***PLEASE NOTE! If you join the boycott, please include the words I'm in! in bolded letters. If you're sympathetic to the cause, please include the words I'm sympathetic! in bolded letters. Thank you and happy boycotting!***

Yesterday marked the 1st anniversary of gog bungling their Devotion release in quite the spectacular fashion, so I figured it‘s high time to open a "Boycotting gog 2022"-thread.

I‘m taking over for Time4Tea here. Over the course of the year, Time4Tea has turned into quite the ardent Zoom Platform shill, and while I sincerely appreciate the amusement I get out of people getting mad at him for shilling for Zoom, I do realise that there is somewhat of a conflict of interest here. Time4Tea should be free to shill for Zoom to his heart‘s content, without fear of making his boycott look like a cheap marketing stunt.

Unlike Time4Tea, I won‘t even bother with drawing up a comprehensive list of demands. If gogstaff wants to change things for the better, there‘s more than enough suggestions in last year‘s thread, so go check that one. Besides, the demands in last year‘s thread seemed to actively hinder some people from joining the boycott, because while they agreed with x, they couldn‘t get on board with y. How bout some solidarity for a change, people?!

If you still care enough to list any problems you have with this store (and if you for some reason are under the impression they won't fall on deaf ears), feel free to point them out in the comments!

With that out of the way, here‘s my small list of suggestions/constructive feedback/things that boil my piss:

- This is a repeat from last year: Get rid of the cosmetic DRM in Cyberpunk. This is for real such a minor issue that would generate (or rather: restore) considerable amount of goodwill that it is simply baffling it wasn't done long ago.

- Another repeat from last year: The Devotion ship probably has well and truly sailed (I know for a fact I wouldn't want to have anything to do with gog if I were in Red Candle Games' shoes, lol), but I still want to see an appy polly loggy from the staffer that came up with the rather audacious "many messages from gamers" tweet.

- Get rid of the horrendous chatbot! Also, seriously, how long is gog support going to be overburdened with requests? Just a short time ago, gog support was second to none, whereas today it seems nonexistant and the only way to get a staffer on the line seems to be bitching about your ticket taking forever on the forum (because, for as overburdened as they are, they curiously still have enough time to swoop in and lock threads critical of gog's support in a fraction of a nanosecond. One of the perks of doubletasking support staffers with forum moderation... (more on that later)

- Care to explain what's taking so long with the Quake Enhanced Edition that was supposedly being finalised (in August) and which NightDive and Bethesda flat-out deny ever being in the works?

- MAKE GOG FORUM GREAT AGAIN! Rescind the idiotic "no politix" rule (which is all the more absurd due to gog merrily putting out shoddy agitprop indie crap with some regularity - which the mods will then forbid you from discussing). Back in the ole days, you could call out idiot users on their idiocy. Now they'll report you and you get a ban, while the idiots stand unchallenged. All the civilised folk left ages ago and gog's staff manages to even take the fun out of a dumpster fire. Not having to moderate the forums would also lift some of that heavy burden off the backs of the support staff and let them do their actual work instead.

- gog is bleeding money all over the place and (according to some news piece I read about it) their main takeaway seems to be that they need to concentrate on being a curated store, which filled me with complete and utter horror, as gog‘s "curation" has been a massive joke (at our expense) for some time now. I mean, hell, they still haven‘t released Hatred, despite 5000+ (!) votes on the wishlist. But I hear Zoom Platform has a DRM-free release in the works...

People who are boycotting, to whatever degree they're comfortable with:
1) fronzelneekburm
2) nightcraw1er.488
3) apehater
4) tag+
5) Ancient-Red-Dragon
6) Wolf904
7) GamezRanker

People who are sympathetic to the concept:
1) timppu
2) _Line
3) BanditKeith2
4) Time4Tea

PS: I‘m marking this as a question-thread. If there is a user who, through his contributions in this thread, distinguishes himself as a particularly outstanding boycotter, that user will win the coveted "GOG Boycotter of the Year 2022" award (ie. that user‘s best post will be marked as the answer and the user will be awarded 5 rep points. Huzzah!)

edit: Two more "demands":
- End the gag order on JudasIscariot
- Give Marko his boxed copy of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine back (especially since you didn't even put it to good use by, you know, using it for a German language build)
- Do something about those annoying downvoot bots, willya?

Ok, 3 demands...

Yep, you can count me on 100% boycott. Key reasons why:
- lack of changelogs, previous versions, patches, parity with galaxy installers, lack of parity with other stores!
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/provide_a_full_and_complete_changelogged_download_system

- lack of decent compression offers, current installers are not well compressed for “archiving”.

- increasing amount of online gated content, online in all but name games.

- rampant forum abuse, downvoting bots, advertising and interest generating bots.

- half broken website, purple dot, you have xx replies not working.

I don’t think anything will change. It would be nice if gog split completely from CDPR, they are the driving force behind the online stuff like Gwent cyberpunk, and are dragging gog down their route of trying to become EA. Quite a few of the releases last year were also quite suspect. Do note, it’s not an exclusive list, epic games sales, galaxifying installers, making old games dependant on galaxy dlls (Titan quest for ex.), etc.

thanks fronzel

Today I didn't buy a helicopter. I saved quite a bit of money there!

Overall, I partially boycott GOG. I buy only those GOG games that I like to have. The rest of the games: NO!

This.

Estimated fronzelneekburm, I would sign if this goes as a solidarity movement.

Because in my opinion a ,,boycott,, falls short and ineffective due the number of:
Outdated
-and/or-
Pending
-and/or-
Discarded forever
-and/or-
Slowly/Incorrectly/Ineptly -being- attended (a.k.a WIP, work in progress)
-and/or-
Deliberately Ignored
-and/or-
Unnoticed
[A little pause to let me catch my breath]
List of stuff every one of us (noted as customers) consider priorities that require/demand an answer/action/(hell... even something so simple and quick as an apology)
-despite-
the objective/subjective/biased/prejudiced/viability level each item on that giant total list could have when going through it in detail...

So:
1) I have my own concerns and complains -and- you, yours, of course. Like many folks here.
That’s the initial and enough state to me.
2) Lets join in solidarity for a change. YES, Why not? Cool!
3) You propose to stop purchasing anything on this store, I propose a meme campaign, the folk next to us proposes the surrender raising the white flag and moving to another store, another one, an organized massive download of our entire offline installer catalogs in a single day & hour in attempt to collapse the infrastructure (A kind of Denial of Service boycott). The other pal, something I do not even understand a single word of the proposed plan, et cetera.
4) THE_HOLD_ON_A_SECOND_TO_THINK STEP: Time and freedom to every one of us to evaluate and decide individually/in_groups/as_a_whole what, how and where will support the proposals that appear along the road... their goals and the methods to be used to measure the progress...
5) Mandatory: Measure progress. Because we need to know if the whole sum of time & effort in gamble are an investment... or a damn waste.
6) Et cetera

BUT, if your initial announcement immediately jumps & starts on Step3 with an yearly loose Boycott, well...
I would not get surprised if 2022 elapses and nothing changes... or everything goes for worse (my personal opinion and prediction, I stand & make myself responsible of them). Under that initial invitation, I would decline (or remove my sign up as I did to Time4Tea's 2021 boycott) despite the ironic fact my purchases are and will be in the foreseeable future in the lowest ever due caution and a considerable disenchantment to GOG!

Sorry for the lengthy post. I hope you get my point and confirm/(adjust if needed) your invitation to then sign up.
Last but not least: I value your time and effort on this. Regards

I'm all for there being a "Boycotting GOG 2022" thread, but this one cannot be it, because it breaks the forum rules in the OP (i.e. personally attacking other users, and marking a thread as a question which isn't actually a question).

Doing that is just giving GOG legitimate excuses to lock and/or delete this thread, and/or any other future "Boycotting GOG 2022" thread.

Therefore, Time4Tea must be the one the continue the boycott with a new 2022 boycotting thread, or else another poster who is going to present the OP of that thread in a professional manner that won't give GOG any reasonable excuse to lock and/or delete it.

Yeah that part was making me curious... I'd be ready to give my heads up of probably another year of no purchases, but this thread might not be it.

I think that is a crime in most developed countries. Nice going buddy.

Overall, I think people who don't want to use the service should just leave. You are making yourselves look like idiots, that's all. Like some butthurt ex-boy/girlfriend who lost their mind after a breakup.

Giving (negative) feedback for issues on the service is one thing. Being an asshat is another. Then there is also a third thing but I am not going to tell you what it is, it is a secret.

EDIT: Maybe it would be just better if GOG closed the forum. Many other stores don't have a forum either, e.g. I don't recall Humble Bundle having one, not sure if Epic has either (at least through their client). The forum is just a free extra service that GOG is offering, they have no obligation to keep offering it.

I don't care if GOG goes bankrupt tomorrow.

Buy all my games on Steam and EGS these days anyway... Just here so the angry GOG fanboys have another post to downvote, because they have no lives and it's the only excitement their sad lives get. XD

Hey man. It's obviously up to you to post what you like in the forum, but I think it's a shame that you feel the need to paint me as a 'Zoom Platform shill'. I don't think there have ever been any rules on the GOG forum against discussing other DRM-free stores and to me it makes sense that a group that is boycotting one particular business would discuss viable alternative options. I used to be a big fan of GOG, but they have driven me away through their poor direction and decisions over the past year and a half. As has been said many times in the other thread, I don't hate GOG and I don't want them to fail. The purpose of my own boycott is to try to encourage them to turn things around and stick to their DRM-free principles. I am going to buy some games from GOG in January, to cut them some slack.

Re. Zoom Platform etc.: I agree with you that it is a shame to see what seems to be a certain amount of 'tribalism' developing in the DRM-free community. My intention was/is not to stoke that, but I am very supportive of more options for consumers in the DRM-free market. For me, the ideal situation would be for there to be several 'good' options of DRM-free stores for people to be able to choose between (i.e. an actual free market). But, of course, given that GOG currently has quite a dominant slice of the DRM-free market, it stands to reason that they would need to give up some of their market share for that to happen. Is it inherently hateful of GOG, to want to see more genuine options in the DRM-free space?

Re. this thread: again, you are obviously perfectly entitled to post what you like and I can't stop you. Imo, it seems rather less 'focused' than the 2021 thread and it doesn't seem entirely clear what the boycott issues are here. I think it also would have been good to link to the 2021 thread, to maintain some more continuity.

Tbh, I feel like it also would have been nice to have discussed it more with the rest of the group who have been boycotting this year. So, what I propose to do is to hold a vote in the other thread, to see what people want to do - in terms of whether they want to go with your new thread or continue the old one, or whatever.

As long as Corona is sending them into home office (I know, there is no Corona in your home country or you are not even allowed to leave your flat - or are you just another one of this sorry "political fun guys")
But what kind of Chat Bot? It is an automated answer to an email. Everyone who did more with email then just pressing mindlessly "send" knows how that work.
Answer and a human will take over instandly.... Yeah right...
We are getting closer to the core of the truth here... And there we are.

GoG is not following your own political agenda.
Nothing else does matter here for you.


And hey, at the same time computer sabotage is called out in this thread.

Hooray to the boycotters. Just show us more of your calm wisdom.

For what it's worth, do know that I do not share fronzel's view. I don't think that just because someone believes (and states) that another store is a better source for them for DRM-free/client-free games than GOG is, that that person then becomes a "shill" (or comparable and worse monikers) for that store.

You're a very naughty boy! XD

As far as I am aware people used to get warnings and quite possible temp bans for mentioning Zoom Platform in a positive or neutral way.. Hell Mods even in the Hitman Game of the year thread edited someones post for bringing up how some of the games that Zoom platform have more complete versions of games then are here .. ya I ain't kidding I would need to hunt in it for the page it happened but ya mods did do that but left bits of that one factor in