I remember seeing some general remarks about companies, obviously if such things are true or not depends on the particular company. If you have something about GOG/CDP being forced by investors to abandon their formerly proclaimed values: Show it.

I dont see your point. I am not sure what you even mean with "mean anything" nor why this should matter. This is stuff for shareholder information. Obviously this stuff is either made to honestly inform them or to dishonestly make them believe something. In either case I dont see your point - whatever it is.

Edit: Maybe try to explain why you believe CDP put those 'buzzwords' in?

"Unless you have proof that I find satisfactory that what you say is going on in THIS company, then it likely isn't happening"

Your mind seems to be made up on this, so "providing proof" would likely be a Sisyphean Task.

There have been a lot of posters here on the forum blaming "investors" as the source of CDPs 'ethical fall'. None of them were able/willing to back it up in any way other than some general evasive statements about "investors (in some other companies) pressuring execs" or similar stuff. None of those who pointed at those bad "investors" showed anything of this actually happening at CDP. (I provided evidence (not proof) to the contrary - the management/board having too much power.) In no way did I ask for proof. I wanted to see if anybody of those who claimed that "bad investors" thing actually had anything about CDP and not just a general prejudice about the "bad investors" or publicly traded companies or whatever else.
You appear to be trying to deflect this now with some made up stuff about me and my motivation.

Yes "I can see"... Thats not what I had an issue with in your posts.

The source of CDP's ethical fail was going public in the first place. The founders freely chose to do that and must have known that handing over the reins to corporate forces would inevitably lead to the company's moral principles being compromised. In the exact same way that we have seen with every other game developer that has gone public or has been bought by a large corporation - it leads very quickly to a drop in their standards and the quality of their games.

The source of the problem is the personal greed of CDP's founders and their choice to sell the company out for a quick buck.

One of the best/saddest stories about this is when Sierra became a public company. It all ended, when CUC purchased them in the 90s in a sale, that ended up being one of the biggest financial scams of the era. The heads of CUC were given jail time and they had/have to pay back damages in terms of 5 billions or so. When Sierra was originally bought by them, they made a lot of promises to Ken Williams, the founder of Sierra, only to betray all of them after the ink had dried.

It's all a fascinating story, really.

The (pretty much) same people(**) who held the reins before going public still hold the reins. So these 'corporate forces' are themselves?

(*) I am not sure how much of the 'DRM free' part was ever based on moral principles. See for example - part of their argumentaion is that DRM doesnt work. With the way MP games can now work (only the server has the actual code, possible due to better Internet etc) DRM is potentially conceptually much stronger than before so this kind of removes the "dont work" part of their argumentation.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-dev-explains-why-it-hates-drm-we-dont-want/1100-6422650/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/05/18/the-truth-is-it-doesnt-work-cd-projekt-on-drm/

(**) CEOs (and board members) are one of the two founders and a relative (presumably - same name) of the other founder. Other board members and management were also associated with CDP before CDP did go public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Projekt
https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/capital-group/board-of-directors/

Yes, they still hold the reins. But, they made a voluntary decision to sell out 60+% of the company as public shares. So, by selling out they have brought onto themselves an additional pressure, that the company is now 60% owned by shareholders that need to be appeased, besides just their own greed. As soon as a company goes public, their priorities shift immediately to satisfying shareholders.

But, I wouldn't blame the shareholders. I would blame the founders for selling out in the first place. The phrase 'selling out' is a perfect fit, in this case.

Only shareholders who are IDIOTS want to get rid of "DRM Free". If they get rid of this then they're directly competing with Steam and Epic and then it isn't pretty given the higher pricing on GOG's end. From the viability on a profit standpoint it is lost with GOG's brand and differentiation becoming mute.
DRM Free and Open Source are about control over the media YOU paid for and rigorous privacy and security for the latter. They are both complimentary to each other.
I feel like a lost opportunity for GOG to get extra capital and allow them to further delay 2077 would have been a robust movie section of the site with downloads matching Blu-ray video and quality. Sure a number of people use Vimeo but nothing can be downloaded and the quality doesn't equal Blu-ray even. Those individual people and companies could be enticed to come to GOG since they are the only ones with a legal framework for d/ling movies are far as I know. They could poach K and J-Drama's offering the first episode for free to get people in. For smaller, yet popular movies that are doubted to merit a BR print run being feasible this is a good idea.
I would have bought a number of video's this way. I HATE the lack of control I have with most digital movies I have now and only bought those that were unavailable on BR.

"Evidence" is the wrong word, the problem being that evidence supports an argument, it doesn't prove an argument or stand on its own. There is evidence the US election was stolen, and the same evidence shows the US election was legitimate. We need to stop insisting "evidence" has this inherent bias which makes our argument for us, or some profoundness that allows people to skip right over the actual debate.

People don't like having the burden of proof, it requires far more effort to argue and also requires intimate understanding of what is being argued. Both of you are just shifting the burden of proof. The problem is that this is an unfalsifiable argument, it cannot be proven one way or the other without insider knowledge.

Either way, I find it funny how people don't grasp when they're arguing something that cannot be proven... yet persist as though it can be. After all, we're talking about beliefs, not facts. The beliefs that your evidence supports your beliefs, the beliefs that your evidence proves what you believe it does.

Seeing as they released on Epic Games first without DRM, GOG's influence seems nebulous. If we wanted to start an unfalsifiable argument here, I could argue that Epic Games has been winning the battle for DRM-free games by bringing us Control and Horizon Zero Dawn without any DRM, then getting old games to release on their platform DRM free.

Oh the fun of how non-biased evidence actually is, we can make Epic games an enemy, we can make them a hero. It all comes down to what you choose to believe and what you choose to ignore.

Do you mean control over the company share-wise?

If so: as I said before to another user.....that is not the case anymore.....65-66% of the shares are free float.

Or did you mean something else by "hold the reigns"? If so, then what?

I dont think satisfying shareholders is one of their priorities...
And if it is then they dont seem to be very good at it - see the lawsuits or the post-CP2077 share price curve.

And I dont think going public is the source - I rather think going public is one of the (here rather early) symptoms. Or rephrasing - there may well be a strong correlation between going public but not necessarily a causation 'going public => going bad'.

And one more opinion: I think its unlikely that monetary greed is the source of the behavior. Its rather lust for power or the desire to feel important.


No, 'evidence' is the correct word. Its your underlying assumption which is off. My goal is not "proof" for the fact here - its obviously unlikely somebody can deliver it. My goals for asking for evidence are:
a) See the evidence for myself. Kind of "knowledge is power".
b) To distinct between prejudiced lazyily made posts which just express the general prejudices of their posters without them even being based on CDP-specific facts and those that actually are based on a CDP-specific fact (at least one) .
I do not believe the general hate against "investors" and corporations (etc) makes these discussions any better. Rather the opposite - its kind of a promotion for "the system is bad - we cant do anything - lets give up".


The term 'holding the reins' comes (presumably) from riding (or similar) a horse (or other animal). The horse (the 66%) has more brute power but the one holding the reins determines the direction and the goal etc: Decides to release CP2077 in an unfinished state, decides not to tell the horse what the goal is, decides to run over DRM-free, etc. That is how I understood the term (I didnt come up with it here) and responded based on that understanding.

Thanks for explaining what you meant.

As for holding the reigns and CDPR: it is more like the horse(s) is(are) very big/powerful, easily displeased, and hard to control....i.e. it/they can buck the owner/rider if it doesn't like how it is being treated.

As for the rest of what you've been saying on the topic: publicly traded companies usually go public in part out of greed for money & can often be a bad thing for such companies in the long run. GOG/CDPR wanting power(over the market share of game sales/etc) might be a part of their decisions, but it is much more likely to be greed.

For perhaps some proof/"proof": look into the founders stock trades around the time of 2077's release.....they each sold off a chunk of their stock around the same time and made quite a mint(almost as if they were hoping to bank off of the price drop in their shares).

Thats whats happening with the lawsuits. The rider promised a carrot but it turned out to be just a bit of grass.

You may have misunderstood my comment/opinion about greed. It was about what motivates the people in charge. The company being greedy is in line with my opinion about what motivates them. Company more money => they more power & more important (and also more money of course but as I said - I dont think this is often the main motivation of 'leader' type people).

Do you have a link for that? https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/7CD.F/insider-transactions/ shows no insider transactions over the last 6 months - at least for me - could be browser failure or sth.
I am also unsure what you think this is "proof" for?

Ah, but they're the same thing....as money IS power**....so in essence they often "want both".
(**often the more of it one has, the more power one has)

(musing: that is why officials often want to control more money. It's not about the money, as they PRINT the money and could always print more....they want the people to have less of it[and thus less power] and to have more of that money[and thus more power] for themselves)

Not at the moment, but I could likely dig one up give time if you want it.
(or you could also look at the stock trades of the main founders around the time of the 2077 launch...before/during/after)

Proof of greed.

They likely knew the game would be a mess at launch and also likely capitalized upon that via selling some of their stocks around 2077's launch
(of course it's hard to prove intent, but iirc they made a good deal of money by doing so, and the timing seems a bit too perfect to be coincidental)