I gel with the idea. I love DRM-Free gaming and hate that GOG is slipping into an entity controlled by a foreign government or it's supporters because of greed for money they may or may not even need. Most companies that capitulate to China specifically are just plain greedy for that bonus cash as they were making billions before the Chinese market opened to them.

I will not boycott because it is my prerogative. That may change if they slide further from their position. But I support you for this and thank you for acting now to try and enact change, however effective or ineffective that might be.

I imagine they do release them at other stores, and quite possibly as DRM-Free, though kind of an obstacle if those other stores are Steam and Epic etc ... not so bad at Itch.io for instance.

Like I said though, if you buy them elsewhere, then no harm to the DEVs, but maybe harm to GOG and the DRM-Free movement.

You write as though DRM-Free is a given. It isn't really, and in most cases, even after 12+ years with GOG, it is in all reality still hanging by a thread ... not so much for Indie games, but certainly for more mainstream ones. If that wasn't so, GOG would have a hell of a lot more great games ... the evidence in that regard speaks for itself.

It deeply concerns me how many at GOG take DRM-Free and GOG for that matter, for granted. We are extremely lucky to have them, and that should never be forgotten, despite all the issues we have with GOG ... and some kind of DRM-Free GOG is far better than no GOG.

Not backwards at all ... it is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
I don't doubt they are hurting their image, but ........ should we make it worse?

Well you are of course entitled to your opinion, I just disagree. When you consider how many games GOG sell, that is only a small number of fish, and seriously I don't know why you continue to include or even care about GWENT. And the Epic deal at this stage is still unclear.

While you are totally entitled to boycott if you wish, I would have thought it best to do it when it can actually maybe have an impact. I also worry that a few minor boycotts will end up watering down a big one, if needed ... much like the boy who cried wolf.

I know that they have apparently said that, and I don't discount the possibility, though it seems to be taking its own sweet time. That doesn't discount what I said though, until they actually do sell the game.

As you and plenty of others know, I am not all that happy with GOG a lot of the time either, and if I thought this boycott could actually achieve something, I would be adding myself to the list. But cold hard logic and reason tell me I would just be penalizing myself for nothing. It's not like it is a Black Movement or any other deeply important issue, it is just a game store where they get up to some annoying things. GOG in reality, don't owe us anything ... they have given us 12+ years, and that should be counted as a credit to them ... probably a continual struggle on their part after the initial euphoria.

I will always want a better GOG, but we rarely get exactly what we want in this life.

Well I would be very careful if I was you, when accusing someone of making an assumption, that you haven't done so yourself. I see many in your larger reply, including that assumption about me.

In fact, you are so way over the top in most of what you say, and way outside the ballpark in relevancy, that I could not even begin to respond to you.

I will stick to responding to others, who are at least somewhat reasonable in what they say.

Sorry dude, but it just had to be said.

Have a good day.

Here's the thing kids. Screeching on a public forum thread does NOTHING!

You are not influencing NOTHING!

You are only screaming into the void. Unless you go into a PR job or outright politics, all you are doing here is virtue signalling to make yourselves feel like you are "fighting the good fight".

Kids? Virtue signaling? Those tinted glasses you're wearing must have quite an effect. All I see are people considering how/where to invest their money and good will (or stop doing so), while discussing the topic. Sure, there may also be some venting here and there, but it's mostly cathartic.

You can add me to the boycott list.

The whole "publish-anything" policy never really existed, it was just some marketing BS or at best Gabe fever dream. There is plenty of games that were or are still forced to be censored, removed because of some unknown "rules", especially VN or Anime-style ones, including some that were fine one day and suddenly removed the next one despite having been on sale for months and not even updated, that's the main reason why for sometime we saw a surge of VN type games released on Gog.

Maybe the DRM/"Drm" laden games on GOG are a negative rather than a positive, but i'm "okay" with them having a few such games here as long as:

A. It allows GOG to continue to be mainly DRM free
B. GOG does stay mainly DRM free
C. Such few games with drm remnants/etc are marked so some of us can avoid them if we choose to

(also with such on GOG, we know some things like: which devs are more into such things like adding drm/"drm")

And why would devs release games DRM free after such other games got added here? Because drm free still sells to a good number of people and they'd want to capitalize upon that niche, perhaps? :)

=-=-= Imo(just musing here so please don't get offended) you have Stockholm syndrome or something close to it re: GOG.....as in no matter what GOG does(outside of things that affect you), you seem to let slide.....out of a misplaced worry of (all gamers) losing GOG.

Thing is, GOG has shown it can handle a little criticism thrown it's way.....and even if GOG starts to fail, then no doubt other stores will eventually pick up the slack(like zoom and others).

As such, imo it is better for people to express their feelings than to keep them hidden...especially if it somehow has a positive effect on GOG and/or DRM free gaming as a whole.

- Then why not add your name to the supporting in spirit list?

That is also an option, and one where you wouldn't have to participate in the boycott.

Where do draw the line? If 10% of games have drm? 50%? 80%? 99%?
For me, this is the reason why „100% drm free“ is the only solution.

Fair enough though I think the best you can hope for is to be able to pay more for a non-DRM version of a game and them putting both on GOG, unless a vast majority cares about it. It is a business after all.

I don't think you were answering to me, given that it has nothing to do with my post.

But to answer your post the issue is not how much game have DRM or not but more what is DRM and DRM-free.

I don't think that Gog really became more lenient with what is DRM and DRM-free simply that the frontier is sometime blurry and that Gog decisions on what is DRM-free and what is not doesn't align with some more zealot vision that some peoples have.

Let's face facts...because of people who buy blindly and others & things like corporate greed, DRM will likely continue to be the mainstay for a long time to come.

That's why (imo) it's better to be more "flexible" with bought games...for example, in many countries it is legal to strip out DRM from one's games.

I am under no illusion that this boycott would achieve anything to change GOG. For that the crowd of DRM-free enthusiasts is too small. GOG has chosen their path and it leads away from DRM-free and towards a lesser Steam clone.

But I don't see this boycott as penalizing myself. On the contrary, I would feel bad about supporting the direction GOG has taken with my money. For me the decision to spend all my gaming money here was, from the start, an idealistic one. I wanted to support the DRM-free platform. GOG has abandoned all their ideals, so I would feel bad to continue to support them.

Of course I would wish that more people think and act likewise. Then this would change something. I has worked in the past. But even without the hope that this might work again, for my own peace of mind, I will not continue to throw money at GOG. They simply don't deserve my support anymore and I have enough games in my backlog to last me two life-times.

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