Hi. Let's have a chat.
We need to talk about how toxic discussion on the Epic Games Store is now. I mainly posted this in the Ooblets thread, but decided to break it out of there for its' own.
It's worse now than it's ever been, and it's been ramping up for quite a while. I don't forsee it getting better without communities attempting to work on stamping these things out, so I want to talk about them.
For example, in the past few months, I've seen people compare EGS and/or Tim Sweeney to:
Hitler
Genocide
War crimes
Racial trolling
a Chinese government spy agency (this one is popular)
Trump (this one too)
Gamergate
I have seen people call devs who take EGS deals:
Cunts
Whores
Thieves
Racist
Trash
On a personal level, I have had people:
Threaten to kill me (a credible enough threat that I called the police)
Try to find my house
Try to get me fired
Harass me for months
Sling massive amounts of racial slurs towards me
Call me subhuman
I don't note those last things for sympathy. I note them to show the more personal level that these things tend to go.
Flipping it around, I have seen people call people who don't want to use the EGS:
Children
Babies
Fanboys
Shills
People who should 'care more about something else' (I've done this personally, something I'm going to actively avoid doing now)
Those are all separate incidents.
Those are all separate people.
None of these things have anything to do with your PC gaming preference.
They have nothing to do with whether Valve earns their 30% cut, or whether Epic doesn't support Linux, or anything regarding technology or software.
They only exist for hate.
These outliers need to stop. They need to be called out when they happen. If they don't, the people saying these things will think that it's acceptable. It shouldn't be.
We can make our points without resorting to this level. We can express our displeasure for something without stooping this low.
We gotta do better.
We need to talk about how toxic discussion on the Epic Games Store is now. I mainly posted this in the Ooblets thread, but decided to break it out of there for its' own.
It's worse now than it's ever been, and it's been ramping up for quite a while. I don't forsee it getting better without communities attempting to work on stamping these things out, so I want to talk about them.
For example, in the past few months, I've seen people compare EGS and/or Tim Sweeney to:
Hitler
Genocide
War crimes
Racial trolling
a Chinese government spy agency (this one is popular)
Trump (this one too)
Gamergate
I have seen people call devs who take EGS deals:
Cunts
Whores
Thieves
Racist
Trash
On a personal level, I have had people:
Threaten to kill me (a credible enough threat that I called the police)
Try to find my house
Try to get me fired
Harass me for months
Sling massive amounts of racial slurs towards me
Call me subhuman
I don't note those last things for sympathy. I note them to show the more personal level that these things tend to go.
Flipping it around, I have seen people call people who don't want to use the EGS:
Children
Babies
Fanboys
Shills
People who should 'care more about something else' (I've done this personally, something I'm going to actively avoid doing now)
Those are all separate incidents.
Those are all separate people.
None of these things have anything to do with your PC gaming preference.
They have nothing to do with whether Valve earns their 30% cut, or whether Epic doesn't support Linux, or anything regarding technology or software.
They only exist for hate.
These outliers need to stop. They need to be called out when they happen. If they don't, the people saying these things will think that it's acceptable. It shouldn't be.
We can make our points without resorting to this level. We can express our displeasure for something without stooping this low.
We gotta do better.