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Ooblets will be exclusive to Epic Games Store on PC
- Thread starter fieldafar
- Start date
Exactly. It can mean one thing. At best it's interpreted as just shrill shrieking, and we know what it is at worst.
Hey, don't sweat it. The fact that you'd even make this follow up post says a lot. Kudos.
Epic has given a statement:
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epics-statement-on-misinformation-and-abuse
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epics-statement-on-misinformation-and-abuse
I honestly had no idea what the history of the term was - I saw it used a couple of times and thought it was funny in an absurdist sense. Obviously now I know better, but as someone who is Moderately Online, I believe it is possible to not fully understand the etymology of even relatively common internet lingo.
what are they even talking about? what fake quotes have been propagated?
Someone edited a discord picture so that the dev said "put all the Gamers in gas chambers". That was clearly fake and only a huge piece of shit would do that (it is made even worse as the dev was jewish so it is more of an insult).
Sweeney made things worse for those developers. Instead of using his largesse to hire a PR firm for them to handle the onslaught and tamp it down, he trolled an already riled mob. He seems smart enough to know that throwing gasoline on a fire will only make it worse.
Those developers should be pretty pissed with him as well.
Some asshole faked a line of discord chat that said one of the developers posted that gamers should be sent to the gas chambers. There was a fake video claiming to show him posting it too.
It was about as shitty as it can get.
I think they are talking about this. I saw a tweet from the devs saying this was photoshopped or something along those lines:
well i would say we've hit rock bottom on this one but i'm sure someone will try to claim he's got child porn or something eventually
This is the original text:
You don't even need Photoshop to create something like that.
Never forget that it is trivial to tweak the text on any website using tools that are built right into your browser.
These types of idiots absolutely love trying to claim people have or endorse child porn even though they themselves regularly frequent sites like 8chan.
User Banned (2 Weeks): Conspiratorial Rhetoric Surrounding Harassment; Prior Related Ban
This is the near "Fake News" type strategy.
On the one hand Epic want to show that they will support developers signing up with them, which of course they should.
Then they trivialise arguments against their service, and the Ooblets developers communication and stances.
Without doubt, there has been a very loud minority doing awful things (as the internet does), including death threats etc, and perpetuating anger with doctored images etc.
However, in this case, there has been ridiculous sentiment from the developer that is not fake, and even included in the developers blog - and their continued doubling down and dismissal of their own audience's concerns or opinions.
It's yet again a super polarised set of approaches from loud minorities, and the overwhelming majority who didn't speak, painted as "gamers", "toxic" etc
I was following the game since being wishlistable on Steam, and am perfectly fine with any developers taking any offers of exclusivity etc to support themselves / studio (outside of the obvious AAA's that don't need that), to save themselves from massive risk. But when you show utter contempt for customers and their choices and opinions that are fully justified with regards to EGS, that's me out permanently.
Regardless of what was fake or wasn't, the devs should have been left alone from the get go. Trolling around their social media, discord, etc., to collect screenshots as "ammo", and ensuring they are collected in an easily disgestable manner to whip up an internet mob, is all just really dumb harassment style behavior. None of it should have happened, and it certainly shouldn't have been reposted here.
Yeah they made a dumb blog post. It was easily ignorable, and everyone should have moved on and just voted with their wallets. Just focus on discussing the store, what's bad about the store, etc., instead of attacking every developer that decides to go with EGS. The reaction from gamers in that regard have been shitty from the beginning, and it's only gotten worse.
Yeah they made a dumb blog post. It was easily ignorable, and everyone should have moved on and just voted with their wallets. Just focus on discussing the store, what's bad about the store, etc., instead of attacking every developer that decides to go with EGS. The reaction from gamers in that regard have been shitty from the beginning, and it's only gotten worse.
User Banned (2 weeks): Excusing harassment and threats
The devs (or any other human being) don't deserve it, that's for sure, but they didn't help the situation either, it was like they were asking for trouble, from the condescending tone of their original piece, followed by some awful discord messages by them, it was a PR disaster, and then there's that Tim guy.
Nah, I've already seen people equating this to gamergate, it's done.
No more point in being upset about EGS, they're not gonna stop no matter what, and the more pissed off people get, the better EGS looks to everyone else.
I'm just gonna stick to not buying games on EGS, and only considering supporting devs, later on other platforms, that don't try to sell me on the EGS and are just honest with taking the deal.
Off-topic: Other thread got locked while I was writing this, l have nothing else to add really.
In addition to that one, there's another one where they put two different conversations together to make it look like the developer was being a jerk to one of their patreon supporters. It's pretty obvious that it's a fake (they didn't edit the timestamps so there's a huge time gap between the two comments) but that hasn't stopped a lot of people from using it as ammunition against the dev. The dev's official stance on backers is that they appreciate their help, didn't want to mislead any of them into thinking that they still required patreon help just to survive, and if any of them have problems with this latest move, they're welcome to email them directly for a full refund.
If I see another "nobody deserves death threats or harassment about the Epic Games Store, BUT" post I'm just going to moonsault into a volcano at this point
at this point i think it's fine to personally decide that you don't want to bother with ooblets or future games from these particular devs but continuing this line of discussion feels way too close to the gamergate "i'm not harassing anyone and condemn harassment, i'm just expressing my own opinions about journalistic ethics that happen to run parallel to and provide cover for the people actually making death threats".
could they have handled this better? probably, but it really doesn't matter at this point. the facts of the situation are what they are, nothing's going to change them, and proceeding on with this thread as we have been just feeds into bad shit even if no one here is directly doing it. being an asshole to people who wanted to buy your game isn't a nice thing to do, but it feels like that shouldn't even be a factor now. criticize epic all you like but let's just leave these guys alone to sink or swim as they will.
While it is 100% wack to cite gamergate in order to paint an egs defender poorly and "win" the conversation or to gaslight, i really really do think this current situation is a hotbed for alt-right recruitment the way gamergate is. This is just my feeling, i have nothing to show to prove it.
That conversation was actually not edited (at the level you think). Another user had screencaped that and asked later on, that got the answer from the dev that was screencapped at the next timestamp. The devs later on said that there was a problem of misundertanding the conversation (which is very likely) and that they would work with long time patreons as you said. They really should have let the wife do most of the PR as she is so much better than the husband on that front, from the original statement on email up to Discord.
No it isn't.
I think some of what they have said is bad but nothing they have said comes close to what has been spread about them by the hate mob, which is what that statement is about. What they have said stopped being important as soon as stuff like the gas chamber thing started spreading like wild-fire.
We will just have to say "oh well", decide if we wanna support the devs or not and consider another discussion destroyed by hate.
i do think it's fair to point out that sweeney's reaction did absolutely nothing to help the devs and almost assuredly made the harassment worse, though.
I've been saying this for a few months now. Sometimes I wonder if it's not Epic's (not necessarily the game makers') intention to be so fucking antagonistic it catalyzes another Gamergate situation.
Which is both horribly unfortunate for those that actually have to deal with it and allows them to hand wave all EGS-related criticism.
I missed the entirety of gamer gate, and still haven't fully grasped the full extent of what people originally started doing or were trying to do. I'm specifically pointing to Epic's statement, and the events as they are. Absolutely, there's no reason to be an "arsehole" as the loud minority on either side of whatever coin tend to be. People are entitled to have their opinions and decide to buy or not, or to have changed their mind based on what every factors they think are relevant to them. It's idiocy to spiral any further than that.
It very much is if you going to waltz over the issues they created themselves, towards their own audience, most of whom have had no involvement in this "hate mob" you describe, and haven't even provided commentary online.
You've absolutely lost me - and I think its best to recoginse not everyone is following everything by the minute. I've read a bunch about this yesterday and today, and haven't read anything on that level - which goes to show I haven't paid as much attention as others. Epic's statement mentioned "fake images", and I certainly know of several, but nothing close to that. I suspected "death threats" and alike, just as with any internet arguments, which is horribly normalised at this point, so much that its "expected". I've been on Discord and seen public posts, which definitely come from the developer - which is all I am getting at.
The "oh well" attitude is exactly what I have myself toward the EGS store, as I've explained plenty of times before. This is a forum for that discussion in the first place. Discussion being key here. This is a more unique case where the Ooblets devs have certainly made it less palatable for me to follow the game at all
Tbh i never considered a concerted effort from Epic to provoke, which would certainly go far to explain how tone-deaf they seem. But that kind of thing feels more like me plugging in a convienient answer, the idea is in the back of my head now tho so it's nice to have that lens. Epic would do well to get that bird's eye view of the scenario and understand their role in everything happening atound them
Not to imply death threats are tantamount to stooping to the dev's level I hope. The dev was a dillweed, but not even in the same galaxy as the extreme part of the bell curve of responses to this event.
It is certainly a plausible reason for Epic to fund these more sought after titles. I really doubt Epic exclusivity considerations are actually considering the game at its core but rather a number of facets. One of them could so very easily be how much heat will it get and whether that will transfer to eyes on the store.
Same here, I'm not even going to bother going into EGS related threads, it's not worth the energy.
I can get behind generating intense press under an "any press is good press" strategy, but to stoke gamergate-types knowingly is literally a violent action to me, i dont think epic is doing that as far as i can see but the situation is admittedly not great currently
That is a nice statement. The issue is not about the people who do not like EGS and criticize their strategy. It is about the ongoing trend of coordinated harassment of devs, on top of creation and promotion of fake materials to gain momentum among the passerbys. It is all the more troublesome as the people doing these awful actions have likely never had any intent of purchasing the game in the first place, I would not call them customers: they are jumping on the harassment train for the sake of being mean and abusive to the devs, and sometimes to the reporters. As a customer, if you do not like EGS, you don't buy from them, it could not be simpler.
How else are supposed to respond to people bringing up death threats seemingly in an attempt to shut down any further discussion, and especially criticism of EGS and the devs in question? If you don't preface your post with that kind of condemnation, then you just open yourself up to ridiculous accusations like, "so you don't care about harassment and death threats?" or even having claims that you support that garbage behavior leveled against you.
"Just honest"
This dev went on an epic tirade and began a spiteful hate campaign against anyone who would presume to disagree or criticize their actions.
Goose Game was a good example of "just honest."
The "but" almost always immediately into some kind of victim blaming or downplaying of the harassment and threats.
kinda like this
There's nothing worth discussing at this point with the original post. I hope that this scenario doesn't repeat itself, with Tim not shitting the twitter verse with his usual hot takes. It's clear theres a toxic crowd, and its in the best interests of all not to go down that road with future announcements.
It's not victim blaming to say that no one deserves death threats but does deserve criticism and is receiving backlash for a good reason.
So, because backlash often escalates into death threats by a minority of deplorables, backlash should not be allowed even when people show their asses and are openly antagonistic towards others? I don't agree that's how things should work.
It would help if people could read the room. The subject moved on from "Ooblets took a deal with Epic" to "Ooblets' devs have been targeted by a harassment campaign." It's gotten to the point Epic had to release a press statement about it. Save the arguments against Epic for another thread (which is sure to show up soon enough). Take this time to reflect on the toxicity that is present in the gaming community and show some empathy towards the devs.
Sympathy towards a guy who liked a tweet basically calling anyone critical of EGS "retards?" Sympathy for death threats, sure, but not beyond that.
Start up a new thread specifically about the harassment if you want that to be the crux of the discussion. Bringing up the devs awful behavior in that context would of course be unwelcome.
So criticism isn't allowed because some idiots might take it to the extreme.
This is dumb.