Some Chinese found a single in-game item objectionable. You'd have to zoom in to even notice it. The item was removed shortly upon the game's release on Steam, nearly 2 years ago. There has been nothing offensive in the game since, and whether there even was in the first place is debatable.

For more details, check out this post:
GOG announced the release of Devotion on December 16 but then cancelled it in mysterious circumstances. The only comment they made sounded like that's what people asked for. But there's no evidence that was the case. GOG failed to provide any explanation, and has remained silent since, aggravating even more of their customers (including the people who originally didn't care that much).

It appears to be a good game, according to the reviews. It was even recently included in the Harvard University library of notable East Asian cultural works. The company's earlier game, Detention, also got good reviews, and was made into a movie and a Netflix series.

Another thing is, though, we are not in China, are we?

Also, the game was never officially banned in China, and it was never found not to comply with any laws, while GOG sells other games that were banned in China.

It's a separate issue, and much more serious in the opinion of many people. For example I was about to buy Cyberpunk despite the issues but now I won't.

Since you don't know practically anything about it (as you freely admit yourself), how can you be so certain the reaction from all the people who most likely know more than you do about what happened is "nonsense?"

Wouldn't that be a strange thing to do? If you really don't care why not just move on? Don't you think it's self-contradictory to claim not to care while concurrently doing everything to prove otherwise?

If you actually read what I had written you would have seen that I said "even 1%" which was given as a small example.

They certainly have proven themselves to be very responsive to randoms on Weibo, so why shouldn't they be at least equally responsive to their actual customers as well? They had 9 full days to address the issue before Christmas.

If there's any reaction from them at any point now, it won't be because they haven't had the time to respond earlier but for other reasons.

I'm sorry, perhaps I'm missing something, but did GOG close their business for said time? Did their support stop working during said time?
No? Then what are you talking about?

This is a pressing matter ALREADY costing them lots of lost potential sales from customers boycotting entire platform because of it.
This is an urgent matter, not something that can be casually brushed off like a fly circling around someones face.

When you shoot yourself in the foot artery you don't wait until it stops bleeding because by that time you will be dead.
Same applies to GOG.

If you knew what you were talking about, you would not have used any percentage to begin with. Statistics and probability of the same are out of our reach for this game.

Exactly what I said, they are probably working with a skeleton crew because of the holidays, and those still around are probably very busy with support, refund, & co, and have better things to do that checking the forum. There is even barely any moderation, just a lone mod connecting, from time to time (and he doesn't seem to have connected for quite some time given that the HK thread is still open despite being a fully political thread).

No offense but you are talking BS.
When issue is urgent you, as an employee, pick up a phone or compose an email and contact your superiours even if they are on the other end of the world on some random vacation.
This is 21 century.

And no, it's pretty clear that this issue in fact is NOT discussed "only on some '1' obscure forum thread".
Perhaps you didn't notice but:
1.A ton of people are referencing the issue in lots of threads, INCLUDING ones made by GOG.
2.The issue has been discussed in many places outside of GOG forums, such as by YT creators.

There is NO WAY GOG doesn't know about the backslash.
It's pretty safe to say they are deliberately pretending to not see it.

Thanks for your answers. I didn't know GOG announced its release on December 16, and cancelled it the same day. I would have preffered no explanations than the "After receiving many messages from gamers" one.

AFAIK it was removed from Steam in July 2019, does anyone sell it nowadays?

I may be wrong but there doesn't seem to be any place selling it now.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Devotion

Fyi, their other game, Detention is sold in a bunch of places, including Playism:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Detention
https://playism.com/product/detention

(Playism is 100% upfront about presence of DRM, they either give you DRM-free, Steam key, OR BOTH, Playism is a Japanese company fyi, made primarily to distribute Japanese indie games)

And apart from the forum where is a everybody still talking about it ?

The YT creators made one, maximum two, video on the whole Devotion issue while they made 10+ on Cyberpunk and continue to make new ones, same thing for articles, even the Gog sub-reddit mostly stopped talking about it, the last post in the pined thread is from two days ago.

So yes there is backlash because of Devotion, but it's nothing compared to the thermonuclear shitstorm that the Cyberpunk release caused and is still causing.

So as far as Gog and CDPR is concerned it's not really surprising if the current "urgent" issue is Cyberpunk and not really Devotion.

I think it was removed from Steam on February 25 and in July the Chinese government revoked the business license of Indievent, which was the publisher for the game globally, perhaps to stop the game from reappearing.

There was a limited physical collector's edition in Taiwan this year (sold out). Somebody said you can also buy a key there that still activates on Steam. Other than that, it hasn't been available since.

There is the possibility it'll go on sale in January on Zoom Platform (unrelated to the video call app Zoom):

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/devotion_probable_release_on_zoom_platform/post1

and a US-based company offered to publish a box edition there:

https://twitter.com/WorkWithPoppy/status/1339234968023801861

The discussion about Devotion isn't really limited to just this forum.

While you can claim that "they have better things to do," let's be clear it's a matter of their priorities and not any extenuating circumstances. The other problems they have to be dealing with concurrently are also of their own making.

That's not really my impression, a lot of threads created by people complaining about the refunds are being deleted almost instantaneously.

You might be right that's how they see it but they would be wrong.

People are willing to forgive a nice company releasing an imperfect game but the Devotion problem is what exposes them for what they have become: no longer such a nice company in the first place. This is much more serious in the long-run, as it determines how everything they do from now on will be perceived.

In any case, the solution to Cyberpunk 2077 bombing is to fix all the problems, which is work for the developers, not the PR team. So the two issues are being (or at least should be) addressed by two disparate groups of employees within the company.

PC Gamer picked up the story according to spl_ice:

https://www.pcgamer.com/devotions-developer-vows-we-wont-stop-striving-after-being-dropped-by-gog/

Other media outlets did as well, ranging from The Guardian to Breitbart (literally):

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horror-game-pulled-from-sale-again-after-backlash-in-china

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/12/18/taiwanese-videogame-blacklisted-again-mocking-chinese-dictator-xi-jinping/

It's really quite an achievement for GOG to have both of the above in agreement about this issue.

From the PC Gamer article: We're not the only ones snubbed then.

Hmm, let's see... On December 17 it took them all of 3 hours to respond to the "gamer messages". We started complaining on the very same day and have not got as much as a peep out of them in 11 days. So yes, they absolutely had the capacity to respond at that time, they just didn't want to.