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Epic’s Statement on Misinformation & Abuse [See Staff Post] [UP: Devs release statement]
- Thread starter anastiel
- Start date
Mod Edit: Added quote tags to avoid confusion.
mod post - guidelines for thread
Official Staff Communication
Thread rebooted. This is the second thread on this subject which has gone poorly, so let's be extra clear -- when a topic is about harassment, threats, or fake defamatory screenshots, that is a cue to take a step back and remember that nothing at stake here is worth any of this. At all.
On the other hand there should not be any generalizations about all EGS critics being supportive of harassment. A thread like this must be treated seriously; a terrible thing has happened. Posters should be interested in deescalation, not in more conflict.
We will be moderating as tightly as necessary to keep the peace.
- It is not the time to drop one sentence of condolence before launching into a spiel about how Epic and their partners are also bad.
- It is not an opportunity to derail the thread into yet another discussion about the many problems with the EGS. There are many many threads about the EGS and its problems and you are welcome to discuss those problems there. This is not such a thread.
On the other hand there should not be any generalizations about all EGS critics being supportive of harassment. A thread like this must be treated seriously; a terrible thing has happened. Posters should be interested in deescalation, not in more conflict.
We will be moderating as tightly as necessary to keep the peace.
Please, for the love of god, stop victim blaming devs for the harassment they're getting.
If we can't at least stamp out this stuff now, I don't know why I'm even trying.
If we can't at least stamp out this stuff now, I don't know why I'm even trying.
And he would be right. Some people are insane with this shit.
BronsonLee just made a topic a couple of days ago about how the hate in Epic related threads was spiraling out of control. I understand that some people don't like how Epic handles business decisions and feel very strongly about it, but looking at past threads it feels like Tim Sweeney personally spit in some faces and insulted them while he was at it.
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User Banned (2 weeks): ignoring the modpost
"Many thanks to all of you that continue to promote and advocate for healthy, truthful discussion about the games business and stand up to all manners of abuse."
Like I said earlier. It would be nice if their CEO would lead by example.
Like I said earlier. It would be nice if their CEO would lead by example.
User Banned (1 Week): Ignoring Staff Post
The blame doesn't lie with the developers. Every one of us would take those enormous checks too. Be mad at Epic, don't spend your money there, and move on with life. It is not worth your time and effort, and money is all they'll understand anyway
Seeing how Epic related thread develops here on Era, a usually more progressive and safer place to talk about games, makes me wonder how trash things get in trash places like that other forum.
I'll just give some constructive criticism about their statement.
I feel Epic should not have added this part of their statement. If the goal is de-escalation I think it's best to just condemn and leave it at that instead of plugging what seems like one of their main selling points for their store. You know a lot of people are going to pick up on this part out of everything else written.
Has Tim Sweeney been abusive? "IT WAS AWESOME!" isn't the same as the prolonged abuse and toxicity some devs get for making a deal with Epic. They're by no means comparable.
It is very sad for the devs affected and having to deal with what must feel like global levels of harassment must truly suck. This EGS furor all boiling over couldn't come sooner enough however to paint how ridiculous things have gotten over the rabid mob response to game devs and their applications moving to a different digital store because it supports them better as a business in the real world where money is a thing that helps them pay rent and eat. I assume more than half of the crazies blasting threats away at developers do things in real life "for money", but I guess that concept becomes more abstract when its an entertainment product?
Ooblets represented the peak of this nonsense if only due to it being a new and niche IP presumably with very few baked in longterm fans to be disappointed and enraged, and yet copped what felt like the very apex of said rage (with the very loose 'justification' of their announcement being 'too sassy').
Ooblets represented the peak of this nonsense if only due to it being a new and niche IP presumably with very few baked in longterm fans to be disappointed and enraged, and yet copped what felt like the very apex of said rage (with the very loose 'justification' of their announcement being 'too sassy').
Some context, the Ooblets devs were the target of online hate for their EGS exclusivity announcement:
I checked out their Discord channel a few days ago to see how bad it got in there. What those screencaps of the developers being harsh don't show is that they were spending hours answering a flood of assholes who took the reaction to their blogpost as an excuse to harass them. With them often doing stuff like post racial slurs (spelled out in different messages to avoid filters). More waves of people came in as Youtubers like Jim Sterling and YongYea made videos about the exclusivity announcement.
I checked out their Discord channel a few days ago to see how bad it got in there. What those screencaps of the developers being harsh don't show is that they were spending hours answering a flood of assholes who took the reaction to their blogpost as an excuse to harass them. With them often doing stuff like post racial slurs (spelled out in different messages to avoid filters). More waves of people came in as Youtubers like Jim Sterling and YongYea made videos about the exclusivity announcement.
Just brainstorming here: one goal might be to consume the flame of internet shittiness as fuel, and perpetuate an environment where the flame never dies. Which honestly doesn't sound too hard.
In other words, poke at the weaknesses of the online ecosystem and nab resources from those cracks whenever possible.
His tweets, as well as the statement from the Ooblets Dev were, at worst, dumb and misguided, but ultimately harmless.
In some relatively "normal" spanish sites, the discussion becomes so toxic I honestly can't stomach longer than 10 posts. In the less normal ones, hatred is so strong I just gave up following any discussion.
Idk, being a gamer is starting to make me feel embarassed and ashamed.
I've been following the development of this title for quite a long time and genuinely fuck anyone who sent those wonderful people threats and harassment over which store a dev is using to sell their game.
It's such a sad inevitability of people mobilising behind one particular contentious topic online, especially within game communities :( Nothing anyone can do can possibly come even remotely close to warranting death threats or harassment
I won't pretend I haven't been hugely critical of Epic, I'd loath to think I've helped embolden any of this horrendous toxicity. Genuinely felt sick to my stomach seeing gamergate comparisons
I won't pretend I haven't been hugely critical of Epic, I'd loath to think I've helped embolden any of this horrendous toxicity. Genuinely felt sick to my stomach seeing gamergate comparisons
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I don't even see why there's been so many discussions about this. The vitriol thrown both at Epic and the developers who choose to work with them and thus make their games exclusive to the Epic Game Store is disgusting, unacceptable, and just plain embarrassing. It's a fucking videogame... What else even needs said?
This whole disgusting debacle makes me want to go buy Ooblets on EGS, honestly.
This whole disgusting debacle makes me want to go buy Ooblets on EGS, honestly.
I wouldn't mind if Epic led the conversation on abuse toward game devs. Maybe they can host the next big gaming conference and actually take a moment to loudly state that harassment should be called out more within the game industry.
My condolences to the developers. No matter what relatively minor missteps they may have made in their announcement and PR work, two people trying to make a nice game for people should never have to deal with the outright hatred and insanity leveled at them for a conflict well beyond their control.
Anyone that justifies that, by saying:"Yes it's bad, BUT Epic/Devs ___", should stop, stand up and look at the mirror.
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Nothing condones harassment no matter how much of a jerk you think a person, a developer, or a company is with their announcement. Feel free to calmly voice displeasure in the comments or an email or whatever, but going beyond that is inexcusable and will do nothing to convince the people involved to rethink their deals or decisions.
I wouldn't be surprised if this scares away a lot of devs from selling on the Epic Store regardless of monetary incentive which is just the shittiest way this could've gone down. I blame Youtubers like Sterling who for years have been saying "don't boycott and not spend your money, bitch and whine about it on the internet". Which is not only bullshit and perpetuates the toxicity around gamer culture.
User Banned (2 weeks): ignoring the modpost
Of course it Isn't, but instead of hiring a PR firm to help them with the onslaught, he thought it more constructive to troll an already rabid mob. He almost wound them up and pointed them a couple of days later. Those developers should be pissed at him too. He did them no favors here.
The fact that it's escalated to harassment, death threats, and doctored screenshots for smear campaign purposes is awful in ways I can't fully describe, and quite honestly it feels uncomfortably similar to what I remember seeing and hearing about during the early stages of GamerGate.
Honestly, as someone who dropped out of EGS threads early on, because I had no interest in EGS and didn't care for the overall tone of these threads back then, BronsonLee's thread caught my attention the other day, and yeah, I hadn't realized things had gotten this bad.
That earlier thread drove the point further: if there's a "but" in your sentence about harassment and real life shit real people are facing, it's time to seriously reflect on what makes you excuse, deflect from or give cover to this.
That earlier thread drove the point further: if there's a "but" in your sentence about harassment and real life shit real people are facing, it's time to seriously reflect on what makes you excuse, deflect from or give cover to this.
That's exactly the vibe I'm getting that made that other thread very uncomfortable to read.
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This will no doubt spread beyond Epic if recent "movements" have been any indication.
As I said in the original thread, this has gone so far that I am not gonna look favorably upon people that still want to discuss what the devs said and did. And this is from someone who has been pretty active in that discussion. We all know what people think by now. Some think the blog post was awesome, some think it was terrible and so on. The same goes for some responses and yada yada. Let's get over it and try to figure out how to fight this hate brigade that destroy everything in its path. We can discuss tone and PR in a level-headed manner when there isn't a hate campaign going on.
I feel so sorry for the whole Ooblets community.
I feel so sorry for the whole Ooblets community.
The weird thing is that they do work with a PR firm on Fortnite stuff.
Reminds me of what George Carlin said "Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that."
Not that having an issue with EGS and especially the exclusivity deals would be stupid, but people sure can be stupid in how they express themselves. All the unnecessary toxicity and flaming kinda makes me want to just shut up about EGS myself. There's more than enough backlash already and unfortunately I feel all the level headed and constructive discussion easily gets buried in all the other shit. Though that's not just an issue with EGS discussion, but overall what passes as proper "criticism" to some people in internet discourse. It's often overly dramatic, unnecessarily personal and insanely hyperbolic. If you tell people to tone it down a bit, then you get called a "corporate shill/bootlicker" or get interpreted as if you would be saying that no criticism is allowed at all or you think there would be nothing to criticize. Which gets us back to that George Carlin quote. Then there's of course the next step, threats, harassment and faking information that goes beyond stupidity. Unfortunately I'm not at all surprised anymore that this happens in gaming/geek culture.
I hope there's still time to stop it from reaching that point.
User Banned (2 Weeks): Ignoring Staff Post
You mean the same Epic that works it's employees to death with constant 80h+ crunch weeks? Yeah, no thanks.
Also fuck the harasser! All they doing is makeing feeling ppl feeling like shit and muddying any meaningful critism about the EGS and it's shenigans.
Which tells me that Tim knows better and still made the choice he did.
What the actual fuck. What a shame that the devs are going through this. Nobody deserves that, especially for something so petty.
If you really disagree with what Epic is doing, vote with your wallet, if you have to tell the devs you don't like what they're doing, keep it civil.
To be honest, I wouldn't put it past Epic to use their official channels to dismiss all criticism against them, but if people are sending threats to devs, they're not wrong in supporting their devs.
To be honest, I wouldn't put it past Epic to use their official channels to dismiss all criticism against them, but if people are sending threats to devs, they're not wrong in supporting their devs.
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If I wanted to wait for the perfect company that doesn't crunch and has the amount of capital of Epic to show up and host an event, I'll be waiting for a long ass time. This isn't about Epic's faults. This is about consumers harassing the creators of their hobby. Even bringing up Epic's faults right now is fucking stupid.
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