That's such an BS argument that lets companies get away with shady & greedy shit.
You can still be a company and make money without fucking over the users.
You can still make money and not fuck people over, but T2 is choosing a different path. That's their prerogative as a for profit business. This is video games, not healthcare or safe drinking water.
Also, my argument doesn't let companies get away with greedy shit. Assigning human emotion to companies and treating them as a sentient entity is what lets things like Citizens United and "corporations are people my friend" to become part of our culture. It is nothing more than an instrument by which T2's ownership group makes money. Those people could be defined as "greedy", but I'd like to see a rational outline on how attempting to maximize the profits generated from a non-essential fetish project falls into the immoral spectrum that should, if applied correctly, be inherent with calling someone greedy.
Some of what you're saying here is right, but companies are not sentient inanimate objects. They are run by people, other humans.
Right, and that's an important distinction to keep.
Said people have chosen to bleed their already paying customers for as much money as humanely possible, even if it means sacrificing an entire community.
A community they aren't a part of and are making no money off of. A community that provides a free alternative to their paid business model in some cases. I don't see how that's surprising.
Being a corporation does not mean you can shit on your customers and expect gratitude. Take-Two can get fucked for their way of handling this. They chose the most aggressive and anti-customer route possible. That was a deliberate choice. They went out of their way to do it. That is vindictive. And greedy because THEY ALREADY HAVE OUR MONEY.
1. I don't think the people making these decisions at T2 expect gratitude from this. I'd imagine their only real expectation is to make money, the entire purpose T2 and GTA exist.
2. I think you're overstating even how aware of the community T2's executives even are when stating that they made a deliberate choice to take "the most aggressive and anti-consumer route possible". I'm betting they're oblivious and simply handed the response off to legal, telling them to nuke all fan projects that could potentially impact their GTA Online business model. Legal would then interpret that as "nuke all fan projects" as it's simply easier and legally enforceable.
It isn't vindictive, it's just callous.
3. Yes, they already have people's money. They want to make more of it, that's why they exist. How does that inherently make them greedy? Greedy implies an excessive desire for something, it's hard to demonstrate how a publicly traded company is evidencing "excessive" desire for money when that's why it exists, short of the company causing meaningful damage in other areas (i.e. the environment, worker safety, etc.). No one's life is at risk here, this is an exchange of player freedoms in a video game for T2 theoretical profits. Tough to see the moral demonstration of "excess" there.
Again, I think attempting to get the attention of T2 on this is absolutely the correct course of action for the community and that T2's corporate agenda here is likely actually causing more harm than their believed good, but hyperbole isn't worth much, especially in a fetish industry where companies including T2 have seen that despite all the rage gamers still show up and buy their games like clockwork.
_/¯