Just to weigh in a bit here, some key points I think we should remember:

1) GOG is a game distribution business who's main emphasis is curating games. Effectively a repository for all games. Besides being a large collection of games, in a way it's like a digital museum where we can capture games of the time. Some styles and types of games that probably wouldn't be made that way anymore.

2) Insulting a race of people is not equal to insulting an individual entity.

3) The internet is a big place, if you look hard enough you'll find someone offended by something for whatever reason. Should their opinion affect your access to a game? Look at how many games exist that have "offensive" content. If GOG were to treat other games like Devotion, we'd easily lose half the catalog.

Typically what I do, if I find a type of media I find offensive, is I just don't consume that content . I suppose if a large group of people in a country find something offensive, they could have game access removed or the game localized for them. But that shouldn't encroach on others right to consume content.

As a fan of the Horror genre, I was looking forward to this game. Seeing the game removed seemingly for insulting an individual entities vanity was upsetting to me considering localization or region locking the game could be an option.

I understand not everyone feels this way but then I have to ask those people (and GOG since they removed the game) this; what compelling reason is their for the Devotion to not be on the platform vs other content others find offensive? What did they find so offensive to warrant the games suddenly not coming to GOG compared to other games?

To GOG: If you can't make a compelling argument, please release this game. Censorship has no place in a business that is all about preserving games. That will destroy your business as you will have to remove other games other people may find offensive. It's a road with no end.

How sad is seeing that athough 8 days have passed, thousands of users raising their voices if favor of non censorship pratices, hundreds of vids on YT and countless forum topics GOG hasn't even said "WE WON'T HEAR YOU" on twitter or in here ... this is really sad, they're indeed letting this happen for everyone to forget how far they are of what once they claimed to be.

8,000+ REAL gamers are asking for this game, GOG. Stop tuning this shit out and acknowledge it!

The reason little dictator Winnie is so sensitive about this, is because the little bear character is actually quite lovable and innocent.
This guy and his party rule by fear. They want people to fear them and obey threw fear. Obviously comparing him to a character that is not so fearsome isn't to his liking because it diminishes his frightening image and he thinks that if the idea that he isn't scary get out there some may think they can actually take him on.
That is the whole mentality behind this.

I like how they used "hearing the gamers" as an excuse to cancel the game but now that more than 8000 people voted for the game to be hosted and so many calling them out for some reason they just can't hear the gamers anymore.

I call 'em as I see them. BLM has ties and hosted people from SJP. SJP has ties with Hamas. Black Lives Matter supporters are Nazis. They just hate white people instead of black people (although they hate Jews just as much as the good ol' SS).

Day 8. Merry Christmas everyone! When are you guys at GOG going to address the Devotion situation?

It's not too late for a Christmas miracle. Look into your hearts... If you still have them.

[deleted]

I take it I won't be getting any answers to my earlier questions to him. Meanwhile, the said user has now changed his status to say: "Kick politics out of GOG!" That's a noble goal. So, where do we start?

How about here: in the Chinese forum, the same account posted a new thread to write: "Seeing that the Polish Stupid Ass [that's how they refer to CD Projekt in China] decided against the popular will to take down a game that insults China, I obediently took out my wallet to spend another $30 on the Winter Sale."

So the first step for him to "kick politics out of GOG" would be to start with himself, if he took it seriously.

Unless the call to weed out politics is only about the politics he disagrees with.

The duplicity is stunning.

Well, damn. I thought they read as some CCP bot pretending to go against the banning from the start, but you can't point something like that without some proof. Thanks for exposing them.

That's some A-class unmasking, my good man. Well done.

To be fair, I think this has more to do with how the biggest nationalists are often to be found among the emigrant communities. It's not only the case with the Chinese abroad but there might be the additional factor that since it's particularly difficult to move from China to the US for the average person, a certain section of the population is overrepresented among such migrants, and it shows.

For balance, he also wrote the following later when asked which game he was talking about: "'Devotion,' strictly speaking it isn't actually insulting China, just [supporting] Taiwan independence. This hasn't been reported within the country [i.e. in China, even though he's in the US: it's a peculiar thing how China is always "the country" even though you live elsewhere], CDPR has suffered a loss but didn't earn a praise."

I've seen this claim before (that the game promotes Taiwan independence) without any explanation. Could have actually been an interesting discussion had he answered but we'll have to do with this wrap-up otherwise.

If I would meet you physically in person and you would say this in my face I would very aggressively exhale into your face for you to take these words back. With all due respect, DAR*A might have created their sh*tty military network. But globabal network wasn't created by them.
Big chunk of what we use now in global network is thanks to CERN.

Wall street is a specific place in US, not a chinese location.
Nobody was bringing US stock traders into the conversation. This is in no way related to what we're talking about here.

GOG is a publicly listed company that claims to be operating within laws and legal business practises - that obligates them to state a LEGALLY VALID reason to overturn already signed contract for a distribution of a game.
If they use some petty excuse without providing a solid proof then they can be held legally responsible for it by contract related developer / publisher.
In this case there are very real concerns over validity of official rhetoric GOG has taken.
Even if said rhetoric would be real it's still BS. GOG has reduced capability for individuals from various countries to buy specific products based on backslash, censorship laws, age rating board block and whatnot without removing said games from distribution worldwide.
GOG has all technical and practical measures in place to restrict a distribution of a product in only a selection of countries.

And just WHY should anybody limit themselves either to 0 (NOTHING) or 1 (EVERYTHING) approach?
Free speech is also about freedom of choice of how much you express.

Afaik the game involves quite some China-related themes. So I personally don't see how this is "media with irrelevant topic".

The... WHAT...
Seriously, maybe I'm alone here, but I usually do fundamentally spellcheck my posts before posting them.

So then it would be the best approach to not say anything anywhere to reduce a chance of offending SOMEBODY somewhere?
It's a huge hypocriSy to suggest that people should "NOT take risks" - just WHY - seriously, if people would not be "taking unneccesary risks" this world would look differently, there would likely not be LCD screens, broadly available internet, and other things.

Since you seem to cannot be bothered I will quote thy self myself:
You are actively confusing CONTENT verification with PERFORMANCE and OPTIMISATION verification.
Publisher / platform isn't obligated to, and in fact CANNOT perfectly test the latter two.

Care to share battlelog stats link?
Just curious...

No, YOU are missing the most important point:
You cannot put up a publicly facing product page in store without having a contract already signed for distribution with developer.
GOG withheld already signed contract, and gave a very highly questionable reasoning.
They should be held LEGALLY for that.

Do you see a problem with a possibility of dev taking their sweet time with their precious little hidden easter egg?
In fact the more someone is dedicated to the craft the bigger the possibilty such easter egg would be of really high quality, possibly quite a piece of work, a work of art perhaps.

Perhaps Playism. It has Detention up there, giving BOTH DRM-free AND Steam key upon purchase, and there's a disclaimer saying:
"
For users residing in China, the Steam key is not usable. In such case, please contact us at ( I censored email for the purpose of reducing spam here ) and we will solve the issue for you.
"

They aren't even remotely the same.
Which doesn't mean either of them is a definition of "good".

Incorrect. My PSU is a very rare hard to get model made in Taiwan from Japanese electronic components. Deal with it :P

" Excuse me, what the F. " memes intensify.
They never had it ACTUALLY in the first place. Lol.

This is the same level of analogy with "Nothing will change for anyone outside of US if CCCP rules the rest of the world outside of US" (notice the C's, I don't mean China here). Lol xD

VPN

If allegedly "chinese gamers" have issue with the game in question they should demand removal of it's distribution in China.
They have no legal, moral or any other right to demand it's removal INTERNATIONALLY.

You have 2 options there:
abide to indoctrination and "ignore the riches of the free internet".
Or use a VPN. It's necessity if you want to enjoy more free part of the world.
And necessity is a pretty darn effective motivator. So a major amount of people do know.

VPN

It is possible. But it's probability is ludicrously low.

Actually, yes, I did. Your point?
Stop assuming people do just as you think they do.

Here it is again, "majority does that so it must be ok". Dude. Just stop.

"X:Hey I wonder what they eat in France.
Z:I don't know. 'I don't live there'.

Q:Here have internet.

X+Z:Gah! What is this abomination?! TAKE IT AWAY!

Q:Have some history books and testimonies

X+Z:BURN 'EM ALL."
Lol. Haha. Dude. Some of your arguments have such meme potential I just couldn't resist :P

You do realize GOG has it too?
So what's the problem with blocking Devotion distribution JUST in China where allegeldy "gamers" got offended by it to the point of demanding blocking it's distribution?

Ladies and gentlemen, right here right now, I'm saying it: GOG is biased AF, in fact so much that typical satire wouldn't describe it well enough.

Well, one thing is certain here: Devotion will not be coming on Gog on 12th of December 2020.

Unless someone figures out how to push the reset button and use a Continue so we can try and do 2020 from the beginning and actually get it right this time...

Coming here to quickly contribute to an issue, which was even the subject of a scientific article on censorship that I produced during my training at the journalism faculty.

The practice of censorship is not only morally condemnable from the point of view of a Democracy, it is also condemnable from the point of view of strategy of the one who wanted to censor. What happens is what I call the "boomerang effect".

The act of censoring aims to prevent a message from being shared, except that once something is censored, this content gains a much more public dimension than if it had been ignored.

Let's do the calculation among us, users who participate in the discussion on this topic. I ask: did you know this game? Did you know that there was a criticism of the Chinese government in this game? Please excuse me to give my previous opinion that most of the answers will be "no". I would like to include myself. I had never heard of this game, I was unaware of any story involving the President of China and Winnie the Pooh, nor did I know that GOG itself was present in Chinese territory.

There is a frequent debate, from the point of view of political science and even anthropological, whether we can consider China a dictatorship or not, but the fact is that with attitudes like this, the Chinese government itself shares an authoritarian message, not consistent with the values democratic countries of the 21st century, and which damages not only the country's image, but its own international business.

Get it. Devotion is an indie game, of a niche genre, which would also be available on a niche platform, but the Chinese government's authoritarian action has made this little cell a Babylonian construction.

This is all so stupid, so naive, so backward, that it is even difficult to believe that one of the greatest economic powers in the world lends itself to such an unstoppable role.

Finally, GOG's amateurism at these times of the championship is equally impressive, believing that it would have no problem to see this endeavor as if nothing was going to happen, permanently burning several traces of its credibility by an equally dumb and primary error.

At the end of the day, it all seems like a big bad joke. And GOG, of course, remains silent, corroborating with ALL that is being said against the company.

Congratulations to all involved.