Genocide2099: They can start by making that Devotion game available on GoG. I won't buy it but it will bring back at least a small amount of trust and respect.
toxicTom: They can't and it has been explained several times why they can't. But, ok, another time.
Nobody denies that announcing the game, and retreating a few hours later blaming "gamers" of all people. That was... incompetent beyond any measure.
Devotion is a (muleta) red cloth to the Chinese, even if the content in question is now removed, the fact stands that the devs "insulted" their "great leader". It may be laughable, but that's simply how authoritarian regimes are - they have no humour, they love to make examples, and we can't change that.
Now GOG/CD Projekt are operating in a grey area in China - officially they are not there, and don't have a license (which could be revoked anyway, see the original publisher of the game). But they also are not blocked by the Great Firewall.
That means, currently GOG is making good money in China, and from what I hear, CP77 sells well there too.
That means they can't afford any negative attention from Chinese authorities at all, and can't even openly admit that - because officially they are not doing business there.
And: CD Projekt is a publicly traded company, which means they are first and foremost responsible to their shareholders. The botched CP77 release already made those irritable, releasing Devotion and getting banned over that from huge and lucrative the Chinese market probably lead to a class action lawsuit against the CEOs of GOG and CD Projekt for harming their own business out of spite.
The only chance I see for Devotion is to find a home on some smaller time store independent from business interests in China. I hope that can happen, because it seems to be a good game, even if the devs pretty recklessly destroyed their own publisher over a silly joke.
It's hilarious how all those couch freedom warriors here whine about "GOG being in bed with evil communists" when it's good old capitalist greed that dictates business decisions, and that has never cared for human rights (see our Saudi best friends when we want oil, or sweatshops and slave labour all over the third world for cheap clothes and resources) or freedom other than the freedom of making money for a upper few percent.
Expecting a smallish Polish company to make a stand against the fickle rulers of China AND their own owners over one single game is delusional, to put it mildly.
If people want to complain about outdated offline installers, DRM-like features in Galaxy, the Epic partnership (also with China in the back...), way too little manpower when the customer base has exploded, the broken website, and finally abysmal incompetence when it comes to communicating with their user base and in general intransparency - I'm all with you. But in the case of Devotion their hands are tied, and probably very tightly, and apart from the initial fuck-up with the announcement and retreat from that I can not see how GOG can be blamed. If you want to blame anybody, blame "the system". Or Xinnie, but I doubt any of those care.
I agree. Sadly, it is what it is. They shouldn't have announced it in the first place as to not set people's expectations. I believe there are people that are genuinely excited for the game. I for one only found about it recently and I think it's a cool game. This is a really bad time for CDPR and GoG.
