this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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These were some pretty egregious mistakes indeed. I think the biggest one is noticing that it is inappropriate-looking for audiences in Germany, but somehow they didn't stop to think whether it would be appropriate for everyone else?
I'm not going to boycot GOG over a major gaffe like that but, it's a mournful day for the anti-Steam purist gaming consumers we see around here. Just another instance of Steam winning by doing nothing while competition trips over itself again.
Yeah this seems like a very stupid unforced error. The devs didn't provide this, they internally were like "don't send that to Germany, yikes!", and then went ahead anyway?
Even if they'd been like "Oh, you're right that looks a bit too Nazi, let's just put one of them so it doesn't" then this would be another boring marketing email.
"winning by doing nothing" They do stuff. Like killing ownership, buying tons of yachts because their owner is a literal billionaire, and squeezing every last cent while gaslighting everyone into thinking they're somehow "pro-consumer". This is how they got here in the first place. They also appear to have a growing hate problem, but I haven't yet read the links I'll be sharing here, so take these with a grain of salt for now: 1, 2. They get away with all this because they have a captive audience, each user doesn't want to give up their library, or each user has already bought one of those steam devices becoming even more captive.
GOG doesn't have a captive audience, and this is by their own design. We take their DRM-free, launcher-free nature for granted. Yet it seem they don't understand that themselves, and continue burning the good will they earned on things like this, or continuing their obsession with LLM generated art. They can't keep tanking controversy after controversy.
DRM-free can continue without GOG, but it'll be handicapped severely without them. Is this what GOG wants?
Thanks for showing up. And yes you're correct, "doing nothing" is a meme, dervied from the fact that Epic, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony are all outwardly very anti-consumer, while Valve is simply less so. Yes they have done some shady things over 20 years, however they have also done wonders in the field of Linux game compatibility, helping (credit to the non-Valve developers) break Microsoft's monopoly on operating systems for PC gaming. In contrast, GOG has done little besides provide the occasional script, Linux version of their official library manager is only now in development after 10 years of begging for it.
Yes, you can still play DRM-free games, FOSS games and get some games directly from the publisher, but in terms of distributors, you're essentially left with itch.io (unless the time they removed nsfw games from CC processor pressure is also a bridge too far for you).
Which company was it that popularized the lootboxes so bad that Notch made a parody of their game in Minecraft's earliest April Fool's version? Oh it's Valve. Which company has been extremely instrumental in killing the ownership of games, making the idea of having to be online and connected to an unaccountable corporation based in the USA to play a single player game so much more palatable? Look, it's Valve again. Even their quaint """wonders""" for Linux (creating yet another distro, forking wine, and porting their DRM launcher?) are such a naked embrace, extend and extinguish effort going very smoothly because they're not Microsoft, despite being quite literally of Microsoft origins, down to the anti-trust saga.
Valve isn't doing nothing. You think so because like you've noted, itch.io went into this payment processor kerfuffle, despite Valve also going into it but nobody else. Plus, GOG themselves aren't helping matters with their own actions, not just the double sig runes and their strange and ineffective apologies, but also the obsession with LLM generated art among countless moments of getting caught with their pants down. Meanwhile, Zoom-Platform is relatively quiet, for better or worse, and I never hear anything from Fireflower Games.
It's easy, if Neverball and Super Tux Kart are the only games one plays, nobody can claim they support monopolists, anti-consumer practices or billionaires.
I checked out the zoom platform, seems nice, majority are Windows games though.
I acknowledge that it's important to raise awareness of bad practices, demanding change and highlighting alternatives where available. However, if you tie yourself in knots over every debacle, and permanently hold it as a grudge long after it's addressed positively, then I'd start thinking your hobby is grudge-holding rather than gaming.
Dont forget Valve's lootboxes.
I actually wanted to mention that and the "trading cards" that literally milk the users out of thin air, but I didn't find a good place for them in my post. Thanks for mentioning them.
Please explain, how the trading cards, that you get for free, can just ignore or even sell for a few cents, milk anything out of anyone.
Is it because Steam forces you to complete badges for all your games, otherwise their Death Squad will come to your home?
Before, you just played the game. Now when you play the game, these things fill your "inventory" out of thin air, and you can make transactions with them including buying them (to complete your collection out of FOMO, etc), of which Valve earns a cut out of them, again, out of thin air. Now scale that up to millions of users. Hmmm, it IS milking! Can't expect any less from the House of Valve.
You can still just play the game, nothing has changed. It's extremely easy to just ignore everything to do with the inventory on Steam, which a lot of people do.
If you don't want to give Valve and the dev money, you can also trade the cards with other people directly.
You could also recycle certain items into gems and use those to craft booster packs, to eventually get a full set completely by yourself.
Also, the only thing the trading cards are for at this point are the badges, that you can "show off" on your profile. All the other stuff (emoticons or wallpapers) can be bought directly in the Points Shop.
In itself, the argument is sound. A lot of media is censored specifically for China or predominantly muslim-governed countries. It's just standard corporate bootlicking.
The context makes it awkward. For example, most of Asia neither knows nor cares about nazis because it's not who oppressed them, so I don't seem them having an issue with it in this sense. But then again, I'm not sure of Gog's presence in Asia...