I will say unless you know when these people joined the boycott (we can make assumptions for some, but I'm not digging through this whole thread to find join dates) it's hard dto tell if they bough the games while participating in the boycott.


Edit to add: nice work though, compiling that post.

To clarify the list.

That wasn't my intention. When you hide your account I can't see what is going on. I just see the error message. In the last list you can access the profiles. When you look at one profile you can say that this person is actively boycotting.

I actually looked it up in this thread by using the search function. The mentioned examples of games where bought by the participants after they joined the boycott. The list contains only those where I am sure.

My my, this thread has certainly exploded since I last looked in on it. I remember when it was first getting started. I joined it because I got fed up with the offline launchers being neglected in favor of Galaxy. With everything that has been going on it seems so long ago lol

I do have one request for the rather comprehensive list you compiled after agreeing that letting this thread sink "was the best idea": for Firefox31780 can you please change my new screen name to Dexter Grif? Figured I was overdue for a change :) Besides, who remembers an old Clint Eastwood movie from '82?

Not sure what your goal was in making that list in the first place, but I commend your thoroughness.

I edited it. I hope it is better worded now.

Done.

I can be taken off the boycott list and to the sympathetic cause

I agree with your sentiments.

Thank you kindly!

Hey thanks :)

Keep this thread going. Every day.

ARD, this post is completely untrue and dishonest. I did not unilaterally do anything. A vote was held among those who had signed up on the list, to decide whether it should be focused on a narrow range of issues, or should be a catch-all boycott for any and all grievances (because there was some confusion about that at the time). Those that voted did so for the former. It was a community decision and I don't see how it could have been done in a fairer way.

Please stop spreading misinformation.

So, to respond to some of the issues that have been raised in the past few pages: many of these things have been discussed at length before over these 250+ pages, but I will reiterate my position on them.

First, about the boycott being 'failed' and 'having no use': I disagree with that. I don't think it's possible to really know how much effect it may have had on GOG's finances and/or their thinking. We haven't seen many further incidents lately of DRM-creep on the store and GOG has even made statements along the lines of 'going back their roots of DRM-free'. So, there are signs they know that things are not rosy with their customer base, and this protest may have contributed to that. No way we can know either way - GOG obviously aren't going to tell us the inside details.

Also, I disagree that the boycott is 'dead' or 'redundant', just because we haven't seen many people joining in recent months. We seem to be in a holding pattern. I agree that we haven't had many new joiners, but we haven't seen dozens of people leaving the boycott either, or coming back to GOG who have left. Personally, I'm quite happy to see the boycott thread stand here as a warning; a sword of Damocles hanging in waiting, should GOG have the poor sense to try to take another thin slice off of their definition of DRM-free. If/when another infraction happens, this thread will be waiting for new people to sign up.

I disagree with your IMO very inaccurate mischaracterizations of my post as being "dishonest" and/or "completely untrue" and/or "misinformation." In my opinion, it is not any of those things.

IMO, which I genuinely believe, you unilaterally decided:

a) to discount the votes from people who are not listed in the OP

b) how long the duration of the so-called vote would last for

c) the conditions for which the vote would be deemed "valid" (i.e. your personal decision that no minimum participation level from the arbitrarily-decided-solely-by-yourself pool of "eligible" voters is necessary in order to make the vote become "valid," etc.).

Therefore, for reasons such as those, I disagree that it was not a unilateral decision on your part to retconn the purpose of the boycott.

And I also disagree with your assertion that it was a "community decision," as if it were truly a "community decision," then all members of the community would have had had a valid, counted vote in it; yet they didn't, because you personally decided that anyone who was not listed in the OP shall have no voice in the supposed "vote," and that the votes that community members did cast who were not listed in the OP were arbitrarily declared to be invalid and not counted based solely on your personal unilateral decision which dictated that they will not be.

About: 'sock puppet accounts being on the list'

I think it's hard to tell conclusively from a user's profile that they are a sock puppet. If we use the definition that anyone that has zero games and has just joined recently is a 'sock puppet', then that would include foad, wouldn't it? And we all know he isn't a sock puppet ... ;-)

We've never had any minimum threshold for games purchased or length of time on the site to join the boycott list. I think it is possible that a newcomer to the site may have joined GOG because they were interested in DRM-free; then read about some of the concerns posted here and decided to join in the boycott.

Another possibility is that some users may have signed up with sock puppet accounts, because they didn't want their main accounts associated with the boycott (for whatever reason). So, there are legit reasons why there may be signees on the list that are recent accounts with zero games.

So, for me to remove names from the list as duplicates, I would want to see some sort of evidence linking the 'sock puppet' account with a name that is already on the list. Otherwise, it's just based on assumptions and speculation.

It was also mentioned earlier that there are many (dozens) of users who posted in the Devotion wishlist request, saying they were leaving GOG, but didn't sign up on this list. So, I agree those very likely outweigh a small number of possible sock puppet duplicates.

Re: deleted accounts being on the list.

This is a total non-issue. It's plausible that some people who signed up on a list to protest about GOG may have decided to leave and deleted their accounts. Those users who have closed their accounts are completely valid to retain on a list of boycotters. There should be posts they made earlier in this thread where they requested to be added and some of them may have even said they were deleting their accounts at the time.

Re: the list of signees who appear to have purchased some games:

Again, this is a non-issue. Please refer to the following statement on the first post: We have never sought to impose on people on the list that they have to maintain an absolute 100% boycott. Because it's not a black and white world and someone who is reducing their spending by 70-80% compared to usual is clearly having a significant impact. Imagine the impact if every GOG user were to do that.

We don't need everyone to maintain a 100% cold turkey boycott to be successful. Someone buying 1 or 2 games in the space of 2 years is perfectly consistent with making a 'significant reduction' in their spending.


I agree and thanks for your post. As far as I am concerned, the boycott is being run for the sake of those who are signed up, who sympathize with the issues that we are protesting about. I am happy to hear from others who are critical, but ultimately, if you don't sympathize with the stated issues, then you are not part of this protest and it's not really any of your business. If you don't like the boycott, then don't sign up. Simple.

As always, I appreciate the help keeping the boycott thread on the front page. That Krogan fellow was a handy little helper, but unfortunately even he seemed to get fed up with GOG and left ...

Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that, seeing as we both think the other is being dishonest.

To address your points (which I'm sure we have discussed before):

Why would we count votes from people who are not part of the protest in a vote to decide its future? That wouldn't make any sense and would simply have invited those who would do the boycott harm (which the past several pages show there are clearly many) to come and sabotage it. It is completely normal for community groups to only allow votes from members of those groups, when making collective decisions.

Yes, I proposed how the vote would be done and how long it would last for. I made that open for discussion and asked if there were any major objections to the vote being done that way. Most people seemed to be in agreement with the proposed vote and I don't recall significant objections from many boycott members, including yourself. Perhaps I misremember, but I don't recall you having a big problem with the proposal, before the vote was held. Most of your objections seemed to surface after the outcome was apparent (when it didn't go the way you had wanted).

You're suggesting there should have been a minimum participation level of members for a decision to have been made? It's true the voting numbers were low and in an ideal world there would have been more involvement. But, there's no way to force people to be involved and, given the reality of low 'turnout', if we had set a threshold, then there would never have been an outcome. Again, the conditions of the vote were discussed and agreed on, before it was held.

As I said above, it is totally normal and logical that only people who have signed up on the boycott list and are part of the protest would have a say in deciding it's future. Tbh, you seem to be the only signee who has an issue with this.

Let me ask you a question: how do you think a community decision like that could have been done in a fairer way?