this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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It is very hard to say no to an abusive company. I guarantee you purchase something from an abusive company. You're not going to consumerism your way our of consumerism.
I can understand this comment for something like an abusive mineral miner in Africa selling electronics parts, or a food corporation that makes shared ingredients. Video games, though, are much more of a finished product, and easy to find competition for.
All major game companies abuse their employees. I agree with not giving them money but it will do nothing. The way people fight abusive employers is with with unions and organizing not with giving money to the other company that abuses employees.
Diablo 4 made sales records amongst the most I have ever seen gamers saying they will boycott something. I want to be wrong, I want this to do something but I see absolutely no information to support that. Meanwhile I do see regulations and unions making change in the real world.
I was disappointed to hear allegations of toxic work environments in Moon Studios, the people who made indie darling Ori and the Blind Forest. So while abusive employers are certainly an important issue, it doesn't appear to be one that's specific to large companies. Furthermore, it was never going to get solved under the supervision of Bobby Kotick - a man who was never going to leave unless something like the Microsoft deal happened.
There's lots of horrible companies in the world, and I salute anyone's efforts to boycott the ones doing horrible shit. Part of the reason I'm ambivalent about the merger is, I don't even buy (or care about the success of) Activision games. But I don't see that as a topic directly relevant to corporate merging/growth. Two publishers merge, that hasn't added to the amount of employee abuse going on in each of their studios.
All of this in my eyes boils down to how capitalism is the problem and I don't think we solve capitalism with boycotts but with strikes.
lol. Mister why bother with anything over here.
You can make decisions on what you support. You don’t have to be perfect and boycott literally every company to make a difference.
People don’t have control over every choice but enough to matter. Especially in regards to entertainment.
There is extremely limited entertainment that is not based on abuse. It gets worse obviously outside of entertainment but I think you'd have a hard time naming any entertainment company of scale that isn't abusive.
Then there's the fact that you'd be using a device built on abuse to play the entertainment.
This is always just some corporate propaganda so entrenched that you think you can not buy a product to make change. Yet companies like Nestle can be well known for seeing water as a luxury and using literal child saves to harvest cocoa while being profitable year after year.
Game studios like Blizzard need labor rights and unions not people saying they'll hold them accountable online by not buying a video game while Diablo 4 becomes one of the fastest selling games of all time. You're just spending lip service to the corporate elite and chasing after a solution that doesn't hold them accountable.
Yes literally every screen, console and movie player is built on abuse, so let’s not do anything about the companies that do openly abuse their employees and customers. It’s all bad anyways so might as well do nothing with your thumb up your ass.
Nestle does horrible things and literally has killed children but let’s do nothing and buy their products anyways. Not like there are multiple nestle boycott groups all over the internet spreading awareness. No they are just wasting their time.
You can stand up against abuse from one company while being unable to do much about another.
Doing nothing gets you nowhere. I’m not saying choosing to support a company or not is the end all be all but it is the damn minimum you can do. Unions and laws against monopolies is what we need.
I don't understand if you misread or are just too upset here but I never advocated for doing nothing. I advocated for doing something while consumerism is doing nothing. It's the same bullshit plastic companies sold us about recycling and now the whole planet is covered in plastic.
I also don't understand what the hell you mean about laws against monopolies, those exist and those are literally why MS didn't buy ABK like a year ago. Oligopolies are just as problematic if not more problematic than monopolies.
You keep "standing up against abuse" by not buying video game. I hope I am wrong and it fixes everything.