The map of people sony’s bs is going to effect is almost entirely the “bad states” on the “same map” map. It’s a bit weird seeing people on reddit boldly jump to their feet to defend… the RF, PRC, most of Africa, the phillipines.
Whenever these gamer activism things happen I just see gamer-gate happening all over again, a witch hunt where people take a minor or normal issue and use it as an excuse to initiate a campaign of harassment and reaction across the net.
It’s almost always driven by misinformation and outright lies. In this case it’s been spread broadly that sony is imposing photo id checks, when as far as I can tell that’s a uk government policy sony is complying with.
Likewise “i’m concerned about data privacy” has been another key rallying call. The data Sony asks for, at least in the us, is entirely a matter of public record.
The subreddit where this is being coordinated has been a cess pit since about a week after the game came out, with the posting dominated by aggrieved people screaming for blood and justice every time their favorite gun gets minor balance changes. I view the current witch hunt and/or consumer actvisim as “the community”, the thin scum of the angriest and most miserable people who do much of the posting and upvoting on reddit, just finding a legitimist causes belli to rope in 100,000 people in to their weird hate campaign. Like, to be succinct, I think these disorganized internet post-4chan crusades are reactionary and destructive. They might get some movement out of Sony, dropping a well reviewed game to bad reviews in a few days is nothing to scoff at. To arrive there they’ve already harassed at least one woman, a trans employee at Arrowhead, off the internet and arrowhead is apparently getting a considerable amount of harassment.
Having watched gamer-gate happen, watched the years of harassment of women, watched and been part of some of reddits early witch-hunts back in the day, watched a few very well made games get torn apart by unreasoning hate campaigns, this all reads as disgusting witch hunting to me. Arrowhead is like 100 swedes whose last game was a weird little twin stick tactical shooter ten years ago. They don’t have clout. If Sony decides to do something unpopular they don’t have much if any power to stop it. I like those little Swedish weirdos, they made something really cool and i’m viscerally angry that they’re being harassed and tormented for the crime of their niche tactical shooter gaining a wide audience.
There’s also the whole thing with “consumer activism” taking the place of class consciousness. You’ve got, at minimum, 100k people who changed their steam reviews who are shaking their fist at bad company instead of figuring out their class role and understanding that all this rent seeking, enshittification, it’s all capitalism and the normal behavior of capitalist companies.
In this case it’s been spread broadly that sony is imposing photo id checks, when as far as I can tell that’s a uk government policy sony is complying with.
but users wouldn’t need to do that at all were it not for Sony requiring them to make an account that’s obviously not required for the core functionality of the game.
Likewise “i’m concerned about data privacy” has been another key rallying call. The data Sony asks for, at least in the us, is entirely a matter of public record.
except Sony doesn’t have that information right now; they don’t know who i am, because i’m not in their primary dataset. ‘that information is already out there’ is different from ‘that information is concentrated and correlated in the database of this service that i don’t trust to keep that information to themselves and that i don’t want to do business with.’ for now, they only have a Steam ID, a display name, and a datacentre IP address. i don’t run the game on my primary PC.
i don’t give my name and address out to strangers on the street. the information is public, yes, but it’s effectively private until i give them a reason and some key to finding that information. Sony might already have bought my information from some databroker, but for the time being that information doesn’t correlate to any of their ‘customers’.
yes, this is normal capitalist behaviour. yes, ‘consumer “rights”’ is not emancipatory. yes, there are class unconscious people involved here, and a lot of deskpounding capital-G Gamers.
… but i don’t understand what the intent is with saying all of this. i don’t really see the intent of saying ‘it’s public information’ or ‘it’s just an account’ or ‘it’s not Sony’s fault’ or ‘corpo’s gonna corpo’. it’s not very insightful, or compassionate; it reads to me as condescending and defeatist. it reminds me of ‘anti-idpol’ talking points.
for most of these people, all they know how to do is rattle their chains. video games may just be treats, but i know people on disability who were only just starting to make new friends again thanks to this game because of the quality of the in-game ‘community’. for some of them, it’s the first time they’ve had fun in years. to me, it’s about consent, and not being coerced into doing things for no benefit.
it’s absolutely not okay what happened to one of the community managers. i see the hypocrisy in a bunch of ledditors defending peripheries. but i’m not seeing a great deal of insincerity, and i think this is a more credible issue than gamergate was. the developers are against this change also, and a community manager even said the review bomb and boycott is giving them leverage in their talks with Sony.
The map of people sony’s bs is going to effect is almost entirely the “bad states” on the “same map” map. It’s a bit weird seeing people on reddit boldly jump to their feet to defend… the RF, PRC, most of Africa, the phillipines.
Whenever these gamer activism things happen I just see gamer-gate happening all over again, a witch hunt where people take a minor or normal issue and use it as an excuse to initiate a campaign of harassment and reaction across the net.
It’s almost always driven by misinformation and outright lies. In this case it’s been spread broadly that sony is imposing photo id checks, when as far as I can tell that’s a uk government policy sony is complying with.
Likewise “i’m concerned about data privacy” has been another key rallying call. The data Sony asks for, at least in the us, is entirely a matter of public record.
The subreddit where this is being coordinated has been a cess pit since about a week after the game came out, with the posting dominated by aggrieved people screaming for blood and justice every time their favorite gun gets minor balance changes. I view the current witch hunt and/or consumer actvisim as “the community”, the thin scum of the angriest and most miserable people who do much of the posting and upvoting on reddit, just finding a legitimist causes belli to rope in 100,000 people in to their weird hate campaign. Like, to be succinct, I think these disorganized internet post-4chan crusades are reactionary and destructive. They might get some movement out of Sony, dropping a well reviewed game to bad reviews in a few days is nothing to scoff at. To arrive there they’ve already harassed at least one woman, a trans employee at Arrowhead, off the internet and arrowhead is apparently getting a considerable amount of harassment.
Having watched gamer-gate happen, watched the years of harassment of women, watched and been part of some of reddits early witch-hunts back in the day, watched a few very well made games get torn apart by unreasoning hate campaigns, this all reads as disgusting witch hunting to me. Arrowhead is like 100 swedes whose last game was a weird little twin stick tactical shooter ten years ago. They don’t have clout. If Sony decides to do something unpopular they don’t have much if any power to stop it. I like those little Swedish weirdos, they made something really cool and i’m viscerally angry that they’re being harassed and tormented for the crime of their niche tactical shooter gaining a wide audience.
There’s also the whole thing with “consumer activism” taking the place of class consciousness. You’ve got, at minimum, 100k people who changed their steam reviews who are shaking their fist at bad company instead of figuring out their class role and understanding that all this rent seeking, enshittification, it’s all capitalism and the normal behavior of capitalist companies.
but users wouldn’t need to do that at all were it not for Sony requiring them to make an account that’s obviously not required for the core functionality of the game.
except Sony doesn’t have that information right now; they don’t know who i am, because i’m not in their primary dataset. ‘that information is already out there’ is different from ‘that information is concentrated and correlated in the database of this service that i don’t trust to keep that information to themselves and that i don’t want to do business with.’ for now, they only have a Steam ID, a display name, and a datacentre IP address. i don’t run the game on my primary PC.
i don’t give my name and address out to strangers on the street. the information is public, yes, but it’s effectively private until i give them a reason and some key to finding that information. Sony might already have bought my information from some databroker, but for the time being that information doesn’t correlate to any of their ‘customers’.
yes, this is normal capitalist behaviour. yes, ‘consumer “rights”’ is not emancipatory. yes, there are class unconscious people involved here, and a lot of deskpounding capital-G Gamers.
… but i don’t understand what the intent is with saying all of this. i don’t really see the intent of saying ‘it’s public information’ or ‘it’s just an account’ or ‘it’s not Sony’s fault’ or ‘corpo’s gonna corpo’. it’s not very insightful, or compassionate; it reads to me as condescending and defeatist. it reminds me of ‘anti-idpol’ talking points.
for most of these people, all they know how to do is rattle their chains. video games may just be treats, but i know people on disability who were only just starting to make new friends again thanks to this game because of the quality of the in-game ‘community’. for some of them, it’s the first time they’ve had fun in years. to me, it’s about consent, and not being coerced into doing things for no benefit.
it’s absolutely not okay what happened to one of the community managers. i see the hypocrisy in a bunch of ledditors defending peripheries. but i’m not seeing a great deal of insincerity, and i think this is a more credible issue than gamergate was. the developers are against this change also, and a community manager even said the review bomb and boycott is giving them leverage in their talks with Sony.