This is your personal speculation. No, the pressure obviously came from our "concerned gamers". Or are you by chance saying GOG lied about their allegiances? If so, it's straight to gulag with them.

I can't believe CDPR/GoG shifted blame on the "Players" who "flooded" complaints with messages about this game being sold on GoG.
WTF are you guys doing? Twice now you guys have lied and manipulated your costumers with yet another immoral practice.

The fact that the management scapegoated your very own SUPPORTERS/customers on why the game is being pulled is not only disgusting, its extremely heart breaking.
Its not that you decided to pull the game and pretty much hurt and turned your backs on an indie dev, its that you have the nerve to BLAME your own community instead of just coming out and being honest as to why this was done.

We may not all be sympathetic as to the real reason, but at least you where honest to the community, showing us yet again how transparent and pro-consumer you can be.

What you pulled with Cyberpunk by only allowing PC versions to be reviewed was bad. This tho, is just even more disgusting and everyone knows WHY the game was yanked.
The right thing to do is come out and say why this was done, not only to the fans, supporters and consumers of GoG but you owe it to Red Candle.

I'm done supporting all things GoG. The classics I can still get from Abandonware sites and Dosbox,
everything else I'll get through Steam.
If I thought GoG owned all the old classics and the devs didn't get money from sales of classics, I'd have another option but thats not a route I support for indies...

You might as well get everything through "abandonware" websites if you are going down that route.

A cc company cannot dictate what legal products a company sells(at least not legally or directly)....also there are other payment methods besides those two that GOG could use if those two CC companies ever held something over their heads in such a manner.

I assumed he was talking about the EU. Most US banks wouldn't dare mess with money transfers like that. On the flip side, apparently when visa and mastercard in particular tried this shit to wikileaks, they got hit by the EU. I imagine US would be similar, but the EU would have jurisdiction in GOG's case.

Thankfully bitchute is now taking up the slack....as well as several other sites.

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1. They're not all game buyers.
2. There are things called v-p-n.

Is bitchute monitized, though? I don't see ads, but that could be due to the fact my browser has a buitl-in ad-blocker. These platforms aren't large enough, yet, though. Personally, seeing GOG's evolution, i think we need to think more decentralized. I've been advocating for a return to IRC for chatting (i heard "matrix" is similarly decentralized, but i don't know much about the protocol), and i really have seen open-source Social Media service engines that resemble facebook. I'm sure there's an open twitter, too. It would make sense to keep these as decentralized as possible, so people can migrate as needed. The problem with social media censorship is that the centralization mechanisms provide too much power. I can get banned in a room on IRC without loosing the whole server, so i can start my own channel for my friends to join me. If the server admins go totalitarian, i can just got to another server or start my own, and my friends will join me with little change to their habits or setup. Switching from youtube to bitchute or the like is alot more drastic.

No, but people can support their favorite creators there via paypal, subscribestar, patreon, etc.

With the recent "changes"(censoring) on youtube and other sites, though, bitchute and others have grown a good amount over the past month.
(so much so, that the msm is now doing smear stories about them)
I have faith that they will likely surpass the main big tech sites given time and a chance.

Tbh bitchute isn't that bad....i've been using it for a week or so now, and besides things like low quality video(under HD quality in many cases) and such it is more or less as easy to use as Youtube.

Yeah... blame legal or technical problems... My guess is people at GOG were overwhelmed by the situation - they're all still in home office and Corona lockdown, so communication is harder.

Here's how I imagine this happened:

1) Someone from the GOG curation team gets the game handed with a note "Check this out, might be up your alley". Said person has probably never heard about the game, but well a quick Google search says it has won several awards... wait - controvery in China, we'll just block it, all fine. Curator plays the game and likes it a lot. Calls his girlfriend and they have a nice weekend.

Time passes.

2) Curator greenlits the game to the guy who manages release schedule: "We'll bring this, great, award-winning game, even an exclusive, it's not on Steam!! Maybe leave out China". The Schedule guy (who hasn't ever heard of the game) picks a date and sends the current release list to the PR girl. Goes and gets some food for his two children for lunch.

Time passes.

3) PR girl (who has never heard of the game) looks at the release list what's next. Announces the release on Twitter, then helps her child with homework...

A few minutes later angry emails by Chinese gamers (or "gamers") start to pile of at GOG's front door. Email guy is disturbed by the loud beeping and tells his boyfriend to wait, to check what's wrong. Gets pale, calls his boss "We have a situation here!"

4) Boss escalates this to their boss - some GOG CEO - who also pales with an exclamation "China is mad? Fuck!" - numbers and figures run through is head, looming doom of being excluded from the Chinese market. "Stop the release! Now!" he screams into the phone.

5) Second level boss calls PR girl, who was just between maths and Polish, and tells her to pull the release announcement. "I can't." She says, "Then think of something". Flabbergasted, and with maths and Polish still sticking in her mind, she clings to the only info she got "some gamers don't want the release". Post message. Apocalypse follows.

Ok that's all made up, but that's how things happen in real life, I've seen it working this way really often. Shit like that simply happens.

Well,
GoG has bought the rights to many of the older games, some they have licensing agreements with.
Being a physical "Big Box" collector myself (mostly SSI/TSR related games and Text adventures) I pretty much already either have digital copies or some type of access. The black floppies tho I have no way of playing.

GoG aint a bloodsucking company and I don't feel comfortable d/l games that can be found on their storefront TBH.
It just sucks that they are pulling this, ya know?

Zork I can play on a Z-Machine interpreter. Abandonware is a loaded term, Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 are found on SOME abandonware sites, we both know thats bullshit.

Regardless if that's the case or not, you'd think they'd now want to avoid bad PR and loss of income by changing course and bringing the game back, or at the very least saying something on the matter.

Also imo it's telling that GOG HQ(the higher ups) haven't released a statement on the matter.

1) GOG's radio silences are infamous. Nothing new.
2) What can they possibly say to fix this? They can't say "because of the Chinese market", because, officially they are not in the Chinese market (no license, see the Guardian article on that).

They're in the corner with no way out other than weather this out and then look what's left standing. Every move they can make will make things worse.

Here's some music for GOG staff while they're waiting in their bunkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTfZijDp4fg&list=RDEjV2Zqujb0c&index=1

:-)

lol, that brought a hearty chuckle. Thans for that. Indeed, I also saw stuff like that happening and it might very well be the case.

But, why the radio silence? Why don't just tell us some marketing bs like "listing this game would not help our core competencies" or something like that?

I know, the situation you describe could and indeed does happen. But why keep your mouth shut afterwards?

Imagine caping so hard and yet still failing to cape hard enough. Even if GOG is not at fault 100% for Devotion not coming to GOG, you still haven't addressed GOG lying to customers and blaming them for the game not being released. Get fucking real bro.