He's right though, people who engage in internet boycotts are all a bunch of self-obsessed weirdos who care more about their own political pet issues than video games.

The irony is the UK is working on a bill to make the unaccountable silencing of the general public much easier.
https://reclaimthenet.org/online-safety-bill/

It might seem unusual to those who are used to the way GOG does things, but the Zoom Platform Discord channel is a really nice, friendly community, where people respect each other. The CEO, Jordan Freeman, hangs out there and chats to customers old and new on literally a daily basis. He mentioned he was going to be traveling in my area and I offered to buy him a beer. He's just a really cool, genuine guy and he cares enough about his customers and community that he is willing to take some time out of his busy schedule to have a drink with a regular customer. Personally, I have a lot of respect for that.

Many people on the Zoom Discord have openly said they would be happy to meet up if others on the channel ever visit their area. It's just that sort of community.

Sure, they are a small team and their site has room for improvement (as does GOG's ...), but it is growing and improving. Yes, I agree, it is yet to be seen how Zoom's (excellent) customer service will scale as they grow, but why would I pre-judge anything there before it happens?

From what I've seen, there isn't anything 'lucky' about the high quality and responsiveness of Zoom's technical support.

Please elaborate. Touche - I've seen plenty of people lying about Zoom Platform on the forum here. In fact, it seems to happen on a fairly regular basis.

I am criticising GOG in a very objective manner, because of a string of poor decisions they have made, which are listed in detail in the first post of this thread. It is not hypocritical to not criticize another store that has not engaged in the same poor practices.

I think Gog should probably drop the DRM free tag . List it on games where it applies and list the ones that are not.

Easy to boycott GOG when they have no support except for the Ukrainian war psy-op, LOL.

Yes, this is why shinyloot did, you know shinyloot don’t you, no wait they closed up shop didn’t they.
How to put this in terms people understand:
GOG has one, only ONE selling point over two competitors, drm free. If it drops that there is no point using the site!!

Precisely.

Absolutely. If GOG drops DRM-free, then it would simply become irrelevant as a games store.

Besides, merely labelling what is DRM-free does nothing to incentivize developers to keep DRM out of their games.

Gog sells games no one else does. Theres a lot of game sellers I always buy the cheapest any place. GOG has most like gone this way bcuz they need the money.

A store like Fireflower Games sells unique games too. Or take your pick from any other small store like Fireflower, I'm not "picking on them" or anything in particular. Unique games means little about relevance as a game store. Think about it...is Fireflower equally as relevant as GOG in the market, or less relevant?

If GOG ceases to be a DRM-free platform, which many in this very topic can contend has already occurred months-to-several-years ago, this is disastrous for DRM-free gaming as a whole. The distinction is that people who don't care about DRM-free have near-limitless options whereas we have hardly any besides Zoom-Platform, a significantly smaller store than GOG (one could even say "less relevant", though Z-P is arguably more relevant in terms of being purely DRM-free without all these edge cases).

They need the money? Niche markets can be quite lucrative so we shouldn't have to accept what are imo bad choices on the store's part to keep chasing after a casual audience. They could've been better off catering to their niche instead of being greedy and it not working out By the way, it seems in my admittedly anecdotal experience, the "purists" here tend to have bigger libraries, buy extra copies, help users with issues faster than support. I dare you to name a single example of someone who uses Galaxy to buy DRMed Epic Fail games who fits that description.

What do you think the percentage is of games on GOG that are not also available on Steam? It's very low - certainly <5%. Not anywhere near enough to differentiate the store and convince people to choose GOG over Steam.

That is true in actual reality.

However, it is not true in the vision of the decision makers at GOG. They think that other great selling points of GOG are:

- "a curated selection of games" and

- "all of your (DRM-infested) games in one place (that isn't Steam)" ... are also great selling points.

And they make very bad decisions based on that false perception that they have 3 great selling points, instead of only just the one that anyone actually really cares about in reality.

I think that belief in a three-pronged selling approach (and they don't realize two of their prongs suck) is, at least in part, what diminishes their commitment to DRM-free and allows DRM-creep to arise in GOG.

The other point is other older games working under modern systems. Steam either doesn't have them or has broken versions, and retails can either be a massive pain to get working under modern systems, or be massively expensive to buy the retail version from.

And even if you download them else where then its still usually a ISO or ripped version so you still have to mess about with it usually to get it working or are missing cutscenes or audio.

Not really, it’s very rare GOG release any old games that need work from them to get running. Even the ones that are are remakes or remasters. I agree it was one of the pillars back in the day of good old games, but that time is long gone.

GoG Gamers Community Need help! PLS vote and write post in this topic: Boycott ruSSian games / Games published by ruSSians - https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/boycott_russian_games_games_published_by_russians