Hi, everybody! Sorry for the rant! I'm Cross-Posting this from my other account on Beehaw, because I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this. I don't see much discussion about this and I'm really curious if maybe I'm viewing this all wrong.
I'm just posting this as a combination of question and vent. Does anyone else here feel frustrated by the current ethical dilemmas of purchasing games from certain companies? My partner is very tuned into the various ethical mishaps happening in the world and keeps me apprised of which companies are doing shitty stuff and which people/companies I should stop supporting. This is important to remember, but it is also frustrating to see how many companies out there are doing bad things.
This is a very "first world problem," but it's frustrating just how many games out there look cool, but I can't play them because it'd be giving those companies/people money. The biggest examples are Activision Blizzard, J.K. Rowling, and Wizards of the Coast. I think Baldurs Gate 3, for example, looks so awesome, but I don't feel comfortable playing it because my partner has alerted me that some of that money would go to Wizards. I feel somewhat frustrated that the discussion around these issues has evaporated when the games are released; it's as though people stopped caring about the bad things these companies/people did. To be entirely honest, I'm not sure if I myself would be able to keep myself accountable if my partner doesn't remind me of it; I think I may have bought the games like everyone else because of how fun they look, and how much they remind me of games I grew up on.
On a similar note, as my partner is working on becoming a game developer, he follows the state of game development and tells me about it, which seems bleak. I mourn the old studios that I used to have a lot of enjoyment for, like BioWare and the others that EA ate up.
Thanks for reading all of this. :) I wish things were more hopeful, I suppose. My partner urges me to support indie developers, so I'm trying to move in that direction. Does anyone have any recommendations on staying hopeful, given the current state of entertainment?
TL;DR: I'm frustrated by the current largely-unethical state of the games industry and want to know how I can regain some hope about it.
Piracy.
Haha, this is a fair response. I'm considering it for the companies that make me feel more icky, but whose games seem really fun.
I'd just like to share my perspective on the piracy front, please don't pirate things and then act like you're doing justice. Just pirate things to pirate them. Or I mean, do whatever you want, I just personally find it tiresome seeing people acting like a messiah because they pirated a AAA game.
Oh, of course. I don't think I'm doing some major thing by pirating a game, I promise. Though, to be entirely honest, there are so many games out there and so little time to play them all, I might as well just focus on the games that don't make me feel dirty.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone view themselves as a morale better because they pirated a game, rather they just either couldn't afford it or didn't want to pay a company they didn't agree with.
It was definitely something I saw a lot on Reddit's piracy, largely due to it's larger userbase and laxed memepost rules. I suppose it's partly on me for taking it too seriously, but it definitely seemed like something people actually believed.
I was scrolling through everyones incredibly true facts about consuming most things under capitalism is probably unethical, pretty much everything is sourced unethically, and thinking there's no solution here to this problem
Then I read this and went, "Oh yeah, i forgot about that", unlike most stuff we consume you can actually just pirate this and then tada, you've resolved your pocket lining issue.