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Assassin's Creed: Unity Launch Debacle Pulls Spotlight Onto Game Review Embargos

RogueyWon (735973) writes "The latest entry in the long-running Assassin's Creed game series, Assassin's Creed: Unity released this week. Those looking for pre-release reviews on whether to make a purchase were out of luck; the publisher, Ubisoft, had provided gaming sites with advance copies, but only on condition that their reviews be withheld until 17 hours after the game released in North America. Following the game's release, many players have reported finding it in a highly buggy state, with severe performance issues affecting all three release platforms (PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One). Ubisoft has been forced onto the defensive, taking the unprecedented step of launching a live-blog covering their efforts at debugging the game, but the debacle has already had a large impact on the company's share value and the incident has drawn widespread attention to the increasingly common practice of review embargoes."

474 comments

  1. THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not harassing women or minorities. Any game journalist who signs a review embargo agreement is a part of the problem.

  2. Depends on Embargo Lift by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's one thing to prevent game review sites from playing one-upsmanship over each other by "leaking" early reviews (that are often incomplete and based on beta versions of the game). However, once you can buy the "finished" product, the only reason to have a continuing embargo is that you know the product sucks but you don't want to share that information.

    Another strategy: Have game review sites flat out say that an embargo for a certain game is NOT lifting prior to the game going on sale. I know lots of NDAs have Fight Club clauses (you do NOT talk about the NDA).. but a clever game review site could probably get around that without actually saying "The Assassin's Creed Embargo Does Not Lift Until 11PM" or something similar.

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    1. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nah, the embargo agreements are perpetually tied to the right to review the next release early. Violate the terms? Well so much for getting any trailers on your site, assholes.

    2. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by dj245 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's one thing to prevent game review sites from playing one-upsmanship over each other by "leaking" early reviews (that are often incomplete and based on beta versions of the game). However, once you can buy the "finished" product, the only reason to have a continuing embargo is that you know the product sucks but you don't want to share that information.

      Another strategy: Have game review sites flat out say that an embargo for a certain game is NOT lifting prior to the game going on sale. I know lots of NDAs have Fight Club clauses (you do NOT talk about the NDA).. but a clever game review site could probably get around that without actually saying "The Assassin's Creed Embargo Does Not Lift Until 11PM" or something similar.

      Its astonishing to me that anyone agreed to operate under such an NDA anyway. 17 hours is sufficiently long that you could aquire the game, play it for 2 hours to get a feel for it, 1 hour to record a video, edit for another 2 hours, and then post it with 10 hours left on the embargo.

      Any game company having their embargo end long after the game is available is just begging for trouble. Or they know there is a very serious problem and they can't or won't delay the release.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    3. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by OzoneLad · · Score: 1

      If you can't publish your early review, then what's the point of having early access?

    4. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In all honesty. Review Embargos are a good thing, because it prevents a game being utterly trashed by reviewers racing to review because they reviewed an advance copy (eg in beta state.) If the review was of the EXACT version released at retail, the game would have to be absolutely complete before physical shipment and the reviewers should have a "download" version (eg an ISO image) that is watermarked with the reviewer's company, so any screenshots/video clearly show it being a review copy.

      On the other hand, the entire "you don't get to review it unless ___" part is bull, and shouldn't happen. Once the reviewer gets the copy they should be able to schedule the review to show up at the exact same time the game becomes available for download to the public. A reviewer should be required to play AND finish the game before giving it any kind of score, otherwise they must state exactly how far they got into the game.

      And too bad gamergate was all about harassing women, because this is the kind of thing that they maybe could have focused on.

    5. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by GuldKalle · · Score: 1

      You need time to actually write the review.

      --
      What?
    6. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      . A reviewer should be required to play AND finish the game before giving it any kind of score, otherwise they must state exactly how far they got into the game.

      That's a nice sentiment, but how much of a game needs to be completed before calling it 'finished'? Just the main story? What about sidequests? Day One DLC? EX Mode / The Second Playthrough That Adds More Stuff? Getting all the Achievements/Trophies? Shortish action games might be able to be completed in eight or ten hours, but RPGs might take closer to fifty, and tactical games might take over a hundred. What about sims that don't have any actual ending? Or sandbox games that don't have any real goals? How do you review those if you can't really 'finish' them in the traditional sense?

    7. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by nitehawk214 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If a publisher starts withholding games due to the embargo, then why not make that a story and publish a review of "We were only allowed to see the trailer, but based on the bad faith of the publisher we suggest that NOBODY PREODER OR BUY THIS GAME, because obviously the game must be crap if they feel the need to have an embargo."

      If people stopped preordering games and buying on release day... this stuff would stop pretty quick.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    8. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by anarcobra · · Score: 1

      I think you should be able to write a review for a shitty game in 17 hours.
      All the other companies will be tied to the 17 hour embargo. As a company that isn't allowed a preview copy you can just buy one on release, play it for an hour, and then publish a story about how shit their game is. It seems like a better deal than getting the preview game.

    9. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 1

      I definitely think this should be more common in both games and movies. That plus the review aggregators showing 0 stars until the review embargo has been lifted and a statistically significant number of reviews show up.

    10. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by mattventura · · Score: 2

      Its astonishing to me that anyone agreed to operate under such an NDA anyway. 17 hours is sufficiently long that you could aquire the game, play it for 2 hours to get a feel for it, 1 hour to record a video, edit for another 2 hours, and then post it with 10 hours left on the embargo.

      But the effect of doing so might make reviews less valuable. Some games might take far more than 2 hours to really get in to, while others might get worse after 2 hours by virtue of being too repetitive. Or, in the case of this game, you might not run into bugs in 2 hours.

      Not that impulse buying a game before good, in-depth reviews have been published is a good idea to start with.

    11. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      A reviewer should be required to play AND finish the game

      Do you have any idea how much time it takes to finish some games? SimCity 2k, for example?

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    12. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This seems like the sensible approach, but unfortunately games journalism is something of a house of cards - there was a study a while back showing essentially no link between the average reviews of a game and its sales. If journalists push too hard the publishers may decide that they're not needed.

    13. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then other publishers get nervous because you said something bad about another publisher...and then they want no part of it. Sooner or later the only information you get about games you have to get from another website because publishers won't say shit to you or help you out in any way. Basically like that in ANY industry where badmouthing someone for ANY reason will get you black listed and ejected from the industry.

      I used to work in the magazine industry and a certain distributor signed some very anti-competition agreements with some publishers....in hopes that they could run other distributors out of business. What ran those distributors out of business was telling their customers (stores and magazine stands) that Publisher A and Distributor B were colluding with each other to fuck with the market....Publisher A gets ahold of the info and then decrees that anyone working with those distributors is to be blacklisted due to bad press.

      And wouldn't you know it? Now there aren't that many distributors anymore, prices went up, people got bought out, and now it's all two companies instead of like ten.

    14. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While this would earn them great respect, it would also sink them, as that would be one of the last times they get to review anything that isn't already out.

    15. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by RyoShin · · Score: 1

      Its astonishing to me that anyone agreed to operate under such an NDA anyway. 17 hours is sufficiently long that you could aquire the game, play it for 2 hours to get a feel for it, 1 hour to record a video, edit for another 2 hours, and then post it with 10 hours left on the embargo.

      There was probably an understanding, whether explicit or implicit, that if the game reviewers didn't accept the pre-release copy and 17-hour embargo that they were at risk to be passed over for both future pre-release copies (I bet Far Cry 4 was the game they were baited with) and advertising opportunities.

      Which is the big crock when it comes to ethics in gaming journalism: Gaming magazines and websites rely on advertising that is primarily from the very companies people expect them to critique and investigate. Yet many gamers that read reviews are somehow blind to this, despite explicit events. (That is certainly not the only instance of editorial misconduct, just the most obvious and high profile one I can think of.)

      These sites rely so much on having access to the game companies that they dare not speak ill of them, whether in reviews, unflattering news, or editorials. Many will post negative news only for games/companies they don't have advertising with or after many other sites (usually non-gaming) have posted it so it's like taking news from the AP. The ability to release a review just ten seconds before another site seems to be taken as some all-powerful thing in gaming journalism, though I doubt it matters much.

      I don't blame gaming journalism. Well, not specifically. This is just a specific sub-industry having the same problem as journalism at large: unwillingness to investigate and ask hard questions. Most papers and news stations are controlled by powerful interests who steer their coverage, and they lob soft-balls at CEOs and the President or risk losing the ability to continue asking irrelevant questions. Gaming journalism and journalism at large do not report the truth, only truthiness.

    16. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Anyone remember when games routinely provided demos and trials, both so that people could try before they bought and to get people hooked on the game play so that they'd go out and buy? Nowdays they expect that just using the name of some mediocre old games is enough that people will buy sight unseen.

      While the embargo is not a good thing, I gotta wonder what makes people buy games instantly when they're released. It also used to be common rule of thumb to wait a month for the first patches to come out or for the price to lower. Those buying on the first day are implicitly agreeing to become guinea pigs.

    17. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      So avoid the developer, it's that easy. It's not like yet another lousy Assassin's Creed game is a must-buy. Boycott the next Far Cry, boycott the entire line of games from the developer. But the game makers know that the sheep will keep buying the games no matter what happens.

      And why in the hell are people blaming the journalists here, except to get GG traction? We wouldn't even know of this if it weren't for journalists. The game MAKERS are the ones to be blamed here.

      Everyone has known for decades that game journalism is pointless. It's never been good, it's always been either amateurs who can barely write or people giving positive reviews to any thing out there. Going to gaming websites to get factual information is as dumb as going to yelp to figure out where to eat (and yes I know plenty of people do both, but I never said people were smart). Anyone who's getting upset about this now must be a newcomer to gaming.

    18. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      I haven't even finished Simcity 1.

    19. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the gaming studios want a more quality review of their game, then they shouldn't force news sites into doing things like this (not that any of the did). Judging by all the crap they initially released, I don't think they want honest reviews.

    20. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      But the effect of doing so might make reviews less valuable. Some games might take far more than 2 hours to really get in to, while others might get worse after 2 hours by virtue of being too repetitive. Or, in the case of this game, you might not run into bugs in 2 hours.

      So the only credible reviews will generally be of the form "it sucks" or of the form "we don't know yet".

      Good luck getting your launch day hype up when those are your options, publishers.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    21. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      you have time to do a thorough unrushed review with a properly edited write up. Otherwise if they get access the same time as everyone else it becomes a race pump out the fast review to grab the eyes to your site. In theory the embargoes are meant to help everyone, some companies abuse their purpose to prevent negative press before release which is not what they were meant for.

    22. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      What they need is a Canary.

      You could have a line in your review for games that goes something like this "We have been given full permission to post our review of this game prior to release" for games that have no embargo.

      When that statement is missing, you know there is embargo in place.

    23. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Have game review sites flat out say that an embargo for a certain game is NOT lifting prior to the game going on sale.

      Many games enthusist sites already do this. currently I pretty much only go to one site for game news (www.giantbomb.com), on multiple times when discussing that AC: Unity was coming out they specifically mentioned that the review embargo would not lift until 9:00 AM PST, which is after the game goes live. They even moved one of their normal podcasts that they do live, from Monday monring, to Tuesday, 1 minute after the embargo so that they could discuss their impressions.

      Mulitple times the week before the embargo went live, they discussed the embargo, and at least in one podcast, they specifically addressed why they agreed to the embargo, rather than not agreeing to the embargo, and buying the title at release, reviewing the game when it comes out, and then releaseing before the embargo.

      In the specfic case of AC:Unity, they knew that it would take more than 17 hours to play the game, and write up the quality of review that they hold themselves to. So, getting the game early, still allowed them to get a quality review to the audience sooner than they would have been able to if they had just purchased the game at release (and wouldn't have required the reviewer to download the game in the early hours of the morning, and do a marathon game session, and right up the review. Which then allows their audience to decide if they want to use that as a factor in deciding to by the game or not.

      As to other game sites, I don't pay attention as much as I did in the past, but when I used to pay attention to multiple sites, it was a very common thing to discuss the embargos; that a specific game was on embargo; their feelings about the practice etc... So it's hardly something that is totally hidden. Occaisionally there are sometimes cryptic accounts, that X person is out of the office getting early acccess to a game we can't talk about, but that's more often for very early pre-release marketting, although it sometimes also includes embargos just before release.

      However at the end of the day, the enthusist press doesn't have much choice about accepting embargos. Sometimes they do not accept them, depending on the terms, but you rarely hear about that, rather the site just doesn't review the game, or reviews it later. But, if they want early access to be able to review the game, and better serve their audience (and help them generate revenue), they pretty much have to play ball. In my opinion, it's up to the consumer to be well informed, and if they require a review, or reviews to help them decide on a purchase, then it's up to them that they should wait. They should also have a feeling in regards to the type of press that a particular outlet provides. Different people, and different outlets definatly have different preferences, biases and provide coverage in different ways. If you're using that information to make a purchase, and it means that much to you, you should have some understanding where they are coming from.

      As to the actual embargos themselves, there are some reasonable arguments for them being in place.

      1. Most large AAA companies have very elaborate (and expensive) marketting plans, and timing that they want to follow to hype their new releases. Sometimes dribbling out what information is shared with the public (for example, sometimes the press is told that they can share these specific features, talk anything about the game up to a certain point (for example when Elder Scrolls Oblivion was released, the press were not allowed to discuss or share any information about what happens after you go through an Oblivion Gate, but they were allowed to talk about other parts of the game before release. Bethesda requested this, because they didn't want to spoil the experience for players coming to these gates for the first time).

      2. It takes time to properly play a game and additional time to write the actual review. A game like AC: Unity usually requires abou

    24. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by mrfaithful · · Score: 1

      I believe it was EA that discovered that (their) games with demos sold poorer in the opening week than games released without. And it seems every game from EA, Activision and Ubisoft have "pre-order bonuses" that entice gamers to not wait for critical reviews. It is a scummy industry and it only seems to get worse.

    25. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by phriedom · · Score: 1

      Reviewers could do that, but they feel that 2 hours worth of play isn't a very good basis for review, and I agree with them. But I think they have decided that publishing a late review to comply with a crappy embargo is a bigger evil than a rushed review with no advanced copy. It is best for the reviewers and the consumers if they get advanced review copies with a good embargo are allowed to publish in time to inform us before the launch, and that is usually what we get when the game is good and the publisher expects positive reviews.

      --
      Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
    26. Re: Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not quite as astonishing if you consider that this allows them the best of all worlds: They can write an honest review without damaging their relationship with the publisher AND have an alibi for the delay that most readers won't question (as, admittedly, you just did).

    27. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Re: "...based on the bad faith of the publisher we suggest that NOBODY PREODER OR BUY THIS GAME..."

      I like your first suggestion (make a story of the embargo itself), but the above suggestion is bad and deeply flawed. First of all, an embargo is not persuasive evidence of bad faith. It's a marketing tactic. You can disagree with it but the game publisher is entitled to set their marketing strategy. So call them out on their marketing strategy.

      Second of all, a reviewer would be within their professional rights and responsibilities to recommend that no one preorder the game. After all if they haven't seen it and the customers haven't seen it, then a preorder is a pure act of faith and hope. That preorder money is at risk.

      However to tell customers "don't buy this game" as a flat statement, that is a boycott on principle. You'd better be damn sure about the principles you are defending. What if the game is worthy of buying? What if the embargo is long over and no one cares at that point? Are you going to deny the customers the opportunity to play a great game?

      The goal should be to get the publishers to change their behaviour, not to club them endlessly. Positive moves by the publisher should be rewarded quickly and directly. Negative moves punished equally directly.

    28. Re:Depends on Embargo Lift by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      So, it's like movies that want opening weekend numbers but don't care at all if they collapse after that?

  3. Bennett!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does Bennett Haselton agree with this assessment? I can't form an opinion until he weighs in on this. He's a frequent contributor.

    1. Re:Bennett!! by GrumblyStuff · · Score: 1

      He's letting ahf some steam.

  4. Ubi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It is Ubi-soft wtf do you think is going to happen. Look what they pulled with there pc drm servers, you couldn't play for over a week when they moved there servers.

    1. Re:Ubi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am not impressed with Ubisoft. From DRM which ate DVD drives to activation servers, to games that installed -once-, and couldn't be played again, to this.

  5. Who adheres to them? by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 1

    i read several reviews of both assassins creed games before the launch. I know some sites held them back, but really why? The reviews were mostly in line with others in the series. The only thing I can think is that there was a day one patch.

    1. Re:Who adheres to them? by crafty.munchkin · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing that Ubisoft were afraid that attention would be drawn to how horribly the game runs on the next-gen consoles. On PS4 the framerate int he first 10 minutes drops down to around 10 frames per second and on Xbone it drops to around 15 frames per second (this is from personal experience - got it on both consoles and have tried it on both). Also, given that it's minimum specs on PC are that of a quite high end gaming PC where it's also running like crap, they really deserve to be smashed in reviews for releasing such a horribly broken game.

      --
      ... wait, what?
    2. Re:Who adheres to them? by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing that Ubisoft were afraid that attention would be drawn to how horribly the game runs on the next-gen consoles

      So, does that mean those games are badly written, or that the next gen consoles are underpowered crap?

      I think I've seen several things now which suggest the latter.

      (Honest question, I'm sticking with my XBox 360 for now, so I've never seen the new ones.)

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Who adheres to them? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you don't mind answering for someone who doesn't understand first day sales, why didn't you wait to buy it?

    4. Re:Who adheres to them? by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 1

      So, does that mean those games are badly written, or that the next gen consoles are underpowered crap?

      Both. I have a fairly modest build PC that severely outperforms either of the next-gen consoles. Granted the PC cost about 3 times as much as a console, but for having the added productivity benefit it was an investment rather than a money sink. That said, this debacle really exposes the shitty programmers that Ubisoft must have. Getting a PC game right is difficult just by the fact that there's such a wide range of hardware configurations that could create a support nightmare, so in this a rocky release can be forgiven...to a point. Once the bugs have been identified, ironed out, and fully patched, it should be able to run near perfect on most systems meeting recommended specs (imho, 3 months after release should be enough time to be able to fix issues on edge case hardware issues). But consoles are stationary targets where the performance is known and static from device to device across the same platform. With consoles, if your game will not run stable on a static platform by the time you're wanting to release the game: #1 you have no clue what you're doing; #2 You need to delay the release date until you learn wtf you're doing wrong with #1.

      As a developer for a console, one should physically have the platform available to test on; have a spec sheet from the manufacturer outlining the details of what every single console of that model is capable of in terms of raw CPU clock speed, RAM space, VidRAM space, Video clock speed, along with guidelines on the minimum and recommended resources that need to be free for the system OS to keep the system stable; and one needs to perform their own benchmarks on the system to find out optimal performance levels as well as peak performance levels. Finally, if one extensively tests on the actual hardware and finds that it's not running anywhere close to optimally, the developers have done fucked up somewhere. It does not matter one iota if the console is underpowered. It's a given that they're going to be and blaming the fixed and stationary target that is a console platform is nothing but a strawman to distract away from the fact that the developers don't know what in the hell they're doing.

  6. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by i+kan+reed · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If that were what actually happened, yeah, that would've been a nice world.

    But... see, they say that, then make their attempt at a wikipedia article about gamergate, that they were given special permission to craft without outside interference, from non-members all about zoe quinn.

    They don't have the ability to not be sexist douchebags, and they don't have any history of making attempts at meaningful changes to videogame journalism.

  7. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    An indie developer having sex with a journalist.

  8. live blog by synapse7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why mention a live-blog and not have a link?

    I think this is it, correct me if I'm wrong.

    http://assassinscreed.ubi.com/...

  9. Don’t really get it by DumbSwede · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I’m not really a gamer, but while game review embargoes may be bad, how-about you don’t rush out on launch day to get it.

    One of the highest correlated factors to success as an adult is delayed gratification as a kid. How about we all slow down and not have to be first. The game will still be available in a week and you’ll know if it is teh luz or not.

    1. Re:Don’t really get it by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's certainly plenty of evidence by now to suggest that games with review embargoes tend to be poor, or at least not as good as they've been hyped as. Aliens: Colonial Marines was the big example from last year - review embargo until launch, then reviews mostly in the 4/10 to 6/10 range (with a fair few even lower). More recently, Destiny (critical consensus "fairly good but not even close to justifying the hype") and Driveclub (barely works, and underwhelming even when it does work) have been good examples.

      By contrast, when a game is sent for review well in advance of release, the reception is usually much more positive. Recent examples include Bayonetta 2 (reviews 3 weeks early in some cases, near-universal praise), Alien: Isolation (America hates it, rest of the world loves it) and Dragon Age: Inquisition (not actually released yet, but reviews near universal in their praise).

      The lack of pre-release reviews is generally a very strong indication in its own right that a game is not going to be good.

    2. Re:Don’t really get it by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      This is just a consequence of all the viral marketing and use of social media for promotion. The advertisers try to create a buzz by engaging people in a conversation, getting them to comment on posts and so forth. When the game comes out the posts come thick and fast, and people want to be part of the conversation, one of the ones discovering the game and telling everyone else about it on day one.

      Having said that you would think that by now people would have realized that it's more fun just to sit back and laugh at all the rage from people who paid to beta test it.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Don’t really get it by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      <typical stupid gamer>But if I wait I'll miss out on the preorder bonus DLC!</typical stupid gamer>

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    4. Re:Don’t really get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is correct, the idea is not to buy on day one, in order not to be tricked into buying a dud. But there's another way to look at this:

      This is merely 'Buyer Beware.' And while eventually the reputation of the publishers and the behavior will be known to all, we do have an interest in society to prevent the scam to begin with so that there are no victims in the meantime. So while what you say is correct, it is not an argument against also preventing the scamming of people who buy these products.

      We're not a "Buyer Beware" society; there should be protections for the consumer against scam artists.

      Otherwise, I have a few bottles of Mr. McNabs Fantabulous Scienticious Snake Oil here. It cures all ailments known to man!

    5. Re:Don’t really get it by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      More succinctly, if you're developing a game and you know it's good, why would you turn down free publicity before release?

    6. Re:Don’t really get it by Harlequin80 · · Score: 1

      I am a gamer and I won't pre-order any more. Major games seem to always be full of bugs the day they are released. Whether that is the game itself or some authentication server creaking under the load.

      The other thing is I generally don't trust the games to be any good. In particular remakes of old games. The original AvP games were excellent. Not so much the new ones. XCOM was terrible compared to the originals and Omerta was just rubbish.

      The other factor is there is usually a steep discount applied to the games within 6 months UNLESS they are awesome. Sure I may not get in with the cool kids on day one but I have a life that prevents me from playing that many games so it doesn't really matter.

    7. Re:Don’t really get it by tobiasly · · Score: 1

      One of the highest correlated factors to success as an adult is delayed gratification as a kid.

      [Citation Needed]

    8. Re:Don’t really get it by Somebody+Is+Using+My · · Score: 1

      Especially since day-one reviews are notoriously untrustworthy. The reviewers either play the game in haste to make the release date (sometimes not even finishing the game) or in some cases the games are played under ideal conditions (sometimes actually in the developer's studios) not is not representative of the customer's experience. In either case, the accuracy - if not honesty - of the review is in doubt.

      I'm far more trusting of a review that comes out a week or two after the game's release than any review released simultaneously with the game; at least it gives the reviewer time to properly play the game. Day-one reviews have no real advantage to the consumer; they are all about increasing sales for the game's developer (by increasing market awareness of their product) and the website/magazine's publisher (by attaching themselves to a popular product). Any consumer who is that eager for a day-one review of a game is probably going to buy the game regardless of what the review says anyway.

      So in addition to waiting a week or so before buying the game, wait a week before seeing what other people think as well. You'll get more honest opinions less manipulated by pre-release hype, and will be better able to judge whether or not to spend your money on the product.

    9. Re:Don’t really get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification

    10. Re:Don’t really get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    11. Re:Don’t really get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you look at it statistically, there actually is not any strong correlation between bad games and late embargoes. Plenty of great games have had day 1 embargoes, and a lot of mediocre ones. People just remember the bad ones with the late embargoes more because they feel cheated/robbed. The real problem is people who pre-order games or buy them sight unseen. Those people deserve to get "tricked."

    12. Re:Don’t really get it by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1

      I see what you did there by not making that link instantly clickable.

    13. Re:Don’t really get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [Citation Needed]

      It will be provided eventually.

    14. Re:Don’t really get it by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      /sarcasm But, but, but, then I can't brag to my online gamer friends about how I'm stupid enough to spent $60 for the ePenis bragging rights of owning the latest Ubisuck's game.

      A sudden outbreak of common sense? Color me shocked ! :-)

      As an ex hard core gamer, I now wait a ~year for when the game is discounted for < $10. That way I get all the patches and know I'm buying a game that doesn't suck.

      i.e.
      After pre-ordering Tomb Raider for full price in Feb last year, only to have it be available for $5 on Steam's sales in December, I swore I'll never pay full price again.

    15. Re:Don’t really get it by Moof123 · · Score: 1

      Let the early adopters suffer. I am not a big gamer, and frankl I often find that buying last year's game gives me a better experience. You can avoid the flops, avoid the major bugs, pay half price, and get to play at a good FPS on cheaper hardware.

    16. Re:Don’t really get it by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      There's also mounting evidence that the bigger the hype the poorer the game. In the last decade there's probably only a handful of "AAA" titles that I'd rate above a C.

    17. Re:Don’t really get it by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      Actually I think you are wrong, it is simply the bad games that get all the attention, most big games both good and bad have review embargoes. The intent is not to block coverage, rather it is to permit more thorough indepth reviews rather than a rushed hack job at the last minute.

    18. Re:Don’t really get it by Skylinux · · Score: 1

      Review embargo yes but not until after the release of the game.
      This is usually reserved for the real shitty games. The ones that are hyped to no end but ultimately fail to deliver.

      TotalBiscuit: The Big Bad Embargo: Just what is it anyway?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
    19. Re:Don’t really get it by Hodr · · Score: 1

      A reasonable position to take, and I usually take it a step further and wait for the "Game of the Year" edition (or its like) to get the updates and DLC included.

      But, the main issue now is that so many perks are bundled with "pre-orders" (which count as day-1 sales) that if you don't participate in this process you often are at a distinct disadvantage.

    20. Re:Don’t really get it by nabsltd · · Score: 1
    21. Re:Don’t really get it by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      In this case, even excluding all the issues of a silent period, the game provided wasn't the release version. I read that the pay facility wasn't provided, so the in-game pay options were free, giving a false impression of user experience.

    22. Re:Don’t really get it by kon23uk · · Score: 1

      +1

      --
      He was a man who didn't know the meaning of the word "fear"; or the meaning of many other words longer than 3 letters
  10. Halo Masterchief Collection - same type of issues by mzkhadir · · Score: 5, Informative

    People are reporting same type of issues on X1. Reddit has a site going dedicated to issues people are reporting. http://www.reddit.com/r/halo/c...

  11. Re:But let's remember by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

    With the big, nefarious, result of having their free game linked on a blog post list of free indie games that the author had heard of.

    Sooooooooooooooooooo conflicty.

  12. No surprise by Khyber · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They released a half-finished game and KNEW it was half-finished. They'd hoped to ride on the sales and issue a patch later. They accomplished this with the review embargo, and they KNEW that was the purpose of the embargo - to allow them to get those initial sales out before the shit hit the fan.

    There should be a lawsuit on this fairly soon, I'd imagine.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    1. Re:No surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Friends don't let friends buy from Ubisoft.

    2. Re:No surprise by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In fairness, while they'll probably get away with it this time, recent history suggests that with major franchises, you can fool people once, but you pay the price on the next game. Some examples here:

      Final Fantasy XIII: sold extremely well on the basis of hype and the brand. Was a terrible game in almost every respect. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a rather better game. Lightning Returns (the third installment) is actually a very good game. Both sold terribly, due to reputational damage from their predecessor.

      Resident Evil 6: near-universally panned. Sold pretty well on the basis of a massive marketing campaign. Resident Evil releases since then have had a much better critical reception, but much lower sales.

      Call of Duty: Ghosts: Its predecessor, Black Ops 2, was actually a pretty interesting game, integrating RTS elements and branching storylines. Ghosts was a lazy, by the numbers pile of spunkgargleweewee. Its sales weren't fantastic by Call of Duty standards, but were still insane. The latest installment, Advanced Warfare, is much better, but is the slowest selling installment in the franchise in years.

      So if Ubisoft put out another Assassin's Creed next year, expect it to tank in sales terms, no matter how good it is.

    3. Re:No surprise by vandelais · · Score: 1

      Maybe they thought they could get the patch completed before the release date.

      --
      Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
    4. Re:No surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting, if not for the fact that Ubisoft have been pulling shit at this level forever now...

    5. Re:No surprise by Xest · · Score: 1

      I disagree, look at counter-examples such as Battlefield 4. It wasn't even beta quality on release, it was alpha quality with glaring bugs such as saves regularly failing forcing you to start from scratch, regular crashes - some even braindead and unmissable like pressing "A" to toggle between autospawn and manual spawn after dying resulting in a crash back to the dashboard after one of the patches designed to "fix" the initial release.

      Yet it went on to win "multiplayer game of the year" award even though to this day it still has launch day bugs and for about 6 months of it's life multiplayer didn't even really work for most people. It's still made excellent sales, and with a followup in the franchise now being extremely hyped with seemingly already high preorders looking at preorder ranking charts on various retailer sites.

      I also think some of your examples are just down to franchise burnout too, regardless of game quality CoD hit it's plateau a good few years ago with Black Ops 1 and it's been stuck at that plateau and trending towards downward sales for a while.

      The gamers are as much to blame - go try and criticise people for preordering on a gaming site and watch the barrage of insults you get for daring to point out that they're silly for paying more money than ever for games that are less finished than ever.

      When they know they can get away with this crap why would they change? Ubisoft has done this because it saw EA got away with it.

      I think if they all start doing it we will see a crash in the market but right now? there's no way gamers are punishing for bad releases even remotely enough to discourage it.

      Microsoft got a lot of praise from developers for dropping their charge for patches this generation (after they realised it was good to allow continuous updates to games like Minecraft and Diablo 3 receive) but I think it's part the problem. Now there's no financial cost to fixing their games Ubisoft, EA etc. have realised they can release paid-for alpha tests and fix them later under a flurry of half-arsed regular patches with no financial penalty. Microsoft needs to start charging these guys $50k per patch again, and only make exemptions on a case by case basis like they did Minecraft on the 360. If they're left with a choice of releasing a game that will be perpetually alpha quality, or paying hundreds of thousands to fix it, then they'll be more inclined to get it right for release in the first place, just like they used to in the PS3/360 era.

    6. Re:No surprise by MozeeToby · · Score: 1

      Direct final fantasy sequels have never sold well because they're not perceived to be part of the "real" series. They always felt like "direct to dvd" sequels, money grabs at best, shovelware at worst. Final Fantasy X-2 sold very poorly even with the fantastic reception FFX had, and X-2 wasn't a terrible game (thought it was a bit obnoxious at times).

    7. Re:No surprise by phorm · · Score: 1

      Final Fantasy X-2 sold very poorly even with the fantastic reception FFX had, and X-2 wasn't a terrible game (thought it was a bit obnoxious at times).

      If you've ever played X-2, you might see why. FFX wasn't the greatest of the name (but, for its faults, it was decent), but X-2 was like a Sailor Moon Dressup game with a pinch of fanboy-pandering. I reached a scene where the protagonists are essentially comparing each others' cup sizes and then threw it in the bin.

  13. Re:But let's remember by halivar · · Score: 1

    You suggest preferential treatment of AAA titles is not a concern of GamerGaters, when they are shouting about it all the time.

  14. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Correction: an indie developer having sex with people potentially involved with the review of her games while lying to keep the whole ordeal a secret from people she knows (including her boyfriend), among a whole host of other things that are kind of standard with bat-shit-crazy women. Yes, the whole thing was/is blown way out of proportion, but she is simply not a very empathetic victim to rally around. She's like the crazy ex that we've all had at least once in our lives.

  15. Quit buying games on day one by MerlynEmrys67 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For that matter, quit buying them the first month or two. Let someone else debug them and when the game is worth actually playing, get it. Heck by then 1/2 the time the game has dropped in price 10-25% anyway.
    I have given up on buying games before the first major patch, for that matter the first few if I am really interested and the reviews are that bad.

    --
    I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
    1. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Skidborg · · Score: 2

      Yeah. I play games that are typically three years old or older. By that point they are dirt cheap and all mediocre games have been filtered out and forgotten.

      --
      Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
    2. Re:Quit buying games on day one by dave562 · · Score: 2

      I adopted a similar tactic. I have been burned one time too many. After the cluster fuck that was Watch Dogs, I will never buy a pre-release version of another Ubisoft game.

      The same goes for EA, after the cluster fuck that was BF4.

      It is better to wait a month or two, let everyone else deal with the public beta test period, and then get it at a discount.

    3. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've never been truly hyped for a video game before. True fans of much-beloved video game franchises cannot wait even an instant to satisfy their craving. If the game isn't highly buggy on release either, so much the better.

      I pre-ordered the Orange Box and played through the entirety of Portal the night it unlocked (I preloaded it like every good gamer does). Even though I was in high school and had class in the morning, I stayed up until three in the morning, finished the game, and went to bed with a huge smile on my face. I did almost the same with Portal 2, but even with my copy unlocking earlier than most people's (a privilege of completing the potato-related ARG) I ran out of steam and went to bed after making it out of the old facility (Portal 2 is much longer than Portal). I don't regret doing any of those things, it was fun as hell.

    4. Re:Quit buying games on day one by eth1 · · Score: 2

      For that matter, quit buying them the first month or two. Let someone else debug them and when the game is worth actually playing, get it. Heck by then 1/2 the time the game has dropped in price 10-25% anyway.

      I have given up on buying games before the first major patch, for that matter the first few if I am really interested and the reviews are that bad.

      Or quit buying AAA titles at all. There are enough good indie games around that I haven't even got around to looking at the big names for the last two years. Even the pre-alpha/alpha/beta versions seem to have fewer bugs (and they get fixed faster) than a major release of a AAA title.

      Makes you wonder just what the budget split is in the big studios between bling/marketing/executive leeches and actual development.

    5. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget EA and the clusterfuck of SimCity

    6. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

      You've never been truly hyped for a video game before.

      I certainly haven't. OK, I'm a little bit hyped for The Witness, but that's about it.

      I waited a year before buying AC3 (Washington Edition). A lot of people hated AC3. I liked it, and I think that part of the reason was that I wasn't hyped and didn't spend very much money on it. I got it cheaper than everyone who pre-ordered, and I got all the DLC. I think it's worth exactly what I paid for it, all up.

      BTW, I'm still waiting for the Arkham Origins Complete Edition.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    7. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

      I think it's fine to buy them soon after release if you want them and can afford them (remember, to some people $60 for entertainment isn't a huge deal) so long as it has been properly reviewed and your research indicates it is a good game. There are plenty of games that launch strong, just as there are plenty that don't.

      But never buy it before you can research if it is good, and if you are likely to enjoy it.

    8. Re:Quit buying games on day one by RyoShin · · Score: 1

      I've started following this advice (not that I was buying a whole lot of games on release day in the first place), but I do make an exception for Nintendo first-/second-party games. While they're not completely free of problems, the bugs are far more rare and (usually) have far less impact on gameplay than, say, falling through the ground.

    9. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      here's a better thought, dont buy Ubisoft, they are a shit company with a long history of releasing buggy garbage among other shitty company practices

    10. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And, it will run shit-hot on your hardware.

      Not so much a big deal with today's hardware, certainly not compared to ten years ago when a lot of us (idiots, on reflection) were upgrading PCs at least annually, if not every six months.

    11. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Hey, SimCity 3000 was a great game.

      There has been no SimCity since.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    12. Re:Quit buying games on day one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are basically describing addiction. You couldn't wait for something and then used to an extreme extent, even though you knew it was detrimental to your schooling the next day. That is exactly what allows AAA titles to continue to suck at launch. The addicted gamers will buy enough copies to make a profit. They don't have to worry about how bad it sucked because once the shit storm blows over the gamers need another fix.

    13. Re:Quit buying games on day one by asavage · · Score: 1

      Ubisoft still hasn't batched a bug in the ACIII DLC which makes the DLC unplayable for me and many others. I am boycotting all Ubisoft games.

  16. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If that's true, where is the outrage amongst the GamerGate crowd? The BBC article was last updated nearly 6 hours ago so there would be plenty of time for it to be the talk of the Gamer Gate crowd and yet none of them seem to even care. As the person above me points out if you watch Twitter for #GamerGate it's not even mentioned once.

  17. Logic Would Dictate... by kwiqsilver · · Score: 1

    That if a company doesn't want publishers discussing how good its game is before release (i.e. free advertising), it's probably not very good.

  18. Re:But let's remember by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    Yes, a journalist who never reviewed any of her games and only mentioned here a couple of times in some articles that weren't game reviews.

  19. Context is important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This would all be a lot less shady if the review embargo was standard across the board for all titles from the publisher. What makes this an obvious damage control stunt is how they set different embargoes on different games.

    This doesn't affect me, however, since I started pirating Ubi games years ago in an effort to avoid the draconic DRM schemes they employ. If the game was fun, then I buy it.

  20. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like a totally legit reason to get death threats ...

  21. Re:But let's remember by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    Correction: an indie developer having sex with people potentially involved with the review of her games

    But the person never reviewed her games. So why is this even still being brought up?

  22. Horrible, right? by grasshoppa · · Score: 1

    Yet the very same folks that got burned here will line up, again, for the next release.

    Folks, until these publishers are punished ( by depriving them of your cash ), they won't change. It's up to each of you to STOP GIVING THEM MONEY.

    Of course that will never happen. If gamers actually *learned* EA would have been out of business years ago.

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
    1. Re:Horrible, right? by RogueyWon · · Score: 1

      Agree with you, until your final sentence. EA makes some utter crap. They also make some fantastic games. EA published Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space, which were some of the finest games in recent memory. Dead Space, in particular, was a huge commercial risk and the kind of game that only a company with deep enough pockets to experiment would dare to take.

      They also put out some utter crap, as well as their lazy annualised franchises and unfinished spunkgargleweewee like Battlefield 4. They also, at times, behave like complete shits in their attitude to their workforce and their willingness to push the boundaries on issues such as DRM and pay-to-win mechanics (though the latter seems to be dying now, thank god).

      But they're a big company; big enough and containing enough people that trying to tar the whole thing with a single brush is a bit futile.

      I think of EA as being a bit like the National Lottery we have here in the UK. Almost all of its players are from the lowest rungs of our social and educational ladders. And a fair proportion of the money it raises is used to subsidise the kind of "high art" (opera, theater, galleries) that struggles to be commercially viable on its own. So it's basically a tax on stupidity that funds some pretty great stuff as a by-product. Yeah... that's EA.

    2. Re:Horrible, right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Agree with you, until your final sentence. EA makes some utter crap. They also make some fantastic games.

      The problem is they're selling it all from the same plate, and if half the pies you buy turn out to be turds, it's likely you'll stop eating those pies no matter how good they were. I have had some great times with EA games over the past 2 decades or so, but I won't ever see one of their good games anymore, because it's reeking over there and I'm not going anywhere near it. I think that's what the poster was referring too. They should be out of business not because all their games are crap, but because there are plenty of vendors who don't sell dressed up turds.

    3. Re:Horrible, right? by mythosaz · · Score: 1

      Except people don't care who the publisher is if the developer or franchise is good enough.

      Dragon Age is Bioware, the same development company that brought us SWOTR, Mass Effect and Baldur's gate.

      I DNGAF who publishes their software as long as was made by Bioware.

      If Bioware goes to shit, so be it...

    4. Re:Horrible, right? by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      yeah by buing on the franchises they then get burned with shit like dragon age II.

      or KOTOR 2 published as unfinished debacle.

      seriously. and me3.

      see a pattern of doing something good and then selling you a piece of turd the next year.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    5. Re:Horrible, right? by mythosaz · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure any of those were bad games. The only real downside to ME3 was that people didn't get the ending that they wanted. The story didn't end on their terms. You can argue that it was just most of the same, but it was supposed to be more of the same.

      I feel the same way about Dragon Age, and I'm still quite on board for the new one coming out, uh, now.

  23. Re:But let's remember by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 0

    So then why is 99% of the #GamerGate hashtag feed complaining and harassing women? Why is this Ubisoft story not even mentioned once by the GamerGater crowd despite the story being more than 6 hours old?

  24. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    GamerGaters don't like having reality pushed into their face.

  25. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The end result could have been very different. Do you normally assume that a potential conflict of interest (in anything) will end up being a non-issue, or do you acknowledge that it raises some red flags and more often than not leads to abuses?

  26. Re:But let's remember by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For once we have an article that has nothing to do with that idiotic subject and not only do you have to bring it up, but you also create a massive straw-man while doing so. Are you just trying to start a flame war or something?

  27. Simple solution:do not buy the game until you know by luvirini · · Score: 1

    Know as in know if there are too many new game problems, like the activation problems, crashes, DRM issues and whatever.

    I personally wait until the game has been on the market for a while until buying them, that way I have a better understanding of what I am buying. (and often they also have come down in price as a bonus)

  28. Sounds like movie reviews by _xeno_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can always tell when a movie is going to be - uh, "good" - when they refuse to show it to reviewers prior to it launching in theaters. Likewise, when a game has reviews coming out before it launches, you usually know it's going to be a good game.

    Of course, the big problem with games is that for some crazy reason publishers rely on "preorders" to establish launch day sales. You get things like 10% off if you "preorder" the game instead of waiting for launch day, or you get special DLC that's only available if you preorder. I don't understand why publishers are so interested in preorders. But it's yet another way of trying to get people to purchase a product before they can review it.

    Now if you don't mind, I need to stop my rant about preorders so I can go back another video game Kickstarter.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    1. Re:Sounds like movie reviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      pre-order : you give us money. we give you NOTHING but a promise to give you something. someday. sight unseen.
      if you don't like it. so fucking what. we've had your money for a long time now. you don't usually even have that 30day return window anymore.

    2. Re:Sounds like movie reviews by khchung · · Score: 1

      I don't understand why publishers are so interested in preorders.

      Perhaps because of the huge logistics advantage and cost efficiency of fulfilling preorders compared to normal orders?

      With preorders, you knew exactly how many boxes you need to make, and where to deliver them to, and exactly how much revenue you are going to get. That's basically pure profit.

      Compared to guesstimating the how much you will sell through retail, and guesstimating how many to send to which retailer, and how many each one might sell, and worrying if the game would be a dud and the boxes would go to landfill, while also worrying if the game would be too big a hit and you can't make them fast enough... preorders is a logistics heaven!

      So, if you were a game publisher, wouldn't you try to get people to preorder?

      --
      Oliver.
    3. Re:Sounds like movie reviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I have preordered some games and one of the reasons I did it was because it used to be sometimes difficult to find copies of popular games soon after their release. Now with most games being offered as downloads, that's not an issue.

    4. Re:Sounds like movie reviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you order online they technically can't bill you until it's ready to be shipped. So, Amazon didn't charge me for the discounted, pre-ordered game until the day it was being prepared for shipment.

    5. Re:Sounds like movie reviews by stub667 · · Score: 1

      I don't understand why publishers are so interested in preorders.

      Publishers in all industries like preorders because it creates a spike of sales on release day. This is required to get on best seller lists, because they are usually about total sales over the last week or month.

    6. Re:Sounds like movie reviews by Gryle · · Score: 1

      That's part of it, though for certain platforms like Steam logistics is less of an issue (really, all you're accounting for there is an increase in traffic load). The other part is accounting. Since the money for the pre-order has already been given it makes the company books looks healthier. Then (and don't ask me how this next part works because I've had CPAs explain it to me multiple times and I still don't understand it) the accountants / sales department can project Day One (and beyond) sales and estimate how much money they expect to make, which makes the company books look healthier than they actually are. A cheap trick certainly but it's rampant in the various entertainment industries including books and music.

      That being said, I'm not against pre-orders. I've pre-ordered books before, titles from authors I'm 90% certain I'll enjoy. I do regret my Skyrim pre-order though, mostly because the PC version was buggy as heck when it first came out and it took significant patching before it was playable on my system.

      --
      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
    7. Re:Sounds like movie reviews by Gryle · · Score: 1

      This particularly holds true for book ordered through Amazon. The spike in sales pushes up the product ranking making the item look more popular, since sales velocity has a strong effect on how Amazon ranks the popularity of an item. Larry Correia, a writer, occasionally does what he calls "Book Bombs" where he'll encourages his fans to go buy a book for a writer he likes on a particular date. The sales spike usually pushes the book's Amazon ranking up helping it get (temporarily anyway) more page views from folks who might not ordinarily browse it.

      --
      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
  29. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The journalists aren't the problem, you dolt. They're in a situation of "I can't make a review if I don't play it, and I can't play it if I don't agree to a LEGALLY BINDING ACTIONABLE AGREEMENT to get the review out at least on time with other journalists". The people you should be mad at are Ubisoft. They're the ones who are the source of the problems.

    This is quite literally Aliens: CM all over again, play by play.

  30. Re:But let's remember by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    The end result could have been very different.

    What end result? She got a tiny bit of publicity along with a lot of other indie devs. Oh the humanity!

    Do you normally assume that a potential conflict of interest (in anything) will end up being a non-issue, or do you acknowledge that it raises some red flags and more often than not leads to abuses?

    Where was the conflict of interest? The guy mentioned her in a couple of articles before they even had a relationship.

    http://kotaku.com/in-recent-da...

    On March 31, Nathan published the only Kotaku article he's written involving Zoe Quinn. It was about Game Jam, a failed reality show that Zoe and other developers were upset about being on. At the time, Nathan and Zoe were professional acquaintances. He quoted blog posts written by Zoe and others involved in the show. Shortly after that, in early April, Nathan and Zoe began a romantic relationship. He has not written about her since. Nathan never reviewed Zoe Quinn's game Depression Quest, let alone gave it a favorable review.

    Emphasis added.

    The fact that you GamerGaters can't even stop lying about the situation with Quinn is why no one believes that your cause is about anything more than harassing women.

  31. Et al by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pretty sure they've been in the spotlight since the X-afterbirth fiasco.

  32. It's what some GG people SAY it's about by sandytaru · · Score: 1

    And I 100% agree. This kind of game review culture is toxic.

    But any time someone in GG begins naming the names of the indie game developer and the feminist critic, this argument falls down. Either it's about ethics in journalism, or it's about two women who did stuff you don't like. Neither of the women are journalists.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
    1. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1
      Brianna Wu claimed in a Huffpost video interview to be a former journalist. She also claimed to have trained as a lawyer. Then she went on to rant about how web sites have a legal responsibility to review all users' comments or be held legally liable. No word yet on whether she's sued twitter over users posts (which, contrary to Wu's claims, the Communications Decency Act, section 230, specifically provides hosts such as Twitter a safe harbor from any such nonsense).

      Either it's about ethics in journalism, or it's about two women who did stuff you don't like.

      There are ethical concerns in journalism. There are ethical concerns about Wu, who claims to have been a journalist with legal training, lying both about her experience and what the law really says. I don't particularly like it when anyone does it, but hiding behind the claims of being a SJW? Or being attacked for supposedly being a feminist? Would a feminist try to create a game with all the characters looking like they were drawn by horny boys for horny boys?

      I'm not buying it any more. We've been trolled! And yes, reviewers who agree to an embargo have already given up any claim of "independent journalism" when the only reason for the embargo is an economic one - to sucker as many suckers as possible into making a sucker bet on the quality of a game that sucks.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    2. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is just incorrect. The "gate" part of Gamergate was the allegation that the developer had sex with some journalists in exchange for press. This is a direct criticism of the ethics of those journalists. The two things are related.

      The critic just happened to publish one of her videos at about the same time - this exacerbated things, but wasn't really part of the "gate".

    3. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by Boronx · · Score: 2

      Game journalism will always need the support of the industry, because gamers want game porn far more than they want hard hitting investigative journalism on games.

      That's not strong enough: *nobody* wants hard hitting investigative journalism on games. If gamergate really got what they say the wanted, what they would find out is how stupid, lost and uncivilized people in the game industry think gamergate types are.

      Gamergate suffers from a problem common among those who take an entertainment medium too seriously: they think they are something that they are not.

    4. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      This is just incorrect. The "gate" part of Gamergate was the allegation that the developer had sex with some journalists in exchange for press. This is a direct criticism of the ethics of those journalists.

      Except that that allegation is a known lie, and doesn't even represent the actual criticism. There was never any press given. There was only a scorned lover whose desire had dated an employee of a website about games. And a million single guys on the internet harassing her and a bunch of random women to "get even."

    5. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by Kielistic · · Score: 2

      No it is not a known lie. Repeating that enough doesn't make it true. The two of them had a very friendly relationship. She got positive media coverage for a game that would have been completely ignored otherwise (or "press" as you call it). Around the very same time (within weeks) they were sleeping together. Most people would criticize that.

    6. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by sandytaru · · Score: 1

      See, this is what I'm talking about. Brianna who? I have no idea who this person is. You're unintentionally giving her the attention you claim that these folks are trying to get for themselves. I deliberately omit the names of the indie game developer that started this all, and the feminist critic, because WHO they are doesn't matter if GG is really about journalistic integrity in regards to video games. I don't give a flying fig about their personal lives or their supposed sin - I am interested in their bodies of work as it pertains to "ethics in journalism."

      Start bashing IGN and Kotaku, they're the real culprits here.

      --
      Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
    7. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by His+Shadow · · Score: 1

      Repeating the lie does not make it true. The "positive press" is non-existent. As as per the standard already set, you are disturbingly knowledgeable about a specific incident that in the grand scheme of things amount to absolutely nothing. Even if it was true that Quinn got "positive press" for sexual favours (it isn't, not even remotely), she got positive press for a game that is little more than an HTML script, has no advertising budget to speak of and will never, ever make anyone a comfortable living, much less rich. Zoe Quinn's sex life is no one's business. That her jilted lover made it a topic of conversation is the actual scandal, not that people have sex and break hearts in the process. The claims made by GamerGate types that even the jilted lover had to clarify he did not make are simply in no uncertain terms false. That the overwhelming majority of the targets of self identifying GamerGate types are women who in almost all cases are absolutely and utterly irrelevant with regards to "ethics in gaming journalism" is the tell here, and everyone is aware of the lie except aforementioned GamerGate types.

      --

      Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos

    8. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by rochrist · · Score: 1

      So how many sales of this FREE game do you think she got for the one or two line 'favorable' mention she got from the guy she wasn't sleeping with? This is IMPORTANT DAMMIT!

    9. Re:It's what some GG people SAY it's about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But the media coverage wasn't from that journalist.

  33. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by rokstar · · Score: 1

    Any game journalist who signs a review embargo agreement is a part of the problem.

    So all of them? You do realize that embargos are an industry wide practice. They also serve a pretty useful function when used normally and appropriately. Also please point out who has ever in gamergate talked about review embargo policy.

  34. Re:But let's remember by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    Actually someone else brought it up first.

    http://games.slashdot.org/comm...

    They even got modded "Interesting".

  35. NO Embargo = Glowing Reviews by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    Really if there hadn't of been an embargo everyone who got to review it would have had to guarantee great reviews.
    You want to see how bad this is go to any site that ranks games and see how many complete turds have great rankings.

    1. Re:NO Embargo = Glowing Reviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or gaming journalists could have some integrity and stand up to the publishers.

      No, that is unthinkable.

  36. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You can't use #GamerGate anymore, if you do you will just be accused of being a misogynous harasser.
    The only people who are still using it are those that will be called that anyway.

    Shoddy game journalism won.

  37. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Of course not. But a few people getting death threats in an industry hardly means the industry is messed up. It just means those people were targeted for a variety of reason. Hell, John Smedly had his plane diverted because someone called in a bomb threat, but people didn't raise pitchforks over that. They just took the 'blame the victim' mentality and joked about how he had it coming after killing Galaxies or whatever, which is kind of ironic considering they accuse others of doing just that to women.

  38. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Informative

    You mean the gamergate guys who found the brazillian "journalist" who was attacking and doxxing anita? But she didn't want to do anything about it. Or people like geordie tait(who's anti-gg) attacking gamergate by calling for a new holocaust

    Like the GG-harassment patrol which goes after anyone on both sides? Yep, nothing at all. Then again, I could ask where is the anti-side denouncing people like Briana Wu, Lee Alexander, or Mattie Brice.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  39. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you haven't seen the gamergater folks gripe about ACUnity then you aren't looking at twitter, that and 8chan are where they live

    About 50% of the tweets are from GamerGate people, and the rest are from people who haven't figured out how to search twitter.

    https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gamergate%20unity&src=typd

    My personal favorite :

    Unity reviews forced to come out late? Guess Ill have to buy it late, seeing as Ill be uninformed. Used. #GamerGate #OpSKYNET

    — Mr. Strings (@OmniUke) November 11, 2014

  40. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You can't use #GamerGate anymore, if you do you will just be accused of being a misogynous harasser.

    Great. So where is the GamerGater outrage over this anywhere else?

    The only people who are still using it are those that will be called that anyway.

    No True Scotsman at its finest.

    Shoddy game journalism won.

    Probably because you guys were too busy harassing people who did nothing wrong.

  41. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm pretty sure i kan read was talking about any GamerGaters attacking the practice of game embargoes.

  42. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh you mean the article where Jimmy Wales had to step in and openly state that the article in question had no neutrality. Where he called out several senior editors for engaging in a edit war, skewing it out of neutrality. Where he had to step in to the Gamejournopros article, openly stating that there "was collusion, and at best it could be called denied not debunked." That same article, where he's now called on the pro-GG side to write their own article, because groups like project feminism and editors with no desire for objectivity have tainted the entire thing.

    Yep, we sure do like facts.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  43. OK, Try This by Kunedog · · Score: 2

    OK, try this. Go discuss these AAA review embargos on a bunch of game news websites' forums or article comments and see if the discussion is censored on almost EVERY one of them.

    Now try to discuss Nathan Grayson or Patricia Hernandez and see how much censorship and pure venom you encounter, by contrast.

    Also notice that this AAA corruption story was somehow not subject to a week-long, industry-wide news blackout in hopes it would go away. And that the people reporting on it aren't being called harassers or mysogynists or terrorists in an attempt to intimidate them and distract from the criticism.

    It is the behavior of the press that is the difference. The popularity of Gamergate is the response to the gaming press's cover up of journalistic corruption and smear campaign against gamers. None the media's lies can ever change that fact.

    P.S. Similar AAA review "agreements" (for youtubers, etc.) were majorly publicized by Totalbiscuit (a major pro-Gamergate guy) long before the journalists. You're severely misinformed or underinformed, or both.

    1. Re:OK, Try This by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      Now try to discuss Nathan Grayson or Patricia Hernandez and see how much censorship and pure venom you encounter, by contrast.

      What is there to discuss about Nathan Grayson? He mentioned her a couple of times before they were in a relationship. After that he never wrote another article about her while they were in a relationship nor did he ever review any of her games at any point. You were probably censored because those sites were sick and tired of you rehashing false arguments.

    2. Re:OK, Try This by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      After that he never wrote another article about her while they were in a relationship

      That should be amended as I quoted above to "never wrote about her again". Nathan Grayson did nothing wrong ethically as a journalist with respect to Quinn. That this keeps being hashed out goes to show that GamerGate isn't about what the Gaters claim. If it was, you guys would stop rehashing these already debunked claims.

    3. Re:OK, Try This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://theralphretort.com/zoe-quinn-couldnt-have-made-depression-quest-without-grayson/

  44. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    If you haven't seen the gamergater folks gripe about ACUnity then you aren't looking at twitter, that and 8chan are where they live

    I did look at Twitter. I scrolled about 36 hours of feeds and didn't see a single mention of Ubisoft or this game. Even your own search only shows like a couple of GamerGaters complaining where as most of the tweets in that search that are actually about the game are from people asking why no GamerGaters are complaining about the review embargo. Sorry, but I'm not very impressed by your attempt at showing me up.

  45. Re:Simple solution:do not buy the game until you k by Taelron · · Score: 1

    Likewise, I wont buy any game until I see a review. especially now that games have jumped from $40 to $60+ not counting the added cost of DLC's.

    Most single player games i wait till they have been out 6 months or so and then Steam has a sale with the whole game and all DLC's for 1/2 or less the cost of the base game when it originally came out.

    Any game that doesnt have a review or is not at least 7.5/10 doesnt get a lick of my money...

  46. Re:But let's remember by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Informative

    1) They weren't invented crimes. They did happen, she openly admitted to banging 5 guys while in a relationship. Using her own definition of rape, she raped her current partner that she was in a relationship with.
    2) No, getting ads pulled because they lied about the movement in the first place. This then further followed by Nick Denton supporting one of his writers stating to "bring back bullying, that nerds should be bullied" and so on.
    3) So, critique is harassment? By the way, how does one harass someone when they refuse to debate something.
    4) No one in GG has "pushed or published" a gamers bill of rights. That was the anti-GG sides attempt. However, dozens of sites and youtubers have changed their ethics and disclosure policies since GG has started. Including Escapist+8 other affiliate sites, IGN is working on an updated ethics policy, and so on. Youtubers like Total biscuit have also been more open, you might remember him--he's the one who broke the story on the Shadows of Mordor stuff.
    5) No one is defending #1 or #3. Though they correct people like you who are getting their information from very specific sources. But it sure makes for a tasty story doesn't it.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  47. Did William Randolf Hearst take over the internet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought only the Post and the Times still practiced yellow journalism. Going by the comments here, and the sales of those papers people, crave it

    Oh well, who the fuck cares? Hearing about company shares taking a big hit for this is great news. Maybe the public can fix the world. You gotta watch these bastards worse than they want to watch us. We'll beat them with their own hammer.

  48. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was outraged two days ago.

    Here:
    http://www.reddit.com/r/Kotaku...

    Kudos to IGN for criticizing Assassins Creed despite having advertisement for it on their site

    Is the gaming media trying to hide behind the newest Assassin's Creed?

    Assassin's Creed Unity press Embargo was, as expected, hiding significant performance issues on all platforms

    Ubisoft make the new Assassin's creed embargo almost a full day after release (twitter.com)

    Assassin's Creed Unity review copies featured no microtransactions in them whatsoever like the real game does for the public.

    "I've told Ubi & will inform other PR: we won't accept a post-release embargo tied to a review copy again" -Stephen Totilo on AC:Unity

    Why Assassins Creed: Unity matters to #GamerGate

    On Twitter:
    https://twitter.com/search?q=u...

    Three primary places on internet for pro gamergate info:
    1. #gamergate
    2. /gg/ on 8chan
    3. /r/kotakuinaction on reddit.

    A lot of this was discussed two days ago.

    It's not Gamergate responsibility to go after Ubisoft, it's the game press's. And there are plenty of pro-GG that responded favorably to Stephen Totilo pushback against the embargo.

  49. Re:But let's remember by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    1) They weren't invented crimes. They did happen, she openly admitted to banging 5 guys while in a relationship. Using her own definition of rape, she raped her current partner that she was in a relationship with.

    Having consensual sex with someone is a crime? On what planet? Oh and [citation needed] for claim about what she claims is rape.

  50. Re:But let's remember by beardface · · Score: 0

    That's because the majority of the games media (the ones that are under scrutiny) are trying to dictate the conversation. And then you have people like you who've heard "things" without researching the situation and then making uninformed claims like "99% of the #GamerGate" or whatever. There's like a handful of women gamergate is legitimately complaining about and those women are nothing more than professional victims capitalizing on chauvinistic boogeymen.

  51. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 0

    On Twitter:
    https://twitter.com/search?q=u... [twitter.com]

    Yeah, already did that search. Most of the people tagged in that search are actually calling out GamerGaters. Nice evidence you got there.

    It's not Gamergate responsibility to go after Ubisoft, it's the game press's.

    Sure it is. Otherwise why have the movement at all?

    And there are plenty of pro-GG that responded favorably to Stephen Totilo pushback against the embargo.

    Great. Unfortunately for every one of those people there were probably 100 that were more interested in continuing to harass innocent women who did nothing more than *gasp* have sexual relations with someone and *gasp* have a differing opinion.

  52. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Ooo, ooo, I know, the link in your comment labeled Parent.

    Gamers have been attacking this practice for goddamn ages, it just hasn't been called "GamerGate" until recently. And I can already tell from your other posts that no matter how much evidence gets presented you won't be swayed, so I'll just leave it at that. (Out of curiosity, what gaming website do you work for?)

  53. Why not just wait? by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Any major title is gonna see two things:

    1. Patches.

    2. Price drops.

    So why not just wait for both?

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  54. Re:But let's remember by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 0

    That's because the majority of the games media (the ones that are under scrutiny) are trying to dictate the conversation.

    Except the "games media" doesn't control Twitter. Try again.

    And then you have people like you who've heard "things" without researching the situation and then making uninformed claims like "99% of the #GamerGate" or whatever.

    *yawn* More boring GamerGater deflection. I've done plenty of research by following the tag for months now. I've also followed posts on 8chan and other places. Get a better comeback.

    There's like a handful of women gamergate is legitimately complaining about and those women are nothing more than professional victims capitalizing on chauvinistic boogeymen.

    How is it legitimate? Quinn never had sex with Nathan for reviews as Nathan never wrote about her after they had a relationship. Anita didn't do anything beyond express a differing opinion. Sorry, but that isn't a legitimate reason to harass and send her death threats.

    Do you have anything of actual worth to add or are you just going to rehash the same, tired and easily debunked GamerGater nonsense?

  55. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Geezus, you're an idiot. The news that most people reacted too came out two days (48 hours) ago in a Forbes article and subsequent game press articles. So you wasted your time scrolling through 36 hours of tweets, lol. Seriously you SJW's really need to learn how to use a search engine properly, honey.

  56. Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nvidia plays the game every bit as dirty as Intel. In this case, Nvidia has created something called 'GAMEWORKS'- a proprietary closed-source library of routines specifically designed to collapse the performance of games on AMD hardware (or older Nvidia hardware). Nvidia pays shills to counter information like this in forums like this one, so let me give you one example.

    The best current ANTI-ALIASING is a FREE, OPEN-SOURCE collection of methods from Crytek (the people behind Crysis and the original Far Cry). Their methods run with excellent performance on older hardware, and slightly favour AMD (because AMD hardware is always more shader-powerful than Nvidia at a given class). Not good for Nvidia. So Nvidia 'invented' TXAA- an horrifically bad AA method both in appearance and 'hit' on performance- but a method that runs far better on new Nvidia hardware than it does on new AMD hardware.

    Nvidia actually PAYS developers like Ubisoft to NOT include the best, SMAA methods from Crytek (remember, they are free for any publisher to use). Instead, Nvidia only allows FXAA (also Nvidia created, but lightweight on all hardware, at the cost of not being so good), MSAA (the old fashioned hardware anti-aliasing that comes with horrible restrictions), and TXAA (hated even by Nvidia fanboys because of its impact on performance). EVERYONE is asking where SMAA T2X is on Unity- but as I said, Nvidia paid Ubisoft to exclude it.

    TXAA is universally loathed (even HardOCP- the elitist PC gaming site that insists on benchmarking games with every possible setting set to max, regradless of the trade-off- stated that TXAA was such an atrocity, they'd always use SMAA in preference), but for Nvidia it is the perfect model for how they seek to ruin the gaming experience of everyone, in order to synthetically make Nvidia GPUs seem 'better'.

    GAMEWORKS increases the number of TXAA like performance destroyers in a modern engine (Xbox One, PS4 or PC) exponentially. Ultra slow GPU libraries to handle trivial things like particles, AI pathfinding, occlusion calculations and the like. Remember, gaming PCs and new consoles are CPU rich- with CPU performance going begging across the commonplace 4-7 cores. No serious PC gamer runs less than a 4-core i5. The consoles have 8-cores a-piece.

    Nvidia literally doesn't care if bouncing ten simple particles on your screen uses 30% of your GPU performance, so long as the same effect on an AMD GPU takes 80%. Nvidia is this dirty.

    Disgustingly, Epic have taken a large Nvidia pay-off to make Gameworks the EXCLUSIVE 'enhancement' library of Unreal 4 (the current most successful licensed engine), and the team behind Witcher 3 (the most anticipated open-world fantasy game ever) have agreed to ruin the performance of that game on AMD GPUs (when it is released early next year) in order to gain Nvidia funding.

    Remember how a week back, more than a decade after the crime, Intel got a TINY court punishment for paying sites like Anandtech to use bent Intel benchmarks 'proving' that the putrid Intel Netburst x86 CPUs were 'better' than the vastly superior (at the time) AMD CPUs? The owner of Anandtech himself made a point of informing his readers that one core was better than two (when only AMD had gone dual core), that 64-bit was pointless joke (when AMD invented x64, long before Intel licensed the tech from AMD), and that Netburst's intent to reach 10GHz showed that only Intel had the right tech and ideas.

    Nvidia no more fears punishment (in the courts or court of public opinion) than does Intel. Nvidia relies on the vicious trolling of its PR teams to hurt its opponents, and to fool the public.

    For how Unity looks (far, far from remarkable), it should run at least THREE times faster on given hardware, with the most pointless settings notched down. Or, it could be THREE times better at the current framerates- and truly appear 'next-gen'. Nvidia steals our possible, doable gaming experiences to enrich itself. Just as Intel loves bloated abstracted, buggy junk like .NET on Windows, because it synthetically needs a much more expensive Intel CPU to run well.

    1. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Fuck nvidia.

      They also downgrade their own older hardware using driver updates.

      I caught them doing it to me once.
      I was using tv output for various things. A new game comes out that REQUIRES their newest driver.
      You simply can't play without this driver version. So i upgrade.
      Tv output goes to black and white only. No possible way to fix this. I tried EVERYTHING.

      Contacting them they pretty much claimed they never had color tv output. I was lying. That was unsupported and never should have worked.

      (when the card would still do it correctly if i used an old version of the driver. OR if i never let ANY video driver load. the hardware itself worked perfectly fine. i would have color output for the bios and boot screens. right upto where win loaded their newest driver. and then black and white only.)

      And their solution to my issue? "You should buy our latest greatest new video card!"

      That was the last time i ever used nvidia. And i haven't missed them at all. Not one damm bit.
      And no longer have to do the driver shuffle dance to make everything work right either.

      So fuck nvidia. They were shit shady scumbags in the past. And i really doubt that has improved over time.

    2. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nvidia actually PAYS developers ...

      Does this form of kick-back count as predatory pricing?

    3. Re:Nvidia to blame by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      So how do we know you aren't a paid AMD shill rubbishing Nvidia for higher sales?

    4. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't suppose you have citations for all of these highly toxic alegations?

    5. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, that makes sense. It has nothing to do with incompetent developers who publish trash code. We've never before seen trash games that run like absolute garbage on any hardware even five years later just because it was so poorly written.

    6. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We don't, and it's not the first time a similar post has been posted on Slashdot.

      The anonymity, lack of citations, and multiple persistent similarly typed, similar length rants against Nvidia, the claims of nvidia shills to deflect attention where none seem to be present mean it'd be far more rational to assume that the only shilling being paid for is by AMD.

      I guess AMD's continuous loss making failure to provide any reasonable competition to nvidia by actually churning out good hardware with non-shit drivers is pushing it to desperate measure.

      So to the AC above, if you want us to take you seriously at least start providing either or all of the following:

      1) Citations

      2) Credibility, tell us who you are and how you know what you claim to know

      3) Proof that you yourself are not a shill

      Until then we can't realistically be expected to assume otherwise. I don't think dirty tricks are beyond nvidia but some evidence would be nice, however I find it interesting that the the other target of hate in the post is Intel, AMD's other key competitor.

      Shill or not, nvidia wrongdoing or not - one thing is clear, the person writing that post has a massive bias towards AMD and against not just one, but both of it's key sector competitors.

    7. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, this is pretty full of shit. But I wouldn't expect you to understand this unless you had a background in signal processing, computer graphics, statistics, etc.

      TXAA is superior w.r.t. what the graphics industry calls 'temporal aliasing' - that is micro-polygons (sub-pixel sized) that have a varying (over time, with a high enough frequency that causes temporally jittering) coverage values that cause pixels to flicker over time as those micro-polygons move within the sub-pixel space.

      This is especially the case for things like high-frequency geometry, for example highly detailed grass/trees/etc that aren't implemented as texture maps and don't have long-distance LOD levels, where a grass leaf waving in the wind varies across sub-pixel space within a single pixel but never leaves it, for example -and is heavily multiplied when you have many of these micro-polygons within a pixel (eg: 1 blade of grass covering 3.2 pixels, one behind it covering 2.1, one behind it covering 1.3, and one behind it covering 0.7 pixels - all slightly moving about).

      TXAA addresses this by statistically sampling mean coverage values and producing a coverage value that combined with other micro-polygons in the pixel and their relative standard deviations, produces a smoother lower frequency coverage value over time than not - reducing the temporal flickering.

      This has nothing to do with being an anti-AMD algorithm, in fact it's an adaptation of what has otherwise been an industry standard super-sampling mechanism in REYES style rendering in the movie industry for almost 20 years.

      Stop talking shit. The way you've worded this propaganda piece, and how you've spread it across Disqus, multiple /. articles, and god knows where else makes you look like an AMD shill astro-turfing to save your life - which for all we know is exactly what you are.

    8. Re:Nvidia to blame by higuita · · Score: 2

      simple... AMD have not enough money to pay others to do that.

      When you have profits, you can do that, when you are losing money, downsizing and trying to recover. That money should be used to PR the game studios for better optimization and improve the drivers (that they know that have problems in several places)

      --
      Higuita
    9. Re:Nvidia to blame by Kartu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In Fermi times Anandtech was comparing cherry picked OCed nVidia GPUs to stock AMDs.
      "Trustworthy", give me a break.

    10. Re: Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe... But AMD seems to have money to hire big name engineers and executives, to much hype and fanfare, while preparing to lay off 7% of their staff. Note too that many of those big names, with press releases upon hiring, quietly leave after a year (when their initial options, RSUs, and signing bonus are vested/secured). AMD spends money on stuff, just not the right stuff... So paying shills a few bucks for trolling internet forums? Sure, why not...?

    11. Re: Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those are some pretty serious allegations for having not a scrap of proof to back them up.

    12. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, you are so full of shit it's not even funny. Seriously, stop smoking so much pot and take off your tin-foil hat.

    13. Re:Nvidia to blame by MrLint · · Score: 1

      TotalBiscuit has a video on the new AC game and he has like dual SLIed 980s and it gags on ultra. AI seems to be the killer on this engine.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    14. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't speak about the performance of Nvidia's libraries or anything, but you are completely off on many points.

      > Remember, gaming PCs and new consoles are CPU rich
      This is so wrong it's not even funny. First of all, a vast number of PC games are CPU bound today. Not many games can utilize more than two cores effectively, mostly due to the API limitations of DirectX and OpenGL. DirectX 12 and OpenGL NG should solve many of these problems, assuming developers actually start using them correctly.

      On the console side, it's 10 times worse. An 8 core AMD CPU at 1.6 GHz is a nightmare. Even if you manage to utilize all the cores to 100%, you're still far behind AMD's CPU processors, and you're not gonna be able to do that thanks to the horrendous memory controller that AMD CPUs utilize. On the desktop, I've coded programs that get 5x faster on Intel quad cores when using all cores (Hyperthreading giving the last extra 100% boost) while an AMD 8 core CPU was stuck at 2.5x scaling. Intel's CPUs go to massive extents to improve their memory performance, meaning that it's easier to code efficient games for them, but with extremely careful memory management, I managed to get the scaling up to around 6x on the same AMD 8 core. This is the main reason why Intel CPUs are better for gaming on PC.

      Now, if you take a look at the PS4, you see that it actually uses GDDR5 memory for the CPU as well, which messes up their CPU performance even more. So we have a CPU running at 1/3rd of what AMD's desktop CPUs runs at with worse memory performance due to GDDR5 combined with the already horrible memory controller. It's a wonder they got anything running at all on those things.

      > Nvidia literally doesn't care if bouncing ten simple particles on your screen uses 30% of your GPU performance, so long as the same effect on an AMD GPU takes 80%. Nvidia is this dirty.
      This is ridiculous hyperbole, and is contradicting everything you've said before. Even if you wasted a fictitious 30% of your GPU's performance on stuff that the CPU could do for you, that's still a net gain if you're CPU limited as it frees up the CPU to handle other stuff. The GPUs in these consoles also allows compute jobs to run in parallel to for example rasterization of shadow maps, so this "30%" performance you're wasting may not even have been utilized in the first place. Again, I can't say if your numbers are true or not (although I doubt they are), saying that offloading stuff to the GPU is always a bad idea is just wrong.

    15. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      buggy junk like .NET on Windows

      You almost had a point, then you turned into a blind fanboy.

      Intel gives exactly no shits about .Net (not .NET, that was the old web-based single-sign-on system, a.k.a. Passport, and it died long ago).

      In Win32 programming, it takes at least several hundred lines of boilerplate code to make a simple, empty window and hook it up to the message queue. .Net abstracts that away and makes it a single line of code: System.Windows.Forms.Form f = new System.Windows.Forms.Form(); Done. So is it "bloated"? Only in that what appears to be a single line of code is actually running the equivalent of several hundred lines of mind-numbing boilerplate C++ (or even several thousand, once you get all of the other window-dressing in there, pun intended). You don't have to know what a WINDOWCLASSEX is or how it differs from a WINDOWCLASS (without the EX). You don't need to know all of the constants for every message or why WM_DESTROY is different from WM_QUIT. You don't need to worry about creating a CALLBACK that uses a member function, or the nitpicky reasons it needs to be static rather than an instance member (or a global function attached via a global instance, that'll work too). .Net handles the mundane parts for you and lets you get things done.

      None of that matters to Intel. It doesn't put any additional (noticeable) load on your system to use .Net. Thus it doesn't "sell" more and powerful CPU's for them. Performance issues from .Net are almost entirely due to programmers that didn't feel a need to optimize their .Net code. You can get down to the bare metal in .Net, and it's really not that difficult to do so. The only real performance problems from .Net are caused by how simple it is to use and how much it protects you (as a programmer) from your own bad designs, algorithms, and ideas.

      What you said about nVidia (note, it's not Nvidia, it uses "sTupid cAse" instead) doesn't surprise me, but the Intel/.Net thing is comically untrue for simple and provable reasons.

    16. Re:Nvidia to blame by sexconker · · Score: 1

      The GAMEWORKS fiasco blew up several months ago.
      Some AMD people complained about it, a few developers commented confirming what AMD was claiming, and a bunch more developers came out to PR for nVidia.

    17. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citation please

    18. Re:Nvidia to blame by TsuruchiBrian · · Score: 1

      I guess AMD's continuous loss making failure to provide any reasonable competition to nvidia by actually churning out good hardware with non-shit drivers is pushing it to desperate measure

      citation please

      Anonymous Coward

      Identity please

    19. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After a 5 second search I'm sure this guy is just some pissed off guy that got banned from the AT forums.

      I haven't used the forums in years, so it may very well have degenerated, but the crap in this post is nothing but unsubstantiated crap with no evidence to back up the claims being put forth.

      I don't know who you are, but if you're the guy that wrote that massive article on "TechSoda"... man you need to relax. You wrote a 14,000 word, 13 page story with 125 screenshots about shit on a message board.

    20. Re:Nvidia to blame by kesuki · · Score: 1

      "Nvidia plays the game every bit as dirty as Intel. In this case, Nvidia has created something called 'GAMEWORKS'- a proprietary closed-source library of routines specifically designed to collapse the performance of games on AMD hardware (or older Nvidia hardware). Nvidia pays shills to counter information like this in forums like this one, so let me give you one example."

      every company in existance is dirty, can't double the number of billionaires if people aren't overpaying for what they recieve. personally i run amd hardware have been for a long time. recently i built a desktop i picked an 8 core model i used whatever hardware i could find and the system ran at about $1,000 in parts. the chip i used was the last no gpu on die 8 core processor (really 4 physical with 4 logical cores) the only thing i could run that lit all the dark silicon was bitcoin mining. but even so, amd's new chip generation was a shocking dissapointment for me, as they were noticablly slower than the previous generation. the world is full of liers and cheats... i tried a nvidia card a while back and it was incompatible with microsoft aero, the previous attempt to buy an nvidia was too short a chip for the heatsink in an asus brand nvidia... so i see no reason to ever buy an nvidia again, i am not a schill when i say nvidia is not the only laying cheater out there, i will never own another nvidia.

    21. Re:Nvidia to blame by X0563511 · · Score: 1
      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    22. Re:Nvidia to blame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So where is your credentials to support your theories then, Ehmm... Anonymous COWARD..

  57. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    Geezus, you're an idiot.

    Great argument.

    The news that most people reacted too came out two days (48 hours) ago in a Forbes article and subsequent game press articles.

    And yet your own link shows that only a couple of gamergaters were even complaining.

    So you wasted your time scrolling through 36 hours of tweets, lol.

    Yeah, all of 15 seconds. That's practically a lifetime.

    Seriously you SJW's really need to learn how to use a search engine properly, honey.

    I'm a social justice warrior? In what way exactly?

  58. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

    Nice. The pro journalists get their paycheck, and when people call them out on it they can simply point at the big bad publisher that made them do it. Both are guilty and crooked.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  59. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The prevarication, you're choking on it.

  60. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And one person sleeping with someone for preferential treatment hardly means an industry is messed up either.

  61. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So he posts a story about her on 31st of march, and several days later they start a relationship, and that's not suspicious at all?
    I'm sure that there was absolutely nothing there during the several days before the start of their relationship.

  62. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    All the info you need is on the zoe post.
    Then again, I'm sure you'll claim it's all fake, even though she never denied any of the things in that post.

  63. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One side wants to address issues with the entire gaming industry. Yes that includes corruption, sex, bribes, etc.

    The other side wants to scream sexist as loud as possible so no real conversation can happen.

  64. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Signing it isn't the problem. Not leaking it anonymously is the problem.

  65. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Supposedly corrupt sites like Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun have been extremely critical of Ubi's review embargo. RPS in particular has been beating this drum for a long time now, of coarse that didn't stop them from being one of the first sites on GG's blacklist because "SJWs".

    We don't need #GamerGate to discuss the problems in the industry, all it ever does is derail to conversation.

  66. Expected from Ubisoft by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 1

    This company has a history of releasing draconian DRM and broken games. I wouldn't do business with them, personally. They're not a good company.

  67. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You've never read any complaints of half-finished games being released and debugged afterwards? Have you been under a rock for the past decade or are you just that fucking stupid?

    Since googling anything is beyond your skill set too.

    http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/2011/12/5_worst_video_game_glitchesbug.php

  68. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Ooo, ooo, another easy one. OK, so a bunch of the results are about this, but others are about Aliens: Colonial Marines and you can find articles defending the practice from even earlier than that. But here, have a bonus link from 2009 of a Slashdotter condemning embargoed reviews.

    I mean, most of the complaints #GamerGate has aren't exactly new (have an article from 2006 complaining about corruption in game reviews), what's new this time is the vitriol and viciousness of the counter-attack that the video game journalism industry is waging against their own customers.

  69. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Go sleep with journalists so they'll back you. Claim sexism when caught.

    Everybody is a pig for calling you a slut. Makes sense to me.

  70. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah the GGers have not said a thing about the Unity debacle.

    You would if Unity had any prominent female personalities on the dev team.

    Yeah, just keep punching that tarbaby GG goons.

  71. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is the feminist agenda you dumbass.

    Fanning the flames is in their interest. Why do you think the bigger issues can/will never get addressed? Solving anything is not their mission.

    If your a feminist you want this arguement to be about sex and anything that tries to redirect it, even into something positive, must be shut down.

    You are just another tool, grats.

  72. Re:gamergate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Incidents like this is what gamergate is all about but sites like Slashdot would have you believe that it's all about crucifying women for no apparent reason.

    so true.

  73. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It created outrage among gamers.
    This may surprise you but GamerGaters are a subset of gamers.

  74. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "invented crimes".

    Perhaps if you actually looked through her twitter and saw the shit she has tweeted at people, especially during The Fine Young Capitalists, you would know what you were actually talking about. Christ, even the person that ran it was doxxed by them, all of that which was posted on twitter BY ZOE herself, then suddenly deleted after someone called her on it. She is covering shit up all the time.
    You are familiar with basically nothing from that small laughable list.

    Anita didn't criticize SHIT. She cherry-picked out the ass.
    Every single issue she came up with has been beaten to death by others so many times it isn't even funny now.
    NONE of her arguments have any logical foundations, they are all made up.
    She got all that money to say a blatantly obvious thing, "derrr females are sexy in video games".
    NOOOoo, really, just like how guys are totally immune to that.
    I could easily go on. There are FAR more overly-sexual masculine characters than there are females.
    There are PLENTY of regular females in games that aren't overly sexual, are main characters, are strong, fit, unfit and weak.
    Literally no argument. At all.

    Gawker have played a HUGE part in all of this as well, since they are the ones pushing it so hard, especially through the journalists circlejerk mailing list that was exposed. (and even got several people fired)
    Many of their staff have FACTUALLY SUPPORTED Zoe on her Patreon. So much for integrity and neutrality.
    Not only that, after some advertisers dropped, they started LOSING THEIR SHIT so hard on their site, their twitters and facebook profiles.
    And not even making up coherent arguments, flat-out insulting advertisers for dropping them. Yeah, good luck ever getting those advertisers back, idiots.
    Then they resorted to saying all kinds of messed up things about bullying others, people should be killed and so on.
    TOTALLY SANE PEOPLE HERE.

    Let's not forget that this whole thing exploded back when Anita held a conference at XOXO where a whole host of websites ALL PUBLISHED THE SAME(ish) ATTACK ON GAMERS AT THE SAME TIME(ish).
    Totally not a huge collusion in the industry.

    The fact that you are supporting these mentally unstable people is awful.
    Is it harassment? Sure it is. Of people that are horribly cruel, harassing and manipulative, trying to force their pathetic corrupt agendas down yet another industries throat. Is it sexist? Is it fuck, it is attacking more guys than it is girls. It only started with them because they were the ones that stupidly leaked their OBVIOUS manipulation. In fact, Zoe only ended up happening because she pissed off the wrong guy.

    I'd go on, but it is obvious you are already blinded by, hilariously and ironically, damsels in distress in need of help.
    They don't need your help. Stop making them out to be weaker than they are. It is actually insulting to them. (for some reason)
    They picked their battles. Let them have their equality. If they don't like it, too bad, this is the real world. They can piss off back to their tumblrs to whine about it.

    Attacking gamers. Gamers. The people conditioned to want to win. That want to complete their mission, that want to get somewhere, and will LITERALLY SHIT THEMSELVES AND DIE if it means they can play a little longer. (silly MMO players)
    They picked the wrong battle.

  75. Re:But let's remember by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Informative

    Having consensual sex with someone is a crime? On what planet? Oh and [citation needed] for claim about what she claims is rape.

    Yep, according to her. If you're in a relationship with that person. Here's your citation It's long though. Really though, gamergate as a whole moved beyond this after about 5 days, when people kept digging and found exactly how much cross-collusion was going on. Anyone who's either in the industry, or has watched the industry has known for 20 years that there was "favors for friends" and collusion. This just broke the proverbial camels back.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  76. Experience makes all the difference by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    Only the young and / or inexperienced will buy a game on launch day. ( Or even worse, pre-order it )

    Us old farts know it's best to wait a few months so they can get launch day Beta III out of the way, all the bugs fixed up in their super-sized patch and the login servers up to speed. Not to mention the reviews to see if the game is even worth all the pre-launch hype. ( Hint: Usually not )

    If you wait a few months more, you'll not only get all the above, but you'll also get all the DLC thrown in for free and at half the price. You may also be playing it on a system that is a generation more advanced than what was intended, making the experience even more enjoyable.

    Yes, I know you can't play MMORPG games this way as all your friends will have long since given up on it before you even start. My question to you all would be "When was the last time a decent MMORPG came out that was worth playing six months later ? "

    I'm pretty sure the only reason AAA titles even still exist is because there is a never ending supply of young and inexperienced gamers out there who aren't yet jaded by the whole process that is launch day insanity.

    1. Re:Experience makes all the difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. I'm having a hard time thinking of the last time a big game came out that didn't require weeks of patches to make it good.
      It's like they gave up on play-testing and just let the customers do it.

  77. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    You have no clue. It is hilarious.

    More men than woman are being attacked in regards to gamergate.

    You are defending people like this guy:
    Geordie Tait has some strong words for Star City Games (hilariously, it was because the sites indexing system changed, but naw man, naw, gamergate, fuck them)
    Have some fun listening to a possibly borderline psychotic person that might actually lose his mind.
    This guy, just like most of the people involved in GamerGates targets, are mentally unstable. To the extremes.
    I honestly fear some innocent people are going to get physically hurt by these weird fucks.

    For a person supposedly in the know, you don't know shit.

  78. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by poity · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
  79. An actual issue involving ethics by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 1

    An actual issue involving ethics in games journalism and development comes up, and most of the comments here are about GamerGate and harassing women when the article isn't about either...

    --
    XDInd
    1. Re:An actual issue involving ethics by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Because GG has ruined the conversation.

      Embargoes, in and of themselves, aren't unethical.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    2. Re:An actual issue involving ethics by Aerokii · · Score: 1

      Absolutely right on both points. Though, while Embargoes aren't always unethical, they really don't speak well of the product in situations like this, heh.

  80. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who he also supported on Patreon and failed to mention that fact.

    Not to mention a bunch of others.

    How pathetic. Supporting sex abusers.

  81. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Here, this link is actually really good. https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Zoe_Quinn

  82. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by poity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's the JOB of the media to hold these companies accountable and to be transparent when they cooperate with these kinds of things. When the media does its job properly, as in this instance, you don't need Gamergate to do anything.

    The fault in your reasoning lies in that you're expecting Gamergate to take over the job of these news outlets and to do their work for them. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Gamergate will continue to scrutinize the media for wrongdoing, and point them out when they abandon their responsibilities.

    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
  83. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by geekoid · · Score: 0

    GG harassment patrol is just as bad as GG.
    I've seen the attacking people for just talking about gamergate. Saying they have a 'festuring vagina' when the person asks them to stop posting to there thread.

    1) Gamergate is not. nor has it ever, been about game journalism.
    2) People in GG who are trying to making it a journalism issue for an excuse for their misogyny,, they don't even understand journalism.

    Gamergate is about hate. Hate of anyone looking at games for a critical point. Hate of women who just want people to understand that women are often just symbols to save and sex objects. They organized to pollute data scientist want to collect about gamers.
    And it's not a few people in the group. Gamersgate was STARTED on hate and lies.
    If you are concerned about decent game journalism, then start something else and stop associating with people who organize death threats.
    They attacked me for listing fact about GG with screen shots.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  84. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by geekoid · · Score: 0

    No it is nt, you dumb ass.
    IT's a fact. Read their history, go to 8chan.

    Fuck twad.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  85. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by The+Technomancer · · Score: 1

    So don't read the sites and don't give them clicks.

    Don't pre-order the games and buy on day one if they're that terrible -- wait for patch 1 or the Steam discount.

    If you think you can do better, start your own gaming site with reviews and such, or start your own gaming company.

    If you can't, well, beggars can't be choosers, my friend.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    -- Arthur C. Clarke

  86. Re:But let's remember by geekoid · · Score: 1

    No, it is not suspicious, you idiot.
    UNless one of them is a time traveler? no? STFU

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  87. Just like movies by argStyopa · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ....if they don't want you to see reviews before it launches, it's going to suck.

    GUARANTEED.

    --
    -Styopa
  88. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I didn't bother to follow any of it ( indie game developer, why waste my time reading when I could be developing ) but what little I did stumble upon of Anita I found sexist. She ignored the entire sexism of the male population in video games and focused on only the female side and acted as if that was the biggest issue. Is that the debate she refused to acknowledge?

  89. Re:But let's remember by geekoid · · Score: 0

    Critique?
    This would be like me, and 1000 of people in my group 'Critiquing' your post by saying:
    I WANT TO FUCKING RAPE YOU IN THE ASS THEN KILL YOU, YOU POOR EXCUSE FOR A CUM STAIN.
    Then posting your address online, and have people scream at you as they drive by.

    See how that isn't really a critique on your post?

    GG being about journalism is what they made up to try and control the mainstream press's view on what is going on.

    You have either fallen for it because your too biased to actual research it's history, or you are stupid. IN any case, you are being a worthless human being.

    You want better journalism in the game industry? good. I'll even subscribe. However, you will need to separate yourself and stop making excuses for those thugs.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  90. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because 99% of the people still using the #GamerGate hashtag are SJW shills looking for attention and trying to make money off the situation. Quite a few of the prominent SJWs have even been caught doing it.

  91. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    GG is not about misogyny.

    Gamergate is about stupidity, the kind where a poster's diatribe claims to completely know the views of the opposition. The kind of stupidity that claims they don't even understand journalism.

    GG is about arrogance and stupidity.

  92. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by tbannist · · Score: 2

    You must be new here, "SJW" is the new "liberal". As a straight white conservative male, everyone you hate is a obviously an "SJW", because it's just another synonym for evil, like liberal, progessive, gay or female.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  93. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    Seriously you SJW's really need to learn how to use a search engine properly, honey.

    So what you're saying is, you are unable to make a point about ethics in game journalism without dropping a "SJW" or latently sexist "honey".

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  94. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm going to give you a pass on this, because you freely admit that you didn't spend very much time understanding Sarkeesian's position. We sciency types tend to misunderstand the humanities, and there's no shame in this.

    Nonetheless, the irony of being upset by what she didn't say in the "little [you] did stumble upon" is too funny not to highlight.

  95. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The implied "contract" of being in a relationship with someone is: "I agree to have sex with you, provided that you tell me about any recent fluid exchanges with another individual, so that I can re-evaluate whether I still want to be in a relationship / have sex with you."

    Person A and B are in a relationship. Person A goes and gets an STI from person C. Person A then lies by omission and transmits the STI to person B.
    If the STI in question is HIV, then person A could be convicted of manslaughter. Person B would not give consent if they knew person A was at risk for infection.

    Now pick a more docile life-long STI like herpes or warts that you can get from simply kissing someone. Never date someone that's known to be a cheater. He/she will give you a life-long STI.

  96. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On the other hand, inept death from 12 year olds (or people with the mentality thereof), misogynist harassment, severe Dunning-Kruger cases and way too many other types of uncivil and irrational behaviour is the main reason why I don't play online games any more. #NotYourGamer

  97. The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Coverage by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Informative

    Link to a single gamergate anything attacking this practice.

    From this post and others, it's clear that you are horribly misinformed. But you should know that gamers weren't truly angry and forming a widespread movement immediately after Nathan Grayson's and Patricia Hernandez's journalistic corruption was exposed. There was still some good faith that the news sites involved had the shred of integrity needed to take responsibility and clean up their own houses.

    Gamergate only exploded after the cover-up, week-long universal blackout, and finally the launch of the (still ongoing) coordinated smear campaign on August 28. None of that appalling gaming press behavior has happened with this embargo story, so there's nothing for Gamergate to point out.

    In the unlikely event that almost every gaming site censors discussion of the embargos, enacts a news media blackout (a bit late for that), and then begins slandering anyone who even mentions the embargos as misogynists, harassers, and terrorists, then maybe a Gamergate-type revolt will be needed.

    P.S. Similar AAA review "agreements" (for youtubers, etc.) were publicized by Totalbiscuit (a major pro-Gamergate guy) long before the journalists. No, Gamergate doesn't have any particular aversion to exposing indie or AAA corruption.

  98. You are completely correct by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    And I am one of many people who harp on the "Never preorder games!!" thing. So why do people do it? Two reasons:

    One is they just get caught up in the hype. They are all excited and wanna have it as soon as possible. Silly, but human nature and it does happen time to time.

    The other is that companies try to bribe you. They offer bonuses that you only get if your preorder, or that you have to pay for later. So there may be some day one DLC, but you can have it "free" if you preorder.

    It is still, of course, and extremely bad idea to preorder and people should be talked out of it at every opportunity. Wait until it is out and reviewed, then decide if you want it.

    1. Re:You are completely correct by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      is there a list of day one dlc games?

      like, were there any that didn't burn the player in some way or another like ME 3?

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:You are completely correct by Jade_Wayfarer · · Score: 1

      I do generally agree on that, although there are some exceptions to that rule - where the sheer reputation of a developer studio is enough to guarantee a good game. So yes, I've preordered Witcher 3 and Pillars of Eternity because I'm almost 100% sure that these games will worth the money.

      But mostly yes, I wait for reviews and more often than not buy games on Steam sale or something like that.

      --
      Absence of proof != proof of absence.
    3. Re:You are completely correct by Skylinux · · Score: 1

      Not sure if it is day 1 but watch out for "The Witcher 3" DLCs. They are going to mock larger companies by giving you their DLCs for free, well if you purchase the game. No need to preorder, just buy it.

      http://thewitcher.com/news/vie...

      One of the VERY few companies left that actually care about the consumer. DRM free from Day 1 - get it at GOG.com

      --
      Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
  99. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Tridus · · Score: 1

    So GamerGate is now Occupy, where it's about absolutely everything (even things that have been already an issue for years) and is thus about nothing at all?

    Gotcha.

    --
    -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
  100. It's entirely the fault of gamers for pre-ordering by Tridus · · Score: 1

    This is very easily fixed - don't pre-order games.

    Problem solved. Now you can wait two weeks to let the suckers who did pre-order tell you if it's good or not. It doesn't matter what the publisher tries to do to slow down the reviews, since in that case the reviewers can just get a retail copy and review without interference.

    The moral here is to not be a sucker by pre-ordering.

    --
    -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
  101. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Having consensual sex with someone is a crime? On what planet?

    Depending on your citizenship, it can be legal, illegal on some parts of Earth or illegal anywhere in the Universe. Usually when it's illegal it is only so when money directly exchanges hands, and then only if the one buying doesn't have the right political connections.
    The one who used the word "invented crimes" is not the person you're replying to. Lying in a game review, while unethical, is not a crime. Hell, Fox, which works on "news" instead of games, could lie and wouldn't get in trouble for it.

  102. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And you took the ball and ran with it. blaming another poster for why you have to fill the comments with your crap. BUT HE DID IT FIRST!

  103. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nonsense! Any violence against lefties is a Public Good. Just look at Chile. Pinochet made several thousand of them disappear, and Chile has been a successful and prosperous nation ever since. The more SJW's intimidated into hiding, the better.

  104. Context is important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    the draconic DRM schemes they employ

    I here that.

    I bought Far Cry 3 on Steam, thinking it would be tied into the Steam platform - (achievements etc, something I enjoy, you may disagree).

    Instead, It forced me to install Ubi's U-play. Ok, not so bad I thought, I'll just launch U-play instead of Steam when I want to play Far Cry 3.

    NOPE. If I launch U-play separate to Steam, it doesn't show me the game in U-play's library. I have to Launch Steam, Click 'Play' on Far Cry 3, which launches U-play, and then (login and) click 'Play' on U-play

  105. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Boltronics · · Score: 1

    It's about being open and transparent with your audience - that simple step is a catch-all for all this kind of crap. So in this case, if the gaming websites announced that they wouldn't be posting the review immediately due to a signed deal with Ubisoft, I think most pro-GamerGaters would be happy with that. How many review sites actually did that?

    --
    It's GNU/Linux dammit!
  106. A sure sign of dishonesty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If any company is demanding a review embargo, it means they KNOW the product is substandard or defective and they want to deliberately cheat as many people as possible before the word gets out.

  107. Re:But let's remember by sinij · · Score: 1

    I take it you are not familiar with Andrea Dworkin and new wave feminism. Pretty much any heterosexual sex is rape. Now check your privilege and apologize for being born white heterosexual male, you rapist pig.

  108. Explains the post PAXAUS release by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This does explain why it was released a week after PAXAUS. Can you imagine the kinds of screaming hordes that would be at the Ubisoft pavillion if PAXAUS was on this weekend instead?

  109. At least there wasn't an embargo on /. beta by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now that took some brass.

  110. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The "journalists" are totally at fault. They made a choice to sell out their audience for future considerations. They don't get to say it's okay because everybody does it. Fuck 'em.

  111. Bug by SternisheFan · · Score: 0

    Here's one of the bugs... http://spherical-sphinx.com/ac...

    1. Re:Bug by Kevin+Fishburne · · Score: 1

      Here's one of the bugs... http://spherical-sphinx.com/ac...

      Nah, I think that's just what melee combat looks like. Games are pretty violent these days.

      --
      Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
    2. Re:Bug by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      On the one hand, that shows off an impressive level of detail, with the eyeballs (not just the very fronts of the eyes) as their own models, for example.
      On the other hand, WTF? I mean, I've seen games with graphics glitches like that before, usually when there's a video driver issue, so maybe it's just that... but I would expect they could afford to test on the current swath of video cards and at least the most *common* driver selections...

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    3. Re:Bug by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Too bad the game is probably at least PG13. I would so love to see some parent sue Ubi for giving their kids nightmares.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:Bug by SternisheFan · · Score: 1

      The llink changed, pic in this ArsTechnica article.... http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

  112. Re:But let's remember by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    I take it you're not familiar with Camille Paglia, or Erica Jong, or Gloria Steinem, or Germaine Greer, or literally any second-wave feminist who isn't a radical feminist. Actually, I don't need to assume that. I know that, otherwise you wouldn't have confused the two. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you're probably even less familiar with third-wave feminism.

    Fun fact: Andrea Dworkin is the only radical feminist that most people have ever heard of. That's how marginal the movement was. If I had $1 for every time I've seen Anita Sarkeesian referred to as a "radical feminist", I'd be probably able to afford Bayonetta 2 including the Australia Tax.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  113. please god, stfu... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this story isn't about #gamergate or feminism or whatever it is that you morons are arguing about. can't a guy just read a story about video games without having to sift through a steaming pile of infantile nonsense?

  114. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why should people believe your claims about other people's motives, more than what the other people themselves say are their motives?

  115. SEGA and Sonic Boom by RyoShin · · Score: 1

    SEGA did something similar with Sonic Boom: Rise of the Lyric for Wii U, except that they just plain didn't send out preview copies at all:

    IGN, for example, says that SEGA opted not to provide the gaming website with a review copy for either version of the game. And they’re not alone, with reviews missing from every notable site—even though both games launched today.

    ...and they did so for pretty much the same reason:

    This is backed up by a number of game-breaking bugs discovered in the Wii U version so far. One bug sends Sonic falling through a level, forcing players to reset the game. Another bug respawns players outside an enclosed battle area, preventing Sonic and his team from returning to the fight. These both seem to be bugs that would have been found in simple gameplay testing.

    I've seen just as many videos in the past three days of game-breaking, horrible bugs in Assassin's Creed Unity as I have Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

    Both games were hyped a lot by their respective companies, both games had no reviews available before they were released. I'm not trying to say that Ubisoft is somehow off the hook for Unity or diminish how bad the game's quality is, just that their game is not alone in these kind of shenanigans.

  116. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Boronx · · Score: 1

    This is insightful? How about waiting to see if a game is good before you buy it.

  117. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by nedlohs · · Score: 4, Informative

    The worst example of this are the embargo dates. For those who don’t know, some publishers will put an embargo date for any sort of review. Usually this on a day or two after the release date, so all the pre-orders will go through first before the reviews start popping up. Breaking this embargo often leads to a legal issue and straining a relationship to the point of no return. There have been cases where embargo dates can be ignored if the review is a favorable one.

          - http://xgamejournalist.wordpre... from September.

    2. Embargoes should be banned. Just make it so journalists cannot ever accept an embargo or non disclosure agreement, consequences be damned. They should be like in other forms of media, where they do their own research and publish what’s important, regardless of company opinions.

          - http://nintendo3dsdaily.com/ni... from September.

  118. Re:gamergate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If a group is really serious about some cause, they don't go around simply claiming they care about something. They take action. So if I may, what has the GamerGate folks been doing? Where are the plans to do demonstrations around Gamestop to raise awareness about this issue? Where's the massive social media shitstorm as you guys make serious waves about this action? Hell, you guys aren't even DDOSing anyone (aka. the lazy tech inclined protest)!

  119. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    An indie developer having sex [with a journalist] is a big concern for ethics in game journalism.

    Sometimes small events become symbolic of a larger problem. Remember the Tea Party?

    We can ignore small problems like this, as long as we tackle that.

    I find thousands of posts complaining about it, so I don't see how people are ignoring this. However, I also don't consider agreeing to an embargo in return for early access to be a big ethical problem. I do consider sex-for-good-reviews to be a big ethical problem, in particular for a game as pathetic as Quinn's.

  120. So sick of Gamergate. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What a waste of a comment section. Both sides of this Gamergate issue can go jag off in a room somewhere together, I don't care to see it.

    I wanted to read comments regarding the contractual agreement to delay reviews but instead I read a bunch of idiotic vitriol.

    First, not a big deal - any sensible person who has control of their impulses can wait until reviews come out to buy a thing.

    Second, grow up and learn to accomplish through polite discussion what you won't accomplish through vulgarity and senseless back and forth finger pointing. Both sides of the Gamergate debate (whatever both sides insists it embodies) are absolutely guilty of this.

  121. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the big, nefarious, result of having their free game linked on a blog post list of free indie games that the author had heard of.

    With the big nefarious result that an utterly incompetent individual now could point to themselves as a "game designer" and "person in technology" and use that as a technology and political platform. And that does hurt us all.

  122. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    So you're saying you're pro-corruption then? I have to wonder if you read the gamejournopros emails or not, they're just about as good as the journolist stuff--fun fact, same guy who started journolist started gamejournopros and then shit hit the fan there too. What is it about people who think that "hiding in the shadows to make a narrative" is a good idea.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  123. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's the job of the media to make money. They will be transparent and hold companies accountable when it's more profitable than the latter. You haven't uncovered a secret cabal. You've merely realized you, and others, have been naive. The media will report on issues that draw the most viewers in ways that maximize profit. It's your job as the receiver to analyze the presented "facts" and make up your own mind on what to think.

  124. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    So why didnt GamerGate start the last time this happened? Instead GamerGate only started after a false story about a game dev sleeping with a journalist who did not actually review her game. People were perfectly fine to put up with crappy game journlists for decades and it only recently blew up.

  125. Re:But let's remember by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    So what's wrong with that? Even though the story is FALSE, it's still nothing to worry about because that journalist did not review any games by the author.

  126. Re:But let's remember by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Of course, if it was a male game dev who slept with a female journalist, all the guys would be saying "Score!"

  127. Re:But let's remember by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    It's not suspicious, even if there were a relationship. And there actually was not a relationship it was just sour grapes from an ex boyfriend trying to get revenge.

  128. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by ultranova · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Any game journalist who signs a review embargo agreement is a part of the problem.

    But then again, so is any gamer who buys a game before reviews are available. It's doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that a company that doesn't want their product reviewed is probably not competing on quality.

    That this is an AAA game and part of a succesful series simply makes things worse, since it means if the company wants to push some anti-consumer move - a new form of DRM, in-game advertisements, whatever - they'll do it here and trust the brand to overcome the backlash to normalize it.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  129. Re:But let's remember by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    So why isn't the fight about a few extremist feminists, why is it instead "gamer" gate? Why is every woman who speaks up on this being harrassed? This is nothing more than an anti-feminist backlash. Why would anyone send rape and death threats about Depression Quest? There are some sick sick guys out there and they've being apologized for and criticism being deflected away from them.

    Even if all the accusations were true, which they are not, this should still be the smallest of all the small scandals.

  130. Re:But let's remember by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    So what? Men are allowed to be one sided but heaven forbid if a woman does the same thing? Video games ARE sexist for the most part. You can't deny that. The article just pointed out more of it. The reverse sexism against men is trivial and minor, to the point that it's not even worth talking about. Sexism against women IS a bigger issue.

    And again, so what? If there is sexism against men then fight against that AT THE SAME TIME as fighting against sexism against women. Instead it seems like you prefer to deny any such thing as sexism against women unless and until some woman acknowleges sexism against men, which ultimately only serves the purpose of denying the sexism altogether.

  131. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    Actually I'm pretty sure that SJW's are puritans in disguise at this point. Every time something comes along, the first thing they start screaming about is "sexism" or "muhsoggyknees." Strange that it just keeps happening over and over again, you know like with Matt Taylors shirt(who was made by a women). I'm sure though that you'll also find that the majority of people in gamergate are left-libertarians. And the majority of anti-gg are left-authoritarians.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  132. Re:But let's remember by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    The bogeyman is real though which is why the topic remains alive and keep feeding itself. Anyone who denies seeing chauvinism in gaming either hasn't been gaming very long or is attempting to defend it.

  133. Re:But let's remember by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Plus, the incident most likely never even happened, there is only one account from it and it's from someone with an axe to grind. But ya, all those GG people who refuse to believe that an jilted boyfriend would ever lie.

  134. Refunds for Their Customers? by Scarletdown · · Score: 1

    So then, since the customers were not able to see any pre-release reviews before purchasing, will Ubisoft refund their purchase price, or just flip them the middle finger and say, "Sorry suckers. We got your money. You know the industry standard is "No returns. Too bad so sad for you. Please come again."

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    This space unintentionally left blank.
  135. If they had any integrity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If they had any integrity, journalists would refuse to cooperate. I would simply pick up a copy in a store after release and review it then. I would notify my readers that the delay was due to the publisher of the game, and suggest that if there is something to hide, then maybe my readers should wait and find out.

    1. Re:If they had any integrity by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Then you're out of business. If you're an online magazine, your reviews would come at the very least a week too late. If you're printed, at least a month. Nobody gives a shit about your reviews anymore when they finally happen.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  136. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow, a frothing MANIFESTO full of CAPITAL LETTERS and bold TEXT that's curiously LACKING any actual evidence for any ASSERTION it MAKES! Clearly this post must have MANY valid POINTS to MAKE that will convince us all!

    There are PLENTY of regular females in games that aren't overly sexual, are main characters, are strong, fit, unfit and weak.

    Could you name just 5 games for me where this is the case? I'm struggling to think of any where the "main character females" are not hypersexualized barbie dolls who have taken on their "hero's quest" for the sake of their man.

  137. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +1, posting anon to not undo my mods. Anybody who asks for the sauce needs to read this neogaf link. Some heroic person cataloged all of the #GG wrongness in one place along with all the links.

  138. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is correct, sweetie. I'm glad your bird brain figured that out. Did your husband tell you to type that? I'd like to smack the fuck out of him. You shouldn't even be posting on /., hell why the fuck are you even on the internet? When did they start putting PCs in stoves? Go knit me a fucking sweater....

  139. GG by cas2000 · · Score: 1

    A spokesman for GamerGate says "since there wasn't a women involved, we have no comment on this issue but as soon as we find a woman to blame you can be sure we'll hunt her down and dox her for our crazier members to deal with".

  140. Fuck you, Mashiki by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck you, Mashiki. You keep repeating this shit over and over again, because apparently repeating lies often enough makes them true.

    I actually read the original post by Mr. Eron Gjoni. The whole damn thing.

    http://thezoepost.wordpress.co...

    And the whole damn thing reads like an immature adult who has no clue how to handle relationships and suffers from the typical belief that his problems are somehow new and fascinating. They're not. He went through the same relationship drama that most people go through in high school. It's part of growing up. But as he himself says, he had never been in a relationship before.

    In other words, he had no fucking clue how relationships work or how to handle problems. He was emotionally immature.

    The "crimes" he accuses Zoe of are trivial, millions of people go through them every day. Know what? Millions of other people work through them on their own or with their friends. They don't go out and publish them to the world in such a way that they prompt death threats and a misogynistic backlash so powerful that national news networks pick up on it.

    Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Mashiki. This whole thing was sparked by an emotionally immature boy who got his heart broken and lashed out in the worst possible way, and to this day refuses to take responsibility for what he has done. As he says, "If you've never dealt with emotional abuse before (as I hadn't up until this point)"... Bullshit. He knows nothing about emotional abuse. He suffered minor violations and by his own responses blew them up into something far bigger. The entire time he was engaging in gross passive-aggressive behavior while believing himself the victim. If he was really interested in "restoring trust" or mending the relationship, he never would have forced himself into her private phone records, despite her repeated resistance and ignoring how obviously it hurt her to do so. His choices at that point should have been to either try to mend the relationship and trust her, or to walk away. Being a controlling jerk in response to his perception that he was being controlled was incredibly immature and emotionally damaging to both of them.

    And yet you trawl through Slashdot threads, posting and re-posting the same shit over and over again, claiming Zoe is somehow evil in ways that nobody else ever is while completely neglecting the evil perpetrated by your celebrated victim. Fuck you. Mature adults could have resolved the whole thing without having animal carcasses and explicit rape threats delivered to innocent women's home addresses across the nation. That you still claim the moral high ground just shows how morally vacant you are.

    1. Re:Fuck you, Mashiki by rochrist · · Score: 1

      Well said.

    2. Re:Fuck you, Mashiki by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In other words, he had no fucking clue how relationships work or how to handle problems. He was emotionally immature.

      Yes, he was a fool to allow himself to be taken advantage of like this. Similar to how people who get loaded at the bar/club and can't remember who they went home with, are fools for allowing themselves to be taken advantage of. It is perfectly acceptable to screw over naive people in our current culture. Is that the kind of culture you want to endorse?

      millions of people go through them every day.

      Yes, a lot of people cheat, rather than break it off, when they find that their monogamous arrangement isn't working. Doing so is selfish, immature, and cowardly. Such behavior should earn the cheater a measure of social ostracism or we'll only get more of this awful attitude.

  141. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    So if I say A is stupid I have to be for B? False dichotomy much?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  142. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    If you let others screw you for money, slut is the wrong label for you.

    Correctly you'd have to be labeled politician.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  143. Ha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The little fuckers not only found female models too difficult to put in the game, but looks like they found the game itself too difficult to build.

  144. Re: The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Cover by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gamergate is about harassment, stalking and mysogyny. And "gamers" are over. End of debate.

  145. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Well, what's their choice? They have the same choice the average war reporter has today. Either sell out and get stories or stay honest and be locked out from having anything to report.

    I was in journalism for a while. Security journalism is by no means any better. It's the same shit as in all the other areas: The first one has a story. The others have nothing because why should I buy your story tomorrow if I can have the sellout's story today? And the reader doesn't give a shit about who is honest or who reports correctly.

    The reader cares about who tells it first.

    So if you want to blame someone, blame yourself for rewarding this kind of behaviour, by buying and reading whatever toilet paper spews its shit first.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  146. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No. Civility won. And stupid little woman-hating nerds have lost. As it should be. The fact that you used to define yourself not by creativity and passion but by compulsive comsumption and obsession tells everything we need to know about you. You're like trekkies, and society as a whole abhors you. You're finished, over.

  147. Re:But let's remember by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    In contrast to big studios fucking with journalists?

    Personally I have less a problem with a game maker screwing journalists than with one screwing with journalism.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  148. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And you're doing this for what?
    You've jumped to protect a women's right to trade sex for favors and protect journalist's ability to sollicit bribes.

    Good for you. The best part is you took a page from the Republican Racists playbook. Gamergate is now a toxic subject much like the inequality of wealth distribution or now called "Class Warfare".

    Yes there are always trolls online, you only choose to engage the trolls of Gamergate because the real issues were just to difficult for you. Hint, the feminist movement only wants to fight trolls too, it makes them the victim and helps them gain support.

    Are there assholes online who write bad things, yes. But ignoring every other issue and claiming Gamergate is only sexists and nothing else makes you lot bigger assholed. Grats!

  149. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sometimes to get ahead you've got to give some head.

  150. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    So if I say A is stupid I have to be for B? False dichotomy much?

    According to the anti-GG side, yes you have to be--which is the point I was making, though I should have expanded on it a bit more. Try going against their particular view, and you'll be thrown into the dirt for your troubles.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  151. Re:It's entirely the fault of gamers for pre-order by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Well, in all honesty it would probably not have any sizable impact on pre-ordering, considering that most pre-orders happen months before a game is eventually finished, long before any review could warn you that the game is crap.

    And, in all honesty, if people still pre-order UBIsoft games, when game after game of pretty much any franchise they're allowed to butcher was plagued by release problems and riddled with game stopping errors, do you really think anything could have saved them from being the idiots they are?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  152. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... [citation needed] for claim about what she claims is rape.

    The claim is on her ex-boyfriend's blog 'thezoepost', which reports Zoe's argument as: "That is, sex with a partner who doesn’t know you’ve cheated on them is sex without consent."

    The ex-boyfriend further says: "... obviously she cheated on me (a lot actually), but why would someone violate their own beliefs on something as important to them as sexual consent?"

  153. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ethics violations don't require motives, as a doctor you can't sleep with your patients, no matter the reason.

  154. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    So why should I bother reading this shit?

    It's not like they have a monopoly on having a "gamer neighborhood watch" on twitter. If they are as horrible as you say (honestly, I never heard of them), dump them, ignore them, open up your own.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  155. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "We sciency types"? Wow, Dunning-Kruger effect out on force. What are your academic credential, science boi? Your discoveries? Yeah, right. Some shit genius you are.

  156. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So we can't use our free speech to criticize gamer journalist but everyone else can criticize them? The only solution is to start our own game review journal?

    Will the SJW crowd defend us when we accept bribes in the form of cash and/or sex too?

  157. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by moronoxyd · · Score: 1

    Repeat after me: There where no reviews for Zoe Quinns game after she supposedly or actually had sex with journalists.
    The whole premise of this 'scandal' is factually wrong.

    Now, if you Gamergaters would actually go after the real problems in gaming journalism, I would be alll for it, but instead you continue to attack women (and strangely enough almost exclusively women) in gaming.

  158. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some asshole cherry picking a hashtag to point out every doofus isn't a "heroic man" besides, aren't heroic men sexist?

  159. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by goose-incarnated · · Score: 3, Informative

    When the hell did it become misogynist to refuse to support a domestic abuser like Zoe Quin? Actually, when did it become misogynist to attack a female because of the things she's done? I fear most of the anti-GG don't know what misogyny means.

    Hatred of particular women != hatred of all women.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  160. Re:Halo Masterchief Collection - same type of issu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not really the same sort of thing, Halo MCC has a few annoying bugs and some bad MP issues but they seem to be rapidly being addressed. Also Halo MCC is actually a good game just hindered by a few first week bugs that have mostly been addressed today.

  161. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    You asked for evidence, you got given it. You can't very well complain that the volume isn't sufficient: you didn't specify a threshold that would satisfy you.

    It's become obvious, when reading comments in the weekly "men are bad women are good" /. articles, that there have been polite and measured response to all of the anti-GG posts (like the above, for example). Mountains of evidence of collusion and media blackout have been presented. Advertisers (the people who actually have a stake in this) have pulled out en masse from gawker.

    So, lets be honest - no matter what evidence is presented it won't meet your threshold. You, and others like you, have already made up your minds that GG is all about misogyny in gaming, nevermind the #notyourshield efforts.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  162. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    Where was the conflict of interest? The guy mentioned her in a couple of articles before they even had a relationship.

    http://kotaku.com/in-recent-da...

    Sorry, no. Their relationship existed prior to that as he is mentioned in the games credits ... he was listed as a beta tester. You've been told now; now are you still going to go around saying "The relationship only started after"? Cause if you do, that will be total, bald-faced lies - the very thing you are accusing other people of doing.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  163. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 2

    It's not suspicious, even if there were a relationship. And there actually was not a relationship it was just sour grapes from an ex boyfriend trying to get revenge.

    I see this repeated a lot - where do you get your information? The rant from her ex-boyfriend (quite a long rant - she admits to cheating on him with five other guys) specifically states that he did not think that she traded sex for reviews. Why does everyone keep saying that he said that?

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  164. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    1) They weren't invented crimes. They did happen, she openly admitted to banging 5 guys while in a relationship. Using her own definition of rape, she raped her current partner that she was in a relationship with.

    Having consensual sex with someone is a crime? On what planet? Oh and [citation needed] for claim about what she claims is rape.

    Unfortunately you are on the indefensible side here - Zoe Quin is a classic textbook domestic abuser. She is a horrible person, a "game dev" with not e single technical skill who somehow managed to convince millions that she was a techie. She lies, is deceitful, hurts other people for fun and is thus a really terrible, terrible person.

    None of the above is misogynist in any way - if she were a he it would all still apply - yet we are getting told that it is wrong to point out all these things about her because attacking her for her deceit is the same as attacking all women.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  165. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    So you're saying, every time you're sexist, whoever tells you it is offensive is an "SJW?" Horse-pucky.

  166. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    So why isn't the fight about a few extremist gamers, why is it instead "anti-gamer"? Why is every gamer who speaks up on this being accused of misogyny? This is nothing more than an anti-gamer backlash. Why would anyone send rape and death threats to prominent members of gamergate? There are some sick sick women out there and they've being apologized for and criticism being deflected away from them.

    Even if all the accusations were true, which they are not, this should still be the smallest of all the small scandals.

    (See how that works)

    In any case, a couple of points that you probably did not know:

    More gamergate folk than anti-GG folk have been threatened (syringe in the post, etc).

    The person sending threats to AS was found and identified by gamergate, but apparently AS refuses to take action (make of that what you will).

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  167. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    Correction: an indie developer having sex with people potentially involved with the review of her games

    But the person never reviewed her games. So why is this even still being brought up?

    "potentially"? You keep making the argument that their relationship only started after she was positively mentioned by the journalist (which isn't true, if you'd only bother to read the credits of her "game"), so it could not have been "trading sex for publicity" as they never had sex until after she received the publicity. That still leaves open "trading publicity for sex", which is not much of an improvement ethics-wise.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  168. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    It is one thing to hold news journalists covering actual real-world news to high ethical standards. But the "JOB" of a writer for a website about video games is to write words that are on topic and sell advertising. Where did these people make some kind Hippocratic Oath for journalists? And what about the nature of their job implies that it has the gravitas to just guarantee that anybody who does it must have agreed to some such code?

    They are obviously crappy websites if they agree to give information about a new game late, just to have more time to write the story. It seems like they could just buy the game when it comes out, play it for 3 hours, write for 2 hours, and scoop themselves. But that is just a reason not to go to that website. It isn't anything unethical. And nothing about a writers job is to "hold these [people] accountable and [random thing that doesn't exist in journalism]."

    Perhaps it is just a simple vocabulary mistake. Perhaps you just confused the word "journalist" with "investigative journalist." And while an investigative journalist is a journalist, and a game magazine writer is also a journalist, there is very little actual overlap between investigative journalists and game magazine writers. Sorry.

  169. Re: The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Cove by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sollicting sex for favors is in, and anyone who says otherwise is a misogynistic asshole.

  170. Re:But let's remember by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    Even in a business setting where there is a conflict of interest concern, (this isn't one) they are still "accused" of doing things exactly correctly; they waited until after the professional relationship ended, and then were free to become involved. Even if one of them had the other's employer, this would be OK. If they were opposing lawyers in a trial, it would be OK, assuming appeals were exhausted. There is almost no limit here. The prosecutor and the acquitted would be weird, but ethically acceptable.

    I think of lot of the "problems" that gamergaters have around sex and journalists could be resolved in an hour by an "escort" in glasses with a clipboard.

  171. Re:But let's remember by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    She ignored the entire sexism of the male population in video games and focused on only the female side and acted as if that was the biggest issue. Is that the debate she refused to acknowledge?

    Other people's speech doesn't need to acknowledge you. It is not a requirement of participation in society.

  172. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It's the JOB of the media to hold these companies accountable and to be transparent when they cooperate with these kinds of things. "

    No it isn't, this is a big lie. Because of things like this:

    Media concentration

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8D67YiLcOM

    Can democracy and capitalism co-exist?

    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12623

  173. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People do love their prostitutes. Thanks SJWs, for fighting for us able to sleep with them without the guilt. "Johns" empower women!

  174. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's the "wealth inequality issue being warped into class warfare" tactic. All SJW are actually Republicans.

  175. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A non-Anon angry response post?
    Me thinks I hit the nail on the head then.

    After all you can't have a crusade without infidels can you? Lol, you dumbshit femistist sock puppet.

  176. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They'll just claim it's misogyny and that we should feel just awful for criticising them.

    And that we're all mouth breathing nerds.

  177. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by gordo3000 · · Score: 1

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/er...

    this is so appropriate.....

  178. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by gordo3000 · · Score: 1

    you have to stop looking at it like that. there are two possibilities. either the blackout is set 17 hours after release, or the publisher gets a copy at release and tries to put something out as fast as possible, possibly without having played the game very thoroughly.

    it wasn't like the publishers had a choice, though going forward, they should say well in advance of a game release that there is an imposed blackout until after release. really that is all that is required now that the general community knows what a blackout is.

    It's like with financial market data actually. People like bloomberg get all the data a bit early (which is HUGE) so that it can be disseminated electronically through multiple sources at the release time. The flip side of the risk of insider trading and the government usually does a pretty good job of enforcing the blackout.

  179. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Beyond Good and Evil
    The most recent Tomb Raider
    Starcraft
    Street Fighter
    All the early cRPGs like Ultima where you pick you main characters genders

  180. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    To me, as an outsider whose mostly just read a bit here and there (I don't read Twitter or any of the major gaming sites involved so haven't seen most of it), someone whose avoided the whole childish drama the thing that stood out on the Zoe Quinn issue was the hypocrisy.

    People were being called mysoginysts for raising a possible issue with Zoe Quinn cheating on her partner with a game journalist and defending her for it "because he didn't review her games" etc.

    But could you imagine if the roles were reversed? that a male game developer slept with a female journalist who also didn't report on his games? He'd be the misogynist for cheating on his girlfriend.

    It's the complete hypocrisy of this sort of thing that makes it all look so pathetic and childish. Even if there was no bias she was still a cheating user - a horribly selfish type of person. Something she should be condemned for as much as any male doing the same, but it seems because she's a female she gets a free pass on that and it's always the male that's the bad guy.

    I'm a fairly liberal person, I don't really care if people want to sleep around, but christ, she could've at least split up with her boyfriend first or made it clear to him she wanted an open relationship. Having an active sex life is one thing, but knowingly hurting someone by not being honest with them is an absolute dick move.

    Whatever the whole press thing, she's still a horrid brat who has no qualms with royally screwing people over and messing with their emotions. She likes to talk about depression and her depression quest game yet she's blatantly happy to cause others like her ex that she cheated on to become depressed.

    I have no sympathy for someone like that, criticising them is not misogyny. It's fair game to call an arsehole and arsehole whatever their sex. At this point I couldn't care how misdirected GamerGate is it's not going to change the fact that Zoe Quinn is scum either way- it's Zoe's own actions that have created that reality and no one elses.

  181. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by dave420 · · Score: 2, Informative

    You seem to not understand.

    One side wants to address the sexism in the gaming industry

    The other side harasses women for simply being women, and makes up all kinds of excuses as to why they're harassing these women, even though their evidence is strangely missing.

    The calls of sexism are valid, and if you can't see that, you really are part of the problem.

  182. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then perhaps they should stop harassing and threatening women and start in on this shit for once.

    And while I agree that any game journalist that signs a review embargo would be a part of the problem with video game journalim, the fact is right now any journalist that doesn't sign one is basically not going to be reviewing anything until much later than 17 hours after the game is released.

    However, any reputable journalist that sticks to their guns and refuses such embargos and various non-disclosure clauses should turn around and report that the reason they aren't reviewing game X is because publisher Y is preventing them from telling people about the game until most game purchases and all preorders have been cashed - in other words, that the publisher knows full well that there will be complaints about the game that will hurt sales otherwise.

    And that should be a red flag to any gamer to avoid the game until reviews start to surface.

  183. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it's like a handful of trolls being egged on by a Feminist PR stunt aimed at getting a nasty response. Feminists have PR firms working for them.

    Gamergate was about real issues, but the other side just has to cry misogyny and insult the trolls. The shitstorm coverup will never blow over.

  184. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by dave420 · · Score: 1

    She's only been accused of being a domestic abuser and all that other stuff. "Innocent until proven guilty" and all that, but I guess that doesn't matter when you're attacking a woman. If you're not a misogynist, you have some sort of weird fetish relating to this one woman, which is causing you to act completely irrationally when working out what she has and hasn't done. Either way you're not being rational, and as such your opinion (which is all you've proffered) means absolutely squat.

  185. Jade Raymond by Mordaximus · · Score: 1

    I'm starting to believe that Jade Raymond leaving Ubisoft might be related to this fiasco. It was only weeks before Unity's launch.

  186. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by goose-incarnated · · Score: 2

    She's done a lot more than domestic abuse. Look up what she did to the FYC; no "alleging" - she freely admits to what she did. Sabotaging charities, in most peoples books, makes you a despicable person regardless of whether one is a male or a female. This particular female is peculiarly toxic. Calling her out on it doesn't make one a misogynist.

    Actually, calling out particular females and their actions as despicable doesn't mean that one hates all females. Only the misguided anti-GG argument say's that attacking a select few females means that you hate all females. That is certainly irrational.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  187. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All Metriod games. That's probably more than five though...

  188. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, if the day after you get sentenced to prison your lawyer announces that he and the prosecutor are now in a relationship, that wouldn't make you the tiniest bit suspicious that maybe your lawyer didn't do his very best defending you in order to keep his future partner happy?

  189. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And all the review sites would be writing blogs about misogyny and rape. GG is simply a reaction to click-baiting I think.
    Something like: You want misogyny, I'll give you some misogyny to write about.

  190. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by gordo3000 · · Score: 1

    question, have you seen the agreements? I ask because I wonder if a press group can say they are bound by an embargo from releasing the review of the game until XX:YY time. That to me is what is needed. If press were honest that the reason no review has come out is because of an embargo, people could understand.

    Then again, I have never bought a game day one, so maybe there are factors I am missing in why people buy the moment it is released with no reviews out and then get pissed out no reviewer warned them (which they obviously weren't waiting for anyways....)

  191. If the product is faulty, take it back by GNious · · Score: 1

    Seriously, if you bought a faulty product, take it back to the store.
    If they refuse to take it back and give a refund, get as many other people as you can, to do the same - especially effective if they do it at the same time.
    The fact that it is a video-game doesn't matter.

    Also, brush up on consumer protection laws - a LOT of countries have laws on products being Fit For Purpose or meeting the criteria of Merchantability (yes, even in the US, from what I'm told)

  192. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you see the irony in saying civility won and following it up with vitriol?

  193. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There where no reviews for Zoe Quinns game after she supposedly or actually had sex with journalists.

    Is that supposed to be the end of it? Everything's fine as long as it there isn't an explicit tit-for-tat payoff between the briber and the bribee?

    If you're a games journalist you have really only one selling point: your integrity. You're not an investigative journalist, digging up important information and bringing it to light, you're a critic and your honest and, as much as possible, unbiased opinion is the only thing that you have to sell. If, in that context, you decide to get in bed (literally or figuratively) with one of the very people who you are supposed to be criticizing it is wholly appropriate to question your objectivity. If every journalist worked in a vacuum maybe one could pull off what you're talking about, but the first step in getting someone to like you is often cozying up to their friends.

    For a tiny game like Depression Quest the greatest danger is being lost to obscurity, any review is a good review. If you bribe someone / make friends with someone / have sex with someone, and that someone raises their hand at a company meeting and says, "Here's a game I think we should review." You've won.

    More importantly, this is a real issue regardless of the what actually happened with that one particular developer. There's no way for any of us to know for sure what happened with Zoe Quinn, but we have a story right here and now reaffirming the problem.

  194. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nonsense.

    The extreme lengths people go to paint GamerGate as harassment is a wonderful example of how desperate this is getting.

    You could start with our press kit - which has been carefully assembled by trolls and misogynists to fool even the most diligent press and neutral observers!

    But seriously you don't need to listen to me. We aren't hiding anything. Visit the #GamerGate hashtag on twitter or the website. The idea that men, women and minorities of all kinds right across the politicial spectrum are engaged in a 3 month harassment campaign (on the net that's an eternity) of women is completely irrational and fact-free.

    But you're welcome to come and see for yourself. You can even get involved in digging out corruption in videogames yourself!

    Personally I like mentally replacing claims of 'harassment' with 'criticism' in most of these arguments. It makes the insane actions of the zealots desperate to crush GamerGate a lot more understandable.

  195. duh? by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

    Really I mean how many reasons could there be for a gaming developer NOT want reviews of it's product before they start selling it other than that it's absolute crap?

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  196. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These aren't mutually exclusive views. There are clearly more than one person with one opinion on both sides, with different ideas. GG, as it stands now, is mostly about corruption within the gaming industry, although this doesn't mean their aren't some misogynists in GG. The anti-GG side is mostly a reaction to that minority within GG. GG itself is merely one icon, but you have two self-labeling groups fighting over what it means, and all the members having different opinions. In reality there's no reason why a discussion can't address corruption in the gaming industry and/or misogynistic gamers, independently. And I'd be wary of anyone trying to suppress the discussion of either.

  197. Re:But let's remember by gordo3000 · · Score: 1

    huh, I just started reading up on this but only ONE twitter account made those threatening comments, it was not obviously any particular person, and could have been someone trolling as much as anything else.
    you can't then, with a straight face, say it is 1000 or even 2 people doing this.

    Hell, for all we know, it could be a cynical method of getting people to feel sorry for you and therefore, side with you. who knows? It seems to have worked quite well actually, as now a lot of folks make out like everyone on the other side has said things like this.

  198. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Except none of that happened. She started a relationship with a journalist who never reviewed, was planning to review or even wrote about her game. Stop spreading lies.

  199. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because the media is helpfully telling us that their motives are bad, and not about how the media is bad. You're welcome :^)

  200. Don't preorder by DrXym · · Score: 1
    A lot of money is riding on a game release. They cost millions to produce and market and delaying could cost millions more. A game would have to be seriously broken to be delayed.

    So it's unsurprising that Ubisoft pushed it out the way it was. If they announced a delay, they'd lose out on seasonal sales, their preorders would be decimated and it would affect their quarterly figures. So they pushed out something with some serious bugs and performance issues and used an embargo to prevent bad press until after all those preorders were fulfilled. I'm sure they'll get around to fixing the worst of the bugs, but people have been sold a lemon.

    As consumers, there is a clear lesson to be learned here - do not preorder. Do not reward companies who use hype and lies to promote a game that may not live up to expectations. If a game is THAT AMAZING, then it'll still be so in a week or two after release when consensus is formed. And if it isn't... well that's €60+ you've saved for a better game.

  201. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If people like GP can't see the irony in claiming to support women, and then supporting a group that actively denies opinions (or even womanhood) to wrong-thinking women, then no I doubt it.

  202. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Triklyn · · Score: 1

    innocent until proven guilty is the burden in the court of law. in the court of public opinion the burden is much less. I believe the ex boyfriend, because why the hell would he make it up, and make up the presumed evidence? to ruin her life? why? unless he was fucking pissed at her.

    There's also a bunch of people saying she's a terrible person who would do that kind of thing. Who presumably are real people that the ex didn't make up just to corroborate his account. So either i assume a massive conspiracy to besmirch the good name of some terrible game dev. Or i assume ms. quinn is a terrible horrible person. one is a lot more plausible than the other. It involves a less complex narrative if Ms. Quinn is the kind of person who would strangle puppies for pissing on her carpet.

  203. Re:The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Covera by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

    Nathan Grayson's and Patricia Hernandez's journalistic corruption was exposed

    These claims have been widely discredited.

    Nathan Grayson's relationship began after he wrote his last piece mentioning Quinn's game. He never reviewed it, and only mentioned it in passing in articles about other things twice. There is no evidence that he ever gave her positive coverage due to their relationship.

    Patricia Hernandez said something GamerGate doesn't like, and the rest is discredited nonsense.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  204. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then perhaps they should stop harassing and threatening women and start in on this shit for once.

    Right, because it's not like when they do, gamesjournos still find a way to twist the story into slandering GG and making it about harassment. The most baffling thing about this whole thing is how reportedly sane, rational people see a fight between media and regular people, and believe everything the media has to say about those people regarding the situation. It's like getting your news about a Democrat candidate from the Republican he's running against.

  205. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Kielistic · · Score: 1

    Every time you're not benevolently sexist enough*

    "SJW"s get their bad rep not for being egalitarian but for demanding benevolent sexism and decrying anything less than that as hatred of women.

  206. Re:But let's remember by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your citation is the blog of her jilted lover? A guy who is clearly not going to provide an objective or even truthful account of events?

    This is why GamerGate has no credibility. The only "evidence" available is bullshit, and they just seem to think that repeating the same lies over and over will make people believe them. It's a thinly veiled excuse to attack women, nothing more.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  207. Re:But let's remember by Theaetetus · · Score: 1

    Having consensual sex with someone is a crime? On what planet? Oh and [citation needed] for claim about what she claims is rape.

    Yep, according to her. If you're in a relationship with that person. Here's your citation

    That "citation" is by Eron Gjoni. You can't say "according to her" when she didn't write a single word in what you're claiming for support. At best, you can say "according to this guy who really hates her, she believes [x horrible thing]" , but then everyone would be rightfully skeptical.

  208. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Five console games, three(?) portable games. No, we're not counting the abomination that is Other M (funny that gamers as a whole managed to hate the game for its portrayal of Samus, without someone like Sarkeesian telling them they should.)

  209. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by tbannist · · Score: 2

    Actually I'm pretty sure that SJW's are puritans in disguise at this point.

    Actually, I'm pretty sure that comments like that make my point. SJW is just another de-humanized group for people to project their personal devils onto.

    Every time something comes along, the first thing they start screaming about is "sexism" or "muhsoggyknees." Strange that it just keeps happening over and over again, you know like with Matt Taylors shirt(who was made by a women).

    Most of us are made by a woman, but I'll assume you mean the shirt. The people who are upset about this, and it doesn't seem like there's that many of them (your mention of this was the first time, I'd heard of it), are more upset that he wore it to a major press event and that no one thought to say, "Hey, before going on international television, maybe you'd like to change into something more appropriate?" To them, at least, this is indicative of a casual sexism endemic to the sciences and science reporting, where female scientists are judged by the appearance and male scientists by their accomplishments. The fact the shirt was made by a woman wouldn't actually matter to them and would appear to be disingenuous deflection because it's not the shirt, it's the where and the why it was worn that matters to the critics.

    I'm sure though that you'll also find that the majority of people in gamergate are left-libertarians. And the majority of anti-gg are left-authoritarians.

    I would suspect that you're suffering from the false-consensus effect and projecting your beliefs onto other people in Gamergate, possibly also the halo effect with respect to the people who don't like Gamergate. Of course, if you are correct about Gamergate having a libertarian base, then everyone else would be relatively more authoritarian, virtually by definition since just about the only group less authoritarian than libertarians are anarchists.

    Additionally, when I spent some time looking over the posts on the Gamergate hash tag, I noticed several references to culture war against the left, and in particular how offline conservatives should follow Gamergate's tactics (against Gawker and Kotaku) to deny left leaning publications advertisers, which is certainly not what I would expect from a mostly left leaning group that advocates against corruption in journalism. For that matter, why do some of these supposed libertarians think that censorship of views they dislike is a valid solution to "corruption"?

    Beyond that, I wasn't actually talking about Gamergate itself, which is a somewhat random assortment of people who all happen to be outraged about vaguely similar things and have twitter accounts, but more specifically about the people who use SJW as a pejorative epithet (which may or may not significantly overlap the people in Gamergate). Of course, on the other hand, I'd never heard of the SJWs until a bunch raging Gamergaters start spewing it all over Slashdot, so there is that.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  210. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Prior to a few assholes attacking women under the banner of GamerGate, GG was all about questionable game journalism practices, such as this.

  211. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by ganjadude · · Score: 2

    let me know when an accused male domestic abuser is given the same innocent until proven guilty thing. until then Id says its been pretty equal. thats what women want right??? equality???

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  212. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    remember the diablo 3 initial roll out???

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  213. Re: The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Cover by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    well, i mean AC says so, it MUST be true!

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  214. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by nordee · · Score: 1

    Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is about (Score:?)
    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14, 2014 @10:07AM
    Actually most game websites that publish reviews feel that embargoes are a GOOD thing.

    They make money on traffic. Traffic is driven by reviews. Review traffic only lasts a day or two at best. Embargoes allow them to get games early and spend time to write a good review, rather than rushing through a game to try to get a crappy review up in the first hours after launch.

    I think all the sites that I've read (Kotaku, Polygon, and Wired) agree that embargoes that last until after the game is launched are disingenuous (at best) on the part of the publishers, but all of them are philosophical about the system and seem to think it works well in most cases.

    Savvy consumers can read the tea leaves. If there are lots of advance reviews the publisher is confident in the game. If there are NO reviews then most likely it's a dog.

    --
    still no sig
  215. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    so now "honey" is sexist? What next "hello" oh wait.... i forgot, thats sexist now. At least according to women walking in NYC and being filmed.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  216. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    clearly nothing short of not a single post about sexism will be good enough for you.

    you understand that GG has become big, meaning the trolls are out now. of course you are still gonna see the crap as well as the actual complaints.

    Just man up and admin you were wrong, i promise you, no one will think less of you for it. on the other hand you can sit there and keep screaming sexist!!! and look like an idiot if you wish

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  217. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There was no need to leak it anonymously.

    Many of the review sites specifically stated ahead of time that there was an embargo on the game, and that the embargo ended after the release.

  218. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    if the journalists knew the game was buggy, it would be worth breaking the embargo because im sure most people would have not bought a known buggy game.

    i pre ordered diablo 3 for PC months in advance, but it will be the last game I get without waiting a few weeks. there is no such thing as a game that i NEED on release day

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  219. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For that matter, why do some of these supposed libertarians think that censorship of views they dislike is a valid solution to "corruption"?

    First, gamegate has only asked - not forced - companies to pull their ads. That's not censorship. That's just market pressure. It's no different than how Anita Sarkeesian makes videos about tropes against women in video games. Those videos don't force game companies (or gamers) to change their ways, but they apply pressure.

    Second, censorship doesn't contradict libertarian beliefs. Under libertarianism, censorship and discrimination is only bad when it's forced by a collective (i.e government) on the individual. When individuals do it, It's just free association. If I don't like you, I am free to not associate (censor) you. I can ask other people to voluntarily join me as well, as that's my freedom of speech.

    In that regard, gamergate is indeed more libertarian/less authoritarian, and not just "by definition". They are so by action. As said, companies are voluntarily pull ads. Anti-gg articles are not forcefully pulled down.

    Contrast this to the attempts to squash GG. There were reports of GG-related topics deleted on several Internet forums. You can find more info browsing from other posters who can better articulate this than I.

  220. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    no people were not fine, it just didnt have a #tag before. I mean how is anyone suposed to know anything, or get anything done without a #tag these days??? /sarc

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  221. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by The+Technomancer · · Score: 1

    You can speak about whatever you like.

    But at the end of the day, money talks and bullshit walks, and if you keep reading the sites you hate and buying games from companies whose business practices you dislike, and you don't bother to compete with them, you've made it known exactly what you're supporting, despite whatever speech you've Twittergrammed to @nobodycaresifyourebuyingwhatyourebitchingabout.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    -- Arthur C. Clarke

  222. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

    Oh look, a post on a sleazy misogyny filled subreddit.

    Yep, that's a credible source.

  223. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    Well, here's the thing, though- I don't like Zoe Quinn at all. If that blog post was true in the least, I think she's an awful person, and that's bad.

    However, that doesn't have a damn thing to do with "ethics in gaming journalism", or whatever drivel they're on about. Her sex life is irrelevant to the development work she's done, and the gaming industry as a whole. As you say, if the roles were reversed here and a man had done this to a woman, yes- it would be awful! However, do you think for one MOMENT that it would have gone on this long and been this big of a deal?

    So, no, criticizing Zoe Quinn in and within itself is not misogyny. However, using her private life and personal relationships to go after other important women in the gaming industry just for the crime of not wanting gaming journalism to cover Zoe's sex life IS misogyny.

  224. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    Funny, the way the mod system can be used to silence a conversation just because someone disagree with their views. It's almost as if the people trying to silence feminist viewpoints are acting unethically in regards to games journalism and discussion.

    HMM.

  225. Re: The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Cove by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    Pray tell- what favors were these? Keep in mind, I won't be accepting any example that calls out an article that doesn't exist and never has.

  226. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    So... have you considered the simple solution of getting a new tag, and denouncing the people who've been harassing/doxxing women? Then possibly you could stop making this about fighting "SJW"s and actually focus on game journalism.

  227. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And we also learned that sparklepunter is a homophobe

  228. Re:But let's remember by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    That may well be a concern- I mean, granted, your example is completely seperate from what actually happened both in severity and the reality of the situation, but aside from all the ways in which you're wrong, you're right!

  229. Re:But let's remember by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    So, by that logic, if a member of my test team is writing a list of software, and the software I wrote is rightfully included for being applicable, this is somehow corruption and I have a relationship with them? Are people in the industry no longer allowed to even be friends with eachother?

  230. Re:But let's remember by sinij · · Score: 1

    No of course I heard, and extensively read about third-wave feminism. They are not as upfront and blunt about their opinions, instead going with "assume guilty" concept of privilege, dubious historical revisionism of patriarchy, and shifting goalposts of constant redefining of sexual assault to include almost any heterosexual activity, including consensual drunken marital sex. Is there really a functional difference between that and "all heterosexual sex is rape" views? If there is, I have hard time seeing it.

  231. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, nobody is harassing bitches! Sluts maybe, but not bitches! Fucking feminist agenda!

  232. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have stopped reading sites and the last time I bought video games they were through the Humble Bundle. The problem now is convincing everyone else to do the same thing.

    One way to do it would be to discuss it on sites like this, and letting people know to avoid Ubisoft like the plague and to hopefully wake them up to the fact that video game journalism is hopelessly entangled with the publishers and is utterly useless. I'm not sure why you think that trying to warn other people away from bad companies is "useless." I don't have the skills or desire to start "my own game company" or "my own website" - and why should I? I'll continue rewarding game companies that play nicely with their customers and avoiding the useless and corrupt gaming press.

    Now all I have to do is convince everyone else to do the same and we might see some real change.

  233. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Kielistic · · Score: 1

    If roles were reversed it would have been over in a minute. But not because of the gender reversal. It would have been over immediately because there would have been no concentrated effort to censor the topic. That is the only reason this whole thing blew up like it did. There is no better way to get people to talk about something then to tell them they aren't allowed.

    No one went after other women because of the scandal. There were, however, some other women that injected themselves into the discussion.

  234. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Kielistic · · Score: 1

    And that's not an ad-hominem, genetic fallacy or poisoning the well.

    Yep, that's a good point.

  235. Publication embargoes are the norm everywhere by Imazalil · · Score: 1

    Publication embargoes are standard in just about every industry, hell even publicly funded research includes them so that journalists have time to prepare the story and then publish it at the same time.

    Sorry, GG, if you've got this, and the fact that some people on youtube give favourable reviews to products they get for free then you really are not bringing anything new to light.

    The fact that the more confident a company is in their product tends to translates into an earlier embargo release prior to product release date is nothing new. At all.

    If you really want that pink version of a sword then go ahead and pre-order, but don't get outraged when the shipping product is a mess, it's a choice you make knowing the risks. Remember the mess that AC4 was? with floating ships and all that? Yeah, did you really think that the new version that's build on a moderately-new engine would turn out better?

  236. Re:But let's remember by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    and what does the anti GG people keep doing??? Repeating lies over and over hoping it sticks.

    long story short, this circle jerk is getting really annoying because as pointed out to you 100 times, there is a real issue here that most people want to overlook all because some people said mean things, as if only those things ever get said to women

    Take that "alex from target" kid, hes been threatened with rape and death for nothing more than becoming a meme. trolls do what trolls do best, except for some reason when a woman is on the other end of it, the white knights come out to their defense and claim its ONLY because shes a woman people say these things, which based on my example above, blows that idea out of the water

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  237. Re:But let's remember by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    why are all them men speaking up about it also being attacked? or does that go against the anti woman motive that is being pushed. lets all just ignore than any of the men who have said anything have also been attacked.

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  238. I'd just call it the stupid tax by Imazalil · · Score: 1

    Who in their right mind would buy a products sight unseen though? Just based on a few youtube videos?

    That is just crazy!

    At least with a car or new McD's sandwich there are some safety and health codes that the companies mostly adhere to, but with gaming there is nothing, not even Nintendo's Seal of Approval anymore.

  239. Re:But let's remember by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    the double standard is funny. lets take COD shall we? If you were allowed to go out and shoot women, they would claim sexism. but you cant, so they claim sexism....

    Da fuq?

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  240. Re:But let's remember by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    and the same stands true for this entire thing! maybe someone should have told this woman who started this entire thing that much.

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  241. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Imazalil · · Score: 1

    So that made it ok to send out death threats and harass her? No one is arguing that she's a saint.

    The original 'outrage' was that she slept with the reviewer, so why was all this directed at her, the reviewer was supposed to be the one breaking ethics, which is what things are clearly about, right?

  242. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Imazalil · · Score: 1

    And you seriously hold the gaming press to that level? Not even 'regular' press are anywhere near that. Is all of GG under 12, or just not living in the real world?

    The gaming press is Entertainment Tonight, not the New York Times.

  243. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What if it very, very cold and there is no Tauntaun to clime inside of and the patients is freezing to death.. then can you sleep with them for warmth?

  244. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So that made it ok to send out death threats and harass her? No one is arguing that she's a saint.

    ...and who is arguing that it's ok to make death threats? GP only said he disapproves (hates) the woman (one woman, not all). You're making a logical leap that hate = death threats

    so why was all this directed at her, the reviewer was supposed to be the one breaking ethics

    You make it sound like anybody who doesn't like Quinn is in support for harassment and death threats. That is false. We can both condemn the death threats AND condemn ethics in journalism at the same time, you know.

    which is what things are clearly about, right?

    Given that GamerGate actually helped identify one of Anita Sarkeesian's harassers, what you say in mockery I say with conviction: YES, it is clearly about ethics, not harassment.

  245. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by His+Shadow · · Score: 1

    the fact that Zoe Quinn is scum either way- it's Zoe's own actions that have created that reality and no one elses.

    Except for the fact that, you know, this wasn't anyone's actual business until a jilted lover spilled his guts in a public display of broken heartedness. But sure, she's entirely responsible.

    --

    Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos

  246. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Ok, since you seem unclear, I'll enlighten you. It's NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS if she did or did not cheat on her boyfriend. NONE. Period. Full stop. End of story.

  247. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Zoe Quinn is not a game journalist. Anita Sarkesian is not a game journalist.

  248. Re:The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Covera by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Stop speaking for me. I'm a gamer. I've been a gamer longer than you. Probably longer than you've been alive. I don't agree with anything you've said.

  249. Re: The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Cove by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Prepare for the deafening silence.

  250. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Go on. You're making your opponents case so wonderfully well!

  251. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    Ahhh, right, "censoring the topic." You're half-right on that point, but I'd say that a lot that was taken down in the early days of the "scandal" was for good reason. I'd argue that, were I a game developer who'd had an ex of mine post all the sordid details of my personal and private life to the internet, I'd want that info taken down too. Who she slept with in this case has no bearing at all on the coverage her game received, has no implications for the industry at large, and is completely irrelevant outside of "hey an Indie developer did a thing." So, while censoring something is a good way to Streisand Effect your way into the stratosphere, there was still legitimate reason for the removal of the material.

    Where I disagree with you is on your second point. Perhaps you're right in saying no one went after other women because of the scandal. However, the events AROUND the scandal, such as women coming out in support for having this information taken down, have been harassed, doxxed, threatened with all sorts of awful things... all for daring to say that a woman's sex life is irrelevant to "gaming journalism." Granted, most of these women were already being harassed for daring to speak out against sexism in games, but it's certainly seemed like it's gotten worse to me. I'd also disagree that they "injected" themselves into the discussion- they attempted to participate in the talk, same as anyone else. The only real difference is that they actually have some visibility thanks to what they do in relation to games.

  252. Re: The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Cove by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    Geez, it's like being in an environment without atmosphere...

  253. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Plus, you know, all the outraged trolls could use their fucking brains and not buy the goddamn game 30 seconds after it's released, but rather WAIT a few days. But that would frustrate their entitled got to have it now feelings.

  254. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Jesus, it's UBISOFT! How smart do you have to be to think that taking a wait and see approach is the right course with ANYTHING from Ubisoft???

  255. Re:But let's remember by rochrist · · Score: 1

    The story wasn't about her. Tip your fedora and head back to redpill.

  256. Re:But let's remember by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Mention it where? In the review he didn't right. Back to redpill, PUA.

  257. Re:But let's remember by rochrist · · Score: 1

    It isn't a CRIME to sleep with other people while in a relationship and it isn't any of your business, you mouthbreating troll. That you lead with this abject stupidity makes anything else you have to say not woth bothering with.

  258. Re:But let's remember by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Here's what you can't get through you thick skull. Her sex life is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. I know you're upset because you figure, hell she was sleeping with everyone but she didn't sleep with me, but it doesn't work that way sparky.

  259. Re: But let's remember by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Why are you anonymous, coward?

  260. Re:But let's remember by rochrist · · Score: 1

    I remember the Tea Party. GG is very similar. A big bunch of know nothing babies screaming and pounding their fists on the table. Also, don't like women much.

  261. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by SillyHamster · · Score: 1

    Actually, I'm pretty sure that comments like that make my point. SJW is just another de-humanized group for people to project their personal devils onto.

    No projection is needed. SJWs are defined by their actions, not their identities.

    Casually and inaccurately use "misogynist" and "racist" to browbeat people while pushing an agenda? SJW - and there's no room in a civil society for such an uncivil actor.

    I'm sure though that you'll also find that the majority of people in gamergate are left-libertarians. And the majority of anti-gg are left-authoritarians.

    I would suspect that you're suffering from the false-consensus effect and projecting your beliefs onto other people in Gamergate, possibly also the halo effect with respect to the people who don't like Gamergate. Of course, if you are correct about Gamergate having a libertarian base, then everyone else would be relatively more authoritarian, virtually by definition since just about the only group less authoritarian than libertarians are anarchists.

    General self-reporting reflects it. Caveat is that this is the Twitter GamerGate population - but it does refute the Twitter accusations of right-wing conservatives being behind #GamerGate.

    It also makes sense in that gamers tend to be more socially introverted and thus more "go your own way" in attitude.

  262. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    +1, posting anon to not undo my mods. Anybody who asks for the sauce needs to read this neogaf link. Some heroic person cataloged all of the #GG wrongness in one place along with all the links.

    +1 for your link- quoting it for a little more visibility since it has more information than most places regarding the topic. Heck I'll even repost it here, for burning justice!

  263. Re: The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Cover by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Gamergate is about [strawman]." I've seen this post several times in this, and other, threads. I'm beginning to think that this whole 'controversy' is some clever troll's chatbot. Either that, or people involved with this are just brainless parrots and/or naive children who should get the hell off my lawn.

    I've also seen this back-and-forth (we'll call it a conversation), pretty much word for word, happening repeatedly on this topic. I'd say that it is time for everyone to agree to disagree, but that only applies when somebody has a semi-coherent point. What a pointless shouting match of buzzwords and inarticulate fools.

  264. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sexism in games.

    Ok.

    Let's talk about the two dimensional male rolemodels in the game, or the fact that 99 percent of the enemies being slaughtered are male. No-one ever thinks of that, but as soon as a female is killed in a game, or a two dimensional female is introduced, THEN the rage starts.

  265. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a third choice, but it involves risk and hard work, so it's not a very popular selection. That is: perform your own rigorous investigations, bypassing the gatekeepers. Organizations are full of people and you can likely find someone willing to defect, or you could even apply for a job at the organization that you are investigating to get inside access. Those are just two of endless possible strategies to get the scoop. It is this sort of effort that separates the respected journalist from the lazy spin-doctors, who simply re-print corporate/government press releases with some light editing.

    At any rate, the gamergaters are going to be disappointed if they think the press will ever be composed of a significant quantity of such hard-nosed truth seekers. Such people are one in a million (and that is an optimistic ratio).

  266. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    So why should I bother reading this shit?

    It's not like they have a monopoly on having a "gamer neighborhood watch" on twitter. If they are as horrible as you say (honestly, I never heard of them), dump them, ignore them, open up your own.

    Since it's the opposition. And the opposition believes that anyone who doesn't toe their line is either: sexist, misogynist, racist, bigoted, have internalized muhsoggyknees, a dupe, uncle tom, house nigger, and three or four other thing I'm forgetting. But they've called anyone who wants journalism reform and clear ethics exactly that.

    So, ask yourself--if being a minority and you get labeled a uncle tom with internalized misogyny, who is only following the pro-gg movement because you're too stupid. You wouldn't question the anti-gg side's actual involvement in all of this. If you're not actually following the movement at all, it's mainly left-libertarian(pro-gg) vs left-authoritarian(anti-gg). There are quite a few on the right who are also pro-gg, they're fall right-libertarian though. I've long come to the conclusion that the anti-gg side is made up of people from 1784, and have a strong desire to go back to more puritan ideals. Especially if you don't "fit their vision" of what's allowed.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  267. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    Really? Can you point out the misogyny. I'll wait. Go on, find it. By the way, between let's say KiA and gamerghazi or one of the other 5 subs that are run, which one lets both sides speak? I'll give you a hint. It's KiA as long as you follow the rule of no doxxing, you can be as anti-as you want.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  268. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    So all of them? You do realize that embargos are an industry wide practice

    Are you saying that "games journalism" is not actually journalism then? Because that's the difference between a journalist reporting on news or *shock* a real problem in the field you're reporting on. It sounds like game reviewers now are an extension of the game companies' advertising budgets.

    Reviewers allowed the game companies to get away with this nonsense until the practice became ingrained. Respected movie reviewers, on the other hand, dug in their heels and reported when a movie company refused to screen movies for critics. That led to a societal attitude where if a movie studio didn't screen a movie for critics, it was a huge red flag, and the studio knew that their movie was shit (and/or a Rob Schneider movie).

    So yes, I'm blaming the games review magazines and online journalists who caved when this practice starting gaining momentum. Reviewers should never be too cozy with studios/developers, nor should they become too dependent on them.

  269. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    i pre ordered diablo 3 for PC months in advance, but it will be the last game I get without waiting a few weeks. there is no such thing as a game that i NEED on release day

    These days, Diablo 3 is really a fantastic game. But it took over a year for it to reach that point. :-(

  270. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    How do you live your life unless it's through Twitter? I don't get it.
    I understand the desire to live life completely through Facebook instead, but it doesn't react and aggregate as fast.

  271. Re:But let's remember by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    That "citation" is by Eron Gjoni. You can't say "according to her" when she didn't write a single word in what you're claiming for support. At best, you can say "according to this guy who really hates her, she believes [x horrible thing]" , but then everyone would be rightfully skeptical.

    Correction: He wrote the blog, though her own posts via her facebook are there where she makes the claim of that definition. That means by her cheating against him, her own definition comes into play. So saying "she didn't write a single word" is factually incorrect, or are you saying that she didn't actually write on her own FB page and make those statements?

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  272. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    Well, I classify anyone who sabotages charities and then boasts about it as a despicable person, regardless of gender. Most people do. Just because this particular person says the right words and has the right politics does not make it right, regardless of who she slept with for material gain.

    Your moral compass may be a little off if you think that charity sabotage is okay if you have the correct political affiliation.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  273. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    If a member of your test team is a journalist who then publicises the software without disclosing his material interest in your software, then yes, you have a serious ethics problem. That is no different than the ZQ/NG ethics problem.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  274. Re:But let's remember by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    Riiiight. That point might be a bit stronger if that "publicity" was a review or endorsement, rather than saying "Oh hey, this FREE software exists, and look at all these other things in the same category!" If the strongest evidence GG has against ZQ in regards to journalism is "a journalist said the name of her game once in a list with a bunch of other games and months later she slept with him and he never spoke of her game again", there really is NO BASIS WHATSOEVER for harassing her and saying it's about "ethics in gaming journalism."

  275. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    review embargos are the creation of bourgeois feminists so they can justify sucking dick for good game reviews, obviously.

  276. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    Yes, these things are indeed sexist! Thank you for pointing them out. Except that it HAS been thought of and discussed- and Anita Sarkeesian does a much better analysis of it than I ever could. Improving the way both genders are treated in games would be a wonderful thing- but what I take issue with is when someone says "Oh hey there's some sexism against women in these games", there are inevitably people who say "BUT SEXISM EXISTS FOR MEN TOO!" ...Ok, yes, it does, but can we, just this once, let THIS conversation started about sexism against women be about, oh, I don't know, women? Does the major lack of female role-models in gaming compared to male role models mean so little?

    And before you even start- yes, female role models exist- but for every female you provide I guaran-damn-tee you I can come up with 5 more males.

  277. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1
    None of the above is true -

    Her game wasn't mentioned "in the list" - it was singled out for specific positive publicity before the list even started.

    There was no "months later", it was a few weeks later IIRC. I suppose that changes it from "trading sex for publicity" to "trading publicity for sex". Whatever. Still not good.

    The strongest evidence against her is not any of this, but this is always what the anti-GG folk trot out. You expect no response to this?

    She, personally, doxxed many of the prominent indie reviewers who disagreed with the blackout (the main thing). Once again, you can look up her twitter account.

    The problem is not even with ZQ, mostly, she's simply the straw that broke the camels back. The game reviewers have no problem with material gain in exchange for favourable reviews. Look at depression quest, for example. It's got one of the lowest user scores ever on metacritic[1] (deservedly - I've seen better results from 8 year olds using the same software that ZQ used - she isn't a techie at all and knows no programming language as far as anyone can tell) but was hyped up for special mention by NG.

    By all user reviews, this game is a piece of brown smelly stuff. Yet the journalist who singled it out for special mention in a positive light just happened to receive sexual favours from her not much later? Many gamers are neither naive nor stupid. When they pointed this out the media blackout occurred. Let me reiterate: The threads and users that were banned en masse were not those that sent death threats, but those that pointed out a shitty game got a positive spin by a journalist who a mere few weeks later slept with the game "dev"

    So far, that media blackout isn't working - gawker alone lost around 10 or so advertising contracts, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Adobe and other prominent businesses. The Streisand effect, FTW :-) The important thing in all of this is to continue ensuring that the media blackout (and collusion to blackout/blackball) doesn't work. So far, so good :-)

    [1] Depression quest might just set a new record for worst game ever, at the rate it is going. Games which didn't even start without bugs got higher scores on metacritic (Big rigs:over the road - listed as one of the worst games of all times got a score roughly five times higher than depression question, in spite of all the publicity that DQ got).

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  278. Re:But let's remember by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    None of the above is true -

    Her game wasn't mentioned "in the list" - it was singled out for specific positive publicity before the list even started.

    There was no "months later", it was a few weeks later IIRC. I suppose that changes it from "trading sex for publicity" to "trading publicity for sex". Whatever. Still not good.

    Oh that changes everything, it was mentioned with a few other games before the list! The molehill has suddenly become... wait, no, still a molehill.

    The strongest evidence against her is not any of this, but this is always what the anti-GG folk trot out. You expect no response to this?

    She, personally, doxxed many of the prominent indie reviewers who disagreed with the blackout (the main thing). Once again, you can look up her twitter account.

    Alright, done- her twitter account shows nothing at all that you mentioned. Drink coke, play again.

    The problem is not even with ZQ, mostly, she's simply the straw that broke the camels back. The game reviewers have no problem with material gain in exchange for favourable reviews. Look at depression quest, for example. It's got one of the lowest user scores ever on metacritic[1] (deservedly - I've seen better results from 8 year olds using the same software that ZQ used - she isn't a techie at all and knows no programming language as far as anyone can tell) but was hyped up for special mention by NG.

    Ok- care to mention any of these examples? you say it's not with SQ, and then continue to do nothing but talk about ZQ. I've noticed that's a bit of a trend with "gaters".

    By all user reviews, this game is a piece of brown smelly stuff. Yet the journalist who singled it out for special mention in a positive light just happened to receive sexual favours from her not much later? Many gamers are neither naive nor stupid. When they pointed this out the media blackout occurred. Let me reiterate: The threads and users that were banned en masse were not those that sent death threats, but those that pointed out a shitty game got a positive spin by a journalist who a mere few weeks later slept with the game "dev"

    Still talking about Quinn... and oh my, people were banned for reposting rumors and accusations against a person that weren't even based on reality? Don't bother lying to me or yourself- when this all started, it wasn't about a single mention before and during a list, it was over a supposed "review" that even her ex said didn't exist.

    So far, that media blackout isn't working - gawker alone lost around 10 or so advertising contracts, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Adobe and other prominent businesses. The Streisand effect, FTW :-) The important thing in all of this is to continue ensuring that the media blackout (and collusion to blackout/blackball) doesn't work. So far, so good :-)

    Funny how harassing businesses can affect them- except that they all seem to be doing juuuust fine. If anything, they're probably getting more hits thanks to GG continuing to harass folk. I'm actually a little conflicted about that, but it's supporting gawker, so it works I guess.

    [1] Depression quest might just set a new record for worst game ever, at the rate it is going. Games which didn't even start without bugs got higher scores on metacritic (Big rigs:over the road - listed as one of the worst games of all times got a score roughly five times higher than depression question, in spite of all the publicity that DQ got).

    Still talking about Quinn... did you have a point to any of that aside from making me waste time on twitter?

  279. Re:But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    [1] Depression quest might just set a new record for worst game ever, at the rate it is going. Games which didn't even start without bugs got higher scores on metacritic (Big rigs:over the road - listed as one of the worst games of all times got a score roughly five times higher than depression question, in spite of all the publicity that DQ got).

    Still talking about Quinn... did you have a point to any of that aside from making me waste time on twitter?

    Well, yes, the blackout can't exist while *you* are talking about it. Anyway, I very rarely do other peoples homework for them as they never change their mind anyway, but here you go - before it was recalled/cancelled/etc from twitter. This, and other links, have already been posted in slashdot comments so I expect you've already seen evidence but dismissed it with "photoshopped!", notwithstanding Occams Razor.

    FWIW, that above footnote points out that, while DQ got rave reviewers from all of NG's friends, from actual players who never met the man or his mistress, it got tanked and almost universally panned. Who cares about the dev - the game is broadly acknowledged as a 0/100.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  280. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by PCTRS80 · · Score: 1

    The problem is when a game reviewer receives a "game review code" they agree to the "review embargo" when they use that code. If they brake the embargo they are subject to legal action that could cost them significantly both personally and professionally. Braking an "Review Embargo" can get a reviewer blacklisted from review copies of games entirely from developer/publishing houses and even dropped by the magazines/websites they post their content. They are trying to make a living, the problem is that the consumer base will pre-order/buy sight unseen then get upset when they get burned and blame the reviewers for not telling them it was a steaming pile of crap. Ultimately it is the consumer to blame for this problem.

  281. Re: But let's remember by Aerokii · · Score: 1

    See, as much as I love Occham, it's not at all necessary here. That post proves nothing even if it ISN'T shopped, and as far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant to ZQ.

    Beyond that, you point out metacritic and mention 0/100 scores... but there's only one professional review on metacritic (50/100), and a user reviews on every other side. I'm SURE none of the scores could possibly be related to the gamer gate nonsense. This just reaffirms that ZQ is irrelevant to the discussion, especially when it should logically be about NG.

  282. Re: But let's remember by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    See, as much as I love Occham, it's not at all necessary here. That post proves nothing even if it ISN'T shopped, and as far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant to ZQ.

    Okay - how about a tweet where she boasts about harassing others? Nevermind her for now, what about the rest of the GG folk that were doxxed - here's a start.

    Beyond that, you point out metacritic and mention 0/100 scores... but there's only one professional review on metacritic (50/100), and a user reviews on every other side. I'm SURE none of the scores could possibly be related to the gamer gate nonsense.

    I'm sorry. The game just isn't any good as a game. This game wasn't greenlighted on steam on its first attempt. On it's second attempt ZQ then took to twitter after the doxing to ask other SJW (I was surprised to find out that that was actually a thing) folk to help get it through steam to show those virgins at wizardchan who harassed her (there's a tweet from her about that too). At that point the game, in its second attempt at greenlight on steam, was in its eighth day with almost non-existent support. After her tweet urging people to support it because of the harassment, it went through.

    Sad to say, but that game would never have stood a chance on it's own merits (there's a popular ZQ tweet complaining about meritocracy in gaming :-)), it needed the publicity of "misogyny in gaming" (a thing which we have yet to see). It took the combined effort of a politically-aligned group of people to actually get it on steam. After that, users downloaded it and lambasted it to hell and back. Hence, the media blackout.

    This just reaffirms that ZQ is irrelevant to the discussion, especially when it should logically be about NG.

    Logically? Logically it should be about the media blackout which caused this whole thing to cascade. Hell, FCOL, wizardchan don't even have a gaming subgroup! The only reason this took off like it did was due to the en masse banning of people and threads who said that the "game" sucked. This sentiment was expressed before any reported harassment took place, btw. The reported harassment occurred only after it was evident that the game sucked.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  283. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by The+Technomancer · · Score: 1

    Humble Bundle gives a cut to the publishers, just like any other store. They just have better PR.

    Beyond that, if you think people aren't wise to the fact that gaming journalism is in it thick with gaming companies, and that there's quite a bit of personnel passing back and forth, and weren't without GamerGate, then you simply aren't paying attention. What's the number one non-industry place of employment for game designer prior an industry gig? Game journalist. Between layoffs, what do game designers do? Write about games.

    I couldn't care less whether or not GamerGate is misogynistic or not, trolling or not, or what-have-you. I think it's hilarious a bunch of people identifying as "core/hardcore" gamers are bitching about something that any gamer worth a damn already knew -- don't trust publishers that don't provide a demo, gaming reviews have grade inflation worse than public school, and review sites and the game industry trade personnel and promotion opportunities.

    Stop whining like an entitled brat. If you want something, like good games, honest publishers, and trustworthy media, do it yourself. After all, it must be a successful business model with all those GGers out there, and there's an obvious market opportunity.

    Or there's not, and even the non-SJWs are laughing at your dumbass for pointing out the obvious and claiming that this whole charade is for great justice and to improve an industry that thinks you're a joke because you still pay them their money.

    Either way, we know what people like you, who are lacking the skills, ambition, and expertise (other than that as a herded consumer lapping at the trough) will do -- nothing of consequence while bleating for someone else to do something.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    -- Arthur C. Clarke

  284. Re: But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    She's appeared in a smash bros game or two if I'm not mistaken. Otherwise it's 14 if you count the duplicates/remakes.

    http://www.gamefaqs.com/search/index.html?game=metroid

  285. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean expect them to have some ethics at all?

    Well shit you're right I guess I was expecting too much from them. They should get as many sexual bribes as they can since everyone thinks it's a non-issue now.

  286. bad by vutaikthp · · Score: 1

    Too bad the game is probably at least PG13. I would so love to see some parent sue Ubi for giving their kids nightmares.

  287. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's not the one who's jilted. He dumped her for cheating, which you'd know if you actually read anything about him.

    Here, try this: https://medium.com/@srachel_m/gamergate-launched-in-my-apartment-and-internet-im-sorry-not-that-sorry-13e5650fd172

  288. Re:The Corruption is Already Getting Proper Covera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, they've been completely confirmed. Nathan Grayson provided free coverage of a game for a friend which is a blatant violation of journalistic ethics. The relationship later became a sexual relationship. Apparently in SJW-land a relationship is only a relationship if there's fucking.

    I don't even know who the fuck Patricia Hernandez even is but apparently she's some Kotaku writer and given that Kotaku is complete useless garbage and has always been complete useless garbage (gee, wonder why Grayson writes for them), I suppose it's not surprising that no one likes whatever you're referring to.

  289. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Tukz · · Score: 1

    They want selective equality.

    --
    - Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
  290. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Tukz · · Score: 1

    Especially on PC.

    I haven't had many issues with Ubisoft's games on console to be honest, but every single Ubisoft game I've tried on PC, was extremely bug ridden one way or the other.

    --
    - Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
  291. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Could I be on the "don't give a shit" side of the argument?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  292. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is ab by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    And just how do you plan to pull that off in the area of computer game journalism? Try to land a job at a game studio so you can do some "inside research" on ONE game that may (or may not) see the light of day some day 2-3 years into the future? IF, and only IF, you have the skillset required, we're not talking about an investigative journalism inside story on the labour conditions in some sweatshop in China where they take anyone provided they have a pulse.

    This is not some one-shot whistleblower story that you may land and never need to work again. Any kind of investigation you may do will sink years of your time to come up with ONE review for ONE game. Hell, even if it meant you could report about the next Final Fantasy installment 2 months before anyone else would make that worthwhile.

    Your idea simply doesn't fly in this environment.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  293. Simple solution by jbee02 · · Score: 1

    Open beta testing, would have prevented bugs and the need to have review embargos

  294. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    SJW - and there's no room in a civil society for such an uncivil actor.

    Someone who uses SJW as a silencing pejorative? There's no room in a civil society for such an uncivil actor.

  295. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    "I've told Ubi & will inform other PR: we won't accept a post-release embargo tied to a review copy again" -Stephen Totilo on AC:Unity

    We've sold out before, but this time we promise to never to it again. Just don't look at my crossed fingers behind my back.

  296. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    Nah, Diablo III Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition for the PS3/4 was good day-1. Of course, I skipped the first (at least for the consoles).

  297. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    when did it become misogynist to attack a female because of the things she's done?

    Things she's done, or things that people hate her have accused her of doing? There's a difference.

  298. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    Look up what she did to the FYC; no "alleging" - she freely admits to what she did.

    You should include some cites. When I did some quick searches, I found Quinn hating sites that mentioned sabotage of FYC, and her sleeping her way through the industry, but nothing that was anything close to fact-based, and no "confessions" about what she did. There was one mention that she did it because she was already working on a competing interest.

    So, is competition bad? What did she do? What did she admit to?

  299. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    I believe the ex boyfriend, because why the hell would he make it up, and make up the presumed evidence? to ruin her life? why?

    Yea, Why? No jilted lover has ever done anything spiteful in revenge, bhy why?

    unless he was fucking pissed at her.

    Oh yeah, there is that.

  300. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    According to the anti-GG side,

    You mean according to the anti-anti-GG side, as that's the only side you are representing, that's the only one you can speak for.

  301. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by SillyHamster · · Score: 1

    Someone who uses SJW as a silencing pejorative? There's no room in a civil society for such an uncivil actor.

    Not at all. But since reading or quoting the entire thought is too difficult for you, there's nothing else for me to add.

  302. Re: THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is a by AK+Marc · · Score: 1
    To me, an outsider, I've seen the timelines from the people that hate Zoe indicate that she broke up with her boyfriend, then started dating a journalists (who had never reviewed her games) and never even mentioned them after the second relationship started up. There was never the assertion that she slept with both men in overlapping time periods.

    I don't really care if people want to sleep around, but christ, she could've at least split up with her boyfriend first or made it clear to him she wanted an open relationship.

    All I could find is that the ex was mad she left him. There was no assertion of cheating. That was added later, to help justify the hate. Initially the complaint was about the choice of a new boyfriend (being a journalist). One mad ex made a non event into a huge scandal. The rumour mill made "changing boyfriends" into "sleeping her way up".

    it's Zoe's own actions that have created that reality and no one elses.

    Had her ex not lied to get back at her for not sleeping with him anymore, this would never have happened. He's the one that created this, nobody else.

  303. Re:But let's remember by Theaetetus · · Score: 1

    That "citation" is by Eron Gjoni. You can't say "according to her" when she didn't write a single word in what you're claiming for support. At best, you can say "according to this guy who really hates her, she believes [x horrible thing]" , but then everyone would be rightfully skeptical.

    Correction: He wrote the blog, though her own posts via her facebook are there where she makes the claim of that definition. That means by her cheating against him, her own definition comes into play. So saying "she didn't write a single word" is factually incorrect, or are you saying that she didn't actually write on her own FB page and make those statements?

    If that is true, then cite to her FB page. Otherwise, we only have Gjoni's word that those posts existed, and as noted above, he has significant reasons for fabricating them.

  304. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by tbannist · · Score: 1

    No projection is needed. SJWs are defined by their actions, not their identities.

    You've already projected the SJW identity onto them. I don't see how you can label a group and then claim it's not an identity.

    Casually and inaccurately use "misogynist" and "racist" to browbeat people while pushing an agenda? SJW - and there's no room in a civil society for such an uncivil actor.

    This is your personal definition of SJW, it is not the same as the others I have been given, so it does appear that you are projecting your own personal beliefs about what is wrong onto this group and then dismissing their role in "civil society" based on what you think they have done. It seems like you're doing exactly what I said you would be doing.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  305. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Triklyn · · Score: 1

    i was including fabricating people to corroborate his story of her being a terrible person. That's way too much effort for something you're not being paid for.

  306. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    I don't even have twitter or follow it. The hashtag only got the mainstream crowd to notice, whereas these issues had been building for a long time before the hashtag.

  307. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    Every time you're not benevolently sexist enough*

    "SJW"s get their bad rep not for being egalitarian but for demanding benevolent sexism and decrying anything less than that as hatred of women.

    I'm glad we cleared that up. Now we know that there are almost no "SJW"s[sic] in the world, and that the accusation is almost guaranteed to be raw pejorative without even being associated with any actual group of people.

  308. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    If you asked everyone I know if I was a horrible person, I'm sure at least a few would say yes. Now, when the others are ignored, and the ones that say I'm horrible are the only ones published, how does that add to the discussion?

  309. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Triklyn · · Score: 1

    i'm fairly confident if you asked everyone i know if i'm a horrible person, you'd get very few people to say that I am. and you'd get even fewer to agree to ruining my life for it.

    how does it add to the discussion to call the guy an outright liar? Ms. Quinn hasn't even bothered to deny many of his allegations. :) when one side says they are speaking the truth, and the other side says "no comment" you get suspicious too. and when other people come out and say, that seems like something she'd do, you remain suspicious. the reviewer she slept with, Mr. gray or whatnot. his defense was that he didn't give her a positive review for sleeping with him.

    you're telling me that not only was the ex lying. that even the people he was lying about are now lying on his behalf?

  310. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by SillyHamster · · Score: 1

    You've already projected the SJW identity onto them. I don't see how you can label a group and then claim it's not an identity.

    By this standard, any label is a "projection".

    But if I label the group of people who steal property, "thieves", is this mere projection? Have the actions not fulfilled the very definition of "thief"?

    This is your personal definition of SJW, it is not the same as the others I have been given, so it does appear that you are projecting your own personal beliefs about what is wrong onto this group and then dismissing their role in "civil society" based on what you think they have done. It seems like you're doing exactly what I said you would be doing.

    Are there or are there not a group of people who go around using "misogyny", "sexist", "racist", and other charged adjectives to police public behavior? Are those words related to the concept of "Social Justice", or not? Labeling the people who fight for "Social Justice", Social Justice Warriors, seems quite apt. If you don't like the label, what would you replace it with?

    Or do you wish to say that no word is allowed to label the group, since it's all "personal definitions" and "projections"?

    You're welcome to come up with a better label - but in the meantime many people have settled for "SJW". Change the name to anything else, people will still hate the group, because they hate the actions of the group, not the label of the group.

  311. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    how does it add to the discussion to call the guy an outright liar?

    One of the two is. And he's the one that started it.

    At best, he tried to ruin someone's life without proof (or even any evidence at all). That makes him more horrible than Quinn was made out to be.

  312. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    Yet, like all SJWs, you feel compelled to do so anyway.

  313. Re:But let's remember by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    No, her position is not that others shouldn't speak. Her position is that certain speech is sexist, and she is calling it out.

    The response against her is to rally around this idea that she shouldn't speak at all; that her being critical of sexist gamers somehow deprives them of... something or other, they rarely actually finish that idea, and when they do it is insane crazy stuff. What is clear is that members of this group illegally threaten and harass her with the clear and explicit intent of silencing her speech, because they disagree with it.

    They could, instead, make response videos and simply counter her speech with their own speech. But then, without being horrified by the crimes, most of wouldn't ever know or care what their response is.

    I personally am offended by sexism in games because it leaves very little for a more enlightened, worldly male gamer to identify with. I want realistic, high quality female characters in the games I play... because I am actually fond of real women!

    I mean, jeeze, shave your neck and realize there is a difference between criticizing you, and oppressing you. Speech is only oppression when it is threatening.

  314. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Triklyn · · Score: 1

    what constitutes proof? he has about as much proof as it's possible to give in an online dealio. he had screen grabs. chat logs. facebook posts. photos that he knew her... etc.

    how would you prove something like this if it happened to you? how would you prove you were telling the truth other than what he did?

    really really at best. he was telling the truth.

    if it's the truth, it's not slander, it's not libel. if he was lying about it all, she's at her liberty to sue him for libel. But that isn't what's happening is it? defamation of character is pretty damning, and I'm sure if this were my life, i'd sue someone's pants off if they accused me of sleeping with game reviewers for favorable coverage. The Ex is not anonymous. He put his fucking name on there and everything. They know where he lives, she'd win a libel/slander lawsuit hands down... if he was lying.

    it'd be really simple to shut him up... if he were lying. ... and he started it? depends on what you mean by started. he's the one to go public... but if he's telling the truth, she's been emotionally abusing him for months... so yes, if he's telling the truth, you'd be accusing a victim that was coming clean about their abuser of "starting it." I think that's literally what they call blaming the victim.

  315. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    Do you call guys "honey"? If you do and you're not gay, then congratulations on pushing gender norm boundaries!

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  316. Re:But let's remember by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    They are not as upfront and blunt about their opinions [...]

    If there's one thing that third wave feminists can't possibly be accused of, it's holding back.

    [...] instead going with "assume guilty" concept of privilege, dubious historical revisionism of patriarchy, and shifting goalposts of constant redefining of sexual assault to include almost any heterosexual activity, including consensual drunken marital sex.

    So you don't actually understand it then. That's fine; there's no shame in ignorance.

    But let me give you a free clue. To critically analyse an argument, the first thing you need to do is understand it, and the very first lecture in any university level critical thinking class covers the fundamental piece of methodology without which you are not thinking critically: the principle of charity. Learn this, and you've taken the first step towards reason.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  317. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by tbannist · · Score: 1

    But if I label the group of people who steal property, "thieves", is this mere projection? Have the actions not fulfilled the very definition of "thief"?

    Is "thief" an identity? I say you're projecting an identity on a group of people you label as SJWs because I don't know if the group you think exists actually exists in any cohesive manner. Also, it's a bit like "racists" or "misogynists", most of the people you would put in the group probably wouldn't think they belong there. Often, I suspect the term is used to identify "people who have called me racist or sexist". I also suspect that more often than not the person has been called on their attitude multiple times and believes that since it's happened so often, the person choose to believe that there must be a conspiracy to silence them, rather than accepting that their beliefs or attitude is genuinely disliked for valid reasons by the people around them.

    Are there or are there not a group of people who go around using "misogyny", "sexist", "racist", and other charged adjectives to police public behavior?

    As far as I know there is not. There are people who use the terms too freely, but as far as I know, they are not part of any organised effort to police public behaviour.

    Labeling the people who fight for "Social Justice", Social Justice Warriors, seems quite apt. Change the name to anything else, people will still hate the group, because they hate the actions of the group, not the label of the group.

    I'm not arguing that the term needs to be changed. After all, what would be the point? I'm saying it is already effectively meaningless, much the way conservative talking heads have made liberal and progressive meaningless by ascribing it to virtually everything they don't like.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  318. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by SillyHamster · · Score: 1

    I say you're projecting an identity on a group of people you label as SJWs because I don't know if the group you think exists actually exists in any cohesive manner. Also, it's a bit like "racists" or "misogynists", most of the people you would put in the group probably wouldn't think they belong there. Often, I suspect the term is used to identify "people who have called me racist or sexist".

    You don't know if the people exist. I do know they exist - I've observed them and identified them by their actions.

    You can dismiss the label all you want - people use words to describe the world as they see it. Your inability to adopt a different perspective does not make that perspective wrong or nonexistent.

    As far as I know there is not. There are people who use the terms too freely, but as far as I know, they are not part of any organised effort to police public behaviour.

    Organized effort is not part of the definition. Irrelevant objection. Is there a concept of "Social Justice"? Yes/No. Are there people who fight for that concept of Social Justice? Yes/No. An individual fighting for Social Justice is a Social Justice Warrior. He doesn't have to be part of a group to be an SJW. Whether all SJWs are perfectly agreed on every ideological point is also irrelevant. There's a general trend that can be described.

    Recently, a scientist was called out for being sexist because he wore a shirt covered with sexually dressed women. Regardless of whether you think that is a good/bad thing - there was action by a group of people to police his behavior, and an effect where he publicly apologized for wearing the shirt.

    The people who think that calling for an apology on sexism is more important than landing a spaceship on a comet are most definitely SJWs by action and belief - they value Social Justice over scientific achievement, and they act accordingly.

    I'm not arguing that the term needs to be changed. After all, what would be the point? I'm saying it is already effectively meaningless, much the way conservative talking heads have made liberal and progressive meaningless by ascribing it to virtually everything they don't like.

    Liberal and progressive are not meaningless labels - do you think "conservative talking head" is a meaningless label? Why would you use that term at all if you think liberal/progressive have become meaningless labels? Only conservative talking heads have preserved meaning?

    You yourself criticize groups for being "called on attitude" and "believing ... conspiracy". You certainly believe that groups worth criticizing exist - just not the ones you don't criticize. Why the bias?

  319. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by tbannist · · Score: 1

    Organized effort is not part of the definition. Irrelevant objection. Is there a concept of "Social Justice"? Yes/No. Are there people who fight for that concept of Social Justice? Yes/No. An individual fighting for Social Justice is a Social Justice Warrior. He doesn't have to be part of a group to be an SJW. Whether all SJWs are perfectly agreed on every ideological point is also irrelevant. There's a general trend that can be described.

    You just changed the definition of Social Justice Warrior (SJW). This is different from the definition you previously gave me, which is exactly my point: SJW is a label applied to people with a different political alignment than you and you project whatever flaws are convenient to make you right and them wrong onto them. It's too bad you aren't self-aware enough to see that you're doing it while you protest that you are not.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  320. Re:THIS is the kind of thing that GamerGate is abo by SillyHamster · · Score: 1

    You just changed the definition of Social Justice Warrior (SJW).

    I have not. I previously said people who do X are SJW. I did not say that all SJW do X. There is no contradiction between what I said earlier and now, and there has been no change in definition because the previous statement was not a definition at all.

    I see you have also completely ignored all of my questions in favor of incompetently criticizing a single point as a "gotcha!". Answer the questions.

  321. Re:But let's remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you believe that Bill Crosby raped all those women when there's only their testimony about it? There is plenty of testimony that ZQ is an abusive person, not just from her abused ex.

  322. Cheap here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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