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Developer Rejects Player Requesting Steam Key For Supporting LGBT Rights

The Hatred approach, I could see it

Though that one was worse because you had geniuses going through their facebooks and shit to dig up anything for articles. "they wore black metal shirts and the one guy likes a Neo-Nazi thing on facebook, wowwwww"

Hopefully it ends with people seeing this and saying "yeah that's dumb"

No, it is the Hatred approach. Full stop. Nothing else. No "this one will fail, because". It will not. They won.
 
That broken English makes me think they are from eastern Europe/Russia. Homophobia is much much stronger there.

Fucking idiots.
 
This is just going to increase sales for the game - I would have never heard of this shit if it wasn't reported on Kotaku. Look at the comments for the review, we're going to get a horde of right wingers buying this shit to support it.

Other Steam reviews are saying that this is garbage anyway so it will blend in among all the other garbage on Steam. Being quiet would be the best action to take.

This is exactly what I was thinking. They do not need to advertise as this will be talked about and generate interest (negative or positive depending on consumer).
 
I was betting this is a russian writing in english, jusging by the mistake. Couldn't find the location of the studio on my mobilw browaer, but the founder's name sounds russian. So I wouldn't be surprised.

Can anyone confirm?

Looks like the developer is from Azerbaijan?
 
Unfortunately, I think this should be applied in any comment section regarding LGBT+ topics.

I don't have the stomach to read some of the things some people say to/about people just because they're a part of the LGBT+ community. I fail to see how anyone can have such a lack of empathy.

a lot of the comments on Obama's hiroshima visit are pretty much scum in general.

I think we just have to accept that people are shit, especially on the internet
 
Wait, I need more context about these free keys.

The developer has been handing out keys to random people that ask for them? Or is this LGBT support asked for a free key when the dev has been handing keys to specific parties like press and such?

This is kind of like that bakery incident that wouldn't cater a homosexual wedding.
 
You have to admire a dev that's willing to nosedive their game sales just before release.

Not gonna happen. Without this, they wouldn't have sold shit, it's just another one of these super crappy unity bullshit games.

Now, they're on media. They are being treated as heroes by Gamergate and other hate groups. They will sell WAY more games than they would have at any point before this. As already said, they won :(
 
I'm truly feeling bad for the guy. He just asked for a key and in return got a hatred message. It's a real shame for a developer to act like that.
 
Wait, I need more context about these free keys.

The developer has been handing out keys to random people that ask for them? Or is this LGBT support asked for a free key when the dev has been handing keys to specific parties like press and such?

This is kind of like that bakery incident that wouldn't cater a homosexual wedding.

It's the former, you just had to message them on Facebook.
 
They should pull anything these guys have done from Steam. They won't, I'm sure they "can't" for some reason, but really, fuck these guys.
 
Even just from a business perspective it's staggering to see someone who can't keep their LGBT hate under wraps for profit.

Money talks I guess.

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen more of this type of thing after Hatred's relative success.
 
Curious if this will lead to more sales despite the controversy. Anyway, shitty thing to do and I'm sure they're hearing their share about it.
 
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Wow, she did more stunts in this GIF than in her entire performance in Apocalypse.

On topic:

The guy engaging with the developer has some balls. Good on him.
 
Their English is really weird. It almost feels like Tommy Wiseau wrote that.

Back to the point, that is some disgusting behavior and seeing people act like this always makes me really angry.
 
Have statements like these ever *not* backfired??? It's such a fine line between reckless confidence and ignorance, sometimes.

In this case it might help. People embraced junk like Hatred on Steam. It's not a huge seller, but plenty of morons were ready to stick it to the perceived SJW enemy by supporting a game that would have otherwise sold about 1,000 copies before being bundled.

This seems like one of the many very rough and terrible indie games on Steam that normally fall off the new release list not to be seen again until the next gleam key giveaway. With this attention they'll get a few sales from the people who think they're waging a culture war to defend their mistaken idea of what free speech is.
 
This thread shows the issue with the topic. You better had not opened it.

No one gave a fuck about this game. No news outlet gave them space, no one talked about "Operation Caucasus" for even a second. This game is so generic and bad, it was deemed to fail. End of story. Now they got everyones attention. EVERYONES. Media, LGBT groups, the random guy on the internet. And they will have good sales soon, because there will be people who put down money just because they said that and media (including NeoGAF) made a big fuzz about it. The guys "who are against the mainstream" will support this shit game and shit words.

They won, regardless what you think, write or do about it. That is the only issue here.
Unfortunately you seem to be right about that, SteamSpy is registering a hefty increase in the number of owners over the last 24 hours.

Edit: My bad, apparently that was just the result of them giving away hundreds of keys per day.
 
Unfortunately I think there's an audience for just about anything and this was still publicity that will get them some sympathy sales. Unless the game can somehow be pulled.
 
This is a bit of a complicated issue for me, kind of a similar situation to the whole Firefox controversy (I don't remember the guy's name or his exact position but I'm sure most will remember that one guy at Firefox who privately supported some homophobic bill and got Firefox into a bit of a public shitstorm). I'm a gay man myself so, obviously, I think these people are bigoted idiots, however, I'm also not sure how much you should mix a person's private opinions with their work, depending on what their work actually is. I mean, there certainly are some jobs where this kind of attitude is going to interfere with your work but when that's not the case, I kind of think your personal/political/religious/etc. beliefs should not have an impact on how people judge your work (and should not get you fired, either, but that's, of course, not exactly relevant in this specific case) because if you start doing that, then you'll basically open up a two-way street (as in: yeah, it's okay to say that person A's work is worthless because they're a homophobic bigot but then it's also okay to say that person B's work is worthless because they support LGBTQ rights or are LGBTQ themself). Of course, when it comes to art and artistic expression, you can possibly make the case for the creators' worldview colouring the messages that can be found in their art, etc. I don't know what kind of game this is and whether homophobia/intolerance/discrimination is at all relevant to its story/gameplay/etc., though, so can't exactly comment on whether that applies here.

But yeah, I definitely think it's complicated. On the one hand, I definitely understand the instinct to not want to support someone who wants to deny me basic human rights, on the other hand I feel like people's work should stand on its own and be seen separate from their personal lives and opinions. Then again, they're kind of the ones who brought the issue up in the first place and mixed their personal opinions into their work (or rather into the promotion of their work) so yeah, I don't know :p.
 
Unfortunately you seem to be right about that, SteamSpy is registering a hefty increase in the number of owners over the last 24 hours:
TW2t4ol.png

Weren't they giving away keys at that time? Until that translates to actual sales it could be people claiming keys just to leave bad reviews for all we know.
 
Alex Jones's icon was enough for me since it comes from an old anti-semitic propaganda poster.

That place seriously needs mods to do something.

I mean the dude's Steam username is Alex Jones. Right off the bat that's how you know he's a probably a broken fucking idiot, who genuinely believes that he's smarter than you, because of the assbackwards political ideologies he holds, that have surely come to represent his entire identity. It's easier to convince yourself the world is dumb, than to accumulate real knowledge, after all. And when your self-respect and ability to fight off your insecurities hinge entirely on feeling like you're the smartest person in the room...

...I've spent too much time dealing with infowars fuckboys IRL, that's for sure.
 
Nobody would know about this developer or game without this controversy.

They're guaranteed to sell more than they ever would have without this bullshit.
 
This thread shows the issue with the topic. You better had not opened it.

No one gave a fuck about this game. No news outlet gave them space, no one talked about "Operation Caucasus" for even a second. This game is so generic and bad, it was deemed to fail. End of story. Now they got everyones attention. EVERYONES. Media, LGBT groups, the random guy on the internet. And they will have good sales soon, because there will be people who put down money just because they said that and media (including NeoGAF) made a big fuzz about it. The guys "who are against the mainstream" will support this shit game and shit words.

They won, regardless what you think, write or do about it. That is the only issue here.

Yeeah, tbh reading all this while I truly feel sorry for the person attacked I just feel there's more oxygen wasted on those asshole developers than they are worth.

I mean chances are this is just about the biggest amount of attention they have actually received so far, and they gain more exposition from this than actual negative publicity. :/
 
Why do people assume they're Russian automatically? That's really weird. Anti-LGBTQ is rampant in most of the world, even big businesses in the U.S and Europe have had anti-LGBTQ stances but Russia is automatically assumed? The developers in this case aren't even Russian, they're from Azerbaijan.
 
If someone asks you for free stuff, all you have to say is "no". You don't have to explain why. Not really smart from a business perspective (unless this has the opposite effect of increasing sales due to increased exposure).
 
Why do people assume they're Russian automatically? That's really weird. Anti-LGBTQ is rampant in most of the world, even big businesses in the U.S and Europe have had anti-LGBTQ stances but Russia is automatically assumed? The developers in this case aren't even Russian, they're from Azerbaijan.

I only assumed it because Russian game devs are common, and russia has a strong anti-lgbt slant compared to other parts of Europe.
 
Why do people assume they're Russian automatically? That's really weird. Anti-LGBTQ is rampant in most of the world, even big businesses in the U.S and Europe have had anti-LGBTQ stances but Russia is automatically assumed? The developers in this case aren't even Russian, they're from Azerbaijan.

Most people probably still think they are part of Russia (soviet union, whatever).
 
I can't imagine such hateful comments can be helpful to their reputation or sales of their game. That's one of those things that even if you believe it you just don't say.

I'm sure they'll get some immediate support from a certain subset of the gaming population, but in the long run it seems horribly foolish.
 
Firefox controversy (I don't remember the guy's name or his exact position but I'm sure most will remember that one guy at Firefox who privately supported some homophobic bill and got Firefox into a bit of a public shitstorm).

He was the CEO and he donated money to stop gay marriage, which is a public thing.

He wasn't fired because he believed something. He was fired because you can't have the head of a company actively working to fight against the civil rights of his employees and customers, especially a company whose mission statement includes lines like "An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent."
 
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