Mori_Yuki: There is no way for anything to fly below the radar of Chinese tracking. They got surveillance measures in place beyond Orwell's worst nightmares.
toxicTom: Yeah, is it a bird, or is it a plane? As the Guardian pointed out, GOG used to be too small to care.
Mori_Yuki: Devotion shouldn't even be a source of conflict anymore. This developer removed content after what happened over at Steam.
toxicTom: And still the game didn't return. Removing the content and voicing an apology is sometimes not enough. Because it doesn't alter the fact that they did mock the "leader" (and his mother) and that fact won't go away, even if they remove the "evidence". Tension between China and Taiwan have always been high, sometimes at the brink of war, and everybody is on edge. The devs burnt their publisher (also people with wives and kids, anyone ever think about those?) over a silly joke they should have known wouldn't end well in this tense climate. And now it's GOG getting burned.
GOG have by simply announcing the game maneuvered themselves in an impossible position: Publish the game, get kicked out of China (and probably suffer Chinese troll DDoS during CP77-release and a large sale), get CP77 banned over there, and explaining to their shareholders that freedom of art is more important than their money? Or give in, angering their Western customers for appeasing Chinese censorship and lack of humour?
Of course their handling of the situation was abysmal. Of all the lesser evils they picked the biggest one: blame "gamers".
For me it isn't about
blaming gamers so much as not even telling the truth of what has
actually happened and the reason
why they decided to handle things the way they did. The evidence for this has been deleted from Weibo. Even the localized twitter message:
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. is now gone as are the threats made by
gamers.
That there is a political dimension to this can't be denied. But what got this to do with this situation? It was a stupid cartoon bear used as meme, used by Chinese citizens not even to mock their leader, that was too much for officials to accept. Now it is again about this game and whatever there was in it that so angered the official party. It was removed. So why is there still a need to interfere with a European shop by
gamers? Why threaten a shop to boycott CP2077 over this? Why should we in the west care what official China thinks about this game? Why do we living in many free eastern and western countries have to care about the sensitivities of a totalitarian Chinese government?
As for GoG? It wasn't like this developer convinced or forced GoG to publish it and GoG had no other choice. They must have been aware of the controversy surrounding the game on Steam as it made its way around news sites and blogs when this happened. What I do see is what happens when someone threatens the company all while they are ignoring wishes and demands of their paying customers. This is GoG's message to me: "We care if someone threatens to boycott us. We simply ignore anyone else and disregard whatever they demand or wish or need."
Relations between China and Taiwan will not get any worse over a game people in the west were about to be able to buy from a European online shop. Other companies bent to pressure put on them to remove content. The infamous video Activision removed and the controversy surrounding it in the west. The cause for their removal of a video clip was because
Chinese internet users accused Activision of "exporting ideology" and bringing "politics into videogames." This is about the same as
gamers said in a discussion about CP2077 only this time around it's about Taiwan. A point which worries me most. Because of those
gamers start alleging things being present in other games and decide to threaten to boycott GoG again, knowing they will give in as they done once over a mere trifle that is Devotion, how is this going to end?
If GoG cares so much about its customers as they do when threatened from a country whose customers don't even get official access it speaks volumes what's going to happen with the next game
they don't like or wish to be censored or not added. This and the way I am perceived as a paying customer and the experience of using this website, the store and support is what really matters to me. I made my decision. As long as this isn't sorted out I will not buy here anymore. I don't buy from a company behaving the way they did. This is also why I don't consider GoG's position at all. Why should I care what situation they got themselves into and problems arising from their poor way of handling things when they don't care the least for their customer(s)?
I don't tell anyone to do the same or think the way I do about all this. If others wish to continue buying GoG games it is totally fine with me. It is a personal decision to decide when it's time to draw a line and send a clear message to GoG that this isn't the way to treat paying customers old and new.