Waypoint Podcast: there's a lot of weird racist undercurrent around China with the Epic Games Store

[thebishop]

It's fairly rare, but I have seen it. I hate EGS, but every time someone yells "TeNcEnT mOnEy!!!!1" my eyes just roll into the back of their head. Tim Sweeny is doing a good enough job ruining things on his own.

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Yeah, I'd like to get a sense of proportion on this. If it's like ubiquitous on Reddit (where I don't post about games), but rare on Era, I'm just missing it.

To use a small number of bs posts to dismiss the overwhelmingly legitimate negativity toward EGS is something else.

But I'm getting the sense that I'm just wrong here, so I'm taking that on.

 

[Oudone79]

You don't have to be racist or xenophobic to not like china. I don't feel sorry foto china.

 

[spam musubi]

While surely some people have made this argument, this seems like a great way to write off all legitimate criticism of epic. Having spent a lot of time on epic threads, a vast majority of criticisms against them in here do not make this argument and actually argue based on epic's actions alone.

 

[teague]

They literally have used Epic Store to spy on people's computer usage.

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By contrast upstanding American companies like Google and Facebook never spy on anyone

oh wait

 

[Heckler456]

I mean, the idea that the Chinese government is using Chinese capital to somehow subvert western democracy is kind of a racist idea.

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Belt and Road. This isn't a fear that comes out of nowhere. If you think that Chinese wouldn't want to "subvert western democracy", then you're being a little gullible.

 

[Deleted member 135]

I don't see the issue with refusing to actively support PRC/CCP-adjacent corporations.

Corporations, like Tencent and Huawei, that funnel huge amounts of money into the PRC/CCP government that allows them to continue with mass granular surveillance, genocide, ethnic cleansing, reeducation camps, and so on. Corporations that have no choice but to obey the commands of the CCP for whatever purpose they design.

 

[z1yin9c]

You can. It's particularly wierd when Tencent is brought up in relation to the Epic Games Store because they don't even own the company, it's an American company, so why bring up a shareholder? Granted a major shareholder, but we rarely see shareholders brought up in other discussions. The implication seems to be to me Tencent = bad.

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I certainly did not see it here much or any. Probably because I don't care about the topic. But sometimes on Twitter or Reddit, you just see it sometimes.

 

[Villein]

what does disliking Tencent and the Chinese government have to do with race?

 

[Dwebble]

To use a small number of bs posts to dismiss the overwhelmingly legitimate negativity toward EGS is something else.

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That's absolutely not what that podcast was doing- as you said yourself, they considered other factors, even if they didn't agree with you about how serious they are.

what does disliking Tencent and the Chinese government have to do with race?

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The criticism too often isn't "I find the relationship of Tencent to this store a problem because..."

It's "CHINESE MONEY! CHINESE SPIES!"

 

[LewieP]

By contrast upstanding American companies like Google and Facebook never spy on anyone

oh wait

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Pretty sure those companies comply with GDPR.

And if they didn't, they should be criticized for doing so

And criticising them wouldn't make someone racist against Americans.

 

[OldMuffin]

Can I not like China but have no issues with Chinese people? Is that racist? To criticise the state but not its people?

 

[Deleted member 6730]

There is nothing wrong with criticizing Tencent.

 

[Herey]

Whenever Tencent is brought up there seems to be tinges of xenophobia, despite how easy it would be to dislike them otherwise.

I'm not well versed enough in the EGS debacle to speak how it's used in that context.

 

[Dwebble]

Pretty sure those companies comply with GDPR.

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Oh

Oh mate

No

 

[Alien Bob]

Just one of the many growing tendrils of anti-Chinese propaganda coming from you-know-where because we're just due for another global superpower dick waving contest

 

[Kraken3dfx]

Epic steals private information from other digital platform apps, they compromise user information on a regular basis, they force themselves into a digital marketplace without doing the work, just by throwing money at publishers to create exclusives.

But let's ignore all that, clearly people are just racist.

Been done with Waypoint for awhile, this doesn't really help their case.

 

[AYF 001]

Yeah, the notion that EGS is a Chinese government front is an incredibly common assertion across just about every community vocally opposed to EGS. It's illogical, and definitely xenophobic - and gives people the falsely earned sense that they're making a brave political stance by opposing the storefront.

I think there's some reasonable skepticism in how the Chinese government operates with Chinese-owned businesses. The situation with Huawei justifies that skepticism. But the fact remains that these same people probably went to see any number of Hollywood movies that were cofunded by Tencent, bought countless items produced in China, and give ample data to social media firms with Chinese investors. So their opposition is clearly not actually about China, but rather China is a convenient scapegoat for a product that they don't want to use for more petty (though still valid) reasons.

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Yeah, I feel like it makes a good after-the-fact justification to hate EGS. Of course, given the gaming community at-large's reputation for tolerance, that's not to say there can't be underlying racism in that sentiment either.

 

[Leveean]

But the criticism Waypoint is talking about isn't "Tencent is bad because it's a bad company" but rather "Tencent is bad because it's a chinese company".

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Because there's a public perception that Chinese companies are more susceptible to corruption, spying and government interference. It's not because of race.

 

[Deleted member 426]

It's been brought up before here. People have legit reasons to dislike EGS, but there are also racist anti-Chinese undertones. There are some people on Era who don't see anti Chinese (and anti Russian for that matter) generalisations as a problem, because they see it as justified.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

We have had versions of this thread before and we do not feel the framing of this topic will benefit the issue at hand.