Have you ever let the actions of a company prevent you from buying a game or purchasing from them?

[twilitfalchion]

Certainly, most modern game companies are large, influential corporations that offer products to sizable markets. And as such, for one reason or another, they may make decisions that are either ethically questionable or just scummy in general.

This is a fairly broad question, but has a company doing something like this ever prevented you from being a consumer of their products? Or are you of the opinion that one person's influence in either buying or not buying a product has no influence on a company's actions, and said company is therefore fine to purchase from regardless?

[Ottservia]

I will never purchase an EA game ever period. I don’t think I need to explain why. Fuck them and their shitty loot boxes

Edited November 23, 2020 by Ottservia

[ciphertul]

No, I've always though that a person or company's actions do not ruin my enjoyment of their product. Even if it's minor some of that money will get to the people who deserve it.

[PyroPlazma]

I refused to purchase Star Wars Battlefront 2 EA due to the whole lootbox shenanigan's. Purchased later on after they removed them for 7$.  

[Parrhesia]

There is no ethical consumption.

[vanguard333]

2 hours ago, Ottservia said:

I will never purchase an EA game ever period. I don’t think I need to explain why. Fuck them and their shitty loot boxes

This. I only bought Dragon Age Inquisition because it was a used copy on sale for $10 and I bought it before the loot boxes stuff happened.

Well, two very recent examples would be Ubisoft with AC: Valhalla and Nintendo/Koei Tecmo with Age of Calamity:

I made a whole thread about why I was upset with Ubisoft about AC: Valhalla. The short version is that the game's portrayal of Celtic people is basically every stereotype pooled together, and it's really offensive, especially since they're planning a DLC campaign in 9th Century Ireland that uses all those stereotypes, so they're using these stereotypes to represent the ancestors of an entire nation that's been stereotyped, oppressed and split in half over its history. For more information, see the thread I made. 

As for Age of Calamity, I can't stand false advertising. A prequel to Breath of the Wild, they said. You'll be able to experience the events of the Calamity, they said. They lied! My only interest in the game was that it was supposedly a prequel to Breath of the Wild; that the player would experience Hyrule, Link, and the Champions' respective last stands against the Calamity Ganon. I wanted to see that, I wanted to experience that, and the marketing said that was what the game would be. But, instead, it's an elaborate prank by Nintendo and Koei Tecmo equivalent to promising a can of food when you're hungry only for the can to be full of snakes (the springy kind, not the animal kind).

I'm sure, on its own, I might be able to enjoy Age of Calamity for what it is: a sort-of alternate timeline "what-if" scenario. But I can't separate it from the false advertising that presented it as something far more interesting.

Edited November 23, 2020 by vanguard333

[Sooks]

Nope, I think that mentally is flawed for a variety of reasons.

The first of which being that I just don’t think that buying the product of a company really has anything to with whether or not you agree with what they’ve done before, unless what they’re doing is affecting that product in a way that would make me not want it, of course. Of course that applies to video games, I mean they put a lot of work (in theory) in to this product and I want the product itself, so naturally I would have my parents make the transaction.

But I can sort of understand the logic, so we’ll follow through with it. You don’t buy their game and thus they don’t get paid for whatever it is they did. But these are people in charge of companies whose actions you disagree with, is it really safe to say that everyone’s pay would be cut evenly? Or would the innocent employees get disproportionately harmed more by a sudden loss of sales? I would argue the latter is probably more likely, and they don’t deserve that.

I guess that only ended up being two reasons. I guess I just don’t really think that buying anything means you support whatever it is they do, that’s a separate matter, but in the end it is just my opinion otherwise we wouldn’t get Chick-fil-A sometimes.

36 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Or are you of the opinion that one person's influence in either buying or not buying a product has no influence on a company's actions, and said company is therefore fine to purchase from regardless?

But this post seems to be under the impression that people do so to influence the companies. I would only do that if it directly happened in the game itself, so like if it relied on loot boxes than fan backlash would cause them to not buy that game, and as such they would know. But unless there’s some massive organized boycott online saying exactly what’s going on I’m not certain they would always be able to know that it’s because of some scummy thing they did 10 years ago, for example.

[twilitfalchion]

24 minutes ago, ciphertul said:

No, I've always though that a person or company's actions do not ruin my enjoyment of their product. Even if it's minor some of that money will get to the people who deserve it.

9 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

There is no ethical consumption.

Tbh, this is where I align more. As much as I may disagree with a company's decisions, my money likely isn't going directly to them anyway. So there's little reason to concern myself with whether or not I should purchase from them.

[kradeelav]

Not gaming specifically, but I've been trying to purchase less from Amazon.

EA hasn't impressed me with any games after ME3, which is right around when the DLC went from egregious to truly offensive.  A lot of times a downhill trend of quality and shady greed goes hand in hand.

[indigoasis]

Typically, if I can get something that I can enjoy and justify buying, then that's all that really matters to me. I don't always take into consideration a company's business practices when I get a new game. I've bought and played Need for Speed 2015, Need for Speed Payback, and Dead Space, all published by EA, and I was able to get them for pretty cheap when they were on sale. I got the deluxe editions of the two Need for Speed games for $7.99 each (both being cheaper than the normal version on sale, too, I'm pretty sure), and Dead Space for $3.99 if I remember correctly. To me, those were practically steals. Of those 3 games, Payback was the only one that had optional in-game purchases.

On another hand, there's also Sword and Shield. The music and characters absolutely bop, but I couldn't justify buying a game that has less content than it's predecessors, not to mention for a higher price. A total price of $90 dollars for both the game and DLC at full retail price isn't worth what's being offered by SwSh, at least to me. I wouldn't necessarily say that what Game Freak, The Pokémon Company, and/or Nintendo was doing concerning these games was a turnoff, it was just that I didn't want to get something that I didn't perceive as "worth it." Xenoblade Chronicles 2, on the other hand, is absolutely worth getting for $60 (or cheaper!), especially with the $30 DLC. You get extremely helpful in-game items, new quests, and a whole new prequel story to play through. You could easily spend over 100 hours playing these games because of how much content is packed into them. Anyway, thank you for reading my Xenoblade propaganda.

Oh, but recent Pokémon stuff (GO, Bank/HOME or whatever it's called now, and Masters money stuff) is really scummy and greedy. I don't play or utilize these games, but I feel bad for those that do since they seem to really be cheated right now. Coaxing the consumer to spend money on a product that they never wanted to spend money on in the first place is bad news. I never liked Pokémon Bank/HOME to begin with, so what they're doing with the monetization bothers me a lot, and ensures that I'll never even get close to those "services."

Apologies for the rant. Anyway, I think that this question is a very good question to ask, especially with the recent controversies surrounding Nintendo right now, and It's interesting to see what other people have to say as well. What Nintendo has been doing doesn't personally affect me all that much, if at all really, but I absolutely understand the frustration of others.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Of course. As an anarchocapitalist I consider it imperative that I, the consumer, express to companies what sort of behaviors I do and do not endorse by means of my expenditures.

2 hours ago, twilitfalchion said:

Or are you of the opinion that one person's influence in either buying or not buying a product has no influence on a company's actions, and said company is therefore fine to purchase from regardless?

That sort of hopeless thinking results from people being unwilling to make principled decisions, even at personal expense. Individual purchases don't influence company decisions for most products, but even the largest sales figures are the aggregate of many individual purchases. Something something integral calculus.

[L3xandr3]

The only thing I have to say on this topic:

There are far, far, far worse thing going on in the world than greedy companies doing shady, greedy things. But if you prefer not to think about that, then you do you.

Anyways, this is the beginning of an utterly off topic rant that has no place in this thread, isn't it? So, I'll stop on that note.

[Glennstavos]

I think it's important to appriase each situation on a case by case basis. When Activision publishes a game like Overwatch that has loot boxes, it's bad. When Activition publishes a game without loot boxes like Crash 4, it's good. But even still, It's tricky because when a company's product underperforms in sales, it's never the assholes in power who take the loss from that. They'll fire a thousand employees on the same day they write themselves a pay raise. Once in a lifetime you get somebody like Iwata cutting their pay to avoid having to lay off staff, but this is not a world that ever rewards or encourages such selfless behavior. I want the video game industry to unionize in order to crack down on mistreatment of employees, but even unions are just miniature power structures that create avenues for corruption. 

I'll still game the system where I can though. I like to buy games when they come out if I really support the idea or franchise that they represent, even though I think it's predatory for a company to say "if they buy a lot of this game, we'll make more". I opt to buy used copies of games and third party controllers if I want the product but don't want to give the company my money for something rotten they've done. It's small gestures that won't ever win me a nobel peace prize, but my own actions are the one thing I can control in an unjust universe.

 

[leetic]

20 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

The only thing I have to say on this topic:

There are far, far, far worse thing going on in the world than greedy companies doing shady, greedy things.

I disagree, considering that greedy companies doing shady, greedy things is resulting in the destruction of the planet's entire ecosystem as we speak. But that's a topic for another time.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Are companies the source of the world's evils?

Well, we are talking about video game companies so probably not in this case.

However, as a Christian Socialist I consider the greed of corporations one the more vile symptoms of the hold which Satan has over this world.

[L3xandr3]

5 minutes ago, leetic said:

I disagree, considering that greedy companies doing shady, greedy things is resulting in the destruction of the planet's entire ecosystem as we speak. But that's a topic for another time.

Mass slaughter of innocents, human trafficking, torture victims, the starving, those dying of curable diseases because nobody wants to waste their time doing that, etc., etc. etc. Who can say which is the lesser evil.

But yes, this isn't the place for that debate.

[Yexin]

well, generally nothing stops me from consuming a product, not even the producers' controversial ideologies nor their crimes, if any
sure, it depends on how i feel towards that particular product, but yeah, i'd say that if i want to have a good time with what i think is a good product, basically nothing "external" can stop me (aside from money, of course)

what CAN stop me are my onw principles:
1) if possible, or if there's even the most remote chance it'll happen, i usually buy Switch ports of those (generally) PS4 games i'm interested in (that's why i gave up hope 2 days ago and bought Persona 5 Royal for PS4, and that's also why i'll buy KH Melody of Memory for Switch)
2) i tend not to purchase products of companies who lie or do something which in my eyes deserves no support (i'm trying to get a second-hand copy of Pokemon Shield just not to financially support TPCi, GameFreak and whoever decided those games should have been the way they ended up being)

and... that's probably it

Edited November 23, 2020 by Yexin

[Lord_Brand]

There are companies I refuse to support any longer because of groups they've chosen to endorse, but I will not discuss the matter in depth here. I've been ousted from one forum already for speaking my opinions amongst those who have already been indoctrinated and refuse to tolerate disagreement or criticism, so I would rather avoid repeating the drama and disillusioning myself with yet more people on this planet.

[The Roger The Paladin]

In my case yes. Though the decision was based more on lack of interest in the new direction of the company than "this is morally wrong". To be specific, August and September of 2011 saw DC comics (that seems redundant when you know DC stands for Detective Comics) instate sweeping changes to continuity (what stories are "canon"), character design, and so forth. While it had happened before... it'd had never been so drastic. Some characters were virtually unrecognizable to their pre-2011 counterparts in personality, appearance, or origin. Example. The Question went from being a down to Earth street level vigilante with a mask that made him look like he had no face.... to a guy who had been cursed with immortality and no face in Ancient Greece. Point is, we were supposed to just gulp down drastic changes without giving a damn. I had zero interest in a "all those thousands (not hyperbole) of old stories you've read have no meaning here" direction, and dropped it. Sometime later, they did another reboot... which changed things up again to be a "halfway" point between the old universe and the new one in an attempt to appeal to everyone. I still didn't care. Why? By now I'm pretty happy finishing off the old stuff I need... and quite honestly, I realized it's easier to afford it and fit it in the house without the new stuff taking up money and space. Not that that stops me from buying reprints of the old stuff... when they do something I don't have. So in a way, I'm still a customer... just a very, very infrequent one. About a year later, when Marvel decided to do the "Marvel Now" direction, and play fast and loose with continuity... I dropped it's new stories as well. Still haven't regretted either decision... or the money it's saved me to spend elsewhere. Kind of ironic, how both companies became their own competition.

[Jotari]

Does wanting me to pay money count?

[Etrurian emperor]

No. 

I have a lot of problems with the modern AAA industry. It would be very easy for me to boycott anything from EA or Activision out of principle. It would be easy because they already release so little games that are of any interest to me. Often that's a result of their shady practices but its still more a matter of tastes then of principles. 

But if Nintendo were to go rogue I suspect I wouldn't boycott their products as long as the quality remains high. I frankly don't think I would have the discipline to deprive myself of stuff I want to make a point. 

[DragonFlames]

I've blacklisted many companies for their shitty business practices or the way they treat their employees.
EA, Activision-Blizzard, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Naughtydog, Konami are the ones that come to mind immediately.

Not only do I just not care about any games they make, I cannot and will not support them with my money. Ever. And game that has their logo anywhere is an immediate "no buy" from me.
Especially not Ubisoft. I mentioned this in another thread before, but that company recently came under fire because it was discovered that they sexually abuse their employees.
I'm not buying a product from someone like that. No, thank you.

11 hours ago, Ottservia said:

I will never purchase an EA game ever period. I don’t think I need to explain why. Fuck them and their shitty loot boxes

This.
Just this.

[lightcosmo]

5 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

There are companies I refuse to support any longer because of groups they've chosen to endorse, but I will not discuss the matter in depth here. I've been ousted from one forum already for speaking my opinions amongst those who have already been indoctrinated and refuse to tolerate disagreement or criticism, so I would rather avoid repeating the drama and disillusioning myself with yet more people on this planet.

People rejected you for that? Sad indeed. If you want to share your thoughts, by all means please do! I would never blame you for disagreeing how a company handles things, it's your opinion after all. 

Edit: on topic, I dunno if i feel that way, honestly. If anything I would just complain about the "quality" of certain aspects of games.

Edited November 23, 2020 by lightcosmo

[Fabulously Olivier]

On a basis of getting personally screwed over, I will never play a game published by Aeria games.

 

Due to low quality products and lack of QA, I've sworn off of Bethesda games.

 

Bungie is on my shit list, as Destiny 2 is already a small game, and cutting most of the game's content (much of which people paid for through overpriced expansions) is one of the most bafflingly consumer unfriendly actions I've ever seen.

 

I refuse to purchase games that sell themselves on being exclusionarily hard, with no difficulty settings. Fuck Dark Souls.

 

I was already buying Ubisoft games from the bargain bin, so I don't see myself as supporting their shitty behavior.

Edited November 23, 2020 by Fabulously Olivier

[Armchair General]

Not really. Mostly because there's hardly anything worthwhile coming out for the Switch, lately. But even then, I would wait for the price to go down if it's something that I'll probably hate.