After reading today EA’s takes on AI and strategies about boosting user monetization promoting and exploitation of user’s gambling addiction, I asked myself “How can someone defend those company agains boycotting and piracy?”.
So here I am: is there somewhere a curated list of VG companies to absolutely avoid giving money too? If not, do you thing we should do it? It would be nice to have a list with arguments and sources in order to make more publicly relevant the ethical and strateical reasons behind piracy.
p.s.I think it’s ok if you pirate things even without a moral stand behind, especially if you can’t afford games and other media at all, but the arguments still apply
there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. you kind of have to make your peace with that and steal when you can
For simplicity, I have it in regex format
.+Jokes aside, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Activision-blizzard and Nintendo are the ones that come to mind.
If indi and plays well on deck, I’m generally on paying.
If it’s publicly traded, just don’t.
The one exception I have is id, but I also don’t preorder, so if they fuck up the next Doom or Quake, I’ll know before I buy anyway.
This, publicly trading means your company is now the product, games are just a way to make the stock price go up, so they need to sell gazillions and have the broadest possible audience.
This inevitably leads to flavour of the month design by committee garbage gameplay, enshittified business models like “live service”, and writing catering to “global audiences” with cookie cutter quips and insufferable millennial “humour”.
All that or whatever the fuck cod writers are mainlining alongside taurine and the tortured soul of Chris Benoit.
Also Ta**Two/Rockstar
Don’t forget Nintendo.
Warner Bros
High on the list for sure, near Nintendo BTW
I’m already not much of a Ubisoft fan, but wasn’t this just a response to a question about what would need to happen for subscriptions to take off? What should have been said? In context, it’s more of a hypothetical than an imperative.
Context doesn’t make for good clickbait, though.
Are you saying that Ubisoft doesn’t actually believe that people shouldn’t own their games and that this was a hypothetical discussion that was taken out of context? Because my impression was that this was sort of a response to people complaining about subscription-based games and DRM content that makes the concept of owning games blurry.
Because if this position doesn’t really represent Ubisoft, then what should have been said is whatever does represent Ubisoft. Ideally they should agree that people have the right own the games they purchase.
In my opinion someone should generally own what they buy. That’s why I like GOG, which distributes DRM free games, and part of why I often pirate games especially from large companies. In my opinion the take that people should only have a license representing permission to use a product that is actually owned by a company is delusional if not dystopian, and Ubisoft should be made fun of for having that position, and their games should be pirated.
Are you saying that Ubisoft doesn’t actually believe that people shouldn’t own their games and…
No
that this was a hypothetical discussion that was taken out of context?
Yes
For me, its almost all the big studios.
One exception being FROM, and a few of the Sony owned studios.
EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony(particularly, Sony if youre buying digital, Sony doesnt give a shit if your purchases suddenly go ”missing")
I think Za/um should be in such list
I have a bunch, but off the top of my head: Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, Tencent, anything that’s Epic exclusive. I should really have Take-Two on there as well but realistically I’m never not going to play Civilization so my principles fail me there.
So, all of the triple A publishers. Got it.
Pretty much lol
For me its Ubisoft, EA and Nintendo.
Do you not know about Sony’s sordid past?
Google ‘Geohot ps3’. Then google ‘Sony rootkit CDs’.
George Hotz was the first person who jail broke a ps3. and taught others how to do it, until Sony sued him. Then anonymous fucked Sony, hard. like really hard.
I’m not a fan of any corporation, so they can get fucked too I won’t buy sony hardware but if they port a game to steam I want I’ll get in on sale.
I support valve with purchases on steam as it supports linux. There was also the fact that sony took the linux install option away from the ps2 (or was it ps3) .
Then google ‘Sony rootkit CDs’.
I get so excited anytime someone else remembers this shit. Thank you.
Makes you feel old dunnit? 😂
I literally don’t buy anything I can get for free.
If you only consider monetary cost, you can get anything free.
If you consider risk, opportunity, and effort, nothing is free.
For your statement to be literally true, you must either buy literally everything or literally nothing depending on your perspective.
Do you really need a list to tell you what to buy and not buy?
I mean it really doesn’t take that much effort to avoid those companies you don’t like.
Keeping a community list seems stupid, everyone has different things they like and don’t like, and the gaming community isn’t a personal army, despite what others might think.
Damn, man. Are you alright? Why are you so stressed?
Eh with the amount of bs companies do it gets pretty hard to keep track of
Plus most people don’t really have the time to dig into all of that
