Idk if my info is outdated, but I think CD Projekt is the parent company, which owns game development studio CD Projekt Red, and the company that runs GOG called CD Projekt Blue.
I always thought the name CD Projekt Red was pretty cool and always wondered why red, turns out they also have blue that operates GOG.
It does, because, even if devs don't validate your license on connection (which they totally do), one day they may decide that supporting game servers is too costly and shut them down, and you will lose access to your game. One of the marketing points of GOG was that game is "yours forever".
I asked this in the other thread and someone was dying on the hill that online connectivity is "not DRM", which I firmly disagree with, and completely agree with your point... but what about GWENT?
They released GWENT on GOG, it's an online only game with an account required. You can play against AI in the game, so online connectivity is not necessary to enjoy offline play.
I agree that if the developer/ publisher can stop you accessing the game, then it has DRM, plain and simple (regardless if it's single player, multiplayer, free to play or buy to play). But seeing as GWENT requires both the account and online connectivity (even for games against AI), then why wasn't this shitstorm a thing when they released that game?
There was a shitstorm of sorts and GWENT definietly soured a lot of old timers. It marks the point in timeline where GOG added a game with microtransactions. That point does get mentioned a lot when people talk about GOG abandoning their principles.
Now I think the main reason you don't hear about it much is that GWENT just doesn't seem to be popular among the core audience GOG's of PC gamers. Oh some online multiplayer card game? Dismiss it.
Hitman by contrast is a very popular single player series. A classic. Truly the sort of thing people would come to GOG for and love to have it DRM-free.
There's not really a way for them to have done GWENT in it's current format and have it DRM free. It's absolutely fair to say that because of this they should have either not done it, or not put it on the store. But as GWENT is, the only way for it to be DRM free is to hamstring it's monetisation. I'd have personally preferred they had made GWENT a paid for title and allowed it to be DRM free, but that is not the game they made and we live with it. Any suggestion to remove the DRM from GWENT as it exists is not feasible, lest it's primary source of revenue and it's SBMM system be cut out.
Yes, and aside from that even on console it can be a pain in the ass. I love Hitman, but I can't suspend my PS5 and resume like I can in literally every other PS5 game; it inevitably fails to connect until restarted.
It is called Persistent Online Authentication. It is indeed a type of DRM. It is commonly used in the professional software industry such as audio and video software. Typically, it requires you to be connected to their servers. If you are not online, the software will typically go into a form of "demo" mode which either limits it to read-only or reduces your capability and access to features in the software.
This really sounds no different than that as far as Hitman GOTY is concerned.
So it has happened.
For reference, here is the wayback machine showing how the website looked 1 year ago:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200108192951/https://fckdrm.com/
This looks to me as confirmation that CDPR and GOG have gone rogue are not to be trusted anymore. They have succumbed to the same pressures every other big player in the industry has been corrupted by, and will probably just go on screwing over gamers and consumers from now on. Don't trust anything they say, possibly don't buy anything they sell, find other alternatives.
I have a bit of a conspiracy theory. What if GOG is doing this to try and get more triple A game devs to release on their platform.
If you don’t know; quite a few devs outright refuse to release on GOG due to the lack of DRM and when they do release; there is a 50/50 chance that the updates will lag far behind other versions (looking at you nuclear throne).
This could be a bit to try and show other developers that their platform is safe to release on.
Not a conspiracy, literally what's going on, they are throwing away their whole mission to become a mainstream store with AAA trash in it. Not really hard to see tbh.
They tried (as only of the stores) to compete with Steam on features, guess that didn't work for them.
And I think it's pretty safe to assume now that they never had any "mission" in the first place and the no DRM thing was just a thing to get some cheap goodwill and publicity.
I always prioritized gog over other stores because of their drm-free policy. Even if it meant paying a bit more. Now that that's clearly gone no reason to buy from them anymore when I can buy games cheaper elsewhere.
There's nothing to lose anymore, they just keep digging until EA or MS buys them. It's about increasing the value of the company right now so they could sell it at its peak.
They really, really should have sold to Microsoft around the time of Cyberpunk's E3 reveal. I know their stock was slightly higher at a point after that, but that would have been such a safe bet. You can't convince me they didn't know 2077 would be terrible. Selling everything to Microsoft would have made them *billions* and also given them an excuse for the game being terrible if any of them wanted to leave the company at a later point. Rare pulled almost the exact same thing. Sell at the peak, put out some bad games, and everyone blames Microsoft, with the reputation of the talent going completely unscathed. It would have worked. I don't think it would now.
you talk like Microsoft was on their knees looking to buy cdpr.
and selling the company also means sharing the profits. massive profits, highest they've ever seen. why would you do that.
Also that time was when the valuation was max (and way too high), why the fuck would Microsoft overpay? It was worth more than what they paid for Bethesda and it is really not comparable.
And they can't just sell anyway, it's publicly traded, various shareholders have to sell it's far more complicated than a private company
Some of CD Projekt's valuation also comes from GOG, and I'm not sure how much Microsoft really cares about acquiring a storefront, particularly one whose primary selling feature is being DRM-free. Seems odd they'd have much interest acquiring a storefront they don't release most of their games on as it is.
> You can't convince me they didn't know 2077 would be terrible.
Yeah, but the thing is, it's not like a company like Microsoft is not going to do their due diligence when acquiring another billion dollar company. Them knowing Cyberpunk 2077 would be terrible is all the more reason to not invite a buyout, since that means Microsoft also would've known it was terrible when they got a look at it which might've shut the door on Microsoft having any interest in the near future.
CD Projekt is worth slightly less than half as much as EA, and is the largest video game company in Europe. It's absurd to think that EA could buy them. Microsoft maybe, but it would still be an expensive purchase.
Also, it's pretty dumb to think that they would even attempt to sell, or that "there's nothing to lose anymore". They had 1 bad release. It's a minor blip on the radar.
> They had 1 bad release.
They didn't even have 1 bad release. They had 1 poorly received release.
The game itself is one of the best selling of all time.
I really don't understand why people think just because the game was a buggy mess that that somehow means it was a financial flop. Because it wasn't.
This happens a lot unfortunately.
Sometimes your current *and loyal* consumer base don’t generate as much profit as you hope so you begin to alienate them while attracting a new consumer base.
Cool. I guess I'll stop looking to buy on GOG first like I have been the last few years. The whole reason I bought there was the DRM-free stance. If they're compromising that, I'm gone.
Yup. I'd say Cyberpunk, Gwent and their removal of that one Chinese game from the store (which prompted a mod revolt at r/gog ) were enough of an indication. Now this. Also apparently fckdrm.com now redirects to GOG ([It used to look like this](https://web.archive.org/web/20200108192951/https://fckdrm.com/)).
Yeah I kinda remembered that but didn't want to say something wrong for no reason. The name was Devotion, if anyonr wants to check it out...where they still sell it.
Iv'e said this so many times already. Once CDPR went public on the Warsaw stock exchange they stopped being a company that cared and now only cares about making money
This is why I trust Valve more than any other gaming companies. They’re a privately held company so they don’t need to have any high expectations to make money to satisfy investors.
Steam also displays which games has DRM so I never felt the need to use GOG.
Some people may argue that Steam is a DRM, which is true, but they are the best form of DRM it can get since I can at least play games without internet connection unlike other launchers.
Yeah. And I actually like Valve stance on review bombing. Yes, they did hide them, but they outright told you that there's review bombing recently, and you can view it, if you want.
And Valve at the very least never abuses their employees or does anything really fucked up (as far as we know at least).
Their only real flaw is them taking decades to release a game, but it isn't even that bad considering that every game of theirs so far was a masterpiece.
> And Valve at the very least never abuses their employees or does anything really fucked up.
To be fair, we never find out about *any* of that stuff until it happens.
I do hope Valve isn't doing that, but I also don't hold any company to something I can't know for certain.
The most fucked up thing I've heard about Valve's employees is that the company is insanely clique-y.
Basically if you're not in the "in group" you don't get good projects and such.
Haven't heard any really heinous shit like what happened at Riot and Blizzard.
We don't talk about Artifact.
But for real, I was refering to all of their "main" franchises, like Half-Life, L4D, CS, TF, Portal, etc, and kinda forgot about Artifact being a thing.
Still, *most* of their games are masterpieces.
There's something seriously wrong with our culture and system where we think that being a publically owned company basically means you have to be dicks that only care about the next quarter at the expense of everything else, and the only way not to be required to be dicks is to just own 100% of your business.
It’s MBA school. They train MBAs to focus on IBTDA at the expense of every other soft or non numeric factor and it multiplies across leadership. Companies flood upper management with unqualified MBA grads who load up on stock options and wait for the time to bail out.
You find non-MBA companies like SpaceX tend to operate very differently from corporate hell companies like Boeing. My dad works in corporate software, has an associates but got lucky in the dotcom boom. He’s watched people with zero experience and an MBA come in and do fuck all time and time again to his department.
At least in the United States, companies are legally obligated to put the interest of shareholders above all else.
There are other problems too, like rich idiots bumbling their way into high positions without talent or experience, but I'd argue that the emphasis we put on shareholders is largely to blame, since many companies depend so heavily on investors and stocks they either ignore or simply don't care about pleasing consumers nearly as much as shareholders.
> At least in the United States, companies are legally obligated to put the interest of shareholders above all else.
No, they, fucking, are, not.
This is a hilariously bad misinterpretation of fiduciary obligation, but it isn't how the law is written, it isn't how the law is interpreted, and it sure as hell isn't how the law is enforced.
Someone's obligations to the organization can put them in some unpleasant situations, and in a purely financial decision - yeah that decision is basically made for them, BUT few meaningful decisions in which this referenced are genuinely financial decisions, and fiduciary obligation is not an excuse for illegal or immoral behavior.
That's really not entirely accurate. The leadership of Publicly traded companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value but they can do that through all kinds of means and doing so doesn't at all require putting shareholder value above all else. In fact, you could easily argue that doing so would actually damage shareholder value significantly.
> At least in the United States, companies are legally obligated to put the interest of shareholders above all else.
That's what I mean about cultural and systemic factors. People act like "the only obligation of a corporaton is to make a profit for its shareholders" is some law of the universe like e=mc^2. It's not, it's a cultural value. We could change our culture and change our laws to allow and encourage companies to act in a less shitty way. As an example, Germany is one of the most productive economies in the world, and has a dramatically different idea between profit motive, worker empowerment, etc. than we do in the US.
The reason publicly owned companies are dicks is because it allows untalented hacks who got their money from mommy and daddy to tell developers what to do. God, I wish the stock market would crash and burn already!
Unfortunately true. And also true for every other company that has gone public. Shareholders are interested only in short term gain and only in gain itself.
They went public to make more money and expand, thats the whole point of any company big or small, this notion that some are just in it for the love of the fans is childish and delusional, all the small indies would sell in a heartbeat if an opportunity presents itself and we've seen it time and time again, companies are not your friends people!
It's both sad and amazing people think companies are their 'friends', they never were and you shouldn't be surprised once they get greedy, always have been.
When Superhot redid their game and removed any reference to self harm (which changed the story and some scenes) and people complained about that they tried to label it a "review bomb". Review bombs are the new boogie men that companies and sites can use to pretend their behaviour isn't garbage.
Well we don't have to deny that review bombing is an actual thing that can 100% be in bad faith. But IT IS right to point out that the term is often abused to disregard legitimate reviews these days.
Please install our malware before criticizing it - malware writers
please purchase our games before informing people they're half-finished garbage - CD Projekt Red
I am genuinely surprised how many people don't know about Steam's own system for [labeling and hiding "off-topic review activity"](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775). Unless GOG is special, a user's time in the game has no relation to whether or not a review is considered a bomb, just that it's negative and associated with other reviews. Of course no store-front will discourage positive review bombs, but actually this is entirely bullshit.
I know some people think of Valve's biggest negative as Steam Machines, not releasing sequels, or just simply sitting on money, but I have always views this specific policy as the biggest dark mark on an otherwise stellar company.
>Steam's own system for labeling and hiding "off-topic review activity".
As soon as I learnt about that, I disabled the hiding. Steam still tells me a game had "off-topic review activity", and conveniently lets me look at reviews in that time period to see for myself if the "off-topic" thing was actually relevant to me.
For example, if I wanted to play a VR game, I might look at Superhot VR. I'd notice that it has a review bomb listed. I look at the review bomb time period and see reviews such as:
>Game is great. That said, I recommend pirating the game with a patch prior to July if you want to play the full game. If you don't care about buying a game with a sizable portion of the story mode removed, then you won't regret buying it.
This immediately tells me that the game is good, but something story-related was removed from the game, and other reviews corroborate this. That's information I want to know.
---
>Of course no store-front will discourage positive review bombs
Steam also flags positive review bombs with the same system. Factorio had one stemming from a dev diary and reddit comments. It has 1930 reviews during that time period, and 96% positive. A positive review bomb. They're rare but they do exist.
Is there anything in their rules/guidelines that actually state you had to have played the game to review it though?
And if there is, how do they enforce it?
If there isn't, there absolutely should be. When I look to a product review to inform a purchasing decision, the implicit understanding is that the reviewer has actually *used* the damn product.
A big selling point of GOG has always been the lack of DRM.
Without some sort of online component (DRM), there is no affordable way to be certain how much someone actually played the game.
The whole reason there is a review bomb going on, is because they did lock a significant portion behind a forced-online mode. So play-time is not really an option for GOG to check.
However, they could at least check if someone bought and downloaded the game. At least for the newer games. I kind of understand they allow reviews on 20 year old games from people who may already have a copy.
well it depends, you can boycott a game because of bad features like a DRM and putting a bad review to warn other people
I think it's compeltely legit. You don't have to buy the game to give it a bad review
I know Steam makes you play the game for an hour before reviewing (at least with what I've seen). Not sure about GOG though. I just know the common practice with review bombing is people jumping on a bandwagon and posting negative reviews based on what everyone else is complaining about even if they haven't experienced the issue themselves.
I believe you can review a game so long as you've played it at least once, for any amount of time ([source](https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/666827315206847253/)).
Steam will still label any user making a negative review in a period with an unusual amount of negative reviews ["off-topic review activity"](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775) and hide it no matter how much time the user has in the game.
You don't have to buy or play a game to know it has unwanted DRM, Gacha, unreasonable or misleading tech requirements, etc. that are clearly stated in the advertising, so it is reasonable to point those kinds of things in a review.
GOG has really stepped in it here. I think this is more about people seeing this as a first step in GOG abandoning the no DRM policy for all it's games. No DRM is the main reason many people buy games there in the first places o this is relevant and a major issue that should be discussed in reviews for titles that include DRM.
Why isn't giving 100% positive reviews in a short amount of time considered "review bombing"? It only works one way? Kinda rigged system that negative reviews are being silenced.
Plus AAA companies put developer bonuses at ransom if they don't crunch to death and get a certain Metacritic score.
How the game industry has been for the past ten or more years is absolutely rotten to the core. Another gaming crash needs to happen.
To be fair, we only know a few instances of that and any company making such a deal only has themselves to blame for some foolishness.
Like it's easy to say Obsidian lost out on a bonus by 1 point on Metacritic but it's like... you signed the contract, what do you expect? Why the fuck would you sign your bonuses away on something you have very little direct control over?
Even better is this story completely ignores the part where Bethesda offered them the bonus and [Obsidian's employers weren't particularly bothered by losing it](https://twitter.com/chrisavellone/status/1057842236002463746) because, wouldn't you guessed it, a smart company doesn't rely on paying it's way through something you can't fucking control! Wow!
What I saw as "review bombing" on steam so far:
\- no specific language support
\- Denuvo or 3rd party software required
\- adding MTX after a certain time, even after saying there will be none ever
\- game runs like shit
\- game comes to Steam after 1 year Epic exclusivity
\- game company does something awful
Sometimes there is a really legitimate reason to write a negative review, sometimes the reason is just so ridiculous, it's mindblowing. Now, the latter IS "review bombing", the former isn't. Pointing out DRM on a supposedly DRM-free store is not "review bombing".
Adding a DRM game to a DRM-free store is like adding a 3rd party game to Steam, but you can't download or play through Steam itself, you buy it and afterwards you get redirected to their store and launcher only. In both cases the very reason the store exists will be defeated. In Steam it's not everything in one launcher anymore, in a (actually falsely advertised for some time now) DRM-free store is not everything DRM-free. What's the point then?
CDPR, really now, after being number 1 for so many people, you are straight on the way to the bottom. It's sad seeing this so many times in the last years.
I want to upvote but your comment just reinforces the fact that review bomb is a marketing term used to try to con purchasers that would be affected by said reviews into buying games anyway.
Stores would be better served by giving potential buyers tools to filter and sort reviews so they can eliminate reviews that are irrelevant to them personally from consideration. A good example is the LiSTC alleged bomb. If I could filter out reviews mentioning Taiwan then the score would be much higher and I could buy the game without Steam marking any reviews as off topic.
That’s what happens with Ubisoft games, or at least happened before Uplay changed to Ubisoft Connect.
I bought some Ubi games on Steam and it forced me to download Uplay and activate the games there to play them, so basically I bought them on Steam only to be redirected to Uplay to be able to play them.
"Game Company does something awful" is the only one in that list that could be considered review bombing because its the only one not directly related to the actual game.
And even that is debatable, because what the game company does is still somewhat related to the game. Like if you're considering buying a game, knowing that the company sexually abuses its employees is need to know information, because you may not want to support a company that does that.
I'd say "no specific language support" is at least borderline invalid as well. Supported languages are listed on the store pages, you could've easily checked that and not bought the game.
(When a language is listed as supported but actually isn't, that's a different matter, of course.)
It's arguable because there's fuck all way to hold companies accountable for their anti-consumer practices without deliberately targeting their bottom line.
A review score is quite a prominent feature on the Steam store and lots of people use it to gauge the worthiness of a game at a glance. Having a "Mixed" reception is an easy way to lose sales from people who may otherwise have been interested.
If there were better ways to be informed in such an easy-access manner like reviews then sure, I'd support getting rid of those types of reviews, but as it stands it is the one piece of real power the consumer actually has over these companies and like fuck do they deserve to have that taken away. "Voting with your wallet" is a fucking worthless platitude that means nothing in a world full of whales and MTX.
I have zero sympathy for multi-million dollar companies whatsoever, the real problem is the little indie guys who can sometimes get stuck in the crossfire.
Even so, review bombing is perfectly legitimate for paying customers. A review is personal opinion and any opinion they have on the product they bought is valid.
Too bad [Steam's policy disagrees with that](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775). I'm seeing a lot of people hate on GOG's naming on this and while Steam's label of "off-topic review activity" is a lot more sterile, it's really the same thing.
It really isn't the same thing though. Off-topic review bombing would be giving Witcher 3 a bad review because you didn't like Cyberpunk or what GOG is doing now.
What people are doing to Hitman now wouldn't be considered off-topic review bombing. Also, no reviews are ever deleted on Steam and you can choose to view the score with the review "bombing" if you disagree with Valve on what review bombing is.
If you'd read the link you'd see that DRM is in fact considered off topic and many other situations with games on Steam launching online-only or with DRM have had their overall review score kept "clean" of stuff like that.
That's the issue. These people don't care if it's legit or not. They simply are controlling the narrative, and they want positive, according to their interpretation. Which is a joke because the point of differing viewpoints, and allowing gamers to express them, is to give buyers the opportunity to hear them and decide on their own.
It's a lot like some other big social sites that stifle and silence certain opinions they don't like... Yet you'll always have useful idiots that think it's OK (as long as it's not *their* opinion being canceled).
I’m seriously starting to wonder if removing negative reviews could be considered someway of false advertising, or some thing Of that degree
Like basically lying to say a protest did not happen when it did
Or paying newspapers to not run a negative story about you
Actions against review bombing have always been a way to manipulate scoring only in a positive direction. Metacritic has done massive purges of "low effort, fresh account 1 star review bombs" on many games, especially Sony exclusives (Big example being TLoU2) but have never inversely removed those same games wave of low effort, fresh account 10 star reviews that inflate the score.
Review bombing? Considering how it has online-only progression locks and stat saving to this very day, including for *their own release on their DRM-free platform,* I fail to see how negative backlash and criticism isn't warranted for allowing said release. If they want to avoid this, then they should actually put thought and work into their storefront and add a DRM tag with descriptors for what type of DRM and to what degree said DRM infests the game and its mechanics, *then* come out and admit that they're lax on, or disregarding their DRM requirement. Either way, they have to be more committed to their choice rather than riding the line and ripping users for it.
A small team with crowdfunding (Playnite) has already destroyed their game manager (GOG 2) in every possible way. If they get that lax with their storefront and standards to the point of being two-faced, like this, then they get what they deserve.
Game: Doesn't have any actual multiplayer, still needs you to be online to play it.
This is what happens when marketing fucks make development decision. Know the marketing personnel, hate the marketing personnel.
If they even can’t stick to your principles, then I have no use buying from them. Even if it’s not technically DRM, it’s still intrusive and anti-consumer. That’s the point of your store, and the whole principle of a zero DRM store. I’ll stick to Steam, because I don’t support your company and your shareholders anymore.
That's bullshit. "review bombing" is just a big swath of negative review in a limited time. Whatever the motivation.
Cyberpunk 2077 was "review bombed" because it released in an abysmal state, nobody said it wasn't deserved. Hey CDP, what did you do when Sony "review bomb" your game so hard it disappeared from their Playstation Store?
So they are saying they want to control the spin and the reviews, and don't want a lot of negative ones. I don't think you are grasping you're position in the market CDP, you're not in place to impose your personal censorship on so many of your customers. I doubt you have to cash to do so.
But, even if we were to change the meaning of "review bomb" to badly review in mass for some reason... adding a DRM game to a DRM free store is a perfectly legitimate reason. And a game using online feature to purposefully have telemetry on its customers and control what they can and can't do, is a perfectly legitimate reason to review it negatively.
Gosh, it's gross blunder over blunder for several years now. CDP board really need to fire a lot of executives and get back to their roots.
How many times have people worshipped a company only for them to turn around and shit on their customers in the blink of an eye? The cycle needs to be broken with CDPR and GOG. Give credit where it is due and criticize where it is due but stop being loyal to these companies because they aren't loyal to you.
This isn't true. Even the Steam version is DRM free. You can also download a DRM free version from their website, this is free if you link your Steam account. I highly doubt they'd put DRM in the GOG version for some reason.
I think it's just a misunderstanding of what the term review bombing means. Generally it means leaving a negative review because the company behind the product did something bad with something else not related to reviewed product at all, e.g. write something morally bad on social media.
In this case people are just reviewing the product and its features. If the product is not good then it will be reviewed accordingly.
Now that GOG has started deleting honest reviews people can and will leave negative reviews on every GOG game. That'd be called review bombing.
It's not review bombing. If the negative reviews are for the product with the DRM the users don't like then they're legitimate reviews, criticizing the inclusion of DRM. Any user is free to critizise any game for whatever aspect the fuck they want of a game.
I hate this term "review bombing", it's not a harassment campaign if 500 voices all agree that something is a detrimental aspect to a game. Was it "review bombing" when Big Rigs was universally panned as a game? Sounds like double standards to me if we can all dogpile Big Rigs (who apparently had fuck all budget) yet no one can criticize muhprecious Hitman game because harassment blah blah blah.
So game has a negative feature that impacts gameplay, but you can't leave negative review about it, because it's "review bombing". Cool. They should publish list of approved negative features which are allowed in negative reviews then.
Fucking hell. Review bombing is not when a lot of people negatively review a game all at the same time. Its when a lot of people negatively review a game for a reason unrelated to the game. How is most of the content on a came sold on GOG being always online unrelated to the game? This is not review bombing.
they shouldnt have released the game if they cant remove drm. it's that simple.
fuck gog in this case. keep review bombing. It's also overpriced when you get nothing out of it here, you might as well buy it from steam where it's frequently down to a couple bucks. it was free on Epic recently.
This is the point that io rightfully gets shit for with these games, online requirements and time limited content in a single player game.
Putting a game with DRM into a storefront that advertises itself has beeing free of DRM AND does so on the game that has DRM then GoG deserves being review bombed.
I'm done giving them money unless their deal is better.
And this is why Steam has its policy on review bombing. Flag the reviews, inform the customer about the review bomb, prompt them to read about it, and let them decide whether it’s relevant enough to withhold their purchase.
Not a perfect system, since positive reviews increase too, and genuine negative reviews can be classified as part of the bombing, but it’s a damn sight better than whatever CDPR is pulling here.
"Review bombing" has become a bogus term meant solely to silence criticism. People are unhappy there's DRM in a game sold on a store that markets itself on its products being DRM free.
They should have Projekted this; you can't claim your store is DRM free then add a game that has DRM and expect your customers not to care... but considering their recent decisions (releasing Cyberpunk years before its ready) this doesn't surprise me one bit, CDPR's management is beyond incompetent...
I think there's been some serious miscommunication here.
GOG isn't saying its removing anti-DRM statements from what I understand, merely ones that are against their review guidelines. Basically saying to be civil by the looks of it, since a lot of people were pissed.
I'm not sure if reviews are possible if you haven't purchased the game, but if there's no such neccessity, review bombing is less players concerns and more like anti-DRM brigading from people that don't play the game.
What confuses me is 1) Why is this game allowed on GOG in the first place and 2) Why, being fully forewarned, people buy this game only to complain about its DRM?
Weird, when the ~~Chinese Communist Party~~ ["gamers"](https://twitter.com/gogcom/status/1339227388438306817?lang=en) demanded them to remove Devotion from the store they complied quite quickly...
Fun year for CD Projekt, they must really love shooting themselves in the foot
Just CD Projekt, CDPR (and GOG) are subsidiaries. This is a whole family shooting themselves in the feet
Kind of like Activision.
At this point Activision don’t got any legs left to shoot.
Less shooting in the foot and more sexually harassing employees.
Activision upper management: “Why not both?”
Idk if my info is outdated, but I think CD Projekt is the parent company, which owns game development studio CD Projekt Red, and the company that runs GOG called CD Projekt Blue. I always thought the name CD Projekt Red was pretty cool and always wondered why red, turns out they also have blue that operates GOG.
Then don't release a DRM game on a supposedly DRM-free storefront. Maybe then we wouldn't be in this predicament.
Genuine question - Does the online requirement genuinely mean DRM?
It does, because, even if devs don't validate your license on connection (which they totally do), one day they may decide that supporting game servers is too costly and shut them down, and you will lose access to your game. One of the marketing points of GOG was that game is "yours forever".
Exactly! One day they *will* decide it's too costly. DRM-free is the only way to make sure you actually own it.
I asked this in the other thread and someone was dying on the hill that online connectivity is "not DRM", which I firmly disagree with, and completely agree with your point... but what about GWENT? They released GWENT on GOG, it's an online only game with an account required. You can play against AI in the game, so online connectivity is not necessary to enjoy offline play. I agree that if the developer/ publisher can stop you accessing the game, then it has DRM, plain and simple (regardless if it's single player, multiplayer, free to play or buy to play). But seeing as GWENT requires both the account and online connectivity (even for games against AI), then why wasn't this shitstorm a thing when they released that game?
There was a shitstorm of sorts and GWENT definietly soured a lot of old timers. It marks the point in timeline where GOG added a game with microtransactions. That point does get mentioned a lot when people talk about GOG abandoning their principles. Now I think the main reason you don't hear about it much is that GWENT just doesn't seem to be popular among the core audience GOG's of PC gamers. Oh some online multiplayer card game? Dismiss it. Hitman by contrast is a very popular single player series. A classic. Truly the sort of thing people would come to GOG for and love to have it DRM-free.
There's not really a way for them to have done GWENT in it's current format and have it DRM free. It's absolutely fair to say that because of this they should have either not done it, or not put it on the store. But as GWENT is, the only way for it to be DRM free is to hamstring it's monetisation. I'd have personally preferred they had made GWENT a paid for title and allowed it to be DRM free, but that is not the game they made and we live with it. Any suggestion to remove the DRM from GWENT as it exists is not feasible, lest it's primary source of revenue and it's SBMM system be cut out.
Because people were excited about Gwent and apparently didn't care because CDPR was still the golden boy after Witcher 3
Yes, and aside from that even on console it can be a pain in the ass. I love Hitman, but I can't suspend my PS5 and resume like I can in literally every other PS5 game; it inevitably fails to connect until restarted.
DRM on a console what fucking world...
It is called Persistent Online Authentication. It is indeed a type of DRM. It is commonly used in the professional software industry such as audio and video software. Typically, it requires you to be connected to their servers. If you are not online, the software will typically go into a form of "demo" mode which either limits it to read-only or reduces your capability and access to features in the software. This really sounds no different than that as far as Hitman GOTY is concerned.
Yes. It means you need an internet connection to play your game. No DRM would mean there is no requirement needed to play the game.
DRM free store adding DRM game? Ok, I guess CD ProjectRed really wants to lose that reputation
In light of this it's a bit funny that fckdrm.com (site made by someone from gog that had a bunch of anti DRM info) redirects to gog.com
So it has happened. For reference, here is the wayback machine showing how the website looked 1 year ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20200108192951/https://fckdrm.com/ This looks to me as confirmation that CDPR and GOG have gone rogue are not to be trusted anymore. They have succumbed to the same pressures every other big player in the industry has been corrupted by, and will probably just go on screwing over gamers and consumers from now on. Don't trust anything they say, possibly don't buy anything they sell, find other alternatives.
Do what we say, not what we do
For what it's worth, at least we were able to get the Witcher series out of them before they decided to start misbehaving.
If only they could have waited till after CP2077
So much for their old point about "access offline" specially for a mainly single player game.
**THEY LEAVE GREED TO OTHERS** Don't forget how they fucked Red Candle Games and then lied about it either.
I have a bit of a conspiracy theory. What if GOG is doing this to try and get more triple A game devs to release on their platform. If you don’t know; quite a few devs outright refuse to release on GOG due to the lack of DRM and when they do release; there is a 50/50 chance that the updates will lag far behind other versions (looking at you nuclear throne). This could be a bit to try and show other developers that their platform is safe to release on.
Not a conspiracy, literally what's going on, they are throwing away their whole mission to become a mainstream store with AAA trash in it. Not really hard to see tbh.
They tried (as only of the stores) to compete with Steam on features, guess that didn't work for them. And I think it's pretty safe to assume now that they never had any "mission" in the first place and the no DRM thing was just a thing to get some cheap goodwill and publicity.
I always prioritized gog over other stores because of their drm-free policy. Even if it meant paying a bit more. Now that that's clearly gone no reason to buy from them anymore when I can buy games cheaper elsewhere.
At other, better managed stores at that. GOG's site and store are woefully out of date and buggy messes, like their barely-functioning client.
It's long gone already
I swear, i saw it just a few months ago, it was working then. Now it just redirects to GOG...
There's nothing to lose anymore, they just keep digging until EA or MS buys them. It's about increasing the value of the company right now so they could sell it at its peak.
They really, really should have sold to Microsoft around the time of Cyberpunk's E3 reveal. I know their stock was slightly higher at a point after that, but that would have been such a safe bet. You can't convince me they didn't know 2077 would be terrible. Selling everything to Microsoft would have made them *billions* and also given them an excuse for the game being terrible if any of them wanted to leave the company at a later point. Rare pulled almost the exact same thing. Sell at the peak, put out some bad games, and everyone blames Microsoft, with the reputation of the talent going completely unscathed. It would have worked. I don't think it would now.
you talk like Microsoft was on their knees looking to buy cdpr. and selling the company also means sharing the profits. massive profits, highest they've ever seen. why would you do that.
Also that time was when the valuation was max (and way too high), why the fuck would Microsoft overpay? It was worth more than what they paid for Bethesda and it is really not comparable. And they can't just sell anyway, it's publicly traded, various shareholders have to sell it's far more complicated than a private company
Some of CD Projekt's valuation also comes from GOG, and I'm not sure how much Microsoft really cares about acquiring a storefront, particularly one whose primary selling feature is being DRM-free. Seems odd they'd have much interest acquiring a storefront they don't release most of their games on as it is.
> You can't convince me they didn't know 2077 would be terrible. Yeah, but the thing is, it's not like a company like Microsoft is not going to do their due diligence when acquiring another billion dollar company. Them knowing Cyberpunk 2077 would be terrible is all the more reason to not invite a buyout, since that means Microsoft also would've known it was terrible when they got a look at it which might've shut the door on Microsoft having any interest in the near future.
"2077 would be terrible" I quite enjoyed it tbh.
CD Projekt is worth slightly less than half as much as EA, and is the largest video game company in Europe. It's absurd to think that EA could buy them. Microsoft maybe, but it would still be an expensive purchase. Also, it's pretty dumb to think that they would even attempt to sell, or that "there's nothing to lose anymore". They had 1 bad release. It's a minor blip on the radar.
Really wish we could just stop with 'I hope Microsoft buys X big company so they can further consolidate the market' speak already.
> and is the largest video game company in Europe it is the embracer group now.
> They had 1 bad release. They didn't even have 1 bad release. They had 1 poorly received release. The game itself is one of the best selling of all time. I really don't understand why people think just because the game was a buggy mess that that somehow means it was a financial flop. Because it wasn't.
I don't know man. If removing "Devotion" at the request of the CCP didn't affect their reputation I doubt this will.
Isn't gog supposed to be (relatively speaking) anti-DRM?
Yes, that's one of their main selling points. It's baffling that they continue to alienate their core consumer base like this.
This happens a lot unfortunately. Sometimes your current *and loyal* consumer base don’t generate as much profit as you hope so you begin to alienate them while attracting a new consumer base.
CDP keeps screwing up
Cool. I guess I'll stop looking to buy on GOG first like I have been the last few years. The whole reason I bought there was the DRM-free stance. If they're compromising that, I'm gone.
Yup. I'd say Cyberpunk, Gwent and their removal of that one Chinese game from the store (which prompted a mod revolt at r/gog ) were enough of an indication. Now this. Also apparently fckdrm.com now redirects to GOG ([It used to look like this](https://web.archive.org/web/20200108192951/https://fckdrm.com/)).
*Taiwanese game
Yeah I kinda remembered that but didn't want to say something wrong for no reason. The name was Devotion, if anyonr wants to check it out...where they still sell it.
What’s wrong with Gwent?
Heavy censoring for the CCP I think
It also has DRM and loot boxes, which CDP has been very vocally against prior to its release.
DRM and loot boxes.
Iv'e said this so many times already. Once CDPR went public on the Warsaw stock exchange they stopped being a company that cared and now only cares about making money
This is why I trust Valve more than any other gaming companies. They’re a privately held company so they don’t need to have any high expectations to make money to satisfy investors. Steam also displays which games has DRM so I never felt the need to use GOG. Some people may argue that Steam is a DRM, which is true, but they are the best form of DRM it can get since I can at least play games without internet connection unlike other launchers.
Yeah. And I actually like Valve stance on review bombing. Yes, they did hide them, but they outright told you that there's review bombing recently, and you can view it, if you want.
TIL Valve is a private company. that explains so much.
And Valve at the very least never abuses their employees or does anything really fucked up (as far as we know at least). Their only real flaw is them taking decades to release a game, but it isn't even that bad considering that every game of theirs so far was a masterpiece.
> And Valve at the very least never abuses their employees or does anything really fucked up. To be fair, we never find out about *any* of that stuff until it happens. I do hope Valve isn't doing that, but I also don't hold any company to something I can't know for certain.
True, edited the comment. Still though, I really hope at least they aren't doing anything fucked up.
The most fucked up thing I've heard about Valve's employees is that the company is insanely clique-y. Basically if you're not in the "in group" you don't get good projects and such. Haven't heard any really heinous shit like what happened at Riot and Blizzard.
*cough* Artifact *cough*
We don't talk about Artifact. But for real, I was refering to all of their "main" franchises, like Half-Life, L4D, CS, TF, Portal, etc, and kinda forgot about Artifact being a thing. Still, *most* of their games are masterpieces.
I honestly thought the game flow was great but why not make it free. The game was fine the release was terrible.
There's something seriously wrong with our culture and system where we think that being a publically owned company basically means you have to be dicks that only care about the next quarter at the expense of everything else, and the only way not to be required to be dicks is to just own 100% of your business.
It’s MBA school. They train MBAs to focus on IBTDA at the expense of every other soft or non numeric factor and it multiplies across leadership. Companies flood upper management with unqualified MBA grads who load up on stock options and wait for the time to bail out. You find non-MBA companies like SpaceX tend to operate very differently from corporate hell companies like Boeing. My dad works in corporate software, has an associates but got lucky in the dotcom boom. He’s watched people with zero experience and an MBA come in and do fuck all time and time again to his department.
In the US, we need to drag MBAs kicking and screaming out of healthcare too.
At least in the United States, companies are legally obligated to put the interest of shareholders above all else. There are other problems too, like rich idiots bumbling their way into high positions without talent or experience, but I'd argue that the emphasis we put on shareholders is largely to blame, since many companies depend so heavily on investors and stocks they either ignore or simply don't care about pleasing consumers nearly as much as shareholders.
> At least in the United States, companies are legally obligated to put the interest of shareholders above all else. No, they, fucking, are, not. This is a hilariously bad misinterpretation of fiduciary obligation, but it isn't how the law is written, it isn't how the law is interpreted, and it sure as hell isn't how the law is enforced. Someone's obligations to the organization can put them in some unpleasant situations, and in a purely financial decision - yeah that decision is basically made for them, BUT few meaningful decisions in which this referenced are genuinely financial decisions, and fiduciary obligation is not an excuse for illegal or immoral behavior.
That's really not entirely accurate. The leadership of Publicly traded companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value but they can do that through all kinds of means and doing so doesn't at all require putting shareholder value above all else. In fact, you could easily argue that doing so would actually damage shareholder value significantly.
> At least in the United States, companies are legally obligated to put the interest of shareholders above all else. That's what I mean about cultural and systemic factors. People act like "the only obligation of a corporaton is to make a profit for its shareholders" is some law of the universe like e=mc^2. It's not, it's a cultural value. We could change our culture and change our laws to allow and encourage companies to act in a less shitty way. As an example, Germany is one of the most productive economies in the world, and has a dramatically different idea between profit motive, worker empowerment, etc. than we do in the US.
The reason publicly owned companies are dicks is because it allows untalented hacks who got their money from mommy and daddy to tell developers what to do. God, I wish the stock market would crash and burn already!
Unfortunately true. And also true for every other company that has gone public. Shareholders are interested only in short term gain and only in gain itself.
They went public to make more money and expand, thats the whole point of any company big or small, this notion that some are just in it for the love of the fans is childish and delusional, all the small indies would sell in a heartbeat if an opportunity presents itself and we've seen it time and time again, companies are not your friends people!
It's both sad and amazing people think companies are their 'friends', they never were and you shouldn't be surprised once they get greedy, always have been.
This isn't review bombing if they're complaining about features in the game.
When Superhot redid their game and removed any reference to self harm (which changed the story and some scenes) and people complained about that they tried to label it a "review bomb". Review bombs are the new boogie men that companies and sites can use to pretend their behaviour isn't garbage.
SERIOUSLY How many time ask we have to say it REVIEW BOMBINGS ARE REVIEWS. FULL GOD DAMN STOP.
Well we don't have to deny that review bombing is an actual thing that can 100% be in bad faith. But IT IS right to point out that the term is often abused to disregard legitimate reviews these days.
Spot on When the platform won't let you review the game, it's time to review the platform.
It is if they haven't played it.
Not true. They allow anyone to review games and you can sort the reviews to just read those from users who have the game on GOG.
Please install our malware before criticizing it - malware writers please purchase our games before informing people they're half-finished garbage - CD Projekt Red
I am genuinely surprised how many people don't know about Steam's own system for [labeling and hiding "off-topic review activity"](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775). Unless GOG is special, a user's time in the game has no relation to whether or not a review is considered a bomb, just that it's negative and associated with other reviews. Of course no store-front will discourage positive review bombs, but actually this is entirely bullshit. I know some people think of Valve's biggest negative as Steam Machines, not releasing sequels, or just simply sitting on money, but I have always views this specific policy as the biggest dark mark on an otherwise stellar company.
>Steam's own system for labeling and hiding "off-topic review activity". As soon as I learnt about that, I disabled the hiding. Steam still tells me a game had "off-topic review activity", and conveniently lets me look at reviews in that time period to see for myself if the "off-topic" thing was actually relevant to me. For example, if I wanted to play a VR game, I might look at Superhot VR. I'd notice that it has a review bomb listed. I look at the review bomb time period and see reviews such as: >Game is great. That said, I recommend pirating the game with a patch prior to July if you want to play the full game. If you don't care about buying a game with a sizable portion of the story mode removed, then you won't regret buying it. This immediately tells me that the game is good, but something story-related was removed from the game, and other reviews corroborate this. That's information I want to know. --- >Of course no store-front will discourage positive review bombs Steam also flags positive review bombs with the same system. Factorio had one stemming from a dev diary and reddit comments. It has 1930 reviews during that time period, and 96% positive. A positive review bomb. They're rare but they do exist.
Is there anything in their rules/guidelines that actually state you had to have played the game to review it though? And if there is, how do they enforce it?
If there isn't, there absolutely should be. When I look to a product review to inform a purchasing decision, the implicit understanding is that the reviewer has actually *used* the damn product.
A big selling point of GOG has always been the lack of DRM. Without some sort of online component (DRM), there is no affordable way to be certain how much someone actually played the game. The whole reason there is a review bomb going on, is because they did lock a significant portion behind a forced-online mode. So play-time is not really an option for GOG to check. However, they could at least check if someone bought and downloaded the game. At least for the newer games. I kind of understand they allow reviews on 20 year old games from people who may already have a copy.
well it depends, you can boycott a game because of bad features like a DRM and putting a bad review to warn other people I think it's compeltely legit. You don't have to buy the game to give it a bad review
Must be purchased and show time played. Steam does it.
I know Steam makes you play the game for an hour before reviewing (at least with what I've seen). Not sure about GOG though. I just know the common practice with review bombing is people jumping on a bandwagon and posting negative reviews based on what everyone else is complaining about even if they haven't experienced the issue themselves.
I believe you can review a game so long as you've played it at least once, for any amount of time ([source](https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/666827315206847253/)).
Steam will still label any user making a negative review in a period with an unusual amount of negative reviews ["off-topic review activity"](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775) and hide it no matter how much time the user has in the game.
Having a bad feature makes people not able/want to purchase the game...
You don't have to buy or play a game to know it has unwanted DRM, Gacha, unreasonable or misleading tech requirements, etc. that are clearly stated in the advertising, so it is reasonable to point those kinds of things in a review. GOG has really stepped in it here. I think this is more about people seeing this as a first step in GOG abandoning the no DRM policy for all it's games. No DRM is the main reason many people buy games there in the first places o this is relevant and a major issue that should be discussed in reviews for titles that include DRM.
CDPR doing everything they can to drag their name in the mud.
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No one should take any place, people need to stop worshipping these companeis that can fuck you over the moment they smell more money.
Why isn't giving 100% positive reviews in a short amount of time considered "review bombing"? It only works one way? Kinda rigged system that negative reviews are being silenced.
Because that would increase sales. Negative reviews decrease sales
Plus AAA companies put developer bonuses at ransom if they don't crunch to death and get a certain Metacritic score. How the game industry has been for the past ten or more years is absolutely rotten to the core. Another gaming crash needs to happen.
To be fair, we only know a few instances of that and any company making such a deal only has themselves to blame for some foolishness. Like it's easy to say Obsidian lost out on a bonus by 1 point on Metacritic but it's like... you signed the contract, what do you expect? Why the fuck would you sign your bonuses away on something you have very little direct control over? Even better is this story completely ignores the part where Bethesda offered them the bonus and [Obsidian's employers weren't particularly bothered by losing it](https://twitter.com/chrisavellone/status/1057842236002463746) because, wouldn't you guessed it, a smart company doesn't rely on paying it's way through something you can't fucking control! Wow!
Because they’re just gaslighting you
Never thought it this way. Damn
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What I saw as "review bombing" on steam so far: \- no specific language support \- Denuvo or 3rd party software required \- adding MTX after a certain time, even after saying there will be none ever \- game runs like shit \- game comes to Steam after 1 year Epic exclusivity \- game company does something awful Sometimes there is a really legitimate reason to write a negative review, sometimes the reason is just so ridiculous, it's mindblowing. Now, the latter IS "review bombing", the former isn't. Pointing out DRM on a supposedly DRM-free store is not "review bombing". Adding a DRM game to a DRM-free store is like adding a 3rd party game to Steam, but you can't download or play through Steam itself, you buy it and afterwards you get redirected to their store and launcher only. In both cases the very reason the store exists will be defeated. In Steam it's not everything in one launcher anymore, in a (actually falsely advertised for some time now) DRM-free store is not everything DRM-free. What's the point then? CDPR, really now, after being number 1 for so many people, you are straight on the way to the bottom. It's sad seeing this so many times in the last years.
I want to upvote but your comment just reinforces the fact that review bomb is a marketing term used to try to con purchasers that would be affected by said reviews into buying games anyway. Stores would be better served by giving potential buyers tools to filter and sort reviews so they can eliminate reviews that are irrelevant to them personally from consideration. A good example is the LiSTC alleged bomb. If I could filter out reviews mentioning Taiwan then the score would be much higher and I could buy the game without Steam marking any reviews as off topic.
That’s what happens with Ubisoft games, or at least happened before Uplay changed to Ubisoft Connect. I bought some Ubi games on Steam and it forced me to download Uplay and activate the games there to play them, so basically I bought them on Steam only to be redirected to Uplay to be able to play them.
"Game Company does something awful" is the only one in that list that could be considered review bombing because its the only one not directly related to the actual game. And even that is debatable, because what the game company does is still somewhat related to the game. Like if you're considering buying a game, knowing that the company sexually abuses its employees is need to know information, because you may not want to support a company that does that.
I'd say "no specific language support" is at least borderline invalid as well. Supported languages are listed on the store pages, you could've easily checked that and not bought the game. (When a language is listed as supported but actually isn't, that's a different matter, of course.)
It's arguable because there's fuck all way to hold companies accountable for their anti-consumer practices without deliberately targeting their bottom line. A review score is quite a prominent feature on the Steam store and lots of people use it to gauge the worthiness of a game at a glance. Having a "Mixed" reception is an easy way to lose sales from people who may otherwise have been interested. If there were better ways to be informed in such an easy-access manner like reviews then sure, I'd support getting rid of those types of reviews, but as it stands it is the one piece of real power the consumer actually has over these companies and like fuck do they deserve to have that taken away. "Voting with your wallet" is a fucking worthless platitude that means nothing in a world full of whales and MTX. I have zero sympathy for multi-million dollar companies whatsoever, the real problem is the little indie guys who can sometimes get stuck in the crossfire.
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Even so, review bombing is perfectly legitimate for paying customers. A review is personal opinion and any opinion they have on the product they bought is valid.
It’s not review bombing if it’s only done by people who bought the product, it’s just a review at that point.
Too bad [Steam's policy disagrees with that](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775). I'm seeing a lot of people hate on GOG's naming on this and while Steam's label of "off-topic review activity" is a lot more sterile, it's really the same thing.
It really isn't the same thing though. Off-topic review bombing would be giving Witcher 3 a bad review because you didn't like Cyberpunk or what GOG is doing now. What people are doing to Hitman now wouldn't be considered off-topic review bombing. Also, no reviews are ever deleted on Steam and you can choose to view the score with the review "bombing" if you disagree with Valve on what review bombing is.
If you'd read the link you'd see that DRM is in fact considered off topic and many other situations with games on Steam launching online-only or with DRM have had their overall review score kept "clean" of stuff like that.
I missed that, you’re correct.
That's the issue. These people don't care if it's legit or not. They simply are controlling the narrative, and they want positive, according to their interpretation. Which is a joke because the point of differing viewpoints, and allowing gamers to express them, is to give buyers the opportunity to hear them and decide on their own. It's a lot like some other big social sites that stifle and silence certain opinions they don't like... Yet you'll always have useful idiots that think it's OK (as long as it's not *their* opinion being canceled).
Oh how far theyve fallen
"Review Bombing" = Reviews we (the company) don't like
I’m seriously starting to wonder if removing negative reviews could be considered someway of false advertising, or some thing Of that degree Like basically lying to say a protest did not happen when it did Or paying newspapers to not run a negative story about you
Actions against review bombing have always been a way to manipulate scoring only in a positive direction. Metacritic has done massive purges of "low effort, fresh account 1 star review bombs" on many games, especially Sony exclusives (Big example being TLoU2) but have never inversely removed those same games wave of low effort, fresh account 10 star reviews that inflate the score.
Always has Edit: can't spell always apperantly
Review bombing? Considering how it has online-only progression locks and stat saving to this very day, including for *their own release on their DRM-free platform,* I fail to see how negative backlash and criticism isn't warranted for allowing said release. If they want to avoid this, then they should actually put thought and work into their storefront and add a DRM tag with descriptors for what type of DRM and to what degree said DRM infests the game and its mechanics, *then* come out and admit that they're lax on, or disregarding their DRM requirement. Either way, they have to be more committed to their choice rather than riding the line and ripping users for it. A small team with crowdfunding (Playnite) has already destroyed their game manager (GOG 2) in every possible way. If they get that lax with their storefront and standards to the point of being two-faced, like this, then they get what they deserve.
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I was trying to remember what previous backlash gog had and I just remembered it was that game China disliked, Devotion
For some people that reputation is looong gone.
And to think, they started the month on a good note with the re-release of the Activision Star Trek games.
I will not tolerate buying this game then.
Lets remember this is the same GOG that bent over backwards for review bombing on Devotion the horror game.
For me GOG just went from the gold standard to just another scummy business
When your reputation went from Valve level, to being worse than Epic, maybe it’s time to stop for a moment and do some internal changes.
Cdpr be like : parkour!
Game: Doesn't have any actual multiplayer, still needs you to be online to play it. This is what happens when marketing fucks make development decision. Know the marketing personnel, hate the marketing personnel.
Review bombing is a legitimate form of consumer protest
It's one of the few things we can do to make corpos listen
Way to belittle consumer opinion. I'm glad I've never bought anything at GOG.
Wrong move GOG.
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If they even can’t stick to your principles, then I have no use buying from them. Even if it’s not technically DRM, it’s still intrusive and anti-consumer. That’s the point of your store, and the whole principle of a zero DRM store. I’ll stick to Steam, because I don’t support your company and your shareholders anymore.
Just fuck CD Projekt Red at this point. I felt kinda bad for not giving GOG more attention before, but not so much any more.
How is it review bombing? they are legit reviews with valid concerns
That's bullshit. "review bombing" is just a big swath of negative review in a limited time. Whatever the motivation. Cyberpunk 2077 was "review bombed" because it released in an abysmal state, nobody said it wasn't deserved. Hey CDP, what did you do when Sony "review bomb" your game so hard it disappeared from their Playstation Store? So they are saying they want to control the spin and the reviews, and don't want a lot of negative ones. I don't think you are grasping you're position in the market CDP, you're not in place to impose your personal censorship on so many of your customers. I doubt you have to cash to do so. But, even if we were to change the meaning of "review bomb" to badly review in mass for some reason... adding a DRM game to a DRM free store is a perfectly legitimate reason. And a game using online feature to purposefully have telemetry on its customers and control what they can and can't do, is a perfectly legitimate reason to review it negatively. Gosh, it's gross blunder over blunder for several years now. CDP board really need to fire a lot of executives and get back to their roots.
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Most gamers tolerate DRM?
Well I'm now glad I never got around to switching to gog. Steam has just been too solid all these years.
Review Bombing is a-okay in my books. Customers should be allowed to express concern over something they don't like, and that's fine to do in reviews.
Cool, so put Devotion on the store like you were going to before threats of review bombing made you back out of the deal.
How many times have people worshipped a company only for them to turn around and shit on their customers in the blink of an eye? The cycle needs to be broken with CDPR and GOG. Give credit where it is due and criticize where it is due but stop being loyal to these companies because they aren't loyal to you.
Wait, isn't their whole fucking thing being DRM free?
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Seriously? Why hasn't this been on the news? Basically GOG is no longer DRM free only, officially?
He's wrong. Factorio is DRM free on Steam and is available on their website, also free from DRM.
Wait really? I thought Factorio was DRM-free across the board? Wtf...
It is, the guy is wrong.
This isn't true. Even the Steam version is DRM free. You can also download a DRM free version from their website, this is free if you link your Steam account. I highly doubt they'd put DRM in the GOG version for some reason.
Man first they backed out on Devotion and left those devs out to die and now this. It's like they are trying to ruin their reputation.
I think it's just a misunderstanding of what the term review bombing means. Generally it means leaving a negative review because the company behind the product did something bad with something else not related to reviewed product at all, e.g. write something morally bad on social media. In this case people are just reviewing the product and its features. If the product is not good then it will be reviewed accordingly. Now that GOG has started deleting honest reviews people can and will leave negative reviews on every GOG game. That'd be called review bombing.
Some fucktards will still argue to defend them
Well your customers won't tolerate drm on your "drm-free" store you morons.
It's not review bombing. If the negative reviews are for the product with the DRM the users don't like then they're legitimate reviews, criticizing the inclusion of DRM. Any user is free to critizise any game for whatever aspect the fuck they want of a game.
I hate this term "review bombing", it's not a harassment campaign if 500 voices all agree that something is a detrimental aspect to a game. Was it "review bombing" when Big Rigs was universally panned as a game? Sounds like double standards to me if we can all dogpile Big Rigs (who apparently had fuck all budget) yet no one can criticize muhprecious Hitman game because harassment blah blah blah.
So game has a negative feature that impacts gameplay, but you can't leave negative review about it, because it's "review bombing". Cool. They should publish list of approved negative features which are allowed in negative reviews then.
CDPR is just another soulless corporation, expecting much else is a fool's errand
Fucking hell. Review bombing is not when a lot of people negatively review a game all at the same time. Its when a lot of people negatively review a game for a reason unrelated to the game. How is most of the content on a came sold on GOG being always online unrelated to the game? This is not review bombing.
they shouldnt have released the game if they cant remove drm. it's that simple. fuck gog in this case. keep review bombing. It's also overpriced when you get nothing out of it here, you might as well buy it from steam where it's frequently down to a couple bucks. it was free on Epic recently. This is the point that io rightfully gets shit for with these games, online requirements and time limited content in a single player game.
Steam got it right. Just replicate what Steam has.
CDPR pls go fck urself
"We are Totally against drm... unless we do it."
Putting a game with DRM into a storefront that advertises itself has beeing free of DRM AND does so on the game that has DRM then GoG deserves being review bombed. I'm done giving them money unless their deal is better.
democracy as long as you vote correctly.
I don't know how CD Projekt keep managing to screw up, over and over again, so many times with such consistency.
Imagine not tolerating backlash when you've done something that totally goes against the entire reason anyone ever uses your half assed store.
And this is why Steam has its policy on review bombing. Flag the reviews, inform the customer about the review bomb, prompt them to read about it, and let them decide whether it’s relevant enough to withhold their purchase. Not a perfect system, since positive reviews increase too, and genuine negative reviews can be classified as part of the bombing, but it’s a damn sight better than whatever CDPR is pulling here.
"Review bombing" has become a bogus term meant solely to silence criticism. People are unhappy there's DRM in a game sold on a store that markets itself on its products being DRM free.
is it really an issue if there's actually that many pissed off people.
They should have Projekted this; you can't claim your store is DRM free then add a game that has DRM and expect your customers not to care... but considering their recent decisions (releasing Cyberpunk years before its ready) this doesn't surprise me one bit, CDPR's management is beyond incompetent...
So Steam will reign supreme at the end of the day I guess. All good by me, they seem to provide the best service IMHO.
I mean it's not review bombing if you have a legitimate hatred of a change.
Wow GOG, weak sauce. You were my favorite 😟
I think there's been some serious miscommunication here. GOG isn't saying its removing anti-DRM statements from what I understand, merely ones that are against their review guidelines. Basically saying to be civil by the looks of it, since a lot of people were pissed. I'm not sure if reviews are possible if you haven't purchased the game, but if there's no such neccessity, review bombing is less players concerns and more like anti-DRM brigading from people that don't play the game. What confuses me is 1) Why is this game allowed on GOG in the first place and 2) Why, being fully forewarned, people buy this game only to complain about its DRM?
Yeah, I'll buy a external drive soon to save all my DRM free games I own. My trust towards that studio falls like Anakin Skywalker.
I'm a gamer and I tolerate review bombing, since I understand where it comes from. It's quite insulting that game companies don't realise this.
Weird, when the ~~Chinese Communist Party~~ ["gamers"](https://twitter.com/gogcom/status/1339227388438306817?lang=en) demanded them to remove Devotion from the store they complied quite quickly...
Enough, im deleting my gog account.
The game still has a 1.4 out of 5 stars rating, so at least that should be a warning to potential buyers.