u/lockwolf i9-13900k | RTX 3090Ti | 64gb DDR5 | My Work PC đ¤Śââď¸Jun 17 '26
That & the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott that happened at the same time pretty much solidified how effective gaming boycotts are. More recently there was the Hogwarts Legacy âboycottâ which wasnât very effective since it passed over 1 billion in revenue.
That's all social media is nowadays. A place for people to take out their frustrations so they can move on with their lives feeling like they did something.
There's really nothing more to it. The average person simply isn't interested in it. We may not belong to that group, but large companies make most of their money from the mass market of ordinary consumers. It is a bad situation.
and there are some people (like EA fanboys) who seem to really love getting stepped on their crotches. this is not something ordinary people would ever be able to understand.
This is exactly why ad tiers on streaming services succeeded and became industry standard. People paid for the ad-free tier while others paid for the ad-tier
You have to get the kids on board. They will continue to buy whatever they think is popular and they don't really care about the prices because often someone else is paying.
Boycotts certainly are effective or they wouldn't have become a thing.
The bottom line is when it comes to stuff like this how we spend our money has much more of an effect than how we vote. All that matter to them is the profit and loss.
>Boycotts certainly are effective or they wouldn't have become a thing.
This is an incredibly simplistic view.
Boycotts can be effective, but that doesnât mean they always ARE effective. The smaller the target, the more effective it can be because the level of organization and public buy-in needed for it to place sufficient pressure on the target is lower. There are also generally fewer ways to casually consume the content being boycotted, and so more avenues where leverage(eg picketers, signs, etc) can be used.
Larger companies can also wait things out really well. Target saw a significant abandonment by many of its core consumers after its various political flip-floppings for a solid year or soâŚ.it still managed to make enough money to survive to today where customers are slowly returning.
When discussing modern games in particular, the audience being targeted is typically so large and varied and wholly disconnected from online discussions about the games that boycotts at a consumer level are functionally impossible unless thereâs something very obviously the matter with the content itself. At which point itâs less a boycott, and more just market forces reacting to a bad product.
It sucks too because we keep yelling into the ether about certain games and people keep buying them.
We would probably have way better NFL videogames but because all these asshats continue to buy the next EA Madden game, we get the same slightly improved BS every single year.
Yes sir. Rich kids and streamers aren't gonna wait. They couldn't give a fuck less that they're enabling this shit to go on. All that matters is what they want. Now now now!
"Its all we got so we might as well just give them our money because we like football." Nah! I choose not to play into that. I stopped buying them and won't give EA any of my money.
im just a realist. a large corporation wont magically start making games better when they start losing money lmfao if anything they will just fire employees which in turn will make the games even worse. i wish it didnt work like that but sadly thats the reality
"Its all we got so we might as well just give them our money because we like football."
yes, i like football games and ill keep buying football games lmfao
college football was an amazing game and waaaay better than madden
"X is unfeasible because people aren't doing it" not quite a true statement. And this sentiment sure helps unmotivate anyone on the fence. Don't do this, please.
Historically, any time a boycott was executed, it worked. Again, you can't say it doesn't work because people don't do it. A statement like that makes no sense. It is difficult because it requires many individuals to unite and act in a coordinated manner. And this is why regulation and legislation is so important. To balance the power of people and companies in the market.
Maybe it's clearer to see the issue with the statement if you say it about other things: working out doesn't work to build muscle because people don't go to the gym. Brushing your teeth doesn't clean them because people don't do it.
Please, the first step to getting people to unite is to get them on the same page. They're not going to with people saying it's pointless. So I ask again to not do this.
The good news is that it is not pointless. And that it does work.
The internet is collectively about 15% of the population being up on internet current events
You can't do much with 15%.
The people actually interacting on the internet is a drastic minority sliver of the real world population. I hope you know this, or else you're assuming the internet is some kind of consensus.
It has never been a reflection of any real world consensus succinctly.
I wonder how much leveraging the fact that average gamers do tend to lean on the hardcore nerds from time to time at least might shift the arithmetic here. Mods, walkthroughs, user reviews, etc. The industry has benefited greatly from the unpaid work of caring volunteers since its inception. The theory is that some of this will pull back anyway due to killing games leading directly to killing enthusiasm for gaming. We all just need to take up disc golf for a few years. Imagine if gamers nexus starts doing woodworking. Yeah it would be rough and yeah those folks pumping buckets of money at Fifa wouldn't even notice, but I do think that realizing the value of the unpaid contributions made by fans is our best option at this point.
The initiative has gotten to the point that it's being discussed in the halls of government. Serious people are bringing real attention to it. The only real objection to being able to make Stop Killing Games real law is that there's not really a way that they can think up to force companies hands.
It was always going to be the Gamers that decide. We know we're not alone. Vote with your wallet.
I'm not going to argue the point, lest I be dogpiled by people assuming I'm simping for corpos, or something. The point I'm making here that their objection isn't a solid reason, or a valid defense, but them throwing up their hands and saying "Geez guys I don't think we can do anything". It's weak, not strong.
No they aren't, coz the masses are oblivious to what's happening in the world, you are in a minority, you just might think you aren't coz we always gravitate towards bubbles that think alike. People say they will boycott x thing all the time and most of the time nothing happens at all.
Boycotts have been effective throughout time but they do require people to take part. Personal boycotts are not the same as a large scale boycott, I boycott plenty of things in my life and I know it makes no difference to anyone but myself.
Are you serious?? Gamers are fucking TERRIBLE at boycotts!!
That's why we need proper legislation to control these companies that think they can get away with everything- because for decades now, they have!
We've waited for years for companies to stop this shit, and given them every opportunity and plenty of noisy feedback, and they don't care. So now we have to fight for our rights. Simple as that.
A big percentage of gamers are kids and that is a problem as a consumer group. I used to blame the politicians and the corporations but I've come around to laying most the blame on consumers these days. We can't just cry foul and do nothing, expecting an authority to come and fix it for us when the corporations are mean.
Legislation just treats the consumer like a baby with no self control. The politicians aren't going to listen in the same way the corporations won't listen, if you don't have enough popular support to boycott then you won't be able to convince a politician to put themselves on the line for you either. They are populists.
Everyone has tried complaining, you've tried getting the politicians to back you. Now it's time to just stop giving them your money.
A big percentage of gamers are kids and that is a problem as a consumer group.
Legislation just treats the consumer like a baby with no self control.
I mean, yeah? This is why boycotts don't work. Gamers aren't going to stop giving them their money. That's exactly my point. I can stop giving them my money, you can stop giving them your money. I've always advocated the "hit them in the wallet then they'll take notice" approach. But what I'm saying is that hasn't been working because people aren't doing it nearly enough, and I just don't see that changing because every generation of new children coming into gaming are not going to know anything different and they'll accept the shitty things as they are as being normal.
We can continue to advocate for that approach and work towards consumer protection legislation at the same time. Lets not put all our eggs in the "hope gamers can have self-control" basket because so far that hasn't achieved shit.
Yeah, y'all should stop playing triple A live service games. They mostly suck.
Also, can smaller companies even afford support end of service playability? Hell, some games wouldnt even be functionally playable without other players or more content. I'm a little confused as to how this is supposed to work exactly.
And I don't mean "vote with wallet" like everyone uses it like "don't buy something... That does nothing and isn't even a vote. I mean literally voting by buying something.
Nobody cares about the millions things I don't buy... But buying that one game out of million games has much more weight.
Financially supporting what you like is better than hating something you don't buy anyway.
I think that is happening on steam. the only AA game I've bought in the last 7 or 8 years is AC shadows. I was always a big AC fan but I skipped most of the newer ones but figured shadows was going to be a good setting for AC.
Outside of that I've been buying indie games. I have bought most driving simulators. Haven't bought forza or any of the driving games. The other game I play fairly regularly is Manorlords.
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u/RevTurk Jun 17 '26
Boycotts are much more effective.