Like I said before fearing the boycott leading to GOG's downfall makes no sense. Should the boycott actually become a threat to GOG's very exitence (an almost impossible scenario, but for the sake of discussion) they would obviously react to it and do whatever thay can to appease the boycotters, end the boycott and allow GOG to continue. The idea that people running GOG would rather see it go under than react to the boycott only works if we assume they are completely suicidal. In which case the place is likely doomed anyway.

This is very interesting. So, how does this work then? If I'm a member of one of those libraries, I can check the game out from their website and play it? Or would I have to actually go there in person?

Does anyone have any direct links?

Yes, the 'slippery slope' scenario is another reason I don't buy the argument that DRMed cosmetics are ok, because they are minor. If we give them this inch, they will take 3 next time.

We live in a world where most of the younger generation of gamers wouldn't know what a 'good game' is if it hit them in the face. They'll gleefully gobble up any old half-assed shite, because their buddy bought it and they don't know any better.

I wonder if it's not mostly just a kind of laziness. I mean, good games are still plentiful, but they're usually not the ones getting the big marketing push, adorning the front page of most online stores etc. Finding them, finding something out about them, requires going out of your way just a tiny bit. If you don't you may get the illusion that Fallout 76, Division 2, Fortnite and stuff like that are the best, if not the only, thing the market has to offer.

I'm saying htis because I know for a fact it's how it works for TV shows with a lot of my friends and acquaintances. It a show doesn't get recommended to them by Netflix, they'll likely never know it exists. And if someone (yes, like yours truly) tells them about it but it's not available on Netflix, they also will not bother to see it. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. What does is that it has to be a single click away.

Why would GOG change their behaviour? As you said above the text I quotes,our little boycott is nearly not enough to make GOG do anything but ignore us. And it seems they made quite some money from Cyberjunk. Ok, the game developers now have to work oout the „problems“, but they are nit the ones making the decisions, they have to repair the things, the higher ups (which as in other companies are never making wrong decisions and are impeccable) did.
So again, why would GOG change anything, besides some „cudos“, which are not more than empty words?

The size of a boycott like this isn't inherently doomed to remain this small. Which I also hinted at.

I can come up with two possible reasons:
1. They see the errors of their ways and have a change of heart.
2. They believe it's in their best interest if they want to retain enough of their customer base to stay afloat.

I think 1 is unlikely to happen. There were probably numerous well thought-out business decisions leading to their current trajectory.

I also don't think they're stupid, so 2 probably only works if/when/once it's actually likely to be true.

Since GOG seems to be ignoring their own forums and site, the place to hit them would be through their social media accounts.
Post on their Facebook, twitter, reddit, instagram...more?
I only have a rarely used FB account so I can't help much there.

Maybe a concise outline of why people boycott and a link to the first post of this thread?
I know they're getting massive backlash on FB from the Devotion thing.

Posting on reddit is like walking on paper thin ice.
You have to be uber ninja to not attract some BS-talkers.
My point is, if anyone is up for the task then they need to be EXTREMELY careful with wording and everything else otherwise it can very easily turn against us.

You know you are getting old when you start blaming the youth for their tastes

no , all i know is their taste is bad

Same here, got my load of what gaming turned into during these years, and well GOG is my last stronghold when it comes to drm-free and DRM, albeit they are definitely doing their worst as of late.

I mean, if the most of us in this thread would think about it soemthing more than just boycotting by not purchasing anything could come up, imho, the real problem for me is how to do that without showing any toxic behaviour.

While you have a point, I was talking about in the long run, as in being unable to do the right thing at the right time (and let's be honest, GOG is screwing up every day).

I will never understand how can people be fine with such a thing: you are still paying for that product. Having bought the deluxe edition of battletech, I still feel mad about the pre-order locked behind their cursed paradox account system, and suprise suprise: the steam version doesn't have this BS, meaning that a pirated version has more content than a legit GOG offline one!
Way to go to stop piracy GOG, yeah...

I usually don't like to pull the "kids nowadays" excuse, but damn, I do think that general tastes and whatnot are shifting for the worse.
Then again in the past games used to release very slowly, and lack of properly updates post launch meant some solids QA tests, which today are non-existent.

Sadly though, old gamers aren't the target of these companies, which focus on taking advantage of kids (and to a certain extent even stupid people in general) to make them bleed money from their parents credit cards.

hehe, had to say something here. You do know that QA is a more recent term and process? "back in the old days" QA was non-existent. Most games was made by single coders, small groups of coders who made a game by themsleves.

There are examples of many games that are unbeatable becuse of bugs, and since you could not deliver patches, they are still unbeatable. There is the example of one of the famous coders (i can not remember who it was right now, I read about it in an interview in Retrogamer some years ago) that when he made his first game (off course alone) did not have enough memory left for an end sequqnce, so he made the final boss unbeatable and as a result he did not have make any end sequnce. There's QA for you.

edit - and just to make another point. It was easier "back then" as the platforms where uniform (i.e. C64, Spectrum, Amiga 600 etc), so it was much easier to make games that worked. You made a game for a c64, it worled on a c64. Now, especially PC (but also making games cross-platform) there are no longer uniform platforms. You need to make the game runnable on W7,W8,W10, you need to make it work on different hardware (AMD, Intel, ARM etc) different GPU's, differnt RAM setups and many more factors. Any developer, big or small, can not do QA on all existing variations of hardware-software setups that people are using today. So instead they do a lot of testing on what may be considered the mode setups, and then they need to release it and hope it works for most. And as players with different setup reports something happening, they can then respons and try to fix it. It is basically a very different workflow which is in respons to the fact that computer systems of today are very different than they where "back theb".

But also, the games themselves where much simpler as well. It is an ocean of difference bughunting 64k of code compared with 10GB of code. Compare the mechanics in for example Pacman with Skyrim, and if you do not see the difference in complexity ....

edit 2 - speaking of Pacman, the original game also had a bug. If you manage to get to level 256, half of the screen becomes garbage, since a byte can not hold more than 255 numbers. Could have been fixed, never was.

All I know is, taste is subjective. Let the youth play what they want let the older generation play what they want. Let for god sake let everyone play what they want. Taste can change. And their is no such thing as good and bad in subjective things. There is only I like it or I don't. This however doesn't mean someone else can not like the very thing i personally despise.

If you want to talk about QA, I think the highest 'quality' games that I ever saw, from a performance/bug standpoint were on the SNES. Games like Zelda: Link to the Past, Mario World, Super Metroid were nigh on flawless. The level of QA that was done on those games was far better than what you see with today's average release.

You have a point about games these days being bigger and more complex. But, quality-wise, things have been going downhill ever since the twilight of the SNES.

not to mention platorm uniformity. It is easy to to "QA" SNES, diffiult to "QA" PC, as I said in edit 1 as well. it is the main difference here.

Gamedevelopers are doing a lot more QA and testing today (especially AAA which now have QA departments, never had before) then ever before

edit -and another point here, the games you mention are made by the people who also made the hardware they run on. These are people who developed the software and the hardware in tandem. again, this do not happen on PC

Yes, marketing has a big effect and I'm sure laziness also plays a role. Also, the new generation have grown up with near-photorealistic graphics being 'standard'. So, they expect that with every game and the AAA studios are mostly the ones that can deliver that and push it with the marketing. Thing is, if you buy games just because they are 'pretty', you should probably expect something fairly shallow.

So, that expectation of high-end graphics disincentivises them from exploring lesser-known modern studios, as well as preventing them from being to appreciate the great games of the past.

Sure, I agree that QA-ing games has always been easier on consoles than PC, given the hardware is more uniform and predictable. Although, that makes the situation with Cyberpunk even more ironic, given most of its performance issues were on console.

I'm not sure I'd agree developers are doing 'a lot more' QA today than in the past. I'm not sure what you are basing that on and I haven't seen much evidence of it personally. Unless you are considering 'early-access' customers to be part of the QA department ;-)