As the title suggests, over the last couple of days there’s been an influx of doomer comments over the SKG petition. While it’s fine to disagree, I’m finding it suspicious that there weren’t comments like this posted a week or 2 ago
I haven’t seen anyone here against it.
Ross got hit with some anonymous legal complaint so I wouldn’t be surprised with astroturfing.
I’m also an American so I can’t help.
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If he helps bump the gaming industry in a better/healthier direction, he deserves 6 figures imo
Are people criticizing it? There is a certain critical mass that when something becomes popular enough a subset of the population will automatically oppose it.
There’s also a threshold where Industry Groups will start astroturfing. Especially when it comes to worker’s rights or consumer’s rights.
It seems like it’s a bit too late now to start astroturfing this though
It’s a fine line because if you do it too early you’ll just add more attention to it. They probably predicted it would stall out.
There was criticism about it every time it’s been brought up. But it’s only been like 5 or 6 people just parroting what some AAA studio’s CEO (or the son of the ultimate WoW neckbeard) said about it.
Yeah bit he worked at blizzard, so he knows way more about assaulting co workers than you. Wait what are we talking about?
I don’t find the absence of criticism suspicious. The petition makes sense. It aims to solve a problem that affects many individuals and a significant part of human culture.
What I do find suspicious is the sudden emergence of criticism now that it looks like it might succeed. I smell astroturfing and media manipulation.
As the petition got more successful it became a bigger topic on here. Bigger topics draw more opinions.
One year ago, right at the beginning of the petition, PirateSoftware came out misreading the initiative by suggesting the idea the petition was about forcing indie developer to host their server, at their expense, forever and other stupid idea on this line. A fabricated these narrative to act as the typical popular youtubers that say endlessly: “this is st0pid, they are st0pid”. The fabricated narrative confused other popular YouTubers with mixed feelings; and there was very little support. This assured PirateSoftware the first place on the youtube rankings when you search for “stop killing games”, plus had lot of kids brainwashed into thinking " this is st0pid". This kind of criticism never went away completely, the were partially silenced by the very recent roaring as people understood correctly what it was actually about. As SKG keep hitting its milestone the angered roar did lowered, so now you can ear again the “this is st0pid” team
You can swear on the Internet. The same way I can say that I want to spray pepper spray on your private parts. And you can then cry about me because I said the big bad stupid word, so I have to una1iv3 myself.
The same way I can say I want to spray pepper spray on your private parts
That’s assault, dumbass. Swearing is fine; threatening someone is a crime. And because you specifically mention their privates, that makes it sexual assault.
Because it’s about to affect big money so they sic their bots on it to shape public opinion and stomp it, like everything else.
I mean I was critical of it well before it hit 1.4M signatures. As it ramps up in articles about it, I’d assume an increase in negative sentiment in addition to the positive side. Its not a perfect thing and has different viewpoints, so it makes sense.
And what is your argument against the petition? All it says is that developers need to leave their game in some playable state for those who laid for it, with several options offered as examples
Because as you already stated, that’s all it says. There is a lot of open interpretation to what that means and not all of it refers to big publishers/devs like EA.
For example, indie games like Objects in Space. It was Early Access and ran into technical issues which led to funding issues as they could only work so long on it. Its broken essentially. But it doesn’t matter if the project was beyond their scope of skill or they ran out of money, they would be forced to pay to fix it. This means (and for other indie devs) if not certain their project will succeed, having to block sales in EU. Its potentially the most damaging not to the Ubisoft’s and EA’s, but to the Flat Earth Games, Bugbytes, ColePowered Games, etc. Its asking new indie developers to take on optional risk by releasing in the EU. Remember no where in the petition does it mention live service games. Only just games.
Additionally, the points brought up in the petition needed to be bullet proof. The moment that petition started to get close to 1M, you know publishers started turning gears to block future legislation. The committee of petitions will verify the petition and then refer it for fact finding. The points needed to be concise for the purpose of the fact finding committee. And they needed to be geared towards the EU acting which around a dozen times now have stated that while concerns are valid, it is up to the member nations to propose legislation on this (which is who the major publishers are reported to have approached - not some EU committee).
I’m still salty about EA’s Darkspore (which I might add doesn’t mention on the case that internet access is required to play - which I did not have back in the day), but this petition just feels like minimal impact. I would just like to remind people that advocating SKG may feel good but that rarely equates to doing good.
NOTE: I’ll probably be downvoted to hell on it, but I imagine that is all that will happen. There really is no solid argument against what I’ve said.
For example, indie games like Objects in Space. It was Early Access and ran into technical issues which led to funding issues as they could only work so long on it. Its broken essentially. But it doesn’t matter if the project was beyond their scope of skill or they ran out of money, they would be forced to pay to fix it.
First off, that studio will not be forced to go back and fix their game. Western democratic governments, including the EU, works on the basis that ex post facto laws are invalid. The game is already dead and abandoned from your telling, so there would be no expectation to revive it.
The true solution for studios making new games in the future is to implement exit strategies for multiplayer implementation early on in development. And for single player games, much of that exit strategy is to not require login servers after the game is abandoned.
And to address your specific example, there is one option that is extremely cheap and easy to implement that will certainly pass requirements: release the sorce code. If a EA game is truly so bungled that it’s better off abandoned, studios and publishers will always have the option to fully abandon it.
The moment that petition started to get close to 1M, you know publishers started turning gears to block future legislation.
You’re forgetting this is the EU, it’s significantly less susceptible to industry lobbying than the US. If it wasn’t the GDPR wouldn’t exist and Apple would still be using their proprietary chargers on all new iPhones.
The points needed to be concise for the purpose of the fact finding committee.
Have you not read the petition? I doubt it could be anymore concise in its language while still being possible to pass. You can’t specify exact implementations for games post-abandonment because any single solution will not work for every game.
There really is no solid argument against what I’ve said.
That is a claim befitting an egotistical fool. But at least now you can’t complain that nobody has addressed your concerns, as you claimed in your first comment.
I’ve made some comments critical of how relentlessly PirateSoftware is being harassed and how annoying it is and how distracting from the actual movement it is.
Nothing wrong with the petition itself, and I haven’t noticed any negative astroturfing about it.
PirateSoftware is being harassed for a whole lot more than just his SKG misinformation campaign.
Perhaps, but the most I’ve seen are some tenuous “evidence” about him being a little selfish in WoW, not finishing games, or using his dad’s influence to land a job at Blizzard. Neither of those are particularly bad, and certainly don’t warrant the negative attention he got. It really seems like people are looking for dirt just because they don’t like his position on SKG.
Then again, I didn’t hear about him until he came out against it, and I saw he defended Godot, which is pretty rad. That’s the extent of my knowledge about him, other than the handful of hit pieces against him people posted here once he got negative attention.
I support SKG and don’t think PirateSoftware is a bad dude. I say just let him be, and don’t watch his content if you don’t like it.
The SKG thing was just the latest L in the series he’s been collecting for a while now. Similar to his wow raid there was another MMO when his party wiped due to someone accidentally aggro’ing a mob. He did the usually “that was moronic, whoever did that is kicked from the raid, etc”. Then he reviews the footage showing it was him that aggro’d and completely 180s, saying the wipe wasn’t on him. As evidenced in his SKG video, guy is super happy saying nasty shit about people but cries toxicity when it’s reciprocated. Guy just can’t help himself. Has to be right on everything and when it’s proven he isn’t, either doubles down or just simply denies being wrong.
Even the wow roaching thing, it isn’t so much the raid but the demanding everyone listen to his side before talking over others when it’s their turn and then leaving before they can have there say and tripling down. I used to appreciate some of his content but given his pattern of behaviour, including bullying, the negative attention he’s gotten is pretty deserved.
The WoW thing wasn’t about being selfish, it’s just one of a dozen or more incidents of him being a narcissistic bully who screws other people over and can’t take accountability for anything.
And nobody is giving him too much shit for simply being a nepo baby. The Blizzard thing is about him being a fraud who’s been caught repeatedly lying and misleading people about his credentials and work experience in order to appear like an expert. He uses his time at Blizzard like a magic wand to expel criticism, going so far as to misrepresent what he even did at Blizzard to appear like an authority when people criticize him.
The backlash against him has been well earned by bad behavior over a long period of time, most of which involves him treating other people poorly for his own benefit.
Pirate has done a lot to earn hate over the years from stealing and manipulating a child back in second life to make a quick buck. Screwing over and generally being a major asshole in eve online that screwed a lot of people out of very real money.
Being a general twat, gaslighting and trying to get his community to harass people irl over the wow debacle.
Lying and giving objectively bad information over development and grifting on twitch.
He’s done everything a twat really can do online short of actual physical harm.
People have grudges with him going back like 15 years. This is not his first rodeo.
Really? From the 5-10 min of his videos that I watched over the last 2 weeks when trying to figure out why people dislike him, I didn’t see any of that nonsense. That’s really too bad if true, because he seemed like a pretty level-headed guy who was a pretty laid-back gamer (no yelling or other form of aggression, which is unfortunately common among streamers). I watched some clips of:
- take on Godot - defended Godot despite some missteps and (IMO) correctly pointed out that their PR person probably got overrun after a somewhat controversial comment that was apparently intended to be a joke (the “woke” post)
- take on SKG - got a little unhinged in his follow-up video, but I hear there were swatting attempts after the first, so I understand the frustration
- an “infamous” clip of WoW where he allegedly left his teammate to die (but he was clearly following other orders to run)
That’s about it. He didn’t seem like a toxic person who routinely trolls and screws people in games, just kind of your average, run-of-the-mill streamer who’s a little low-key but still out there to create content to get people to watch.
Then again, he could totally be the jerk you make him out to be. It’s really hard to tell what’s a legitimate explanation of things and what’s people looking for a reason to slander him because they don’t like his take on SKG. The couple of articles I read seemed to mostly be the latter, but they also didn’t mention most of what you did here. So idk, I guess I haven’t made up my mind about him, but honestly, I don’t think it’s really worth digging into because I’m not into his content anyway.
You watched 5 minutes of his own verbal diarrhea and formed a full opinion on him?
From the 5-10 min of his videos
There’s the problem: you won’t get evidence of a murder if you ask the murderer for it.
He streams a lot, so the things he says or does are spread out, especially if you’re only looking for noticeably damning stuff like the rim job related rant against SKG.His confidence and speechcraft makes him very good at steering conversations by lying or deflecting, as long as you trust what he says.
Good places to start looking may be his conversation with Dr. K or Ross’ “The end of Stop Killing Games” on Youtube, both are hosted by level headed people;
I can only assume you haven’t seen the latter, because at the very least it makes it very apparent why people dislike him.Dr. K
This one? He sounds like an awesome dude according to his bio, but I’ve never seen anything by him, I’ll check him out.
And I haven’t seen any conversations between him and Ross. I did see snippets of his original reaction, where he seemed to completely misunderstand the petition, and his follow-up, unhinged rant, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the latter because he had apparently gotten a lot of negative attention (swatting attempts, calls for him to leave the publisher he was at, and random negative remarks on his own games), so I think it’s quite possible his attack on Ross was an emotional reaction to that negative attention, and not level-headed attack on Ross (I’ve seen nothing to suggest Ross is anything other than an awesome guy).
So my opinion on PirateSoftware is relatively neutral. He seems to be on the better end of the streamer range, which isn’t saying much (lots of popular streamers are pretty toxic). I don’t think he’s anyone to look up to, and I wish he’d either have Ross on to discuss the petition or thoroughly read and understand it so he can elucidate his opposition to it, both of which I think would be helpful for his audience to form an actual opinion instead of borrowing his. But maybe he’s on the worse end of that spectrum, I don’t know, since again, I’ve only watched a few minutes of his content and he seemed like your average streamer who exaggerates their credentials and leans into “content,” and I’m not surprised clowning on people is part of that.
I literally had not heard of him a month ago, so I’m missing a ton of context. However, nothing I’ve seen makes me want to watch more of his content (he’s definitely not my style), but nothing makes me think he should be “cancelled” or whatever. Aside from some offensive remarks, I don’t think he’s really hurting anyone.
he’s repeatedly refused to talk to ross;
after the first video pirate software uploaded about SKG, ross left a comment offering clarifications and a chance to talk about the petition and surrounding misconceptions.
ross was refused an answer.
then PS uploaded more videos, and streams, with even more misinformation.
ross ignored it at that point and just continued doing his thing, advocating for the petition, giving updates, etc.
then it looked like the petition would fail, so ross decided there’s nothing left to lose by talking about the drama with PS, and lo and behold, suddenly all youtubers and streamers were suuuper onboard, helped spread the drama, and as a consequence SKG reached its goal… because of the drama.
so a net positive overall, but sad that it’s only because drama sells ads on streaming and video sites…really just a dumb state of affairs…
and to be clear: ross wasn’t at all vindictive in his video. frustrated by the situation, yes, but ultimately it was a very fair and sober response.
highly recommend checking it out; from what you said so far, i think you’ll enjoy the level-headed approach ross took!
Another bot paranoia…
Not every people that disagree with the norm is a bot. The petition got more popular recently, even some news outlet that has nothing to do with games started talking about it in my country in the last week, so has a high chance of a bunch of people that didn’t read much about started to comment with their “protect the billionaires” reaction.
Welcome to the age of bots.
Enjoy your perpetual unavoidable and even undetectable bias and opinion influencing astroturfing.
Paid for by whoever doesn’t want the things that you want, to influence the people around you to bite at each other’s throats and work against their own interests.
This is one of the biggest reasons Reddit has turned to shit.
I made some critical posts about it several months ago. It was exhausting. So I stopped. Haven’t changed my position though.
Does anyone else find it suspicious there wasn’t any criticism on here about Stop Killing Games until after it hit 1.4M signatures?
Nobody here disagrees with any point of the petition. I signed it. Even if gaming companies were rushing to send shills to raid discussions they would have done it months ago and last places they would go astroturff for is this Kazakhstani anti-whaling forum. Especially when their target now is the Eu bureaucracy and MEPs. Where I might say they have not a bad chance of succeeding.
I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago. I’d assume most people who have criticism don’t leave a comment because it’ll get you massively downvoted and your inbox will be flooded with angry replies.
I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago.
Not on this account…
What are the criticisms? Genuinely curious, have no idea what problems anyone might have with it, other than some quotes from the Ubisoft exec trying to act like implementing user run servers is borderline impossible
People don’t have problems with SKG. They have problems with reading and/or comprehending its goals.
In my experience about half the posts about it (since the start) have some dummy saying it’s unreasonable for devs to support games forever.
No, there was definitely some criticism before. Prior to this month, it wouldn’t be unusual to hear people complain about how it would destroy the live service market and was therefore Bad Actually for games and game preservation
The topic getting much more mainstream just brought all those people with.
There are a handful of concerns from insiders are that somewhat valid, more or less things to be careful about when trying to sort out how to make this fair and reasonable to both sides.
You can ponder how long from shutdown of an online server until the companies IP is no longer worth anything because they have to give up keys to playing it without subs. Same goes for anti-piracy. If A goes under and is bought up by B, how long is that timer before the assets aren’t worth anything anymore.
But all those concepts get thrown the hell out the window when CEOS stick their fingers in their ears and start stamping their feet and shouting “nothing is written in stone” “at some point the service may be discontinued” “Nothing is eternal” when in fact all those problems can be solved. Fucking tone-deaf asshats. Costs you money, sorry nothing is eternal. Costs them money, ohhh noooo can’t do that it might cost money.
When you launch a title with online requirements, you have to escrow or insure the servers for X months and escrow code. When you sell or fold, you then have X months to work out a new buyer or maintainer. At the end of X months. you either keep the game online through other means (sales) or provide server binaries, serverless binaries, or details/code to keep the game running indefinitely.
Why would they? Most people didn’t know about the petition until a few weeks ago, and I think people are largely knee-jerk supporting their favorite streamer (in this case, PirateSoftware). I don’t think there’s a concerted effort here to kill it, just people coming out of the woodwork now that it got a lot of attention.
This may have killed piratesoftwares career
