I am not a big fan of this specific horror genre, but the GOG statement is at the very least unfortunate. Why blame "gamers" for the decision?

Also, who is ok with this creating a precedent for the platform to delist games seemingly on a whim or with a similarly insulting to their customers excuse?

Just curious - what happens if GOG does release Devotion?

Not in the sense of possible repercussions from China, but what would that change with people who expressed their dissatisfaction with GOG and controversial decision to not release the game? All is forgiven, we will buy again from GOG, too little too late, bridges are burnt...?

Maybe it's not a lie, just missing info: "Chinese" in the front.
First I thought it's bullshit too, but then I thought again. We often forget that China is huge in terms of sheer manpower. So let's see:

There are 1 billion Chinese.
Let's assume there are 100 million gamers - 10% of the population.
From those let's assume 5% dedicated fans of Winnie the Pooh. Which is an extremely low estimate, if you look how leadership cults work and considering life-long indoctrination starting in early childhood. That's 5 million gamers in the Winnie-Fanclub probably well organised in what they have for Twitter. And's just the dedicated fans of the leadership, not counting their wider circle of people who just tag along trying to make a good impression.

So when GOG announced releasing this game which they hate for making fun of their glorious leader - there's millions and millions of angry people - indeed gamers - standing in line to give GOG hell. I can imagine people in GOG HQ going very pale when they realised that... that's dimensions and lightyears more shitstorm power than the few hundred? even thousand? ResetEra "activists" equally getting riled up over nothing. And in the name of the glory of their leader - so they'll even be encouraged, and not blocked by the Great Firewall.

It's a messy situation GOG maneuvered themselves in, and handled in a really bad way. They could have brought forth some legal shenanigans, blame crashes whatever. Saying "because gamers" - even if true - makes all Western customers go wtf, but also tells those Chinese internet soldiers "Yay, we did it! Long live Winnie!".
They could even have stated "We just learned that the game makes fun of the Chinese president and his mother, and in Poland we take mothers very seriously, so we don't want to sell this game", and here people would probably shrugged it off as another weird GOG decision.
Of course, if they are afraid of a Chinese shirstorm DDOS attack, they should have done their research about the game and never listed it in the first place.

That may be true, but you "replied" better than I could hope to.

I completely agree, an you're absolutely right. Like I said, you "replied" better than I could hope to.

However, I don't believe they were unaware the game makes fun of Winnie, and I'm pretty sure no one else would've bought it either, so the end result of THAT excuse would be pretty much this.

At any rate, reading your post, we seem to agree in regards to the bulk of the situation - GOG shitting its pants (again) - even if we possibly disagree with the specifics.

This WAS GOG's doing. If they can't play with fire, why the hell do they try to be edgy again & again? It ALWAYS backfires. And they never learn.

We'd do what we've long done. Supported them through thick and thin. They can still make amends to actual gamers. Releasing Devotion with a public appology to the developer for even temporarily cowtowing to this blatant extortion by CCP trroll acounts would go a long way in that regard.

Im sure they have their eyes 24x7on every foreignor who visits the shore if what some people say is true...
Wouldnt think its that big in the grand scheme of things (Cyberpunk aside)

I agree, and I wasn't excusing them. Earlier posts suggested GOG was forced into this situation but in fact they clearly brought it upon themselves.

And since they appear to care more about any potential business in China than they do about their existing customers all over the world, they now have to face the consequences.

GOG painted themselves into a corner where any money spent with them at this point would be an endorsement of censorship.

As far as I can tell, these are the contacts for both Projekt Red and GOG parent company: https://www.cdprojekt.com/pl/inwestorzy/kontakt/

Go wild. Pretend to be Polish for extra annoyance.

From what I've read I'm not even sure the game actually does. It seems to have been a placeholder, possibly not even in the release version but an earlier version that got spread due to piracy (although I haven't found reliable sources for that claim yet). After the first Chinese shitstorm two years ago, the devs explained, apologized and took the game down to fix bugs and search for any other forgotten placeholders, but then never re-released it and their publisher had its business license revoked by the Chinese government (or so I've heard). From what I've seen this is not about what the game actually does contain, but what the game accidentally did contain in the past. It looks like they want to see the devs fail and the game erased from history not because of what it actually is but because of the "audacity" it was associated with in the past.

THIS (attached) HURTS

A rough chronological timeline:

1) Game is released. Gets overwhelmingly praised.
2) A bit after release, stream pointing out the offending easter egg is released on Weibo (China's biggest social network). Shortly thereafter, the stream is removed and any mention of the game is forbidden.
3) Devotion is heavily review-bombed. The developers' previous game (Detention) also catches some flak.
4) Developers apologize for the easter egg, explaining that it was a placeholder and patch it out. Despite that, the review-bombing doesn't stop.
5) Both publishers of the game sever ties with the developers.
6) Developers announce that they will remove the game from Steam citing technical issues and other reasons.

Why would it even matter if the game made fun of any political figure? So what? It's pretty commonplace to do so in the West, and it's legally protected as freedom of speech. Why should some foreign politician get special treatment and be beyond any criticism?

And how could it even be insulting to be called Winnie the Pooh? I think many public figures would love to only ever be compared to such positive characters.

Whether or not the game should have been released in China is a separate matter. But the game being pulled worldwide because it's objectionable in a single culture or jurisdiction is inexcusable. It's well within China's rights to not want any foreign influence inside their borders but neither should they be allowed to exert their influence to impose political censorship abroad.

This just has not precedent, CHINA HAS THE POWER to decide sth that will affect the entire world. WTF?

I've thought long and hard about this but it really is for the best, so we have to show GOG/CDPR the way...

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/relocating_gogcdpr_headquarters_to_the_country_that_they_love_best_china

That's even worse.

And there's people going along with this. You know, to show they're reasonable & understanding. "Oh well, they knew what they were getting themselves into."

Yeah, sure. This punishment does NOT fit the "crime". It's way past time to stand up.