Its a business... Looking for a business that will put ideal before profit is like looking for a unicorn.

Whenever that is particularly desirable (ethics before profits) in a particular application domain, there are two possible tools: Enact laws to force corporate entities not to cross certain ethical lines or otherwise let that particular application domain be managed by a non-profit.

Otherwise, hoping that profit-driven corporate actors will do the right thing on their own when it goes against their bottom-line is insanity (as in, trying the exact same thing repeatedly and hoping for a different outcome).

I'm not saying that this need to be the case always btw. Sometimes, the profitable thing to do is also the ethical thing to do (purists will say its not good enough if the intent isn't there, I think its fine). Its like anything else, you just need to apply the right tool for the right job.

So in other words, it's not achievements themselves per se, but any degree of difference in your view. Which then begs the question, what of features that are intrinsically online-account limited but have low-to-trivial gameplay relevance? e.g. Dragon Age Origin's option to upload a game journal to a Bioware forum account, cloud-based backup or, to quote a previous example, events triggered online in Tales of Maj'Eyal? These features do exist in the GOG version but require an online connection (and verification) to function. So does that count as "feature parity" in your book (presumably a plus) or "single player DRM" (presumably a minus)?
Agreed, not the same but that post was the closest to raising Achievements (prior to yours) - after all, pretty much the only legitimate use of Achievements is for online bragging rights and Galaxy offers that, apparently.
One poster hardly speaks for a full thread, and Ancient-Red-Dragon's rather "purist" view isn't reflected in the first post. Subject to how he responds to the queries above, I suspect he'll be boycotting indefinitely while most others here are happy to resume buying if GOG address the issues raised.
Which is the main reason for a boycott like this - to make GOG realise that its ability to profit is tied to its (original) ideals.

Thanks for your summary. I also moved to other places for buying games and also I reduced my backlog a bit instead of increasing it. Which means, I bought less games overall and no games on GOG.

I had a faint hope that they would turn around after getting the huge backlash due to Hitman, or after getting some financial losses recently, but they didn't. They don't even change something as simple as removing the DRM from the Cyberpunk Rewards DLC - a change that wouldn't cost them anything and that CDPR has full control over. This shows, that they don't have the least intention of returning to their old, actually DRM-free ways.

The same is true for communication. There are still some nice mods left who reply to messages, but they are restricted in what they may say and what they can do. The GOG management has made it very clear that they prefer empty PR-blab over honest communication.

In short: as long as the management stays as it is now, GOG will not improve but will continue their way towards becoming just another poor Steam clone. (Or maybe an EGS key reseller. We'll see.)

Seems to me they want to have it both ways: market DRM-free while selling DRM and DRM-like. Maybe different if there was enough outcry over the Cyberpunk "My Rewards" (and/or the Interactive Map which was another unprecedented listing on GOG's catalog). Iirc, I thought I read the idea with My Rewards was to be something for an upcoming multiplayer mode (where "naturally" there will be microtransactions!). If that is still the case, then it would seem the goal is to keep the platform lock-in DRM rather than remove it, since it can get used later to even more effect.

Unfortunately, many people seem to not want to acknowledge this likely future, despite past examples being proof positive that once "small" anti-consumer practices take root, they seep into areas previously thought safe. As one of MANY examples, people said a decade ago that microtransactions didn't matter because "that's just on mobile, it would never happen on PC master race!". Look where we are now. They are something supposedly "natural" to have in multiplayer games and GOG is partnered to sell DRMed games from Epic Fail Store, which is propped up by them.

In regards to your question: "So does that count as "feature parity" in your book (presumably a plus) or "single player DRM" (presumably a minus)?" --- Based on the descriptions you gave (I am not familiar with those features you cited from first-hand personal experience), those would be examples of both feature parity and also DRM simultaneously.

In regards to when you said: "So in other words, it's not achievements themselves per se, but any degree of difference in your view:" --- that's with the caveat, that it depends on whether or not the removed features were removed for a reasonable reason.

For example, GOG games for which the original releases of those games on disc originally used to have GameSpy multiplayer: it would not be reasonable to expect those games still to have GameSpy multiplayer on GOG, given that the GameSpy company has been dead for eons.

In contrast, there is never any reasonable reason for why Achievements should be excluded from GOG games.

The only possible reasons for the exclusion of Achievements on GOG are:

a) the devs are being lazy and/or

b) the devs are being cheap and/or

c) the devs are being unethical and simply don't care that they are treating GOG customers like second-class citizens for no good reason.

d) GOG is complicit in all of the above, because GOG neglects to enforce feature parity, like they should.

None of those qualify as reasonable reasons for why it's okay for GOG games to be missing Achievement feature parity, therefore, there never should be any missing Achievements on GOG.

As for when you said "One poster hardly speaks for a full thread, and Ancient-Red-Dragon's rather "purist" view isn't reflected in the first post" --- indeed my posts do not speak for the full thread, nor do I intend for them to do so.

By the same token, the original post of this thread is not meant to be an all-encompassing, definitive, never to be modified, set in stone, sacred list of every possible reason that any GOG customers could possibly have to boycott GOG.

Rather, the OP listed what he thinks are some good reasons for boycotting GOG (which they are, and I agree with all of those reasons, and so do lots of other customers). But he's not trying be the supreme Emperor who ditcates from on high the unquestionable dogma of all GOG-boycotting tenets.

Now, going back to the Achievement subject: I am certainly not the only GOG customer who gets upset when GOG games are missing Achievements. Plenty of others do as well.

It may not be "most" GOG customers that care about Achievements, but certainly many do.

Besides that, we should also note that it's likely that many people who are upset about missing Achievements on GOG are reluctant to speak out about it, because anyone who does speak out about it gets cyber-bullied by way of their posts automatically being down-voted and their "rep" on the forums desecrating (which by the way, GOG allowing the toxic "downvoting" system is in and of itself another good reason to boycott GOG).

These shady tactics are meant to ostracize, shame, and belittle anyone who stands up for Achievement equality for GOG customers, and intimidate others into staying silent on the subject, lest they be publicly shamed too.

So, that is to say, there could very well be a lot more silent Achievement-wanting customers on GOG than would be apparent from reading this forum.

In regards to when you said: " the only legitimate use of Achievements is for online bragging rights" --- that's not accurate. For examples, here are some other uses for Achievements:

- receiving a personal sense of accomplishment
- feeling like you've completed a "Completionist" run of a game
- admiring the artwork that is drawn for the Achievements
- being satisfied at having overcome difficult challenges

Things like that are still the case even if someone has their Galaxy profile private (i.e. someone who doesn't use it for "bragging rights"), and still collects Achievements anyway.

On a different note: some of the wording in that quoted posted makes it sound like I don't buy any games from GOG at all. But that's not accurate. Rather, I don't buy games that lack Achievement parity, I boycott those games specifically (and not just their GOG versions, but all versions on any platform).

And I've also greatly reduced my spending on GOG since the Devotion debacle, so that's another way how I'm somewhat boycotting GOG, although not in a 100% way that I never buy anything from GOG ever again.

Finally, over the course of 2021, I've also come to understand another reason that leaves me inclined to want to further boycott GOG, and one which also isn't listed in OP, but is still IMO another valid reason why someone might want to boycott: I feel like my GOG library is insecure.

To fully back up my GOG library on hard drives would cost a minimum of several hundreds of dollars in hardware costs, and maybe over $1,000+ if I'd need more than one 8TB hard drive (I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure how much space I'd need).

And even after making that investment, I realize that my GOG library still wouldn't be secure with only having one backup copy. But I don't have the spare money to buy enough hard drives to back up two or three copies of my whole GOG library.

So, all of this leaves me to question: am I being foolish if I continue to buy new games from GOG, whilst knowing that GOG could quite possibly go bankrupt within the next year or two or three or five?

In contrast, if I start buying DRM'ed games from Steam and/or EGS instead, then that could, ironically, make my DRM'ed libraries there be more secure than my (sometimes) DRM-free GOG library would be, should GOG ever go out of business.

Because the Steam servers and the EGS servers aren't going anywhere: they will always have a copy of my DRM'ed games ready to download for all of eternity (or at least for the rest of my lifespan), presuming they don't ban my accounts or something like that.

I sure would like to see GOG gets its act together, and stop with all the shenanigans that are driving away and alienating its customers, so that I don't have to keep worrying about things like what I've just described.

But as GOG releasing Devotion could have ended up with CCP deciding to actively hunt down and block any platform from China that sells CDPR's games, that reasoning does not really help you to get Devotion released here unless you can convince almost everyone outside of China to boycott the entire CDP Group.

I really think that everyone who values any of the other issues in that "second" goal over the OP's first goal should just create another boycott thread for them and make sure in the OP of that thread that anyone boycotting GOG over the Devotion incident should keep that baggage in this thread that is almost certainly doomed to not get any official attention from GOG as the CDP Group does not wish to see any Devotion related threads getting linked as sources for whatever updates GOG would want to give us about the other issues.

But that is of course just me applying what little crisis management training I have had to endure to all the factoids I could gather from this fiasco, so everyone please disregard that if you wish and live in denial of the economic and geopolitical problems involving China that will ensure that CCP can practically do whatever it pleases as long as its own citizens are not up to reform it enough to agree to play with same rules as the rest of the world.

I was impressed with how Hitman turned out.

I originally thought that GOG wouldn't budge (and if Steam had not cornered the rest of the market to such a high degree, they might not have).

That being said, I strongly suspect that the range of issues for which you'll garner enough support to make GOG budge is centered around a very specific core (drm-free for most of the single-player content). I'm not sure to what extent you can get significant momentum beyond that.

But either way, I think its important to approach this with open-eyes about what GOG is and isn't. Its a business, not a cause.

If you buy a game drm-free here, because you care about having the drm-free version of a game, want to support the developer and possibly show that drm-free is a viable business model, that's fine.

However, if you buy a game drm-free here so that 'you can finance GOG in their quest to spread drm-freedom to all corners of the gaming world', you might be setting yourself up for disappointment. I think they've pretty much shown at this point that if they could make more money being Steam, they totally would.

This doesn't have to be bad btw. If GOG mostly supports drm-free because they are forced into it by the market, I can live with that personally as long as the end result is what I want.

The automated downvoting scripts are out in force, I see. But it seems they lack the "human touch" - even trolls are being affected.

Time4Tea, I'm on both on the sympathetic and full boycott lists - please delete me from "sympathetic". I'm on full boycott mode now (and apparently forever). You can also go ahead and add me to a 2022 boycott, if you consider such a thread. By the way, thank you again for your time and dedication.

5P34R, well said - your thoughts on this matter mirror my own.

I dimly hoped someone in GOG's management would get a pang of guilt or just see the disgusting behavior displayed towards customers and business partners as bad strategy, but a year on and Devotion is still not on this store and not a peep (much less an apology) has been heard about the matter. Well, their loss - not a cent from me since the event, and certainly no positive word-of-mouth.

^
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very much this imo

I support GOG as long as they release DRM-free games. By NOT buying games with DRM in them, you are setting a strong message that it's not worth their time to host these titles on their platform.

Barring that, I think we should support GOG in the hopes that more titles will become DRM-free. Whether you dislike GOG upper management or not, the more sales DRM-free versions get the better.

Whoa, wish I'd seen this sooner. Sign me up and expect me in the 2022 edition. Heck, send me a private message with a link once it's up.

I want to remind GOG that, as a "DRM-free" storefront that doesn't have the marketshare of Steam, it needs to cater to people who want DRM-free games - not all the Steam users who don't care about that, that are just going to continue using Steam because they already have it, and especially not people who don't buy games at all anywhere. Neglecting your core audience is how companies die.

My personal first priority is booting government censorship to the greatest extent possible by law, and being transparent about it. To be more specific, to stop letting the CCP mass-downvote posts with bots and to stop letting them prevent the international release of Devotion on GOG - if they want to ban sales of Devotion IN China, that's fine, but GOG pulling the rug out from under Devotion on the CCP's behalf is the primary flashpoint reason I've been effectively boycotting GOG ever since it happened, even though I hadn't seen this thread until recently.

I also want GOG to either not sell crippleware, or label it in a way that is impossible to miss and colorblind-friendly, so that if ANY content in other editions is missing, locked behind Galaxy, DRM'd in any way, etc, everyone will know before purchase. I'm not going to ask GOG to hard-boycott DRM software, but I am going to ask them to be VERY clear about anything that would make the offline installer experience inferior to any other version of a given game. This includes multiplayer components that don't work fully over simple LAN/etc with no extra software. So, to be clear, as long as GWENT met these labeling expectations, I'd have no problem with it being on GOG. It doesn't, so I have/had a problem with it, or anything like it that fails to sufficiently label crippling aspects.

The only version of Galaxy I'm interested in is an open-source, lightweight Linux-friendly client. The heavier, more closed, and less-Linux-friendly it is, the less I'm willing to touch it, and the more it's pushed, the less use I have for GOG in general. As things have been going so far, I'd rather they withdraw all Galaxy development beyond supporting multiplayer for games that need it, on all platforms including Linux. I'm not going to download anything through Galaxy, ever. DRM-free is in part about being less invasive - extra clients are invasive.

Once these are met, cutting all ties with Epic would increase the odds of my making further purchases here.

I also want to note that the "GOG is losing money and refocusing on ‘handpicked selection of games’" thread got locked and redirected to a seemingly-buried? 4-year-old 33-page thread about CDPR (not GOG) in general, the last posts in which are days old and largely unrelated. I don't believe I need to do more than just point out the facts there, they speak for themselves.

Also, just for reference, if I'm ever prevented from accessing the offline installers in any way to the point I can't get my games for a significant period without some kind of client download, not only will I switch this to a perma-boycott, I will go on a campaign myself to get as many people as possible to join, because that would be completely unacceptable. I expect that it will never come to that, but if it does, GOG is never getting me back. Ever.

Let's be realistic here: Given how GOG has behaved, in contrast with the mission statement and what the core audience wants, is it any wonder they're in the red? GOG has to stop wasting resources on things that don't further the mission statement or actively go against it, before it's too late. Treat your customers right and they'll treat you right. If GOG hadn't pulled the Devotion debacle, I probably would have bought the Witcher collection and more by now. Until Devotion is up, I definitely won't, and I know I'm not alone. Devotion is highly likely to be the next game I ever buy on GOG - no matter how long that takes. As-is, GOG is getting close to the point where I turn off promo emails or redirect them to a low-priority inbox, because GOG is just too far from its mission statement and all the bribes in the world just don't matter.

C'mon, GOG. I want to feel good about the idea of supporting you again. I don't want gimmicks, distractions and outside intervention, I want the original mission statement. Always have. "You were the Chosen One. It was said that you would destroy the DRM, not join them. Bring balance to the games industry, not leave it in darkness." Especially with recent articles, it's very clear we don't "UNDERestimate GOG's power." Do I really have to be asking myself whether in this case, too, "There is another?" Is it really too much to ask to be able to buy truly DRM-free games legitimately in the 2020s without all the complications like extra launchers, clients, accounts and other booby-traps waiting in the wings?

I agree with this post 100%, the reason GOG is failing is because they have not been kind or trustworthy to their customers, and have undermined their own "mission statement" countless times. We're buying games from GOG to support DRM-free gaming, and our right as people to 'own' the items we purchase. Online, or Offline. I couldn't care less about Devotion personally, but I agree it was a bad move and makes no logical sense why a foreign company should have to bend the knee to China. They have no business "pressuring" GOG in any way. This company needed to stand firm, and continue to sell the title regardless of whatever imagined consequences may have happened. Of which, there is none I can think of.

Given all of this, I am still inclined to support DRM-free titles on GOG. If and when this company decides to dilute it's supposed mission statement even further with more controversies like this and allowing more titles like Hitman to be sold, will be the day I probably quit PC gaming altogether. I want no part in the nightmarish future publishers want. Where everything is cloud-based and subject to their own whims. I want to see GOG do 'better', I want more quality releases from companies like Capcom and Bandai Namco.

While I agree with you and admit it is a realistic and a sober understanding of how business work, I might add, humbly, that if a company proposes to work through a cause, and after conquering clients through this cause model, change directions, the obvious consequence will be that many of those originally attracted clients of the cause model will feel cheated and used.

This is the recipe to fail as a company.

The HITMAN situation was a big example of how this feeling can make noise. Im still hoping for the best for GOG team, staff, mods, etc. We're all learning through this.

I'm on the same boat. It used to be a boycott to GOG, which was the only plataform I got my games from. Now it's just a not buying games spree.

Still, If they backepedal the Devotion fiasco I would probably come back.

e: Achievements are anti-features and rely on DRM-like systems to be implemented, and, thus, should NOT be forced. Unlike on other strong DRM platforms where they are.

You type (and regularly do) a whole lot of words for your precious achievements (going so far as to say you'd rather games not be released DRM-free on GOG if they don't have achievements). I really do think you need to sit in a quiet room and contemplate on this for a long time about why few to none ever join you in this crusade.

Like, seriously, your goals are antithetical to what the majority of the rest of us want at all. I'd rather GOG entirely axe the Galaxy achievement system entirely!

Because your "achievement equality is HARMFUL to the rest of our goals, of a DRM-free environment with offline installers for everything. Achievements require Galaxy, and are very much DRM-like. I absolutely do want to to shame you, because what you want is damaging to me and all of us (including yourself, whether you admit it or not).

Sorry, your argument on achievements are even more bunk now than they were in the past. You want to reinforce Galaxy. We've seen where this leads. We've seen games that implemented Galaxy features that de-facto turned it into DRM (calling them bugs and they were later fixed.) You have no ground to stand on

(Your bringing up the issue of storage space is legit, but that's a different discussion entirely.)