I don't disagree with your main point, just want to mention that I got a CD-ROM with the Ebola game. Never played it, and don't plan to. Some guy on reddit describing the gameplay: "I have this game. You're a helicopter that flies over a 2D tilted map of a village. Villagers get infected with ebola and it spreads by them hitting eachother. You have to burn X amount of villagers to clear the level. That's how I recall it to be."

Not going to participate in the useless discussion whether it is "right" or "wrong" to make a game about an ongoing epidemic... (it is right BTW; oh shit now I participated, whatever)

...but I just keep wondering, when did they start making this game? COVID hasn't been in the headlines that long, and already someone managed to make a commercial game about it, in a couple of months? Probably someone has asked this already in this thread.

Is that normal in game development nowadays, game development tools are so good that it takes a couple of months to come up with a new game? Or did they happen to have some other "managerial" game in development, and changed it into a COVID game on the fly?

Has anyone actually played the game, and is it any good? Sorry if I didn't read the previous 100 pages to see if anyone has.

Hmmm, so when I posted my first comment my “score” was 257, I gained +1 for making the comment taking me to 258.
Last night I was going through the forum reading comments and saw my comment was marked ‘highly rated’ which took me to 264, after I post this comment it will probably be 265.

I’ve been ‘low rated’ enough to know that your score decreases.

Have I possibly had too much to think Herr GOG?

Fairly? I doubt you know what that actually means. Well, I'll tell you it's privileged freedom to ban willy nilly things that are truthful and YEAH I expect another ban coming my way but that's expected from biased mods.

I'll wait for the rioting expansion.

Some games can be made really fast. Some not. Mobile games are churned out from some companies on daily basis. There are IMO two posibilities here. The game mechanics were so simple to implement, that they were really able to made it in 3-4 months. Or, they were already making this game for a longer time, but during pandemics, they’ve decided to shift the development to be more in line with the current situation, and added mechanics, which are reflecting on reactions of the world, and gave it a new name just before a release. I have not played the game, so I can’t tell, which is true, but verified owner rating is currently at 4/5, but no one of the owners reviewed it yet.

42

Also, they are only donating for May and June. However, the game was released just yesterday so it is ridiculous to even mention that they are adding the sales from May.

My questions to GOG are: Are you completely out of touch with reality? Do you understand how inappropriate a game release with this name and this topic is at this time? At a time when nobody really understands this disease to a reasonable degree to give any worthwhile advise in the first place. Well done! Do you ever think of all the people who have suffered and died because of that illness? I personally know people who have suffered from this illness and died in the process. Do you, GOG? Do the game developers? Do you think that a laughable 20% going to some charity is going to be enough to offset that?

I'm going to donate directly to charities of my own chosing. Thank you. Don't need you, GOG, to educate me on anything. I'm doing my part not lest by being part of two clinical studies. What are the developers of this game doing? They cheaply try to profit of this pandemic. Shame on you, GOG! Shame on the developers! And yes: good intentions, sharing 20% of the profits ("net sale") with a charity. The road to hell -- they say -- is paved with good intentions.

How much development time went into that? If it was much more than three months I'd be surprised. That however means it's nothing but another example of half-baked shovelware, which we really don't need here. How many good games are being rejected by GOGs curation process because of some arbitrary reason? But you, GOG, thought this was for some reason appropriate?

No! Won't buy! No can do. And I won't be buying any games from GOG for quite a while. Thank you. Enough other issues in the real world to attend to, don't need any games at the moment to eat up my time.

GOG really should consider pulling this game.

I wouldn't want this game even if it was FREE.

And totally seems like an opportunistic way to grab some cash before someone else has the same (bad) idea.

If it was about some generic plague or virus - to keep it ABSTRACT, like Pandemic -, it wouldn't be so bad even if the timing wasn't the best (see the Epic example).

One great thing about games is ESCAPISM - we can have WWII games, sci-fi, fantasy, etc., and not having to deal with exact real world events if we're having a good time enjoying great gameplay or story.

This isn't that.

Really? Hasn't there been enough Covid-19 over the last months? Keep that bull****. Not buying it!

This so much....as an example:

Let's say anon's aunt shelly was st*bbed to de*th tragically one day by some other person in an alley....then a dev made a "aunt shelley st*bbing prevention sim" to supposedly help people prevent such from happening to themselves and others while the de*th was still fresh and the anon whose aunt died was still grieving.

Obviously some would be upset and rightfully so.

Now if(as you said) this had a generic title & not one like this(obviously meant to get the game press and attention and sell units) and/or was made long after this pandemic it'd likely be more acceptable by a good number of people.

------------------------------------------------

Also an aside: People can buy what they want, but why is it that(in general) it seems people lack empathy for things and/or cannot seemingly empathize with why people might be upset if they don't affect them in whole or in part?

Curate the curation

Disinfect GOG from the curators A.S.A.P.

While making a COVID game during the real-life pandemic does feel like a cheap way to get more attention to a generic(?) managerial game...

...I am still quite surprised by the strong reactions here, as if this was some kind of baby seal clubbing game that denies the holocaust. I mean, sure, people can decide not to buy it, but for some reason I don't see any real problem with this release. Yes my wife is (at least temporarily) unemployed for now due to the pandemic and for all I know I might have had corona alrady back in February (not confirmed, but I am suspecting it), but still this game release fails to raise any strong negative feelings. Mainly just that "oh right, trying to get cheap attention for your managerial game, aren't you?".

If this game was just called "Pandemic" and was generally about fighting some worldwide pandemic, would you be just as angry? How about all those pandemic movies made over the last few decades, should they be abolished?

Was the release of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" very bad taste because it was about the ongoing "climate crisis"? I agree it was a stupid propaganda movie for simple-minded people (South Park made fun of the movie quite appropriately, "Run! Climate change is coming! It is right behind us! Now it is coming the other way!!"), but still I didn't boycott nor get overly angry about the movie. I've seen it three times already!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKOmoUlea9o

20 points from GOG house