I'm not interested in going and looking up a bunch of stuff to prove a point that is self evident based on what we're discussing. (If there was no blow back, GoG wouldn't have apologised to begin with). All you have to do is look at any gaming news site for an article about GoG and you'll see it.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/17/18100180/thronebreaker-the-witcher-tales-pc-gog-com-steam-cd-projekt-red-sales

There's an article with 40 odd comments and a good chunk of them are people saying they won't shop at GoG anymore because of this. I'm not going to bother digging up more, most of the ones I've seen go about the same way. That's just the first one I saw linked to GoG on Polygon.

And what you seem to fail to understand is that if this bad press is coming from people getting the facts wrong, the correct action is to correct the record of the facts.

CDPR/GoG already tried playing "nice guy" and bowing down to these hateful mobs 3 times before. How did that work for them? Seriously, they threw their business partner PC Master Race under the bus for it too. By being silent and issuing apologies, and not standing up for the truth, the narrative got spun on them that they are serial offenders. And this isn't changing by being silent now and continuing to bow down and remaining silent.

Maybe next time someone gets outraged over GoG-Chan since it's a "whitewashed" mascot which "should" be depicted as Japanese? See. I can play the outrage game too. It's easy. All it would take is one post on ResetEra getting the ball rolling over anything taken out of context. All those blue-checkmarked "journalists" join the fray again.
We already have outrage over what is an "acceptable" Halloween costume as "most" of them have been deemed offensive. And you best not dress up as your favorite Black or ethnic sports star if you aren't Black yourself.

Your solution is what exactly? Next time someone gets outraged over something trivial Chandra gets the axe? Keep sacrificing CMs to appease the outrage mobs? Doesn't seem like a good PR plan to me.
You are seriously quoting Polygon? That's hilarious! HAHAHAHA!

The one thing that I think I agree with you on here is that GoG has put themselves in a tight spot. Because of how ineffectual their responses have been they have created a situation where they are being viewed as serial offenders of some kind of larger offences than they ever realistically perpetrated.

Had they come out with a strong response in either way the first couple of times there was a big outrage they wouldn't be in the position they are now. Had they just come out and said, "Nope, we think the joke was funny, you guys are over-reacting and we're not sorry" They would've gotten some flack and pissed off a small group of people but they wouldn't be constantly attacked for every little perceived insult to some group. Honestly, that would've probably been the easiest course of action, but I don't think they have that option anymore cause they've done this enough times and given enough half-hearted apologies that it attracts gaming press when it happens now. Now I think their only option is to clamp down on their messaging and wait it out for long enough that it's not going to be immediately used against them if they piss off a group.

So far as the Halloween costumes, that always seemed pretty obvious to me. I think it's pretty overblown to get outraged by someone dressed as a ninja or a geisha. They are essentially dressing up as characters, not races. I do think wearing blackface is taking it a little far though, mostly due to the historic connotations of that.... most other costumes don't have the same history attached to them.
I didn't quote polygon. I said look at the comments section. Polygon isn't ResetEra (which, I don't even know what that is, I never heard of it before you brought it up in other threads) it's a pretty standard gaming news site. I'm not saying the article is worthwhile, I'm saying that the comments on it are negative towards GoG. That's really all that matters in the context of the conversation. Unless you think that anyone that reads a gaming article on Polygon is somehow inferior to you.... which would be pretty arrogant....

*edited for sarcasm. I'm trying to be nicer to people*

At least we are agreeing on something. I'll meet you halfway and say that while I still think standing up for themselves was the best option. Taking a firm stance the other way is a better PR move than being wishy-washy which they've been every time so far. The first rule of PR is to get ahead of the story as best you can with a firm statement.

Edit: Polygon? Seriously? "Standard gaming site"? You really don't know what you are talking about...
No it's not. There is not a more "identity politics" pushing gaming mag than Polygon. They are the World Weekly News of "serious" gaming journalism.

So, you are saying those people were pro social aganda, but just not militant? Well, I agree that they are not SJWs, then. Because there is another three letter acronim for such people now.

That's reasonable. I do actually think it would have been easiest for GoG to stick up for themselves along time ago if that was the road they wanted to take. The odd thing about arguing with you is for the most part I don't think we disagree about outcomes and more about the circumstances surrounding them. I'm not happy about Linko being gone, I just think GoG has a reasonable justification for getting rid of him. I don't like the degree to which political correctness has created a world where everyone feels they have to walk on eggshells, but I can also understand why some people feel the need to demand people behave differently based on bad personal experiences they've had. I do think we probably agree on more than it would appear based on previous discussion... and sometimes I'm a sarcastic dick, which doesn't help.
I'm saying it's possible to think someone said something shitty without actually having an agenda.

But yeah, it's possible to believe in something and not be a militant believer. That's the difference between someone who quietly goes to church on Sundays and someone who holds giant placards on aborted fetuses outside high schools.

Fair enough.... I don't pretend to be an expert on gaming journalism. I don't read much gaming news. I picked that because it was the last article I had seen and I didn't feel like digging around to prove a point that, as I said, should be self evident. People complained in multiple places and to argue that would be stupid. (Again, it's not whether they were right to complain, just that they actually complained)

Unless to think someone said something shitty IS a part of the agenda.

Thinking that transgender people have exclusive rights to hashtags is possible only in "social justice" frame of mind stating that minorities should have exlusive rights.

But they don't have to think that they have exclusive rights to a hashtag, just that the joke was tasteless given their understanding of the circumstances.

That's like saying someone making a joke with a hashtag about someone dying is cool because hashtags are free for everyone to use. It's still going to piss off the people who knew the guy that died probably.

So? If someone makes a joke with hashtag #IsDead, he should be fired? Because someone from "underprivileged" minority group used the tag for their social activism at the moment? How does that not mean "exclusive rights"?

NeoGAF once was considered the "left wing" counterpart to 4Chan. At some point, NeoGAF got tired of how far left they had gotten and toxic discussions and mod abuse by left leaning mods who would start banning people for disagreeing with them. So they cleared house and "fired" a bunch of their extremist mods. That led to a mass exodus of the extremists which formed ResetEra where disagreeing with the "consensus" opinion is a bannable offense. If one even dares to try to say the tweets didn't seem bad to them, they are instantly banned for "downplaying transphobia". It's that crazy there.

Imagine a forum where anyone who even tries to correct the record gets banned. So it's no wonder there is a misinformed mob calling for heads. If you read their thread on the matter, you'd think CDPR and GoG eat live babies in front of their mothers.

If you want to see the very definition of a true echo chamber, just Google ResetEra and GoG and look at their forum threads. It really is nuts.

That's interesting. And it sounds like there's good reason I've never heard of it, it sounds very outside my wheelhouse. I don't know how popular such a forum could be, it sounds relatively niche, but I could see how it would attract certain kinds of people.

That being said there are probably just as many forums or sites out there that militantly express their views on any number of things from all ends of the spectrum of ideology. I don't seek out those sites either. It would just be depressing to see that much anger and loathing directed at pointless things.

If you want to know why the outrage seemed so extreme, they had 85 pages of discussion, 4213 posts about just the last tweet. And that's after banning all dissenting opinion. They get quite worked up over there.

Ok, i actually googled "cdpr transphobia" as instructed by one of the people posting in the link you provided, and surprisingly i got into a media echo chamber of political correctness gestapo.
Before, i used to think that we should lay this issue to rest, but now i think we should make links available to everyone, so they see whats going on.
All this drama over a harmless joke?
The gaming media playing an active role in turning some witty post into a political conflict?
To me this looks like a targeted attack against GOG, but also it helps bring to light the workings of a conspiracy-like organization.
Luckily this could turn out to be in the advantage of GOG, because according to statistics (yes i know statistics are not a thing to go by but still), there are 80% of people who think political correctness has gone too far and are bothered by it.
So in the end GOG will come out on top.

You say some people say they wont buy on GOG because of their joke....well...there are people who say they wont buy on GOG because GOG didnt take a stance against the political correctness gestapo.

While GOG is in a bit of a dillema right now, as they are in the business of selling games, not in the business of political correctness, i think they might get an unexpected advantage out of this, because they are obviously the victims of a political correctness activism attack, and people are generally fed up with the political correctness gang and their hystrionics.and aggressive activism.

I remember a number of people claiming they cancelled their Cyberpunk 2077 pre-orders during every one of these non-troversies. With people like that, it's clear a lot of them definitely don't buy games here.