Posted March 06, 2022
I loathe GOG and its community for many reasons, first of all how implicitly supportive it was of the alt-right when the GOG forums became its meeting place, to ramble about foreigners, migrants, lgbti, women, during the cultural waves of gamergate, trumpism, etc. Accepting white supremacist flags as avatars for openly neonazi customers all while censoring "political" reactions to them what the last straw. I didn't "boycot" GOG, as in posting in that thread and thinking I'm "pressuring" GOG to do this or be that. I just left, and haven't bought anything here for years, because I hate this complicity or greedy irresponsibility more much than I hate DRM (videogaming inconvenience versus real world suffering, real lives destructions).
GOG's stance towards Ukraine raises my esteem a notch. I know that the restrictions on Russia are very unsatisfactory, and do collateral "damage" (it also harms anti-war people, it even harms other countries), but these effects don't compare with what is at stake. Economic restrictions are not the carpet bombing that Russia inflicts on Ukraine. Especially if we're taking about access to a videogame shop (oh noes).
And I appreciate GOG's stance all the more given how infested the community is or was with Putin fans, breastfed at its farm trolls, and echoing all his straightforward fascist rhetorics of virilism, nationalism, culturalism and violence - values which implications and consequences are visible now just as they've been in the 1940s. I don't expect Putin admirers to choke on their shame as they should, I don't even expect them to shut up or to stop voting for their local putin's-next-best-thing. But that GOG officially positions itself against their idol, while being "too late" at least isn't "too little". My years on this community has taught me what kind of political leaders or discourses gamers tend to side with (spoiler: it's the kind that make the world look like a videogame), so I appreciate the potential cost that GOG is facing.
It doesn't make me "like" GOG (I don't forget the years of extreme-right safe heaven provided on these boards, nor what such things have cost to democracies, and, on a more futile level, I don't appreciate GOG as a shop building its identity on consumer values with fast moving goalposts - the technical obligation to use their "optional" client makes them a joke), but I'm still back to considering buying GOG games after a long while of it being right out of the question.
GOG's stance towards Ukraine raises my esteem a notch. I know that the restrictions on Russia are very unsatisfactory, and do collateral "damage" (it also harms anti-war people, it even harms other countries), but these effects don't compare with what is at stake. Economic restrictions are not the carpet bombing that Russia inflicts on Ukraine. Especially if we're taking about access to a videogame shop (oh noes).
And I appreciate GOG's stance all the more given how infested the community is or was with Putin fans, breastfed at its farm trolls, and echoing all his straightforward fascist rhetorics of virilism, nationalism, culturalism and violence - values which implications and consequences are visible now just as they've been in the 1940s. I don't expect Putin admirers to choke on their shame as they should, I don't even expect them to shut up or to stop voting for their local putin's-next-best-thing. But that GOG officially positions itself against their idol, while being "too late" at least isn't "too little". My years on this community has taught me what kind of political leaders or discourses gamers tend to side with (spoiler: it's the kind that make the world look like a videogame), so I appreciate the potential cost that GOG is facing.
It doesn't make me "like" GOG (I don't forget the years of extreme-right safe heaven provided on these boards, nor what such things have cost to democracies, and, on a more futile level, I don't appreciate GOG as a shop building its identity on consumer values with fast moving goalposts - the technical obligation to use their "optional" client makes them a joke), but I'm still back to considering buying GOG games after a long while of it being right out of the question.
