Boycotts don't work either, for that matter.

Dude, the internet just bullied Disney into rehiring Jimmy Kimmel. Do you know how? Boycotting Disney's subscription services, unsubscribbing, and stating that it's because they fired Kimmel.

A for profit corp will absolutely change course if their wallet takes a big enough dent.

If there is enough will, boycott works. It worked to help end the apartheid in South Africa.

The two are not mutually exclusive. For-profit corporations react to, well, changes in profit. It's not about the influence 'trickling down', it's about punishing bad behavior on the part of corporations in the only way that they actually understand - something which other corporations, desperate to please their shareholders, take note of.

Boycotts, performed by a sufficient percentage of the consumer base, do what they are intended to do - adjust corporate behavior. Nothing deeper - but far from pointless. And considering how fucking difficult it is to pass regulations, and how even with a friendly legislature such things take considerable amounts of time and must avoid violating corporate 'rights', boycotts are not a tool to be discarded out-of-hand.

As long as for-profit corporations exist - and they appear to be well-established to continue to do so for the near-future - we must deal with them as they are, not as we wish them to be (ie well-regulated or gone).

I just think it’s myopic and counterproductive that so many people seem to think “vote with your dollar” is the only strategy to consider, especially when they’re working-class and have negligible numbers of dollars to vote with.

It's not the only strategy, but pretending that corporations don't affect society, or that consumers don't affect corporate behavior, is foolishness. Corporations, as a class of entities, vacuum up most wealth in our society, but individual corporations still rely on relatively narrow consumer bases with small individual consumer purchasing power - a chip company that suddenly loses 20% of its sales for a year is in deep shit - with the shareholders if nothing else, and that's what corporations care about. For that matter, one of the few advantages of our ultra-fucked capitalist society in the states is that there are plenty of meaningless choices - there are half a dozen different brands of fucking cereal. It's not about having 'more' or 'less' dollars to vote with - allocating those dollars differently still can send a message - assuming the boycott is widespread and narrowly targeted.

On top of that, this is about a video game, an extraneous expense to begin with.

Which companies PR department wrote this?

Boycotts work when people actually do them rather than just say they will. Gamers are notoriously weak-willed when it comes to boycotts.

Boycotts worked in protesting apartheid South Africa. Boycotts have also had tangible impact on Israel's economy, and given that it seems that internationally, the tides have changed in terms of countries actually recognising the genocide.

You're right that it's more powerful to identify what activists are doing and to join in their efforts, but this isn't an "either/or" kind of problem. I agree that it's not productive if people boycott a thing and go no further — we do need people pushing back in more active ways. However, boycotts can have an impact if enough people do it. Furthermore, I think that boycotts can act as an easily accessible first step towards more active support of a cause, as well as a way of keeping an issue in people's minds.