Good. Actual journalism. Too much to expect from most gaming news sites, apparently.
(Thanks to the couple of valiant exceptions.)
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THQ Nordic holding an AMA on... 8chan (UP: website linked to multiple mass shootings) READ THREADMARKS
- Thread starter Deleted member 401
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Good. Actual journalism. Too much to expect from most gaming news sites, apparently.
(Thanks to the couple of valiant exceptions.)
Yeah it's right there in black and white. I'm seriously disturbed that they thought they could get away with this and from such a senior member of the publishing team as well. I've seen some shocking things but this has got to be up there in the gaming news. And just how apathetic can the rest of the department be to "okay" that in the first place? I seriously hope none of them have children or claim to have a pulse!
Good article. Better than most of the gaming media ones.
That GamesDaily article kinda sums up the problem of why alt-right tactics work as well as they do. Pretty much everyone in there writes off what happened as a mistake, which is exactly part of the pattern.
A lot of people look at that scenario and think "Boy, that seems like a big mistake to make", get a bland statement that it was a mistake, and that's the end of the discussion. The alt-right, meanwhile, takes their intent as sincere, and then takes the bland apology offered as something forced upon the company. As a result, the company gets a net win by courting new customers while most people discount the exact action that won those new people over.
If the pressure was kept on and people didn't just cowtow when monstrous behavior is written off with an "oops", then the company might feel pressure to actually do better and demonstrate that their mistake was genuinely a mistake. That subsequent behavior would suggest to the alt-right that they are actually not welcome.
A lot of people look at that scenario and think "Boy, that seems like a big mistake to make", get a bland statement that it was a mistake, and that's the end of the discussion. The alt-right, meanwhile, takes their intent as sincere, and then takes the bland apology offered as something forced upon the company. As a result, the company gets a net win by courting new customers while most people discount the exact action that won those new people over.
If the pressure was kept on and people didn't just cowtow when monstrous behavior is written off with an "oops", then the company might feel pressure to actually do better and demonstrate that their mistake was genuinely a mistake. That subsequent behavior would suggest to the alt-right that they are actually not welcome.
Again, the thing that always gets me in these discussion is that people are free to choose not to buy video games because of
- the story
- the graphics
- the gameplay
- the platform
- the art style
- the franchise
- the developer
- the price tag
and god knows what else, but suddenly when it's on moral grounds you get a bunch of people going "whoa hey now"
- the story
- the graphics
- the gameplay
- the platform
- the art style
- the franchise
- the developer
- the price tag
and god knows what else, but suddenly when it's on moral grounds you get a bunch of people going "whoa hey now"
For my part, my line is that I'm happy to support developers working on THQ Nordic games if their management condemns these actions and publicly calls for firings/resignations.
Otherwise they're complicit and I will not support them.
This might have a negative impact on blameless individuals, but there are other games I can support instead.
Otherwise they're complicit and I will not support them.
This might have a negative impact on blameless individuals, but there are other games I can support instead.
When you read people's outrage on this forum to something like Anthem not meeting expectations versus a developer who supports CP, racism, homophobia saying it was just a mistake and how dare we "punish the poor devs" it literally kills me. Priorities amirite?
Yeah that's a good write up. Glad that these are still coming and that there are people putting together good articles rather than just shitting out a barebones article.
So is Deep Silver, etc. also being boycotted? Are we putting disclaimers on Deep Silver threads? Where are you going to draw the line? It seems like the connection between THQ and some of these companies and titles mentioned in this thread are tenuous at best.
Because it is a hard topic.
All of those are reasons you wouldn't want to buy a product.
But let's say you went to Burger King for lunch and someone was incredibly rude to you. Is it fair to never go back to that specific location? What about the stores owned by that franchise owner (?)? What about all Burger Kings on the planet?
Should you never go to BK in the UK because some kid in Florida spit in your whopper? Should you never go to BK in Florida because the CEO was a knob once?
And I genuinely don't know the answer to that. As a sense of punishment I think it is stupid. But I also know that I don't eat at Arby's anymore because I ate a bad sandwich and had horrible food poisoning twenty years ago as the mere smell of an Arby's sandwich makes me nauseous.
Similarly, I know there are brands I don't support anymore because some of their on-air personalities are truly horrific people. I justify that because at least two of those on-air personalities actually hold high ranking positions in the company. But I also know that said on-air personalities and managers have little to no say in what other divisions of the company work on.
Like I said, this is a hard topic. As a site it requires discussion to figure out what to do. But as an individual it is very much an individual decision
"No, I actually never even bought Final Fantasy VIII."
"So you're just going to punish all of the innocent devs that worked on the game because one writer really liked the word 'whatever'?"
Just like how violence always gets brought up whenever there's a thread about objectifying women, it's only in threads like these where people suddenly start to care about the "devs".
If someone from Burger King corporate said that memes about "faggotry" could be part of a meal deal, I'd be out for good.
All locations.
And that's before talking about the child porn.
No that misses everything. When you shut down the discussion you shutdown everyone's criticism. Ain't a single person saying let's look at it from other angles. This is simply a matter of people have shit to say about what has happened and will continue to happen (production or media communication) and you all just don't want to hear it. And for what? If this was Nintendo it would be fucking crickets.
who the fuck cares
If I liked Burger King that much, I'd go to a different Burger King. If I'm just hungry I can go to McDonald's, I can go to Wendy's, I can go to Harvey's. I do not owe Burger King a single thin schooner-covered time.
I'd personally count them as a separate entity (different CEOs, different staff). That's just me though.
Oh I dunno, all the people I've seen gleefully enjoying Anthem's rough couple of weeks and shitting on Bioware definitely care about developers.
people bending over backwards to try to justify a way to still by games without seeming morally bankrupt. just say you don't care and move on, just be honest instead of saying i won't let this terrible thing effect me because i'm an intellectual
Except you don't need Game Threads to have this discussion and criticism of the company. You can still have News threads like this about THQ and talk about how shitty they are and how much of a problem this is. Banning advertising their games with game threads is not a ban of discussion on THQ.
THQ's products and advertising their products should be boycotted unless this situation is resolved and that's going to take more than just a throw away apology.
And how many of those people are constantly wishing that EA, Activision, Etc would go out of business. Look if people don't want support this boycott fine, whatever, but spare me this "I care about the poor devs!" bullshit.
Throw up a poll if you want to see how the rest of the board really feels about boycotting discussion.
The situation gets more interesting if Burger King releases a new sandwich; let's say, Destroywhopper, which becomes a hit amongst emo teens, and the idea at a fast foodie forum on how to deal with it is to not discuss it too much.
Well I mean, yes? That's exactly what happened with Chick-Fil-A; the owner's a huge asshole, so a lot of people decided to stop going there.
If the PR & Marketing Director and Business & Product Development Director of Burger King decided to host a Q & A on an antisemitic child pornography website even after they were warned repeatedly that it was a bad idea, yeah I'd give serious consideration to never going there again.
This isn't reddit, the staff makes these decisions, not the users.
Users would just login with their alt-accounts to skewer the vote in their favor.
These game journo's need to look at waypoint's response to this and ask themselves why anything less than scathing would be an appropriate response to this. Their (lack) of indictment means they are also complicit in this shit. Most of those articles didn't even bother to mention thq left a twitter post with A LINK TO 8CHAN up for like what 12 hours??? But ok it was all just some big "misunderstanding" and they're just these nice Austrian dudes based out of Vienna how can we even expect them to know what 8chan even is??? No we're just a bunch of Era drama queens making a big deal out of an honest mistake I guess /s
that doesn't become interesting because it is still being a silly and overly reductive. people aren't mad because of a business decision or because of a sleazy advertising campaign, they're mad because a major publisher actively engaged with and linked to a site that is known for pedophilia, racism, sexism, and abuse
stop dancing around the issue with bullshit hamburger simillies, it's not helping
The wonderful hbomberguy's most recent video is on how brands put out "woke" content, knowing the backlash it will cause from internet crazies will keep them in the public eye.
At the end he warned about companies eventually doing the opposite, making moves that pander to alt-right to enjoy the publicity in the opposite direction. I can't help but suspect this is what's happening here.
At the end he warned about companies eventually doing the opposite, making moves that pander to alt-right to enjoy the publicity in the opposite direction. I can't help but suspect this is what's happening here.
I live in a world were 45 is fucking people left and right. With the support of many. Ain't anybody gonna tell me that I can't talk about what I want to talk about just because you all have feelings. For once. All of this needs to be discussed. Not ignored. What the heck are you all afraid of?
These are the usual gamer™ priorities. Who cares about child pornography, racism, sexism and all that social justice bs? I'm only here for the games, make games for me THQ. I don't care about things that will never affect me, ethics have no place in gaming. Except when game journalists are being unethical.
Except banning THQ game threads and only allowing THQ news threads isn't ignoring it. It's directly discussing it.
Regarding boycott, I believe it'll be sufficient enough to treat it like Kingdom Come back then.
Put a staff note at the top of every single THQ Nordic thread, explaining why the company is hazardous and it's all up to you to support them or not. Banning will make people forget, that's not always the best way to inform and remind people.
Put a staff note at the top of every single THQ Nordic thread, explaining why the company is hazardous and it's all up to you to support them or not. Banning will make people forget, that's not always the best way to inform and remind people.
And then you all cry that games journo's aren't doing their jobs when you can't even hold the conversation yourselves.
You should try 8chan I hear you're able to say anything you want there
And that was actually what I was thinking of
I know that I personally didn't go to chik fil a for quite some time afterward because of said behavior. But I also didn't judge people who decided that the CEO being a dickhead has no bearing on the acne covered teenager manning the counter.
And that is what we are seeing here. Instantly anyone who doesn't support the ban is a hypocrite and a bad person and blah blah blah.
Which cuts to the main point. I have a very hard time supporting any company under the THQN banner unless they specifically say something to get across the point "that's not cool". But someone deciding that a random indie dev studio that got acquired last month shouldn't be punished because THQN are shitheads doesn't make them a bad person.
It just makes them a different person
I was willing to give the CEO the benefit of the doubt, but it's been well over 24hrs and this situation really only has one acceptable outcome. I dont plan on buying any more of their software if they decide to shrug this off. If the admin here wants to deny them free advertisement, I think that would be well within their right.
Instead we should just put links to pirates copies so people can play the game without having to support them....I kid
I'm convinced you're trolling at this point. You've contributed nothing beyond dismissals and haven't substantiated your position much at all.
Your line of thought in this post is disingenuous at best. (1) No one is suggesting to "shut down discussion," but to temporarily deplatform promotion of their games to achieve a goal. That's not the same as, say, banning the utterance of "THQ Nordic" or "Darksiders."
(2) Drawing the absurd hypothetical of Nintendo is just stupid, because the whole point is that THQ Nordic clearly hasn't undergone the internal evolution appropriate for when a regional company becomes global — hence, their grossly incompetent and edgy PR & Marketing Director.
Nintendo, on the other hand, is completely professional and would never willingly opt into rapporting with neo-nazis and pedophiles.
Was just going to edit but fair enough that was over the line. sorry
On Banning THQ Nordic Games
Official Staff Communication
To address a few recurring points: We will not be banning games published by THQ Nordic and subsidiaries like Deep Silver. You are instead welcome to continue raising the issue in threads relevant to the publisher and its games. Disclaimers and boycotts as user driven initiatives are welcome as well.
As we have said before, issues like this should be talked about and should be aired in the open. There is not and will never be such a thing as a "partial ban" on a video game here.
Please do not throw around highly inflammatory accusations or insults at your fellow members. Thank you.
As we have said before, issues like this should be talked about and should be aired in the open. There is not and will never be such a thing as a "partial ban" on a video game here.
Please do not throw around highly inflammatory accusations or insults at your fellow members. Thank you.
I feel that it isn't the journalist's role to listen to lame excuses and half-assed disingenuous arguments unless it's from the requisite Trump guy on the CNN panel.
My problem is that I never see any of this until well after the people who haven't said whether or not they're buying the game start wringing their hands over the fact that other people aren't.
My problem is that I never see any of this until well after the people who haven't said whether or not they're buying the game start wringing their hands over the fact that other people aren't.
It's cool. I see shots fired my way for language. We're good.
