
The problem of game developers receiving abusive messages - guildwriter
https://medium.com/@morganjaffit/the-cost-of-doing-business-c09cc5cc8728
======
user68858788
Up until about five years ago, I've only ever wanted to create and share video
games. After a couple years doing it independently and getting my first
professional game job, gamer gate happened. It's absolutely terrifying to see
the lengths at which people will go to make someone's life a living hell.
Every industry friend was affected, and reacted mostly by reducing their
online presence, and I've done the same. Some were targeted personally. A few
left the industry.

It's hard to want to make games now. The best feeling in the world was
watching someone on YouTube play something I'd made. It's different now. Part
of it is fear of being targeted, but it's also made me think of why I would
put so much effort into something that attracts so much vitriol. I know it's a
minority of people, but games take months of hard work to create and these
thoughts take a toll over time, especially on bad days.

The more personality a person puts into their game, the more they risk being
targeted. It's depressing to have to hide self expression, reduce social media
presence, and use pseudonyms when all I really want is to make games for
others to have fun with.

~~~
ManuelKiessling
As someone who heard and read about Gamer Gate, but not more, I'm genuinely
curious: What exactly is it that GG did to people working in the industry? My
understanding was that the two parties having a fight were female developers
and game reviewers on one side and a horde of "young angry white males" on the
other (at least if you simplify the whole thing enough).

And from this I understood that it was mostly the life of these females that
was made a living hell. So, are you one of those female game developers, or
did the mob turn against everyone creating games, regardless of gender?

I hope this doesn't come across stupid - it's just that it seems to be an
extremely complex topic and I just want to understand it a bit more.

~~~
falcolas
Going by memory here, since most of the search results about the topic are
very... polarized.

The genesis of the problem, as with so many problems, is that two people were
in a short term sexual relationship. The issue with that is the woman made
video games, and the man reviewed video games. His review of her video game
"Depression Quest" was glowing - a sentiment most people who played the game
didn't feel was warranted. The relationship was uncovered, accusations started
flying, and a mob was formed on both sides. Those mobs proceeded to do what
mobs do - attack each other.

The biggest impact I saw was that people in the industry were not allowed to
be neutral, so they just didn't comment. Why interact with the crowd when
you're just going to be pilloried in a highly visible fashion by one side or
the other?

~~~
jdlshore
GamerGate was orchestrated by misogynistic racists on 4chan's /pol/ board.
They used "ethics in journalism" as a deliberate excuse to rile people up, and
tricked a large crowd of gamers into buying that excuse and thus providing
them with cover and additional power. Ultimately it was a disgusting and
successful attack against women and people of color.

By repeating the excuse (that it was about a game review, when in fact it was
an orchestrated attack, and the supposed review _does not exist_ ), you're
perpetuating a mistake (providing cover to a small group of misogynistic
racists) that caused a lot of harm. I doubt you did this intentionally, so I
suggest you do some more research.

There is a fantastic YouTube series that goes into detail, including
investigating the public record of the people behind GamerGate, here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ)

If you can't watch the whole thing (although it's worth it), this part goes
into the origins of GamerGate:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TrKkkVEhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TrKkkVEhs)
.

~~~
falcolas
Hmm. Seems you're correct regarding the review. I must have mistaken the Giant
bomb review I read for it. The journalistic impropriety did not include a
review, just positive press.

Whomever stirred the pot, honestly, doesn't matter in this context. In the
end, both sides used the mobs to their own ends. Both sides were contemptible
in the end. It wasn't the mysogynists who attacked Total Biscuit (not to
mention his wife and children) over his commentary about the journalistic
impropriety angle, who sent him death threats.

~~~
jdlshore
Your response here bothered me, and it took me a while to figure out why.
Ultimately, I think it's the false equivalency ("both 'sides' did terrible
things, so they're both equally at fault") and the lack of regret for your
mistake.

If you don't see the problem here, I don't think I can convince you otherwise,
but I couldn't let this stand unchallenged. It is _not okay_ to blow off a
deliberate, well-planned, devastating attack against women and minorities. You
spread misinformation that benefited the attackers. That was an understandable
mistake. But then you doubled down on that mistake. The original mistake is
understandable. The doubling down is not.

People suffered real harm as a result of this. We all have a responsibility as
caring humans to do our part to prevent it from happening again. I'm not
asking you to go out and volunteer, or send money, or anything hard. Just
don't spread misinformation, and don't engage in false equivalencies that
benefit aggressors.

------
swivelmaster
I had a long phone conversation recently with a game industry friend who had
the misfortune of being involved in multiple games that became targets of
abuse. I had asked him for advice about potentially making some youtube videos
about game design, including f2p game design (which I have substantial
expertise in).

He warned me that depending on the approach, even implying that I thought
certain types of games or monetization weren't the worst thing since cancer
could result in hate mail, doxxing, death threats to myself and my family,
etc. He had been through that experience and wanted to warn me against it.

Despite being involved in some very popular f2p mobile games, the worst abuse
I've had was someone sending me a DM on Reddit saying I should get cancer.

I don't really know what, if any, the solution here is. I've been able to
ignore the worst of what I've taken because it's been pretty mild compared to
what's possible. It makes me wonder - if I were the public face of a game that
really, really pissed off the trolls, would I be able to emotionally handle
the result? I have no idea and I don't want to find out.

~~~
arkh
You just need to not give a fuck. It works for online interaction and it sure
work for other parts of life. Care about what you can influence, don't about
things you have no control over.

Someone cut in front of you in traffic: good for them. Someone insults you:
heh, must be their own insecurities showing.

I think the only threshold for online interaction would be people threatening
violence against you. If they do, file a police report then don't sweat it
anymore.

Learn to not care about things and you'll endure a lot less stress. Then your
life will feel a lot better.

~~~
tremon
Apathy is not a healthy approach to life in general. Forcing yourself to feel
"meh" about things you really did enjoy once is soul-crushing in itself.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I don't think @arkh is suggesting apathy, quite the opposite in fact. Enjoy
your art and don't give the naysayers a second thought.

~~~
arkh
This. Try to see the good parts of things.

Someone is cursing you about your work? First, that's just words on a screen
so you can close it to not see it. Two, this person bought your production so
hey! your bank account feels better. And last you got a vivid reaction out of
someone: isn't creating games and art goal to make people feel something?
Sometime it is negative but I think the best works are those who you either
love or hate. Not the bland ones.

Seeing some good in most things is not an easy mindset to get to. But you can
start by doing it as a joke until it can become natural. "Another rainy day"
-> Temperature are 0°C and it's good for the plants so let's enjoy those
facts. I totaled my car -> I have an excuse to ask a ride-share with some
colleagues I fancy until I get a new one.

------
cannonedhamster
This sounds like a lot of industries I've worked in, most of which involve IT.
I'm sort of amazed how many people think it's okay to hurl abuse at other
people in general. Don't like a completely voluntary video game? Don't buy the
next one and stop playing the game. Maybe submit some feedback on what is
causing you not to continue playing and move on. I'm both a child and a parent
and while there were a few years where I was will of spit and vinegar and
mouth off at other people, I've never felt it okay to send the types of
comments that some people think are acceptable (I've looked in case my memory
was rose-colored).

What amazes me more are the people who bring this attitude into the real
world. I've had my job threatened, co-workers physically threatened (I'm
apparently somewhat imposing so I don't get physical threats often), screamed
at, had someone shoot a nail gun at me...It never ceases to amaze me how
people can have so little respect for themselves or others. Kindness literally
costs you nothing, and yet it can often be so hard to find.

------
forapurpose
The mistake is to take the users' comments at face value, IMHO. They are not
that upset about a game; something else in their lives is painful for them and
they are taking it out on you. They are unable to deal with their emotions
otherwise. That perspective can help in a couple of ways:

First, you know it has nothing to do with you or your game; you are just an
object, a mental construction, at which they unload their anger; they might as
well be talking to the pin-up poster on their wall (or to the pixels which
form an enemy on their screen). Second, if you realize these are troubled
people who feel powerless; if you have some empathy for them; they lose their
power over how you feel. Here's a recent story about the comedian Sarah
Silverman taking that approach and going a step further, with amazing results:

[http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/blog/sarah-silverman-s-response-
to...](http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/blog/sarah-silverman-s-response-to-a-twitter-
troll-is-a-master-class-in-compassion-1.4471337)

Also, it may be important to ask why so many young males (if that's the
demographic) have such emotional problems, why so many can't process their
emotions effectively and feel so vulnerable. I think we sort of take it for
granted that young males (and to a degree, all males) can't process emotions
and act out, but I think that's a mistake.

~~~
Terr_
I also wouldn't be surprised if there's a default positive correlation between
angry or confrontational gamers (writing abuse or not) and games designed
around having "stab your enemy in the face" as part of their marketing and
gameplay loop.

That said, the article contains some other examples (like Terraria) which
don't fit that mold.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I got a glimpse of this working on my open source Minecraft clone, and it's at
least half of the reason that game is sitting on the backburner. Gamers can be
a pretty entitled group.

I also see this in the rest of my open source work, to a lesser extent. On the
whole I probably get slightly fewer "fuck you"s than I get "thank you"s.

~~~
camus2
> Gamers can be a pretty entitled group.

Just like sport fans, moviegoers, fooding enthusiasts or people who buy books.
In every circle you'll have a tiny loud minority who behaves like crap, it has
nothing to do with gaming. You'd think people who buy books have a better
education and behavior? People like J. K. Rowling or Stephen King have had
plenty of stalkers and death threats, King wrote plenty of books about on
subject.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
In my experience gamers are a clear outlier.

~~~
camus2
Compared to what? violent hooligans in football?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Other online communities. I haven't really met any violent holligans in
football so I can't compare to that.

~~~
camus2
Because you think hooligans aren't being mean and hateful online as well?
let's not even talk about political circles which have nothing to do with
gaming. You are talking from you experience standpoint but you're wrong, there
is way worse than gaming communities.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
A sample can be simultaneously greater than the mean and less than the
maximum.

------
sixtypoundhound
This.

Seriously, I run a bunch of FREE websites and I'm amazed by the stuff that
shows up in my inbox. When did it become ok to harass someone running a FREE
website?

If you don't like it, hit the frigging back button. And get a life.

~~~
vtange
This reminds me of an article I read a long while back (I don't remember the
title..) that basically argued that by lowering the barrier of entry to your
content, be it a game, app, etc., you make it such that others have nothing to
lose for slinging mud. IIRC the same article did a study on online free-to-
play and subscription games and noticed that games with higher barrier of
entry, be it with price or even a lottery system, tend to see more civility in
their communities, since people have something to lose if they are banned.

It would be great if someone could link that article in or something.

------
Cafey
"I want [something] and I want it now."

This is what I hear from reading most of those angry tweets/comments.

Sadly, sometimes they are simply shouting because the game is not what they
were hyped about. Maybe we are over-hyping games to get pre-orders in? I
remember a time when the first time I heard about a game was when it was
actually on the store shelves (good ol' boxes). Now there are dev-blogs and
the likes years before a game is actually going to release...

~~~
Impossible
The thing is marketing a game does not justify death threats, rape threats,
doxxing or even personal insults. Poor user reviews, not buying a game,
refunds and civil complaints should be enough to signal that a game isn't good
enough. If making a game to the best of your ability, marketing it, and not
quite hitting the bar for a subset of gamers justifies abuse then I'd
recommend developers stop making games. There are better job options that
don't subject people to that level of abuse. If you made abusive comments
toward startup founders because the MVP doesn't live up to the hype of the
landing page on HN you'd get banned or at least heavily downvoted, I don't see
why game developers should tolerate that kind of abuse.

------
keriati1
I guess it's not just game developers, I work with my team in finance sector
on a customer portal and we also get almost similar level of feedback from
some people... But we have millions of users. I like to think that at this
scale we can't avoid to have some of those guys.

~~~
itronitron
I was going to write something insightful but then realized that yeah, people
are just being incredibly rude when they provide feedback in that manner, to
the point that their comments are not useful as feedback.

------
dasil003
This is just an ugly side of humanity that has always been there, but is
magnified by the combination of anonymity, disenfranchisement, and ever more
addicting Skinner-box style entertainment.

We are a tribal species; in the past this type of behavior would be socialized
out of you or else you would be a recluse. You didn't have the opportunity to
sit in your own filth and project your self-loathing onto anyone across the
Internet.

As a species we're just not emotionally equipped to deal with the current
reality.

~~~
InclinedPlane
That's a cop-out. This isn't genetic, this isn't universal, this is a cultural
trend.

~~~
dasil003
A cop-out? No, it's an explanation. How are you going to reverse the trend?
First you have to understand the underlying factors. It's incredibly naive to
think this type of impulse never existed before just because it's permanently
recorded and visible for the first time.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Humans aren't feral, their patterns of behavior are dictated by culture,
education, etc, regardless of "impulses". People may have impulses to hurt or
steal from others, but those impulses can be controlled and the impacts of
those impulses can be diminished on society. Socio-cultural norms and
education teach people that there are other ways to get what you want than
theft, for example, and provide strong discouragement against engaging in such
"anti-social" behavior. On top of that there are legal proscriptions against
such behavior. All of this adds together to massively reduce the level of
murder, rape, and theft in civilized humans vs. hypothetical feral human
populations.

And the same dynamics can occur with individuals hurling abuse online. Those
individuals could experience consequences for their actions (from twitter,
valve, potentially the criminal justice system in some cases, etc.) from
institutions as well as from society as a whole. Telling a game developer "I
will rape you!" should be an action that dramatically curtails the
perpetrators career options and results in losing friends, but today it
doesn't.

Sure, people hold dark impulses inside them routinely, everyone understands
that. That doesn't mean they are uncontrollable. This is a recent phenomenon,
which itself is proof enough that it is not due to some uncontrollable
universal urge.

~~~
percival_krusen
How do you hold people accountable without compromising anonymity, though? And
if you compromise anonymity, how do you avoid a chilling effect on those who
depend on it for e.g., political activism? Seems like a dilemma to me.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Anonymity isn't an issue for some of these things.

For example, when you're interacting in a customer service context on, say,
steam, you are not anonymous. Valve can change its TOU to make it so that you
forfeit all claims to redress if you use abuse during a customer service
interaction, and can further scale that up to include additional consequences
(banning you from participation in certain ways or from certain benefits).

Additionally, "in band" consequences don't have to compromise anonymity. On
twitter or facebook, for example, you can have abuse reports that are verified
result in different levels of account restriction. You can make it so that the
account's posts are no longer visible in other people's timelines as replies,
for example (e.g. they are only visible to people who specifically follow that
user or when specific posts are linked to directly). You can restrict accounts
in other ways and even block access to accounts for short periods of time. Or
you can ban people forever. All of these techniques have been used for years
and years to prevent abusive behavior, the only reason they haven't been used
effectively against this particular sort of abuse is because of apathy on the
part of most platform owners, but that can change easily.

------
auggierose
Well, try to publish an academic paper, and prepare for abuse in the form of
reviews. At some point you need to learn to just shrug it off and focus on
your work. Same is true for making games, I guess.

~~~
DanBC
Do reviews of academic papers typically come in the form of "Hello, FUCK YOU -
people do not read this SJW paper, it is retarded and a piece of crap"?

~~~
auggierose
Different words are used, but the meaning is sometimes the same

~~~
jstewartmobile
" _Hello, FUCK YOU_ " would be an _improvement_ over some of the the passive-
aggressive backstabbing I've seen.

It's like, at least you'd know...

------
guelo
What we need is to take a page from Uber and have user-side ratings along with
the producer-side ratings. A forum like steam could let producers or peers
downvote gamers and then producers could choose to not sell games to people
whose ratings are too low.

~~~
jdiaz5513
Something tells me there may be an inherent danger to isolating these people
further.

You may be on to something, but perhaps restricting sales is not the best use
of user-ratings.

I've often wondered if weighing a producer-side rating against the user-side
rating could work (e.g. a user with a low rating can give a 1 star review yet
have little effect on the game rating).

------
xg15
Slight aside, but:

> _Would you sign up for a job where you get screamed at all day, every day?
> Why would you go through that, when there are a million other fields where
> that doesn’t happen?_

The amount of customer service rep/call center jobs we have answers this with
a "Yes", I think.

(Not taking into account the reasons people sign up for those jobs though.
Probably not because it's their passion...)

~~~
finnthehuman
When I was younger there was a popular line of thinking that the typical
highschool job in customer service was where people learned to grow up into
the kind of people that wouldn't yell at customer service. It sounded like the
kind of thing that could be true, but was certainly the kind of thing you want
to be true if you have one of those jobs. I've recently been thinking it has
merit.

-Having someone directly in my face yelling at me over a couple of dollars made it a practical necessity to cultivate in myself an industrial-strength version of "you can't control other people, you can only control how you react to them." And that includes calibrating your level of fear to the actual level of risk. Even if all you are is a wimpy teen somehow made shift lead, ya gotta look a scary motherfucker in the eyes and tell them "No," when the only thing you've got to defend yourself is "Get out or we're calling the cops."

-My sense of how to treat others is based on concepts of shared humanity. When someone is screaming at you, there ain't time or good reason to try and empathize with them. But you can't stoop to their level, either. So peg a bare minimum for behavior as a personal standard, and then try to live up to the standard. -- Consequently, I don't understand the trendy ideas on empathizing that posit I have to cultivate a personal connection before I can determine "oh yeah, it turns out I shouldn't be a prick to this person, either."

------
cageface
I'm sure this is worse for game devs but I think it affects anybody that
creates customer-facing apps. The culture of rudeness and entitlement among
customers today is very deep rooted. It's one of several reasons why it's
smarter to build B2B businesses.

------
arkh
> Abuse is the cost of doing business.

Reading the article, that's the guy behind Firewatch. I think the problem is
not his games but his social media use. I'd wager most of this abuse he
received was after he DMCAed pewdiepie after pdp used the word nigga while
playing. People don't like devs who have a "stream our game all you want it's
free publicity for us" message when launching it and use spurious DMCA claims
on people they don't like.

Maybe the problem are people who decided to make the video game industry woke
and all about US centric politics. Or maybe the huge difference between the
author and his father is "social" media and giving a damn about what is
written there.

------
davidbanham
I left the industry because of the entitled behaviour of the community.

------
jancsika
Do all game devs experience similar types of abuse, or only the devs of games
with environments in which the developer's company is attempting to monetize
the player as they move through the game?

For example-- there is some beautiful sidescroller game I've seen where the
animation looks like old-school Fleischer studio cartoons. Do devs of games
like that get abuse from players, too?

~~~
justinpombrio
Yes - look at the tweets in the article. I've played Don't Starve Together and
Terraria, and neither of them have any in-game monetization. Those are also
both family-friendly games. Don't Starve has a cartoony art style, too.

I can't speak for the other games. Strangely, the tweets don't either. They're
not like "I am angry about this particular feature", they're like <word salad
of swear words>.

~~~
Mithaldu
Terraria (178k followers) and Don't Starve (63k followers) get this stuff
because they have the kind of playerbase size that makes people feel like the
devs won't ever see their message anyhow. They tried to ask for stuff, or saw
others try and didn't even see evidence that the devs saw the question. So
they figure it's fine to just yell at the ocean.

------
Viliam1234
Seems like most of the abuse could be avoided by leaving Twitter.

------
abiox
i suppose a couple questions might cause some people to infer otherwise, so to
be clear: it's not implying the behavior is "fine" or shouldn't be critically
analysed.

ok. so, things like online death threats and other such things get talked
about a lot, and i have two main questions:

a) what kind of conversion rate is there - that is, threats being acted upon
(how many threats vs how many events)?

b) has there been any analysis that shows these threats are credible and
should be considered as demonstrating legitimate danger?

(again, this isn't to meant to excuse such behavior.)

my question stems from the fact that there is a rather long standing "internet
gaming culture" which provides a context for hyperbolic aggressive commentary
and interpersonal behavior, that some people may not be familiar with. for
example, for as long as i can remember (i started with quake 3 over modem) to
lose a match was to 'get raped'. to go on a win streak was to be 'fucking
raping everyone'.

my thinking is that the vast, overwhelming majority of 'death threats' are
hyperbolic and aggressive, but also utterly throwaway comments void of danger.
as a consequence, talking about real world fear and even actions (like moving
house) doesn't really garner a sympathetic reaction from many in the internet
gaming culture, because it (from their perspective) demonstrates either
significant naivete and ignorance, or some kind of intellectual dishonesty
(given the idea that the threats do not represent an actual danger).

------
ohiovr
I have followed dreams that became unsatisfying. But I can tell you life can
survive a dream. And enjoying life doesn't have to be difficult. I did do some
indie game work but because of my own incompetence I could not make sense of
the business. Fortunately I have gathered skills which had value elsewhere.
And you can always have the satisfaction of knowing what the dream really was
all about. Sadly most of us never even try.

------
Gatsky
Isn't this just overstimulated people having their gratification loop
interrupted? I guess gamers are more likely to be this way. Even the ones that
aren't so shrill seem to enjoy watching others act it out for them on twitch.

------
DoreenMichele
I can't help but wonder how much this is rooted in general distress out in the
world. If you feel you can't control your life at all and a game is your
escape, controlling that can take on an excess of importance.

------
rhcom2
Four years after Gamergate, how can this be news to anyone?

------
arkades
I don’t understand what forces devs to participate directly in this public
discourse. Barring those so small they can’t hire someone to run interference,
why precisely are you publicly interacting with your customers?

Anyone who works with the mass public, be they cashiers or physicians, knows
damn well that the Public is terrible. Don’t give them a hotline into your
head.

~~~
Pfhreak
Games have credits. Developers have Twitter accounts. Devs are excited about
their work, share what they are working on. The devs are not seeking these
interactions at all.

~~~
arkades
All of my patients know my name. It’s on a badge, with a picture ID and all.
This includes drug seekers, people looking for a suit, a handout, and just a
general smattering of crazy folks. Yet they don’t manage to find my fb, my
Twitter, my LinkedIn.

Part of this is that devs plug deeply into social media, personally and
professionally, and have few (or no) firewalls between the two.

Unless you -have- to be the public face of a product, your professional media
interactions shouldn’t be accessible to the masses. Your private definitely
shouldn’t be. They need to be heavily firewalled. If I can trivially message
the lead dev of my favorite game, he’s done something wrong. If I can reach
him on a private account he can’t just burn or ignore, he’s done a lot wrong.

The internet hosts the majority of people on earth: it’s a very, very long
tail of crazy, poorly socialized, immature, etc. There is no changing that if
you are accessible to seven billion people, some tiny percent of that will
amount to an overwhelming amount of shit.

The answer is jealously guarding your privacy and communications channels,
which isn’t something I’ve seen in these discussions.

Im not trying to victim blame here. I just don’t see as fruitful lamenting
something that boils down to “dealing with the public en masse sucks.” It
does, and it will:

~~~
Pfhreak
Think about scale. A good indie game might have hundreds of thousands or
millions of players. Is that the same order of magnitude of patients you see?

~~~
arkades
No, of course it isn’t.

But then, I’m pseudonymous or anonymous everywhere, and do my level best to
keep my pseudonyms unrelated to one another across multiple platforms.

As opposed to letting my patients trivially connect my real name to my various
social media channels.

~~~
vvanders
> No, of course it isn’t.

Then maybe it's time to put down the keyboard and listen to the experiences of
the people who have found some level of success.

When you've shipped a title that's moderately successful you're more then
welcome to come back here and tell us how were doing it all wrong. Until then
I find it hard to listen to the advice of someone who can't empathize with
what is happening here.

~~~
burger_moon
Comments like this are equivalent to saying you cannot criticize a football
players performance because you've never won a championship. It's illogical on
many levels.

------
Uhhrrr
This is just something that happens when you put something out into the world.
I had a project I worked on reviewed by a major newspaper as, "At best
obscure, at worst ridiculous." That (temporarily) stung worse than "CUNT CUNT
CUNT CUNT" ever would.

~~~
pavlov
The difference is that the newspaper doesn't actively send you their review
hundreds of times per hour, or try to discover your personal information and
intimidate you with insinuations of what they could do to you directly.

------
jnordwick
Yawn. A lot of professions deal with this. I work in high frequency trading,
and i get told I'm the Devil by people multiple times a week including major
publications. But i love what i do and nobodys unintelligent abuse is going to
change that.

~~~
IronKettle
You get told to "hang yourself" and told you should "die screaming" or just
have someone yelling "cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt" at you multiple times a week?

I used to work for a hedge fund. Mostly people just didn't understand it and
were skeptical, but phrased it in a way that gave me an out: "I don't
understand how it provides any value to society," or things like that. Nobody
ever harassed me online with just "cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt".

------
debacle
> The big issue here is that when you speak to players (and I have, a lot), a
> large number of them would agree with this statement “There are times when
> it’s reasonable to send personal abuse to a developer,” although they differ
> on when those times are.

Seems disingenuous. Without qualifying what those times are, it's logical that
almost anyone would agree with that sentiment on some level. Did the developer
take a drug-fueled sex tourism jaunt with your Kickstarter donation? Yeah that
person probably deserves a little abuse.

> And what will happen when the best established developers and most talented
> up-and-comers decide that it’s not?

I think that gaming is probably the last industry that will suffer from
something like this. There's always going to be a glut of people that want to
work on games/in gaming.

I don't think this editorial really _says_ anything. Some people on the
Internet are loud assholes. Game developers put themselves on the Internet.
Ergo, some people on the Internet are going to be loud assholes to game
developers.

You can find someone complaining about anything:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23applesucks&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23applesucks&src=typd)

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nycsucks&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nycsucks&src=typd)

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23berniesucks&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23berniesucks&src=typd)

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23catssuck&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23catssuck&src=typd)

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23rainbowssuck&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23rainbowssuck&src=typd)

This has been a problem for decades, and probably ages before that:

[https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

Loud, angry, vocal minorities tend to drown out the majority. If you can't
ignore that, you'll never succeed.

------
djroomba
I've seen a few indie developers actively antagonize so called gamers.

I've seen abusive companies like EA get rightfully called out.

So Im skeptical of the depth of the claims, but I believe there are a few
crazies.

I've ran a few foreign tax information websites, and I got extraordinary death
threats very graphic and very detailed.

I think the internet really allows the mentally ill to scream for the
attention they desperately want.

~~~
swivelmaster
Do you think the type of abuse that EA received was appropriate?

The answer is: Absolutely not. Remember when Mass Effect: Andromeda came out
and the facial animation system was broken? Some enterprising players looked
through the game credits, found a woman they thought was responsible for said
animations, and personally harassed her about it.

If you think this abuse is limited to complaining about loot boxes, you're
wrong; it isn't.

