I'd imagine most use ad aggregation companies anyways so the ads are just mediated via a 3rd party and the streamer doesn't even really know who's ads get shown.
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Streamers posting sponsored content for problematic companies
- Thread starter everdom
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I'd imagine most use ad aggregation companies anyways so the ads are just mediated via a 3rd party and the streamer doesn't even really know who's ads get shown.
Boycotts don't work by punishing company revenue, they work by promoting media awareness about a companies actions and damaging their reputations. Nobody in the gaming industry has a worse reputation then Activision right now. Their current problems and issues have been broadcasted to everyone from news articles to Youtubers across multiple platforms. As far as its concerned their reputations already in the toilet.
The issue here is that most of Activision's profit comes from a population that doesn't follow gaming news or doesn't really care either way. You're key fallacy is assuming an "informed public" would actually punish Activision, when its much more likely they would think "That sucks", never think about it again, and then going later on to purchase the next COD when it comes out.
When a company releases a shoddy product, the people impacted are the consumers. A boycott from consumers makes sense. Consumers don't have a stake in the company and it's a direct response.
When a company is abusing its employees, the people impacted the employees. Consumers (and partners like streamers) are outsiders to that relationship, so the impact of any boycott is muddled because both the employee and the company are on the other side of the consumers.
Imagine there was an apartment complex that was not up to code. You think this is wrong and you feel sorry for the people living there, so you report it with good intentions. Instead of it getting fixed up, the building gets demolished and everyone who was living there has to find a new place to live. Did you actually help the residents? It's an extreme example but if consumers truly banded together and performed a full boycott of Blizzard products, you would see the same effect on employees.
i can support the people who work under a corrupt leadership and try to do what i can to help their situation, definitely don't have to support said leadership and their shitty decisions by providing said leadership with my money, giving them the financial out to continue with their BS. i can say fuck the company but not fuck the average employee working for a check.
I dont know what to tell you other than fuck AB but I won't either reprimand or applaud a streamer who accepts payment from them.
Come on, now. Some people can't afford to not accept sponsorship deals.
You shouldn't judge someone for choosing to purchase or play a product they can purchases within a market for their own entertainment.
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That doesn't excuse the streamers who are popular from being discerning. Again the folks I'm talking about are all >50k followers.
Giving someone the "side-eye" on Era has become its own meme at this point it's ridiculous.
They don't need an excuse to get paid for their jobs. Maybe they enjoy the game and take the deal because they enjoy playing the game.
By all means call out streamers who do problematic things but let's not add "they took a deal from Activision Blizzard" to the list to get mad at them for.
I agree.
But a lot of people need to understand how small of a bubble Era is at times.
Blizzard sucks but a LOT of people have fond memories of Diablo 2
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I still don't know what people want from THQ Nordic, aside from the 2 involved in that admittedly ludicrous AMA to never work in the industry again or something. It was an absolutely massive screw up of an idea, but it's the only real controversy that came out of the company isn't it, and it's basically been like 2 and a half years since it happened, so I just don't really know how there's no real evidence of change there.
They definitely needed more of a punishment than whatever they did or didn't get, but at least they didn't double down on it and start doing weekly 8chan AMAs or what have you- they apologized and moved on. I can't really fault anyone for covering their games or working on sponsered content with them at this point, and I hate the fact that some people on here ( not directing this at you) think that showing support for THQ Nordic is showing support for 8chan and all the horrible content that was posted on there.
Streaming is such a nascent space that it feels like ethics haven't really been figured out there, and a ton of the biggest names seem to give zero shits
True but it's still a lot of money. I don't know how much money a popular streamer makes, it was just a passing thought I had.
By that logic we should also forbid comcast , the power company, microsoft and other software companies for doing business with Blizzard activision. And if those companies refuse we should side eye them too. Right?
One of the advantages of being a streamer vs say, a TV producer, is yiu don't have to do this and have less incentive to if anything inventive to at all. There's no FCC to cite you or shut you down, moderation is lax (and scattershot when it does hit), and advertisers generally don't care about any controversy that isn't big enough to trend online for more than an hour or two.
Also, a boycott isn't all that important with ActiBlizz because punishment isn't being precluded on gamers maintaining a set of principles that they seem to unable to stick to, ActiBlizz has to deal with entities that don't and will not care about the latest Diablo game.
With the focus on Activision Blizzard it might be easy to forget that most game streamers are on a platform owned by Amazon. Whether you want to judge them or not is your prerogative but there's a foundational rot you either have to accept or wilfully ignore when it comes to streams in the first place.
Mad at them implies some degree of anger directed at them, when in most cases - in relation to here - it's just people being critical of them for it. Which I don't really see an issue with.
I was definitely throwing a side-eye to streamers rocking back and forth on neon yellow Cyberpunk chairs while they gleefully touted the virtues of the game pre-release.
I am fine with streamers taking money from Acti. Its their job and they didnt do the things Acti did.
I am also fine with streamers declining such offers.
Personally I am done with Acti (as in buying anything from their devs) unless we have proof beyond reasonable doubt that the working conditions changed.
I am also fine with streamers declining such offers.
Personally I am done with Acti (as in buying anything from their devs) unless we have proof beyond reasonable doubt that the working conditions changed.
Last year this came up in a discussion from some streamers I watched. I forgot where. Sorry I don't have receipts.
For a game like Raid (mobile game), they were being offered 10k and up for ads on YouTube. For. Every. Single. Ad. One video a day for a week had that ad. I don't look down on anyone for taking that money. Also I should note that they had about 10k followers or less. You do the math for the big streamers.
Yeah, TBH, I thought this thread was going to be about streamers shilling shady key resellers or crypto scams, not a mainstream release. Outside of ERA, I'm not sure how widely circulated Activision's abuses even are. And even in here, it's not like there's a CP2077 level ban on the game
This is not nearly as clear cut as people want it to be. Lots of Good people poured their heart and soul into the project for a completely shit bag of a company.
Most of these developers are not wanting you to boycott their work. They are happy you support their fight against Acti-Blizz and how godawful the company is and has allowed things to be but you are not helping the developers when you ignore their products.
The Rot within Acti-Blizzard is only going to get purged by continuing to support the good people and their fight. I know one particular Developer at Blizzard who has been fighting the fight harder than most and even within the company she is still getting attacked by men saying she is being shrill etc. The Good news is that man lost his job just about immediately.
Most of these developers are not wanting you to boycott their work. They are happy you support their fight against Acti-Blizz and how godawful the company is and has allowed things to be but you are not helping the developers when you ignore their products.
The Rot within Acti-Blizzard is only going to get purged by continuing to support the good people and their fight. I know one particular Developer at Blizzard who has been fighting the fight harder than most and even within the company she is still getting attacked by men saying she is being shrill etc. The Good news is that man lost his job just about immediately.
Judging people for moral purity is mostly what this forum is about.
Should just let people decide what they want to do with their time as long as it's within legal rights.
It is not any different than Era keeps hyping games and related stuff even when there is a stickied thread of gaming stuff manufactured by literal slaves.
Would any of you actually willing to stop gaming because of it? I would imagine not. It's easy to say let's boycott this and that and let's side eye anyone making excuses if we choose to forget that we too, are making excuses for our personal enjoyment.
Would any of you actually willing to stop gaming because of it? I would imagine not. It's easy to say let's boycott this and that and let's side eye anyone making excuses if we choose to forget that we too, are making excuses for our personal enjoyment.
I'm actually quite a bit more a fan of the reasoning that a lot of people worked on this game, many of whom were not involved in the horrible culture that plagued the company. I think sticking the women in front of that and saying, well because they were victims we should still buy the game, actually does more to ignore the work they did as well as everyone else. I can't pretend to understand what they've gone through, but I tend to think they would not like to be known because of victimhood.
In reality, people aren't buying the game because they want to punish the offenders, including those in charge. But is that what is going to happen? Unlikely. What will probably happen is lost sales will result is lost jobs; yes, some of those will be people who participated in or encouraged the behavior. But many of these will be innocent victims of that.
I suspect I will receive one reply to this that says, well if you work for a despicable company, you should go work somewhere else. But the entire industry is like this! And one or two lost paychecks for the majority of its employees can be the difference between making a living and homelessness. It's not as simple as just getting another gig. An exec or a bigwig can jump ship and get a soft landing, but your basic artist or QA manager is going to have reason to be concerned.
I'm still not sure if I'm going to buy it, but I had planned to on day one up until a few moths ago.
In reality, people aren't buying the game because they want to punish the offenders, including those in charge. But is that what is going to happen? Unlikely. What will probably happen is lost sales will result is lost jobs; yes, some of those will be people who participated in or encouraged the behavior. But many of these will be innocent victims of that.
I suspect I will receive one reply to this that says, well if you work for a despicable company, you should go work somewhere else. But the entire industry is like this! And one or two lost paychecks for the majority of its employees can be the difference between making a living and homelessness. It's not as simple as just getting another gig. An exec or a bigwig can jump ship and get a soft landing, but your basic artist or QA manager is going to have reason to be concerned.
I'm still not sure if I'm going to buy it, but I had planned to on day one up until a few moths ago.
Most people are pretty against doing something that directly impacts their livelihood. I can't really fault them for that tbh. If they did, there would be very, very few companies they could even work with. ActiBlizz is the easy one to point a finger at, but what about Sony, MS, Insomniac, etc? I think the best thing we can all do is to keep the convo going and never letting it fall from conversation. Constant pressure is the only thing that leads to change.
I wouldn't say that's what the forum is about, but people surely love doing it. Just check that Johnny Depp thread that got locked yesterday.
Our consoles are made with slave labor. SNK is heavily invested into by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Naughty Dog crunches its people into the dirt. Ubisoft, Activision, Quantic Dream, etc. are self-explanatory. I wish I could boycott everybody bad, but there's really nothing left.
This same forum celebrated a lot Insomniac's reveals days ago.
It was amusing seeing some users hyped for the Wolverine game; then posting "fuck Activision " in D2R threads.
Or the whole issue around Kena's development; with some brushing it off as "nothing big because, nothing else was said since"; despite the main person involved in the issue been a poster from here.
Which makes kinda hard. Like it seems that the purpose is to boycott companies that are already cool to hate. Which ends diminishing the issues and the reason behind the boycotts.
That too.
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I always find it interesting when people are critical of others when it comes to boycotts and issues, yet the only time they mention the plight of the Uyghurs is in throwing them out as some token to shame others for standing up against anything problematic in gaming.
Those that will bring up a perpetual larger or other issue that that person should be acting against as well, despite often not making any move against any of them themselves.
Those that will bring up a perpetual larger or other issue that that person should be acting against as well, despite often not making any move against any of them themselves.
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Would it be fine if they would have a short disclaimer about how Blizzard is actually bad, despite what the entire content of the video says, somewhere at the bottom of their video description? And then redirect viewers to that video, to not shit up the current one? Because that seems to work fine for Era.
Hollywood Celebs are in Diablo 2 ads, The platform holders are all still supporting Activision Blizzard and cutting million dollar marketing deals. Streamers would be the least of my concern when it comes to these kind of partnerships.
They're just taking cues from the much bigger, much more influential industries. Weird to go after the smallest fry.
I think it can work in a combined capacity if there is that intent or need to cover the game. Ars Technica wrote an extensive segment at the beginning of their review — https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021...s-an-uneasy-walk-through-old-remade-dungeons/ — detailing the history of ongoing events and I think it does well to provide that grounding, though I would have cut the 'skip ahead' part personally.
I don't think you need to cover the game to raise awareness of its issues mind, other places seem to not want to cover it at all, but if you are doing so then I think there's merit in simply not looking past it entirely and making sure the connection between Blizzard and current events is intact.
I'm a Muslim so the plight of my fellow Muslims treated as literal slaves for all our enjoyment is not something that I would invoke lightly.
It is interesting though. How people are willing to boycott one thing but not the other.
One boycott is easy, all you need to do is avoid games they're making. The other is not so easy, because you need to avoid purchasing video game machines and platforms altogether, even though in terms of severity literal human slaves trump all others.
By all means, boycott all you want, I am not telling people not to take a stand. It's just that when people whose self enjoyment depend on literal fucking slaves start to demean others for not also boycotting what they are boycotting, that is when it start to irk me.
Oh, and I'm not gonna touch anything made by Activision Blizzard, in case anyone is wondering.
It's unpopular here but I will echo this. I follow a great deal of developers across ABK, a decent amount of them affected directly by this culture at one time or another, some very recently, and this is still the common sentiment among the folks I follow. Many of the employees organized under ABetterABK have emphasized this as well.
None of them, and certainly not I as an outsider, are asking people to buy the games no matter what; if you feel morally that not buying or playing or even talking about the game is the right thing for you to do then more power to you and I support you.
However, if the people who are actively affected by this aren't asking for boycotts and for everyone to not discuss and play the games, then I would prefer to consider that perspective more than my own. I guess I just feel better making the decision to support them the way they are asking me to support them, not in any way that I personally decided was the best way.
For instance, I have a long history with the Crash Bandicoot franchise, both in front of and behind the curtain (albeit years ago now) and often receive their PR and press gifts for Crash-related stuff, to share with my small following. When they sent that piñata out, and the Anniversary assets, I prefaced them with a 10 second intro card describing the employee demands and showing charities the ABetterABK folks have asked people to support. For as long as this goes unsolved, I will continue to do this. I retweet it daily at least once regardless. I regularly retweet employee commentary and perspectives. I regularly retweet employee stories. I have begun making donations to their suggested groups. I feel like I'm doing a lot more to support them this way than I would be by being an individual not playing a video game. That's just my feeling and opinion. It's likely that I'll buy used, if I do buy ABK games.
That said, again, if you are boycotting, I understand your point of view, and I support you in doing so! Your lines and boundaries and your take on the situation are yours to feel out.
What I don't support is people saying there is only one way and that if you're not boycotting there must be something wrong with you, or that you don't care about the employees. There is a gulf of difference.
As an aside — people saying judgment against the actual affected people still at the company for not asking for/supporting boycotts feels really gross to me. I think they are more than entitled to rallying support for their demands in their own ways.
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I'm aware from past threads. In fact you've been pretty vocal in giving your perspective on topics relating to Muslims in general, which is valuable as it's one that isn't often found here. So, if it wasn't clear, I'm not referencing you. Rather the contingent of people whose sole interest in connection to that issue is to invoke it in the manner I described.
I think boycotting something instead of everything is somewhat easy to understand though, when it comes to your second line specifically. There's a difference between being selective within a system and abandoning it entirely, and I think as long as you're not there beating everyone else down then there's the ability to progress toward awareness and, in few cases admittedly, some degree of change. It's those that stand on the sidelines of everything to point at others for not caring about a perpetual 'other thing', when they themselves err on the side of inaction toward every case, that confuse me.
I do think there's a distinction when it comes to people beating down on others for not joining in on a boycott (like say, going into the D2:R OT and calling some random person shit for buying the game) and being critical of those who produce content around a game without mentioning anything in relation to the ongoing concerns. That is to be critical mind , and you can be critical of someone without crossing into being demeaning. In that sense I don't see a need to jump in front of it because it's at most a discussion and people wondering if things couldn't be better were those in positions of having audiences to devote a shard of time toward the issues in addition to the promotional work they do.
Similar to Cyberpunk I've little contention with people that invariably play a game, but I do think tying these things to ongoing issues is beneficial and that sometimes people would rather sacrifice that than handle a certain amount of awkwardness in addressing it prior to whatever content they're producing on it. In that same sense I would absolutely agree with you that the coverage of Uyghur muslims was embarrassingly minimal from a lot of major establishments, as is the seeming lack of desire to investigate it further to understand how the issue persists with where we are now.
Sometimes it may be the case that a streamer is not aware of whatever bullshit is going on with a company.
If they are, it's their prerogative whether to sell out for shitty companies or not.
People can opt not to watch streamers who opt to do so. Or at least not the sponsored content.
I don't know where I'd draw the various lines. I have only thought about this for like 60 seconds.
I have avoided watching videos for THQ Nordic games that have appeared on Youtube channels that I might otherwise have watched. So I guess I'm at least inclined to avoid watching the particular videos in question.
If they are, it's their prerogative whether to sell out for shitty companies or not.
People can opt not to watch streamers who opt to do so. Or at least not the sponsored content.
I don't know where I'd draw the various lines. I have only thought about this for like 60 seconds.
I have avoided watching videos for THQ Nordic games that have appeared on Youtube channels that I might otherwise have watched. So I guess I'm at least inclined to avoid watching the particular videos in question.
As someone who is a really small streamer that has turned down a few sponsored stream offers easy answer is ,yes, the more you turn down generally the less you will be offered . I'm sure the bigger you are the less of a problem this is though..
Is there a single big publisher or dev that isn't problematic? I mean Acti Blizz Situation is beyond fucked up, but the you also got Ubisoft also being fucked up, same with CDPR, Naughty Dog, EA, THQ, Sony, Microsoft etc all being incredibly fucked up in different ways. Its part of their job that would have to stop accepting money from almost all major pubs and a lot of top devs which would be a decent chunk of change. I aint gunna be asking or side eying some streamer because they are doing a sponsorship from one of these companies while I play games on my devices that are made by slave labor.
For example:
For example:
Which gaming systems do you play on? And why do you think Boycotting and side eying streamers that use this as income is any worse than what you are doing by purchasing game systems made by racist and xenophobic slave labour? The device you typed this thread up with was 99.9% likely related to some pretty awful shit.
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Typically you don't go to the publisher, they come to you. And they come to big and small streamers.
Yes, if you're a giant streamer who can cancel their deal and be fine then sure I get being upset at that person. There's probably a couple hundred of those people at the most. And most of those people aren't playing A-B games. So is this thread for like, a few dozen people?
Streamers with big followings and steady income can make the choose to ignore. Streamers trying to not get evicted might need to make another out of practicality.
I mean, I know I should quit my job. But I can't risk losing benefits and I'm a coward. So here I am.
I mean, I know I should quit my job. But I can't risk losing benefits and I'm a coward. So here I am.
User banned (2 weeks): Inflammatory comparison
"The engineers at Lockheed worked so hard on these anti personnel mines! How could you boycott them?".