Bill R Boggess
Member
See, I can get behind something like what you've posted here.
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Eurogamer: Firewatch review-bombed following PewDiePie racism incident
- Thread starter Coxy100
- Start date
See, I can get behind something like what you've posted here.
Chairmanchuck
Member
Those people are liars and mostly juniors who spout bs thats not true.
At least in Germany people know what "nigger" means and know what "neger" means...
I doubt many people in Europe would go to a black person on street and say that slur.
NoMoreTrolls
Banned
I could see people giving the game negative reviews as a statement against the developers misusing the DMCA. In sure that the grand majority of them are just mad Pewdiepie fans.
James Scott
Banned
Nah, he's both.
Could give him the benefit of the doubt if this was the first time. It's not.
chaos789
Banned
Yeah I am getting old too. But rather that than follow some douchebag youtube pseudo celebrity. I have watched ACG reviews on youtube at times because I think he gives a good analysis in his reviews. But other than that, not really interested in some guy streaming himself playing a game and acting like a child. Time would be better spent reading a book or watching a quality film or better yet actually playing the game myself.
I don't really trust that first group either. Look at any thread where America's lack of hate speech laws comes up. Lots of handwringing that no amount of "look at every single other first world country" can calm.
WrenchNinja
Member
He is a racist. You probably are too if you're caping for him.
Precisely.
Feels like a complete 180 of the nonsense with the Killing Grounds. Whereas you can have people properly justify why that game was bad, you can't really do the same here with Firewatch (or at least in comparison).
I guess the ball falls in Steam's court as how to approach this nonsense...
I guess the ball falls in Steam's court as how to approach this nonsense...
Research Indicate's Trespasser is the greatest Let's Play of all time.
paperspace
Member
⁣
Actually curate their shit?
Delete the reviews? Ban said users? Implement systems to prevent purchase -> review -> return?
Lots of things.
ebullientprism
Member
All of those are terrible ideas with no specifics on how you would even separate the genuine reviews from the people piling on.
And as it is, Steam is already are doing a pretty decent job of curating reviews. The list of reviews you get by default on the current store page only has one negative review that mentions the PDP thing (and even then not directly) the rest of them are just regular negative reviews, most of them dated prior to the PDP incident. A bunch of the positive ones mention the PDP thing.
And even with the slightly increased negative reviews the game is still "Very positive" overall and will stay there since this will blow over in a few days.
SinCityAssassin
Member
I literally saw a review from 2016 that said "Gay." And it had more thought and meaning put into it than this sheeple pushback from the Bro Army.
7DollarHagane
Banned
Fuck this take. The gaming community is better than this. Don't give me this Debbie downer shit just because a tiny minority of idiots do publicly visible and loud crap like this.
As a black dude living in America, I strongly disagree. The sad truth is that there are a lot of racists in this country. No, not all of them are wearing white sheets and burning crosses on front lawns, but there are plenty that makes it clear that this county doesn't want to progress past that racism. It goes beyond gaming, so I think that's a topic for another day, but the main reason why I avoid multiplayer games is because it's often filled with racism, sexism, homophobia, and a plethora of other hate speech. Personally, I have not the desire nor patience to power through this shit anymore.
These people review bombing firewatch may be a small number, but the community that fosters this mindset is not. Obviously, it's not the entire gaming community, but it ultimately doesn't matter. For many minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ community, gaming has been far from welcoming for them, even if it doesn't always devolve into hate speech.
You'd be surprised.
There's a lot more intelligent "Let's Play" games coverage out there than you might imagine.
It's not all screaming d'bags even though they (understandably) get the most coverage.
And since you mentioned it, I'd much rather watch informative & entertaining YouTube personalities covering my favorite games & genres than brain-dead TV programming any day of the week.
Yeah, blame the victim that had the gall to not want to be associated with blatant racism.
"I guess".
Weltall Zero
Member
"I'm leaving the discussion, but damn if I'm not going to shit out the most trite post imaginable on my way out so I can feel that I had the last word, including saying PDP isn't a racist, victim blaming people offended by the N-word, and comparing Firewatch devs to literal criminals."
OK then. Whatever we will do without your valuable input?
again - i do not agree with this at all.
that's the whole point of the review / refund dynamic.
You buy a product, you notice it's faulty / doesn't work as advertised, you have your money refunded and review the product accordingly, so other prospective buyers can make a more informed purchase decision.
If a refund disqualified you from reviewing the product, when you're at 1.5 hours playtime of an obviously bad / faulty / disfunctional game, you'd have to choose between getting your money back (refund) or informing others of the low quality of the game (negative review).
So you'd end up with a much higher share of positive reviews, because people sure as hell would rather recoup their investment.
Blood Diamonds
Banned
I'm turning 20 this year but even I find myself just not understanding the appeal of watching some guy scream while being bad at a game. Like, it's all my little nephew watches and its fucking weird.
Weltall Zero
Member
The problem is deciding that a review was illegitimate to begin with, and giving Valve the power to do that is inevitably going to result in false positives. Without a proven cause that invalidates the review, you can't do any of the above, including preventing purchase -> review -> refund. Sure, reviews that specifically mention the PDP controversy are probably easy to target, but then PDP supporters will simply post a low scoring review that doesn't mention it, and then what? Do you ban all negative reviews for Firewatch from now on?
It's not as easy or clear cut for Valve to do something about it. In this particular case it would not be a bad idea to remove all Firewatch reviews from the past week and instill a moratorium for new reviews, but this doesn't "solve" review bombing in general.
Edit: Actually, you know who should do something about this? PewDiePie himself. If he's truly as sorry, humbled and contrite about N-word slipping as he says he is, shouldn't he be sympathetic and understanding towards the devs that were disgusted about it? Shouldn't he be upset that his fans are attacking those devs over it?
7DollarHagane
Banned
Exactly my point that it's a societal problem, and games are a big enough element of society that that societal problem appears in people who also happen to play games. It is not exclusive to games or even fostered by or more prevalent in games, it just is a part of the world everyone has to work against.
People posting "this is why I don't want to play games anymore" accomplishes nothing because the problem still exists. Stopping playing games doesn't mean you won't encounter this behavior or bad racist beliefs.
Messofanego
Banned
+1 to this amazing documentary style LP.
RazielCuts
Member
Haha, I love this logic.
Column A - game studio doesn't want to be represented through association with a high profile YouTuber with a track record of racism; and they don't want him profiting by making videos using their content - in the past, present or the future. With no other means (apart from asking nicely) they send this message by DMCA'ing his videos which utilize their content as the subject matter.
Column B - said high profile YouTuber's audience don't like this form of 'censorship' and abuse a system that isn't curated very well by a highly profitable platform holder.
One of these things is not like the other.
This calls for a source.
All evidence points to the opposite -- it does seem to be proportionaly worse in gaming and geek culture.
I do my part: My Patreon support is carefully curated. Those people are getting peanuts.
Meanwhile, Mr. Moriarty gets $30K from gamers for switching careers out of spite and PDP is the top youtuber in the world.
7DollarHagane
Banned
There's also the excellent raycevick's and super bunnyhop for games commentary and many others. "YouTuber" is just the medium. Anyone can get in front of that camera and provide content that is either good and informative or terrible and mindless.
Weltall Zero
Member
Was this jab really necessary considering he was talking about something completely different to what you linked?
Appropriate username, this blatant "both sides" post matches it so well.
Oh wait, that's an "f", right? Never mind then.
joecanada
Member
Even if someone was fundamentally against YouTube strikes this is not the way to express it. It's not as if these developers have a history of abusive policy they made an exception to make an example out of one dickhead who noone feels sorry for.
Dinky Dino
Member
Not gonna lie that is some impressive support for a streamer
That wasn't meant as a jab at all, I mean that those are probably the best demonstrators of a LP having value beyond just playing the game. If you still don't see the value after watching both the cult of personality style and the informative style I genuinely don't think you're ever going to - the disconnect is too great. Sorry if it came out that way.
Gotdatmoney
Member
I find it hard to believe this isn't a gaming problem given I can count the number of people who could go as unphased as PDP and other streamers for saying this shit in other mediums or jobs environments.
Ted
Member
Whilst much of what you say is true and I agree they should not be explicitly expected to monitor other channels than their own [realistically, how could they even start] but this is far from just another player. You'd have to be actively /not/ viewing any gaming channel right now to have missed this one. If said high profile streamer is foolish enough to hoist themselves by their own petard by streaming to Youtube/Twitch and still going directly against the spirit of the PUBG code of conduct using such abhorrent language, then so be it, that's his problem.
More broadly I think I also have to politely disagree about this being "activity outside of the game". It may not be using their built-in comms tools but he is playing/streaming their game with an audience of hundreds/thousands and commenting, hatefully, about another player of the same game.
Even their own TL;DR on that page states:
TL;DRPlay Fair And Respect Other Players.
In this instance he most certainly has not shown any respect for his fellow player, so he cannot be respecting the code of conduct as written here and I see no reason why any developer unambiguously committed to diversity in their community would feel any moral qualms banning this person.
Dark Ninja
Member
Pretty amazing to organize that many people to actually pay and play to a certain point in the game just to review it negatively.
michaelius
Banned
But actually was it? IIRC PDP was targeted for what he said in PUBG stream.
don't we think that non-gaming alt-righters and non-gaming white surpremicists are also supporting pewdie since he is a vocal known racist and supporter and they could be contributing to the Firestorm smear campaign? it doesn't have to just be gamers. if you are involved in a white surpremecy movement you probably contribute however you can: from writing letters to senators to online smears
It's really not, you said some dumbshit, then double down on that same dumbshit while saying people calling you out on said dumbshit are twisting your words.
Like seriously, "PDP isn't racist, and he deserves to have a career, but he should have to undergo the consequences, but it's not his fault because he grew up in a place without racism so how could he know, but it shouldn't impact his career, but he's just dumb and not racist, and that's not an excuse, but..."
You are literally talking in circles about how you don't care that he's racist or stupid or both. You are literally defending the idea that his stupidity trumps the racial overtones that he's been exuding for the past 3 years, and your next step if you do decide to come back into this thread is to say, "well I'm not a PDP fan anyway so I didn't know about the other 5 racial infractions he had prior to the two last week so I don't know, but still it's all just comedy and he's an idiot so it's not racist."
And to you sir, I say again, get the fuck out of here with that shit. That is a lame, lazy, baseless, thoughtless reduction of his actions and a stance you're taking because you don't, have never, and will never actually care.
Since I feel a lot still needs clearing up.
Keep in mind Pewdiepie follows Lauren Southern (alt right), Alex Jones, Sargon of Akkad (alt-right YouTuber. Though he was recently banned on Twitter), Joe Rogan, Palmer Luckey, Stefan Molyneux (alt-right), Paul Joseph Watson (infowars writer and alt-right), MomBot (GamerGater and alt-right. Pretends to be a Japanese mother living in Japan but really not at all), Ian Miles Cheong (GamerGater, alt-right, holocaust denier), Nick Monroe (alt-right freelance journalist who has done work on the escapist).
I'm probably missing a lot. Some are new follows, some old, some just right after the "death to all jews" controversy because they came to his defense. But sure, that N word just slipped right now and he's only just an idiot.
Some of these people even retweet Pewdiepie and comment on the "SJWs going after him again," make fun of WallStreet Journal, or here with Lauren Southern "here we go again!" https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/906960217350529024
Lauren Southern in particular doesn't really cover games but boy she will defend Pewdiepie and even retweet Ian Miles Cheong and other terrible people who defend Pewdiepie.
There's definitely a movement and signal boosting from his allies to defend him.
Keep in mind Pewdiepie follows Lauren Southern (alt right), Alex Jones, Sargon of Akkad (alt-right YouTuber. Though he was recently banned on Twitter), Joe Rogan, Palmer Luckey, Stefan Molyneux (alt-right), Paul Joseph Watson (infowars writer and alt-right), MomBot (GamerGater and alt-right. Pretends to be a Japanese mother living in Japan but really not at all), Ian Miles Cheong (GamerGater, alt-right, holocaust denier), Nick Monroe (alt-right freelance journalist who has done work on the escapist).
I'm probably missing a lot. Some are new follows, some old, some just right after the "death to all jews" controversy because they came to his defense. But sure, that N word just slipped right now and he's only just an idiot.
Some of these people even retweet Pewdiepie and comment on the "SJWs going after him again," make fun of WallStreet Journal, or here with Lauren Southern "here we go again!" https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/906960217350529024
Lauren Southern in particular doesn't really cover games but boy she will defend Pewdiepie and even retweet Ian Miles Cheong and other terrible people who defend Pewdiepie.
There's definitely a movement and signal boosting from his allies to defend him.
Necrovoker
Neo Member
That's why Freedom of Expression is better than Freedom of Speech. There shouldn't even be a debate, Felix used hate speech online and it should be sanctioned accordingly, especially since the derogatory intent is very clear in this instance.
As for the reviews, while in this case the impact on sales they'll have on this 2015 game will most likely be minimal, Steam needs to actually start monitoring their platform, because next time this could very well kill an indie developer.
As for the reviews, while in this case the impact on sales they'll have on this 2015 game will most likely be minimal, Steam needs to actually start monitoring their platform, because next time this could very well kill an indie developer.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
PDP is a racist, not an idiot. He's smart enough to know that fans and other racists will defend him every time he does racist shit for attention and attack others in his name.