this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023

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Total War Warhammer 3 devs will remove Steam users starting boycotts (www.pcgamesn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

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[–] theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“The right to discuss is a privilege“

That word, I don’t think it means what you think it mean.

[–] FARTYSHARTBLAST@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ok genius: Just what the hell does the word "the" mean?

I don't think it's even a real word.

[–] li10@feddit.uk 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of “reasonable” points about how they’ll be moderating, but with a clear undertone of their true objective being to silence criticism imo.

Maybe just don’t do stuff that causes people to heavily criticise and boycott your game?

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Silencing critique is authoritarian bullshit. BUT, tw “fans” also say some heinous shit to CA’s employees all the time that is over the line.

Calling for boycotts due to decline in product quality isn’t unreasonable, especially after price hikes, but the players need to realize also that the business needs to raise prices every few decades to account for increased costs (wages, benefits, rent, etc). Both sides need to meet in the middle but gamers are notoriously unreasonable as a group

[–] Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

It’s worse than raising prices, it’s offering less content for higher prices. Total war pharoahs is a prime example, because it was clearly designed as a saga game(a cheaper, smaller scale total war title essentially) and then sold at full price when they realized the wildly unpopular, nobody-asked-for game Hyenas was getting shitcanned and they needed to trade what little faith the playerbase had for any cash possible.

[–] blue_zephyr@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

"The beatings will continue until morale improves"

[–] OctopusKurwa@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

C.A really fly under the radar with the general gaming community but their shitty behaviour is up there with the worst cunts in the industry.

[–] Jumi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

The good old double-down

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Putin does the same. Silence anyone who dares speaking out.

[+] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca -7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

You're all going to downvote me for this, but review bombing them and calling for boycotts because they raised their prices is fucking bullshit.

The worst part of this is that this is directly from the "fans" of the game who will spend hundreds of hours playing this thing and yet see no value in the work by the developers. If it's too expensive for you, don't buy it and move on. Get over yourselves.

(and don't come in here and say some bullshit about it just being DL-fucking-C. It still takes work, and it still has value or you wouldn't be whining so much about wanting it so bad.)

(and to be perfectly clear, as you'll probably tell from below, I was a game developer, but I wasn't a dev on this game. I did, however, work on a similarly niche fan-base game and did many crunches and DLCs)

As a group, you'll lament the treatment of developers (the people) and how they shouldn't be laid off, and shouldn't be overworked, and they should hire more QA, and studios shouldn't be closing blah blah fucking blah.

Then you'll all turn around and scream at those same developers because there are bugs, and the game isn't what you wanted, and you'll call them lazy, and incompetent and you'll tell them they don't deserve to live or at the very least even have that overworked, underpaid job they've toiled at for the past x years.

Then the Developers (the business) will do something like (jeebus forbid) raise their prices, trying to make enough money to hire more developers to make better games, or pay their workers so they're not underpaid, or hire more so they don't have to overwork the rest, or as is happening more and more, avoid shutting down completely.

I wish every gamer had to work through crunch on at least one game (or even DLC) and see the amount of work and passion and skill goes into making games. Because right now, you (as a group) seem to think there's no value in the work to make that product you brag about spending hundreds of hours playing. Go get a job in the game industry, if it's so easy, so you can see the value in the product (and afford to buy it, or at least know not to be a yappy little bitch about the price.)

[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

review bombing them and calling for boycotts because they raised their prices is fucking bullshit.

Just like you've stated your opinion here, they also can and should do that.

I wish every gamer had to work through crunch on at least one game

This is silly, developers shouldn't put up with crunch, but the blame for this doesn't lie with the customers, but instead with the corporation exploiting them.

You seem to be attacking the customer, and commiserating with the employees, but completely ignoring that somewhere all the value of the enterprise is being extracted. All in favour of status quo, this is terrible for everyone who actually works on the game, or pays for the game.

[+] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca -12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Review bombing is not "stating your opinion". It's malicious.

(Edit to add: one of the big reasons for crunch is trying to squeeze work out of a fixed amount of money, which is the whole point of this. Saying there shouldn't be crunch is irrelevant.)

[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Giving someone a bad review is stating ng your opinion, telling others to do the same is more of the same, just like you've done here.

The reason for crunch is oversupply of employees who want to work in the industry or product. This doesn't happen where employees value their time, or there is a undersupply of talent.

Games are not cheap when compared to other entertainment, and they involve the same magnitude of costs, these are businesses and crunch is exploiting talent.

There is a bad actor here, but it's not the customer.

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Review bombing is not the same as just giving a bad review

[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

If your product or treatment of customers is so bad they'd go to the trouble to create multiple accounts to give you bad reviews. Maybe you deserve it.

Maybe just maybe they are saying review bombing but they just mean bad reviews. There is no evidence in that article that stream has detected review bombing meaning single person or bot flooding their page with bad reviews.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My issue is that the price raises don’t go to more devs or even better conditions for existing devs. They go towards the execs vacation home and another Ferrari.

That said I’ve bought everything for the tw:wh series and pretty much everything total war in general over the last 20 years, I’m a fan of the series and love creative assembly’s games. I’m fine with price increases so long as it results in a better product, I think a lot of the recent complaints have been rooted in price increases have happened but there’s been no improvement, if anything there’s been decline in quality. The last tw:wh3 dlc was meh for many though I’ve enjoyed it so far, and the latest game tw:pharaoh appears to be dead on arrival.

Again, I have no issue with price increases, I’m familiar with how business works, but there needs to be give and take, we pay more, we want at least the same quality as before.

[–] PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem isn't the developer or the customer. You're falling for the oldest trick in the book, keep the peasants fighting amongst themselves and they won't realize the king is the problem.

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca -3 points 1 year ago

Exactly. That's what I'm complaining about! These attacks by the "fans" are harming the developers, not the publishers.

[–] muse@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Raising prices isn't going to magically fix crunch or get you paid more.

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 year ago

So review bomb and make it worse?

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Total war is practically a Madden game with per team dlc. They deserve the criticism. They do yearly releases of various themes on the same engine with minor improvements.

I'm not really sure why an experienced dev would support publishers. Your some of the lowest paid and hardest worked devs and frequently get laid off post release. The actual costs for your labor aren't the majority of the cost of games, stop shilling for your abusers.

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Total war is practically a Madden game with per team dlc. They deserve the criticism. They do yearly releases of various themes on the same engine with minor improvements.

Then why are people buying it!? If it has no value, then a price change makes no difference. You don't like it, don't buy it!

I'm not supporting publishers. The actions by the "fans" are doing absolutely nothing to the publishers!

[–] BudgieMania@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then why are people buying it!?

The latest Total War has been one of the worst performing ones from user activity perspective in its first few weeks, which is one of the main metrics that is relied on to estimate units moved on Steam. So it can be argued that people, at this point, are not buying it.

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

So it can be argued that people, at this point, are not buying it.

That's fair.

[–] trias10@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I'm more surprised that anyone gives a shit at all that they have the time to go do something like a review bomb or try to organise a boycott. People must have a lot of free time on their hands, I barely have time to play a video game, let alone sacrifice valuable free time to go organise a boycott.

If a game is bad or costs too much, I just forget about it and move on. Loads of other things I have to do with my day, and there are a billion other games I can play instead.

I played Warhammer 2 a bit, but saw their shitty patches that broke the game every time, so I just uninstalled it and forgot about it, and CA. I recommend people do that instead. Loads of other fun games to play instead.