Question though. How many of the workers at Rockstar do you imagine would thank you for not buying the game they made? If no-one had bought RDR2, would those workers be better or worse off?

Question though. How many of the workers at Rockstar do you imagine would thank you for not buying the game they made? If no-one had bought RDR2, would those workers be better or worse off?

Question though. How many of the workers at Rockstar do you imagine would thank you for not buying the game they made? If no-one had bought RDR2, would those workers be better or worse off?

Looks like Valve's on the list too, so that's Steam out. Now what?

Gearbox are 100% on that list, so that’s Borderlands 3 out entirely.

I wasn't suggesting it was the 'perfect boycott', or that it'll make any difference, or even makes any sense. My interest is more around the dreadful issues that the videogame industry has with employee abuse and exploitation.

And the thing is, it's not even like they're not making fucking boatloads of cash. Acti-Blizz made record profits last year but sacked 800 people off the back of it to enhance shareholder value, because 'expectations' weren't met. It's the same 'infinite growth' model that we see in so any other business models, that by definition is always going to fail at some point, and it's the little guys who get the kicking.

It's awkward of course, when your absolute favourite thing to do is play videogames. I'm boycotting Epic (and by extension the Epic Store, I'll wait for Borderlands 3 until it's on Steam), and I won't be buying any more of Rockstar's stuff either. But I guess the time will come when my ethics will collide with the reality of buying something I really want off an awful company, cross that bridge when I get to it I suppose.

But how different is that argument from ‘but if I don’t buy those sweatshop trainers/footballs sewn by 5 year olds/ Primark anything then those people won’t have jobs’?

You've come to it already, with Steam. So now what? Short of boycotting the industry wholesale what's the viable path of action to take?

C'mon. Software engineers and graphics artists and producers and other games developer employees have a wealth of career options and a much more comfortable life than kids in third-world sweatshops, and frankly I think it diminishes the awfulness of sweatshops to make that comparison at all. There are non-exploitative games companies. There are not non-exploitative sweatshops.

Not sure I can get on board with that line of reasoning really. You could use that to justify buying goods produced by any means, right down to actual slave labour. Ultimately if stories like this damage sales then surely it might prompt reform.

edit: What mimi said.

I type all my games in from code in the back of magazines that I borrow from the library, only after I've made sure that the magazine employees are all unpaid volunteers that do it for love, not money.

NervousPete was caught up in the decimation?!

Rest In Pete.

I don't see any innovation any more. Maybe it's there, maybe it's limited to genres I don't have any interest in. But yeah, I remember when you could find things in games you'd never seen before. It's that bad right now that they are remaking 20+ year old games because they really can't come up with any new ideas. Such a shame.

The movie industry was like that for quite a long time too. It has been nice to see things like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocket Man.

The developers of Shenmue 3 have announced that the game will be an Epic store exclusive on the PC.

This has caused uproar with those that have Kickstarted the game and were promised Steam keys as one of their rewards.

Should be interesting how it pans out as a lot of comments on the Kickstarter page are asking for refunds.

https://twitter.com/NinWire/status/1138558939031887873

Much like how most people are happy enough not owning any DVDs or books anymore

Do you own a game if you bought on Steam?

Do you own a game if you bought on Steam?

The Human Cost Of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

TMA;DW