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Why Boycotting Video Games is a Joke... & You're Falling for It by Nate the Hate and Modern Vintage Gamer.
- Thread starter It’s Time To Go
- Start date
Meh. I've been personally boycotting Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, THQ, and CD Projekt for years. I just don't want to put my money in their hands when there are hundreds of other developers/publishers I can support. I'm definitely not going to influence their behavior alone, but there are lots of consumers that let ethical issues influence their buying decisions. I'm pretty sure it's been a couple years since the last time CD Projekt has been openly transphobic on their social media; I have to think the media and consumer pushback is at least partially responsible, even if the company is still selling a lot of games.
Admittedly was tested with the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remake, but have managed to resist that
Admittedly was tested with the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remake, but have managed to resist that
This is where I'm at. The first boycotts weren't just random people independently deciding not to buy things associated with slavery, it had widely distributed antislavery tracts spread by religious objectors throughout Europe explaining why you shouldn't financially support products that are made available through slavery. I don't think boycotting really happens all that much with video games.
I mean, there's the Hellena Taylor thing, I guess, since that was clearly one person trying to create a rallying effort around a cause. But, you know.
Choosing not to buy a game because then a large portion of your money goes to someone who will use it to finance hate campaigns against the underprivileged -> Morally reprehensible, those creators need our support
Choosing not to buy a game because the framerate is bad -> Okay nevermind fuck the creators. Lazy devs anyhow
Choosing not to buy a game because the framerate is bad -> Okay nevermind fuck the creators. Lazy devs anyhow
This is anecdotal, but it just simply puzzles me when I see someone who is claiming to have a very strong feeling regarding a VG company and a game that releases due to moral reasons, but then proceeded to play the game anyways, day 1, and even using VPN to unlock the game earlier, even using justification saying that they have the game gifted to them and so it's okay since they're not buying it like WTF, why does it make any difference since the person gifting the game for them also give money to the company.
Stuff like that puzzles me. People that justify stuff to make themselves feel better about doing things they're supposedly railing against in the first place, at least be honest with it.
Stuff like that puzzles me. People that justify stuff to make themselves feel better about doing things they're supposedly railing against in the first place, at least be honest with it.
For me boycotting has always been about what I am comfortable with anyway, not necessarily sending a message. I understand the realities of the business and that my one voice makes no difference, but in some cases I am not comfortable in supporting that particular company. It may make me a hypocrite in some ways as to where I draw the line, but still.
protip: You aren't actually boycotting a product if you wouldn't have bought it normally anyways
Although not for the same reasons, there was a lot of tangible backlash towards the game or company so it might not be the best example here.
If you are referring to the loot box backlash, it did not exactly work for that game either.
Yup. There are examples of this:
Why They Don't Take Boycotts Seriously...
Just as a FYI. (Click for the full thing)(Picked up from the PCG forum via Poisoned Sponge)www.rockpapershotgun.com
This picture is completely meaningless. The reason for the call to boycott was due to a lack of dedicated servers, and guess what the next instalment (black ops 1) had? Dedicated servers with a server browser, only on PC. Then later instalments that didnt give a fuck about the PC were generally ignored and had low player count, while the treyarch games which generally cared about the PC audience always had great longevity.
i find usually the people who are skeptical of boycotts have never had a valid reason to boycott anything. For example, is era's ban or "boycott" if you will, on featuring the TERF game a joke? No. It measurably makes a difference in some people's lives, so uhh... no boycotts (of whatever form they may take large or small) are worthwhile and don't have to bring down the whole company or stop the game from selling every copy to be successful - and i don't think that's ever something that's expected unless you are being super disingenuous, and I understand Nate does say "it can make a difference in your own world" but it seems a little dismissive, of a tactic to bring an important issue to light.
I'm just looking to live my life in a way that's consistent with my values and focus on actions that are within my sphere of control. That means not buying optional entertainment that supports bigotry. I don't give a shit how ineffective someone thinks boycotts are.
I will never understand the need to dismiss boycotts/justify why you *need* to buy the game.
Just play your video-games man. You do you.
Just play your video-games man. You do you.
No, EGS being unpopular worked. There has never been a "boycott" of note in videogames.
I think of it this way, vote with your wallet and vote with your morals. If the company/dev/person is scummy, exploitative and enabling of bad and obscene behavior, don't buy their games and don't support them. And then the best you can do and tell others as to why. From there, you've done, what I feel, is a good starting point. Can't force someone to do something they don't want to do, or in this case, can't force someone to think the same way as you.
I mean he says the your choice to boycott should made with the understanding that you may not change the world but you will change yours. Video is more talking about how people will make a big stand for unpopular companies that they had no intention of buying games for anyway and are silent for games they want which is true we see it on here. He points out that you will have content creators that put a big show of boycotting a game months or years before release just to still cover the game anyway when it comes out. Also that boycotts take months to years of commitment and with gaming some of these companies dont even release a game yearly.
Honestly I just try to stay away from negative news about X company's shitty doings because they are almost all shitty.
I just purchase/play what im interested in .
I just purchase/play what im interested in .
I'm not referencing the people in the video, I'm making a general point.
I don't really care about what people do with their money, but I personally boycott games. Video games are not the only one of my hobbies. I will survive not playing a few games.
Yup. There are examples of this:
Why They Don't Take Boycotts Seriously...
Just as a FYI. (Click for the full thing)(Picked up from the PCG forum via Poisoned Sponge)
This Image still geht's qouted over and over when it's one of the more successful boycott attempts.
COD was irrelevant on PC for years after MW2
(And this Screenshot shows that only one page of users is active out of all of them)
Honestly, I think the discussion around Call of Duty image highlights how much prevalent the bad faith arguments are poisoning discussions of this topic. It's brought up twice within the first ten pages, immediately followed with description of how it's a fundamentally misleading image, then almost a hundred posts later it's still being used as evidence.
Everyone apparently knows this image, everyone apparently knows why this image is misleading, why are we still clinging to it if not because we're fine with that particular lie?
Everyone apparently knows this image, everyone apparently knows why this image is misleading, why are we still clinging to it if not because we're fine with that particular lie?
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How else are people going to raise awareness of issues? Not everyone is perpetually online and some of us rely on word of mouth to get this kind of information. I wouldn't have known about the Ion Fury homophobia incident if it wasn't for people here talking about it and you can bet I won't be buying further games from that dev or 3D Realms.
When people are asking you to boycott, nobody can force you to do so, but it's weird to say that people shouldn't do so at all, when many people wouldn't know about serious problems in the industry otherwise.
Yup. See: Resetera reacts to sexism exposed at Activision Blizzard vs Resetera (barely) reacts to sexism exposed at Sony.
For those who haven't listened; MVG is not going to support Hogwarts Legacy, something he didn't make public before. Regardless of those familiar with its background not supporting the game, the game is going to sell well, that's a given (unfortunately). Online activism is like a drop in an ocean, and companies know this.
"Because you need me, PC gamers. Your guilty conscience may force you to support competition, but deep down inside, you secretly long for a cold-hearted capitalist to dominate the gaming space, monopolise the market and rule you like a king! That's why I did this. To protect you from yourselves!" - Gabe Newell
It seems a bit weird to claim that the EGS situation can't be considered a boycott. If a lot of people don't support a company because they don't like what they're doing, that's a boycott. Not every boycott necessarily has to be an explicit call to boycott.
I also wonder if the idea that your video game purchasing decisions should depend on the ultimate cumulative result isn't fundamentally nefarious framing.
Like, as we're posting right now, I'm putting out my recycling. That's not to say that I believe that climate change hinges on my, L Thammy's, recycling. I don't believe that at all. I think that individual efforts tend to be overvalued and things like corporations and governments have far more control over the climate situation, and that in order to see change we're going to need more large-scale efforts like investment in clean energy.
But it isn't necessary for me to believe that this is going to lead to the final result of the end of climate change in order to put out my recycling. I like soda, I drank a few cans of Dr. Pepper, I don't want empty cans clogging up space in my apartment. It doesn't take me any more effort to put them in the recycling bin instead of the garbage. If I have stuff to dispose of as a result of just living anyway, why not put in that minimal effort to put them in the recycling if I think it might cause a little less harm to do so.
Similarly, I don't think people choosing not to buy a Harry Potter game because of J.K. Rowling necessarily have to believe that they're going to bring down the game and destroy J.K. Rowling with a singular purchasing decision. It could just be one among many factors that go into their purchasing decision. If someone was on the fence about the game, they're interested but they don't have to play it, and then they go "well, I don't like the idea of my money going to a known transphobe who will use it to abuse others, I can play something else instead", is that something offensive or harmful in any way? Does that demand the intense scrutiny that it draws in what whatever bizarre reason?
Like, as we're posting right now, I'm putting out my recycling. That's not to say that I believe that climate change hinges on my, L Thammy's, recycling. I don't believe that at all. I think that individual efforts tend to be overvalued and things like corporations and governments have far more control over the climate situation, and that in order to see change we're going to need more large-scale efforts like investment in clean energy.
But it isn't necessary for me to believe that this is going to lead to the final result of the end of climate change in order to put out my recycling. I like soda, I drank a few cans of Dr. Pepper, I don't want empty cans clogging up space in my apartment. It doesn't take me any more effort to put them in the recycling bin instead of the garbage. If I have stuff to dispose of as a result of just living anyway, why not put in that minimal effort to put them in the recycling if I think it might cause a little less harm to do so.
Similarly, I don't think people choosing not to buy a Harry Potter game because of J.K. Rowling necessarily have to believe that they're going to bring down the game and destroy J.K. Rowling with a singular purchasing decision. It could just be one among many factors that go into their purchasing decision. If someone was on the fence about the game, they're interested but they don't have to play it, and then they go "well, I don't like the idea of my money going to a known transphobe who will use it to abuse others, I can play something else instead", is that something offensive or harmful in any way? Does that demand the intense scrutiny that it draws in what whatever bizarre reason?
If a company releases shit-flavoured potato chips and people who normally eat chips don't buy them because no one likes shit flavour, that's not a boycott. That's just the basics of how purchasing decisions work: someone makes a product in the hopes that it will appeal to someone who wants to buy it, and if it doesn't appeal to them they don't buy it. Describing that as a "boycott" isn't meaningful, and in fact devalues the term itself because it no longer distinguishes what's happened from normal unremarkable behaviour. If you use a boycott to describe that, you've turned the meaning of the word into "a bunch of people didn't buy something", which is a far more general activity that happens all the time every day.
The whole idea of a "boycott" is that it's an intentional, organized action to achieve a goal. But that's basically never the situation that's actually underlying these discussions.
Sorry, I'm not watching a 70 minute video just to hear an opinion from two YouTubers.
The YouTube grift is getting even more ridiculous and it has always been kinda clownish in the first place.
For whatever is worth, I think boycotts only work when they are naturally punishing a shit product or if there's an easy alternative. Nobody is going to stop buying sliced bread if there's only one brand available.
The YouTube grift is getting even more ridiculous and it has always been kinda clownish in the first place.
For whatever is worth, I think boycotts only work when they are naturally punishing a shit product or if there's an easy alternative. Nobody is going to stop buying sliced bread if there's only one brand available.
Except that this wasn't just Epic releasing a product that people found undesirable. You're completely ignoring all the negative publicity and controversy that Epic generated, in large part because of their own words and actions. You can't ignore that when talking about why people chose not to support the EGS.
Ironically, if EGS was simply a product that people didn't like, it might have ended up doing better than it did. People generally don't like when billionaires try to force them onto platforms while telling the world that they don't care what consumers think and will follow the games.
If you don't want to use the word "boycott", go ahead. I'm not interested in arguing semantics with you, even if I find the whole "it devalues the term" angle a bit laughable. But EGS was not just an undesirable product, but it was run by a billionaire who thought he could shit on the people who had to spend money to make his store a success, people got upset and it generated a lot of conversation among each other, and based on all of this, decided not to support the store. That's a far cry from quietly putting a shit flavored chip on the shelves.
I don't think I'm ignoring anything. The EGS is a platform that was going against an established competitor, Steam. Ultimately, they have to convince users, many of which already have a strong existing relationship with Steam, to support their platform and continue to buy things there. Those customers are starting from a position of not purchasing anything on EGS and energy needs to be placed into making them do so, because the place of no change is that no one buys anything on EGS. If they can't establish the trust necessary to start in what is a potentially long term relationship with a new platform, that's part of the product failing.
It isn't part of the break from normal behaviour if people don't start buying from there, which is what I'm saying with the part that you called laughable. It's part of what's happened as a whole in threads like these: we're discussing the efficacy of boycotts, but before we get there we're changing it into a nebulous term that doesn't really describe anything and is simply applied at convenience to justify applying it wherever it supports our end goal. If the word was not devalued in these conversations and remained a specific meaningful term, it would highly limit the amount of cases that we would be able to bring up.
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I think that part of the problem is that "not buying a game that I don't like" is not a boycott. If you use that word you are giving you more importance that you have.
There has to be a ideological reason, if not, every game that you don't buy is a boycott.
There has to be a ideological reason, if not, every game that you don't buy is a boycott.
All of this is really bizarre.
Boycotts work. What this describes are failed attempts at organizing a boycott.
The fact that video game boycotts often fail is because of a widespread anti-activist, regressive, and plain-old childish thinking in the gaming community. It's generally a young population that has grown up in the current political and economic hellscape we've been stuck in for decades, so unfortunately we see dumb takes like this or not getting the value in having devs unionize or increased government scrutiny against shitty work environments, anticonsumer actions, and industry consolidation.
Also, a blanket disdain for organizing boycotts in video games, as it seems is suggested here, is really stupid.
Taking that Hogwarts game as an example, yes I could do a personal boycott and tell my friends about it. But we're a drop in the bucket, and the HP IP is literally worth billions of dollars.
Considering the harm to trans people that Rowling's disgusting rhetoric and the enormous influence she wields culturally and politically, calling for and organizing a boycott of that game and other products that benefit her is absolutely legitimate. You need big numbers to get traction, and I'd argue it's quite possible, too. Which is where people with a platform and influence come in. That's the fastest way to reach a large audience for anything.
Trouble is a lot of people don't want to do it, and saying that boycotts don't work when in reality you simply don't want to do the boycott in the first place is just bullshit. I find this cynical view that it's just clout-chasing rather gross.
Do you believe the way Sweeney and EGS behaved had no influence on people's decisions to not support EGS? That there isn't some contingent of consumers who might have supported EGS if not for the fact that Epic chose to be so abbrasive and force users onto their platform? That the free games and big discounts on their own could not have swayed a couple of people to spend money there, if not for the aforementioned abbrasive behavior?
If you answer no to any one of the above questions, then it's not the same as selling a shit flavored chip, aka a product that people simply find undesirable.
It isn't a substantial difference because these people haven't bought in to start with. If their efforts to try to appeal to customers instead alienated them and inspired distrust, that's just part of failing to appeal to customers. That's just failing to make the platform, which is built on the expectation of having a long-term relationship with the customer, appear appealing because the customer does not believe that the long-term relationship seems appealing.
But moreover, I don't think whether EGS' failure was because of a "boycott" matters as much to the conversation as whether or not the definition that we're using of a "boycott" is meaningless garbage, so the point you're arguing with me is just something I don't care about.
I don't think it's untrue to say that people are using social media to spread awareness of issues, and that people are learning more about things that are happening behind the scenes, and that's affecting people's purchasing decisions. But every purchasing decision is made on a collection of factors, such as how much money the individual has available, what their personal needs are, competing alternatives they have available, trust established with the seller, and so on. Something isn't a boycott based on whether it contributed among these factors because we're still looking at the normal behaviour, the set of decisions that go into making any kind of purchase.
A boycott is specifically an organized, collective action. It's a different action from individual purchasing decisions. It might be a factor in individual purchasing decisions, and in fact is trying to deliberately disrupt the normal occurrence of purchasing decisions in order to achieve some end which may not have anything to do with the product itself. We don't figure out whether or not something is a boycott based on what kind of motivation it is or what kind of information it's based on, we figure out whether something is a boycott based on what kind of action it is - or, perhaps more accurately, that it's a call to action. You can't have an undeclared boycott because it is the act of the declaration that is the boycott, not the absence of a purchase.
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Thing is, Gabe didn't do anything lol
He just waited and it worked out because his product is good
Nah, gamers are accountable for what they do or don't do. A protest isn't something journalism as an institution is supposed to manufacture consent for, it's supposed to cover it, and the impetus for it, as those events happen. Like, what are you even saying here lol
Black Ops 1 was a dud on PC.
View: https://imgur.com/G6W5YM3
And MW3 or even Ghosts had a bigger all-time peak than MW2, easily.
The only reason BO2 or 3 are higher are, maybe, because they are some of the best CoD there are (at least for 2).
Outside of Black Ops, every other CoD game on Steam has a better all-time player count than MW2.
Fuck, even Ghosts has 3 times the all-time peak and it's an awful game.
Sorry, not buying this bullshit. Boycotts do work when coordinated effectively and people stick to their guns. Go on, get outta here with that nonsense random ass youtuber loll
It's not necessarily journalists calling for boycotts or whatever. It's simply awareness. I don't believe most consumers are aware of the state of the industry.
I wouldnt call it a joke, if I dont like a developer and dont want to give them money thats a choice made for me and my own beliefs, not because I think withholding my money will cause a discernable difference.
They aren't, but whose fault is that? The reporting is absolutely being done though.
Just in general, the average person is going to be fairly disconnected from any labor reporting at all. My parents couldn't tell you about worker issues in the gaming industry, but they also don't know how the last Amazon union vote went either.