Okay, since you responded in good faith, I can at least do the same.
My original point was really that feel like there are a group of people who intentionally needle developers to get them to slip up and say something bad or mean, and then use that as additional ammunition on their crusade. I don't mean to downplay the concerns here, or to imply that the people with legitimate complaints are wrong.
First of all thanks for that! Sorry if I came across as snarky.
To me these people always existed though, ever since the idawnof the internet. If these people just got put on ignore by the devs they woudn't get any ammo though. They are not obliged to communicate with toxic people. What it comes across as to me these days is the devs engaging with these people to paint the entire argument being made as toxic, and it's working looking at this thread. You have people in here that defended their monetization model in other threads using this to deligitimize the other sides argument
Again the Blizzcon guy in resepect to the mobile Diablo game was the perfect example of this in every way, except even him being toxic is debatable.
I think the problem is that it's hard to ignore toxic idiots when you're the developer. Especially now, in the age of social media and Reddit and at a time when people are rightfully calling for greater transparency and communication in video games, it's harder to just ignore all the people who are assholes. For one, there are a lot of them. They form brigades easily. They can and will target games they don't even necessarily care that much about just to advance an ideological agenda (see: Ooblets and EGS). Then contrast that with people who, by the nature of their jobs, HAVE to keep lines of communication open to talk to their audience and keep them up to date. Especially if you're frontlines PR, you can't just close your DMs and your inbox. And even if you managed to do THAT, you'd still have to read Reddit and forums and Twitter to make sure you're taking in all the legitimate conversation surrounding your game.
That means that it's pretty likely that people working on games are going to have to read a certain amount of bullshit; it's unavoidable. And a couple of comments a week telling you what a shithead you are is probably easy to ignore. But roll out stuff like what Apex Legends did, and suddenly that's not a couple of comments, it's a flood.
I can agree with that, the job of a PR person in gaming is getting harder and harder. But what does stooping to their level do? As you said, some of these assholes just wait for a reaction like that. If ignoring doesn't work, they should at least make a distinction between these assholes and people voicing their concerns in a normal manner. But that's not really happening. In this case, they didn't just call the assholes freeloaders. The whole situation is really dumb anyway because they already backtracked on the model and now call people who criticized said model names again. Like...why. Just makes their original apology ring hollow.
Negativity is always louder than positivity, and that's even more apparent in a job like this. I'm just not sure if this mixing up of assholes with everone else is just a genuine human defensive reflex or by design to silence criticism.
We need a better way of handling this sort of thing. Is the current Apex Legends event over the line when it comes to abusive monetization? Yeah, probably. Is their most recent attempt to fix it sufficient? Jury's out. But there has to be a way to communicate this that doesn't immediately result in a portion of the audience going scorched earth. And it happens every time. Developers are just people too.
Agreed. I edited my earlier post where I said the inevitable assholes popping up is a problem in itself that needs adressing. I just don't agree with bringing it up every single time it occurs, or even sometimes making a mountain out of a molehill, because it's always leading to the original point being lost.
I know if I were in their place, I'd probably handle it even worse than that developer on Reddit. And I suppose that's fair if you want to say that would make me unfit for the job, but we're asking developers to not only be good at their programming or art or whatever jobs, we're also asking them to essentially take on the protective armor you'd normally associate with low-level celebrity. Not everyone needs or wants that kind of baggage, and increasingly it's a requirement of the job.
See this is what I don't get. When someone says "the developers fucked up", it's not an attack on an individual. Almost never individuals get called out outside of legit harassment campaigns we saw with Gamergate. If I was a dev I would just not engage in this nonsense, PR people are there for a reason. I get the problem with Indie devs who don't have people relegated just to community issues, but at least when it comes to pricing models indie devs rarely have problems anyway. Especially when the criticism is directed at a genernal thing like monetization (and let's face it, that's the topic more often than not these days), it's unlikely most devs had a say in it outside the higher ups.