to spoof e-mail addresses. For me, a collection of sample redacted (and possibly translated) messages would be sufficient.

These 'messages from many gamers' clearly aren't public, or stronger evidence would have come to light already. So, if they exist, we have to assume they must be in the form of e-mails or messages sent directly to GOG support. Which means that GOG are the only ones who could (legally) prove either way whether they exist (for anyone still talking about 'burden of proof').

Which raises another question/suspicion: if the 'messages from many gamers' is true, where are all these Chinese gamers? Why didn't more post on Weibo? Why haven't they flooded the GOG forums/twitter, etc.? Why are they all just sending private messages, which are conveniently invisible to everyone except GOG?

I don't know 100% that GOG is lying, but on the balance of the information we have available, and the evidence they have not provided but so easily could, I do not believe they are telling the truth. It does not seem likely to me they are.

I would just like to point out, it was 'many messages from gamers', not 'many gamers', once again for what it's worth.

"Earlier today, it was announced that the game Devotion is coming to GOG. After receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store."

Doesn't make a huge difference to some of the arguments, but to some it does.

And 9000 community wishlist entries is kinda not very impressive. Galaxy for Linux is at 30 000+, and not only is that never going to happen, there hasn't been any reason given, not a peep from GOG about it. Consider Linux gamers represent 0.8% of all gamers out there...

THis whole Devotion controversy boycott seems like a silly hill to die upon, but to each his own, I respect you sticking to your guns.

A video game store boycott seems over-the-top to me due to a sensible business decision from a small time player on the market, though. Just my thoughts.

Carry on.