Again, according to you. There isn't some arbitrary line where dev choices need to be coddled.
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We need to talk about how toxic discussing the Epic Games Store is when it comes to accusations and insults (Read OP and Threadmarks Before Posting)
- Thread starter Deleted member 42
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I guess I would be wondering if you could qualify the reasons why what THQ Nordic did was as bad or not as bad as the EGS exclusivity deal. Or the firing of 800 people during record profits, or the endless cycle of crunch that is reportedly resulting in PTSD in some employees.
They don't have to be equally bad to be called trash decisions. Tone policing.
Fortnite, the game that Epic itself profits massively from involves crunch. The money to pay for exclusives comes somewhere.
Nah, nice try, but again: there is no arbitrary line where dev choices need to be coddled.
I'm responding to the user drawing a comparison between Activision, THQN, and Rockstar with companies who announce EGS exclusivity.
We're discussing companies who put their games on EGS' platform exclusively, not criticizing Epic itself.
But you were the one who drew the comparison, and I explained why calling companies who go exclusive with EGS trash is not the same as calling THQN or Rockstar trash.
This has been done over and over again.
But it gets ignored, and threads still get full of posts saying "it's just another launcher" or "it's just petty tribalism". Lots of people seem to engage with the subject disingenuously without paying any attention to the source of people's concerns. If people are apathetic of towards the subject, I think it would be better if they don't antagonise people who care about it. If they want to engage in discussion, they should take some time to understand what people are talking about, rather than just making a load of assumptions about a subject they don't seem to be invested in.
That's entirely fair - I could have (and likely should have) separated them more cleanly to others- in my mind I absolutely wasn't saying they were comparable events (they obviously aren't), but rather, was referring moreso to the latter in terms of fostering a better conversation about the EGS in general, not to give an 'excuse' (of which there is none) for the shit people did to Bronson.
I probably should have moved that second paragraph under the second quote, to be sure.
The other three are business practices that directly hurt employees or endorse morally bankrupt websites. What EGS is doing is supporting small businesses. It's so not close it's not even funny.
There are a ton of these posts. But they just get ignored. Disingenuous bullshitters come into the thread time and time again, repeating what are effectively talking points, it gets very tiresome. They seldom argue with the content of those threads, but instead erect ridiculous straw men to argue against.
It is hardly surprising threads turn to trash. The signal to noise ratio just goes off the scale.
No, I said they were devs who got criticized, and different people had different feelings about them, not that to me they were all the exact same level of badness. Being less or more bad doesn't make it not bad. There is no arbitrary line at which point no one can call out a dev.
And my point was that the presence of criticism of these devs does not inherently justify that it is reasonable to call any dev trash for any reason. Like, it's really easy to explain why THQ Nordic or Activision is trash, a lot more complex and nebulous to explain why a dev is trash for EGS exclusivity by itself.
And the posts that do that are not being criticized by the OP. This thread is about the people on both sides being toxic to each other and that we should all try and do better. That would include not ignoring constructive well thought out posts.
Seems reasonable to me. Who are you to tell others what they don't get to criticize or feel strongly about? No harassment, that's for sure. But criticize? Very fair.
Pretty much, It's an endless loop where someone will ultimately come in and ignore all the posts about it and say it's just another launcher and downplay any concerns about the egs as haters.
So what about the devs that have signed deals and have shown obvious contempt for anyone having issues with the egs store?
We should, but being nice to each other is a function of our ability to actually hold a conversation. That often doesn't happen.
I didn't tell people what they can criticize, I responded and explained why THQN's actions getting criticized as "trash" is not itself a justification to call a company trash for EGS exclusivity. It's a tone and invective that does not come off to me as valid.
But again, being more or less bad doesn't make a choice not bad. OP was saying people were in the wrong calling these deals out, and then people followed up by telling me I should encourage devs who take choices I fundamentally disagree with. That these corporate choices should be beyond reproach and must only be dealt with by using niceties, unique to all corporate choices discussed here. I contest that.
OP
OP
Huh? When?
This thread is about trying to stop things like calls for violence, threats, or racist/sexist remarks.
But "people criticized THQN" does not justify criticizing EGS-exclusive games/devs. That's my point. It's entirely neutral to whether it's "justifiable."
I absolutely agree with this--and I don't see why anyone would disagree honestly--but one reason I can never support Epic is specifically their liaison with THQ and the fact that Tim has no qualms showing his support for them. No game in history is worth that noise.
I certainly got the sense that you were putting "calling devs trash" in the same bucket as "harassment".
Again, to you, and again, there being worse choices made doesn't mean others are beyond reproach.
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But... the sequence of events was you bringing up Era criticizing THQ Nordic et al and saying "if this dev can be criticized, why can't devs who go EGS exclusive?" I'm explaining there that the criticism THQ Nordic faced has nothing to do with this.
Devs don't necessarily need to take their fans opinions of the EGS store into account before signing deals if they think enough oftheir fanbase will still buy the game anyways.
Even if they have contempt for fans who won't follow them, that doesn't mean that you have to go low as well. Take the high road and call them out for their negative behaviour all you want, but saying only "they are trash" or anything else as reductive as that does not move the discourse forward, it just makes it worse.
If someone is being extremely black and white, the solution is not to go to the opposite pole of the argument as them and then say "Well I'm here" and then argue back and forth. Obviously racism, sexism and other extreme things such as that is a different story, but ultimately the Epic Game Store for non-Epic developers is a choice made in best interest of their company.
I'm saying that people criticize devs and call them trash all the time - and gave them as an instance. Someone might say that THQN was worse, but I'm saying there is no arbitrary line at which point criticism is off the table, and that there are multiple degrees of making bad choices which can get called out.
And the answer here is that criticisms of more serious issues do not by themselves make criticisms of EGS-exclusive devs more or less justifiable. They're neutral to the whole matter.
Also, I don't think anyone is arguing what people can criticize. People are just finding the arguments weak.
I agree with not insulting them and they don't have to take fans opinions on what they are doing for the business. I just hope that if it bites them in the ass long term they look at their own decisions as the cause and not blame fans.
Indeed! And like any business, if they make a bad business decision, whatever it is, they either learn from it or are doomed to repeat it. To bring this back on topic, the Epic Game Store seems to be working for most of the companies who have accepted the deal so far.
With Ooblet, it turned out that at least one of the discord images that's getting passed around was an outright lie where they spliced together a response to a completely different subject in an attempt to incite people against the developer. I went to check out the discord channel myself and among other things, I'm seeing stuff like the developer saying that everyone should be civil and try to find common ground and that if any of their patreon backers are upset to contact them and they'll offer them a full refund. From reading the Ooblet thread, you'd think the devs were evil incarnate.
You shouldn't be calling people trash and developers are people and in the case of some indie developers, only 1 or 2 people. Disagree with their decisions. Don't buy their products. You can even directly tell them that you disagree and wish they would do something else. But it is wrong to send hate at an individual, especially when it's over something like a business choice over which platform to support. It's not healthy for the person sending the hate and it just makes the world a little bit worse of a place.
You shouldn't be calling people trash and developers are people and in the case of some indie developers, only 1 or 2 people. Disagree with their decisions. Don't buy their products. You can even directly tell them that you disagree and wish they would do something else. But it is wrong to send hate at an individual, especially when it's over something like a business choice over which platform to support. It's not healthy for the person sending the hate and it just makes the world a little bit worse of a place.
I feel like posts like these are part of the problem. Based on this thread alone, it should be pretty clear that it's a passionate subject. If you know you're ignorant on the topic, maybe inform yourself before throwing out the ol I'm going to school them on how business really works stuff that we've all heard a thousand times on the topic. It's been discussed enough that folks shouldn't be all that ignorant one way or the other. I get that this is a forum, but part of the problem with a lot of threads here are the "well I don't know the specifics, but let me give you my opinion" anyhow posts. Hell, many can't even read the quotes in the OP before posting at times. I've probably been guilty myself in the past, but I really do try to be better, especially on heated subjects.
To put it simply, the topic is more focused on the discourse around EGS and you're on about how businesses gotta get ahead of the competition.
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Calling a decision "trash" on a forum or not wanting it to work is not the same as harassment or sending hate.
If you're directing that language at the dev, then it is harassment. If you're saying to somone else, "That dev is trash", then it is not. If someone came up to you in person and started calling you trash, and then thousands of other people did too you would definitely have every right to say you're being harassed. Because that is what harassment is.
How Era reacts to EGS news has led to me posting in here less. How people, normally excited for a game, suddenly remark that they will refuse to play it because it moved to the EGS (and then to bully those who are still excited for the game), is so incredibly toxic that it makes no sense to even have a conversation. It's not rational, it's cult-like.
Yeah, EGS is missing features compared to Steam, and sometimes the games they pick up promised to be on Steam and then some don't follow through, and for some people they couldn't even access EGS because it didn't support their country/currency yet; but suddenly having a games forum lose the ability to talk about a game because it had become taboo is just toxic and inappropriate.
Yeah, EGS is missing features compared to Steam, and sometimes the games they pick up promised to be on Steam and then some don't follow through, and for some people they couldn't even access EGS because it didn't support their country/currency yet; but suddenly having a games forum lose the ability to talk about a game because it had become taboo is just toxic and inappropriate.
That entirely depends on whether you are calling the devs trash or calling the decision to take Epic's deal trash, there is a difference and one slides slightly to close to harassment for comfort. Besides that I feel using trash at all is needlessly aggressive and confrontational which is kind of the point of the thread, to tone down on needless aggressiveness (or worse) when discussing/arguing about heated subjects as it's currently feeding an Ouroboros of toxic discussion on the Internet in general.
I also want to point at that almost anyone, including me, would take the deal Epic is offering in their position, especially indie dev's so it shouldn't be too difficult to be understanding of the decision. By all means be disappointed and by all means be annoyed with Epic/EGS for creating the situation to begin with but taking it out on the developers is misguided and self-defeating, if not slightly hypocritical. There are caveats with things like moneyhats involving Kickstarter where devs have a little more share in the blame but going on the offensive and getting aggressive is never the right answer. None of this means you can't criticise, (I certainly do as I'm very much in the against-EGS camp) but do it healthily.
I'll say only one thing, just in case people have forgotten
Hats&Crates
Sounds like the Puritans in my area that make it so you can't buy liquor on Sundays and that keep marijuana criminalized.
This is me, and I haven't even downloaded the thing. But if I post in one of those threads, "oh neat, I might grab that" about some EGS game, god help my notifications. Maybe it's better now, but for awhile there, it was enough for me to just write off every thread even tangentially related to EGS.
I have yet to see a good argument for why discussion of the EGS should not simply be banned.
It's clearly having a negative impact on the community overall, and like similarly negative external influences it would be best to remove it from the equation entirely.
What would be the downside of no longer allowing discussion or promotion of the EGS, and how would that outweigh the upside of massively reducing the amount of toxicity that surrounds any discussion regarding it?
It's clearly having a negative impact on the community overall, and like similarly negative external influences it would be best to remove it from the equation entirely.
What would be the downside of no longer allowing discussion or promotion of the EGS, and how would that outweigh the upside of massively reducing the amount of toxicity that surrounds any discussion regarding it?
vitriod,
Yeah and it's not good. I'm not going to both sides or pick sides. All companies should be held accountable for the shit they do.
yeah, and both of those things are heavily regulated aren't they?
But then do you ban discussion of games that are exclusive to the EGS too? Because the subject would always come up in threads about those games.
Port begging and console wars have been pretty effectively stamped out, but for some reason all this nonsense surrounding the storefront wars has been allowed to endlessly fester and grow rotten.
I don't really know what it is that drives people to such inhospitable lunacy.
I don't really know what it is that drives people to such inhospitable lunacy.
I'm sorry you have to go through all that shit, Bronson.
I don't like Epic's practices when they buy out Kickstarted games, but realistically, it's a fucking launcher on the same PC I have Steam on. I don't have it at the moment, but I give it about 6-12 months for the feature set to get better and I'll have it.
Fuck it's like fans of league titans Steam Football Club getting mad that upstart team Epic Game Store United is buying the expensive players.
I don't like Epic's practices when they buy out Kickstarted games, but realistically, it's a fucking launcher on the same PC I have Steam on. I don't have it at the moment, but I give it about 6-12 months for the feature set to get better and I'll have it.
Fuck it's like fans of league titans Steam Football Club getting mad that upstart team Epic Game Store United is buying the expensive players.
Should they be? I don't see any reasonable arguments for why I can't buy liquor on Sunday or why smoking a joint should be criminal but supporters will bring up the supposed societal chaos that will be unleashed if you allow either of those things.
I'd like to know what societal harm has come out of micro-transactions or why children have unmonitored access to money to buy them. The 'think of the children' stuff always gets brought up but its almost never supported or explained. Epic has parental controls.
