"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Vainamoinen]

I think 99% of the stuff I have on Humble I can download DRM free.

 

100% for me. So?

 

Without Steam keys, it's conceivable that Humble as we know it would be dead

 

Correct. That's the problem. Key reseller, not publisher.

[Twig]

100% for me. So?

 

...are you trying to pick a fight i don't understand

[BusbyBerkeley]

Correct. That's the problem. Key reseller, not publisher.

Do you have an issue with big box stores selling games? I genuinely don't see what the issue is here.

[sucks2Bme]

i dont see gog having stardock games as an association with GG

 

and I would prefer to have steam keys rather than not if I had to choose. Best would be both though, of course. 

[Problem Machine]

Re: GoG, I certainly don't want storefronts refusing to sell games on the basis of their association with GG, no matter how much of a shitweasel Brad Wardell seems to be -- nor even avoiding promoting them, if that's what they deem to be in their best interests. I don't think the decision of whether or not to support a company with questionable views should be made at the level of distribution, but at the level of the individual consumer.

[Jutranjo]

It's not exactly the same as with GoG but doesn't Stardock also publish Offworld Trading Company, designed by a show host on these very forums?

[sucks2Bme]

yes, they do. 

[Henroid]

Mark Kern and his followers think Play Asia is a developer. It's a shop.

 

Meanwhile, Milo Whats-his-ass is paying to have his Tweets about the Play Asia thing promoted by Twitter.

[BadHat]

I didn't give a shit about the Play Asia thing until I checked their twitter and saw this. https://twitter.com/playasia/status/669469895420153857

 

Like, fuck, a real customer is someone who buys your products, end of. I meet that criteria handily, but apparently GG's dollars are so important to them that my custom doesn't count any more. Fine, fuck em. I couldn't give less of a shit about this utterly transparent, manufactured non-controversy, but the stance they're taking is so cynical and manipulative that I'll never feel comfortable giving them money again.

 

Hope they aren't banking on this "boycott" too hard, GG will have moved on to the next pre-emptive anti-outrage (because, really, that's all they have left) in a couple of weeks, then they'll find out who their "real customers" actually are. (Who am I kidding, their actual service is great, they'll probably do fine.)

[Problem Machine]

Someone was hypothesizing on twitter that this might be a lone gator taking over the twitter account while the higher ups are off on Thanksgiving vacation. Hilarious if that ends up being the case.

[Henroid]

Someone was hypothesizing on twitter that this might be a lone gator taking over the twitter account while the higher ups are off on Thanksgiving vacation. Hilarious if that ends up being the case.

That seems a bit far-fetched. More than likely, the company doesn't know much of what's been going on for the last year and next week we'll likely hear apologies about not understanding what they were getting into. There's been more than one scenario over the last year of companies not investigating the GG thing, assuming it's just some sort of "YEAH WE LIKE VIDEO GAMES A LOT" situation.

[Problem Machine]

Um, naw, not with the kinds of messages going up on the twitter feed. This is definitely someone who knows what GG is, though whether their supervisors do is questionable.

[Bjorn]

100% for me. So?

 

 

Correct. That's the problem. Key reseller, not publisher.

 

Ummm, Humble has never intended on being a publisher.  They are a mission driven retailer who provides their customers with multiple options for delivery.  If I'm reading you right, you want them to be something they never were and never wanted to be. 

[Vainamoinen]

If I'm reading you right, you want them to be something they never were and never wanted to be.

 

Not so much 'want them to be' as 'prefered if [far] more other options existed'. If it's Humble's loyal duty to spread Steam keys in the world, so be it. But yeah but no, I don't have to like it. But let's leave it at that. It's off topic enough, and there's no shortage of actually gg-related discussion material right now.

 

 

That seems a bit far-fetched. More than likely, the company doesn't know much of what's been going on for the last year and next week we'll likely hear apologies about not understanding what they were getting into. There's been more than one scenario over the last year of companies not investigating the GG thing, assuming it's just some sort of "YEAH WE LIKE VIDEO GAMES A LOT" situation.

 

I think it's fairly obvious that, strictly speaking, they don't know what's been going on for the last year. But that mirrors the gamergate problem, the supporters of the movement also do not know what's been going on. Gamergate's founded on ever promoted, purposeful misunderstandings of the diversity/inclusion discussion. If companies particularly in Japan see, but do not understand the discussion, they're likely to import gamergate's purposeful misunderstandings instead of the actual scope of the discussion. Play-Asia/Koei Tecmo know gamergate – but they are unable to understand it.

 

May be one of those cultural misunderstandings, but frankly, I don't give a damn.

 

As was apparent with companies like AMD, people don't usually apologize for supporting gamergate. They are, of course, forced to apologize when they insult the movement, which would bring us back to GOG/CDPR (whom I still DO support!). Strange how this supposed "SJW outrage" achieves nothing while gamergaterism seems to turn the tides for definitely suffering developer teams.

[Merus]

And yet who's manufacturing outrange here

[Tanukitsune]

Hmm, I wonder if this just some ploy to get GGers to buy an overpriced import booby game? I rarely import anymore because it's so expensive.

 

I can imagine GGers buying the game just annoy some "SJWs" that don't give a damn.

 

"Hey GG! The SJW are BOYCOTTING US! Show us how wrong they are by spending 200$ on this dumb booby game!"

 

The thing is, if the outrage was faked, GG won't care, everything they believe in isn't real, so even if PlayAsia openly admits the SJW didn't give a damn about the game, GG will still think it's a victory somehow.

 

Most of what I'm reading from "SJW" is one or two saying "What? We're sex positive! We don't care!" and the rest talking about things that are more important, so yeah. I'm pretty sure it's manufactured outrage.

[Vainamoinen]

Yup. The strawman that feminism is sex negative celebrates ample revival parties in gatertowns these days.  

 

Unsurprisingly. It really doesn't get less sophisticated than "Oh noes, the damn SJWs would actually have criticised this game had it ever been published in our region!".

 

As Sarkeesian focuses more on clear cut narrative tropes these days, as reviewers definitely do, and as Dead or Alive doesn't exactly place its characters in an extended narrative context, even that assumption – even that – is a bit far fetched.

[Fingus]

The PlayAsia tweets are steeped in channer lingo so whoever runs that account is definitely familiar with GG or at the very least the culture that it spawned from. 

 

This whole thing is pretty straightforward the way I see it. Koei-Tecmo decided that publishing DOAX3 in the west wasn't worth it because historically these game's haven't done particularly well, so they don't want to dedicate resources to both distributing it and dealing with the backlash that always follows these games. Let's be honest, there would be no shortage of snarky reviews slamming the game because it's such an easy target. Not to mention that Twitter and YouTube would have a field day with it. The western market is simply not very welcoming to this style of game, or at least it's not as normalized as it is in japan.

It's not a huge financial strain for them to have a couple community managers work the negative press, but likely more of a hassle than they see it being worth. 

 

I think Jim Sterling nailed it. Corporations don't give a shit about controversy, they make decisions based on money. Microtransactions generate WAY more controversy and from a bigger crowd than sexism does, but how many publishers do you see backing down to that? 

 

I'm not sure if Koei-Tecmo intended to incite controversy. Their statement was in pretty poor english, but the message I got from it was "It doesn't make much financial sense to distribute to the west, and we don't really feel like dealing with the complaints of sexism.". But people of course latched onto the sexism part of it, and PlayAsia definitely swooped in and fanned the flames to capitalize on it. 

[feelthedarkness]

There is no way that a store specializing in asian animated imports isn't leaning heavily on the plastic butts crowd, so this can only represent a temporary zeitgeist bump, rather than some oversight by the company. 

 

also, co-signing fingus's (fingusi?) post. 

[Vainamoinen]

High hopes for Monday's Jimquisition. Though I have the feeling JFSS is fed up with the topic already.

[James]

I haven't confirmed this for myself, but on today's Beastcast they seemed to be saying the Koei-Tecmo statement was from a community manager who had been pressed on the issue. I'm not sure an official statement would even have brought the sexism thing up.

I've been wondering whether to delete my Play-Asia account (in response to the GG courting rather than the DoA-importing), or whether that's an entirely empty gesture. There doesn't seem to be any facility on the site itself to do so, so I'd have to email customer support. But I've only ever ordered two things from there, so it's hardly a significant material loss to them. It's probably not worth the fuss.

[thefncrow]

The story, as I recall, is that people had been asking KT on social media about it being released in the US, and they'd respond that it wasn't coming.  In one case, someone followed up with something like "why not?" and actually got a response, which was:

 

 

Do you know many issues happening in video game industry with regard to how to treat female in video game industry? We do not want to talk those things here. But certainly we have gone through in last year or two to come to our decision. Thank you.

 

That comment has since been deleted.  That is the basis for all of this.

[Vainamoinen]

That comment has since been deleted.

 

Silenced! By the SJW!!

[Henroid]

 

Silenced! By the SJW!!

Couldn't be the higher-ups in the company going "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU" in the eyes of the Goobers that are gating.

[Deadpan]

Apart from this not exactly being the most effortless english, the non-sequitur nature of that comment kinda makes me suspect it might have been in response to a different comment implying that feminists were to blame for this, that might have gotten deleted before that screenshot. I mean, how often do you see companies just bring up those kinds of issues when they don't have to?

 

Maybe that really is the reason that that one poor community manager wanted to give, but it looks so weird with nothing else in the conversation pointing in that direction.