rjbuffchix: I was considering making my own topic about the game de-listing but this one seems to allow for making points that I haven't seen brought up yet across any of these discussions. Let's first recognize all governments are authoritarian in nature. Yes, even a hypothetical pure direct democracy without any corruption, where everyone's vote is counted fairly (as, the root form of democracy is still, in essence, mob rule and "might makes right"). These systems and political institutions are all based on telling other individuals what to do, backed by force. Call a spade a spade. Additionally, it's curious that if an oppressive regime somewhere uses rhetoric like "the People", most observers from afar can see this does not match reality. Yet they will also be blind to the fact that their own regimes are the same way, with similar rhetoric about the ideals of Democracy and the People's will and Social Contracts and ad nauseum. Do you honestly feel you have a meaningful say in "your" government? Even if you did, would that make it ethically right to force others to bend to your whims? My deep sympathy goes to anyone affected by the rule of tyrannical megalomaniacs...which is all of them. I don't mean to minimize anyone's suffering but to recognize everyone's. Certainly some people suffer to a greater degree, and that is truly horrible, but my point is that the root issue of oppression that people talk about with this game is ultimately not "a matter of degree" but, rather, "a matter of kind."
As a different example not suggested until this topic, GOG takes the various monopoly currencies as payment (current credit system is a function of this). They would've done so for this game too had it not been de-listed. On the surface this is just accepted by people but when you look at it, these are currencies that people are forced to use to exist, from economies that have been politically manipulated resulting in the devastation of livelihoods and lives. And see just how far (not very) the common person goes trying to get around this system, meanwhile "money" is literally invented out of thin air for the preferred. Is that ethical behavior? Does it feel any better for the average people suffering from this, just because the parasite class in their country uses rhetoric to say they were "democratically elected, by the people?" (the same rhetoric used in various regimes that everyone recognizes as oppressive, mind you...no one ever seems to account for this discrepancy). Sadly, I don't think boycotting GOG over the de-listing will do anything towards stopping unethical treatment of people. It is more likely that if you succeed in hurting GOG by not shopping here, we'll just lose the biggest DRM-free store on the market. A better start would just be encouraging peaceful (i.e. non-political) means of problem-solving and intellectual change in the folks you know, neighbors, etc. In the meantime, very sad to say, the oppressed will still be suffering, the censorship will still be occurring, "money" will reign. Good luck finding ethical companies and being able to afford them in the current political systems around the world.
I actually have a practical alternative. You see, I have been mulling over making my own game in the format of Nethack. Now, that's my choice, but i recommend others do something similar to what i'm about to propose. I'm making a game where the only thing you can't do is molest children, because that's the one thing you can't excuse in a game you release to the public domain. Sure, you'll even be able to murder the children, but have intercourse with them. You can have intercourse with plants, slimes, demons, animals, men, women, aliens, have threesomes, foursomes, fivesomes, even commit rape, etc. You can enslave a population, you can commit blasphemy. I will only restrict that one thing, no matter how distasteful i find those other things are to me. The purpose being the ultimate freedom of expression, to explore your own demons when given the opportunity, as well as face (semi)natural consequences for your actions (STDs, dealing with a lynchmob, slave uprisings, pregnancy, etc). I'll also release the source to the public, which will enable those people who want even more freedom than i provide to remove that single if-clause from my code or to even add new features and sins and consequences that I didn't even think of.
More deeply, my suggestion is that people go ahead and make some games in their spare time that they might actually like to play themselves, and release that, source and all (via BSD license or something), on the internet to set a new bar in the market. Say i publish my game annonymously, and someone likes it, and it spreads, and my red-stared, yellow-fured bear mobs offend someone? How will they trace all that back to me? Even if they did, what could they do to me when i just release a game for free instead of charging for it? Kinda like this avatar i found, except alot more fun. It's not like there isn't a market out there for the things we like. Imagine how devastating it would be for the VN market, for example, if someone released a decent quality VN, and it's source, completely free on the internet with as much toxic masculinity as possible. If it was good enough, and long enough, how the hell could the VN market compete with something that's popular for features they're afraid to commit to? And imagine that source were easy enough to understand that people could extrapolate on it and make their own in a similar fashion, and do the same thing. Just don't engage in stuff that's actually illegal (loli in some countries), but instead make the "perfect slave woman" or something (not saying that that would be particularly popular, but assume for a minute it would be). Hasn't minecraft rocked the industry? A bold person, or group of volunteers, who want to change the industry bad enough, if they have enough vision, can totally do it.
kohlrak: I decided to go check, and they clean slated that outside of certain special partners. I can't even find animated videos with no voice acting. I understand that these vexing things have happened, but why could these things not be addressed more carefully? You can't tell me that this option wasn't available for the entire existence of pornhub, but suddenly it just started happening? I don't claim to know what the catalyst was, but I think we know that there's a reason visa and mastercard ddi this instead of the courts. There was plenty of this happening in the past, as I'm aware pornhub has actually deleted constant uploads of the Christchurch shooting. I don't know what happened, but we aren't being told the whole story, here
And, no, i'm not saying this stuff didn't happen, because it actually, certainly did, else they wouldn't've had the capacity to handle the cristchurch videos. The kicker is, the same thing has been going on on youtube, too... And facebook... And twitter... These companies didn't get hit by mastercard and visa.
I think there was an investigative article of the New York Times among others kicking up some dust. Not sure if this could be addressed more carefully. They obviously never gave a damn about wither material was uploaded consensual, so tossing it all (at least all material by unverified accounts) was likely the easiest solution.
Yeah, something similar happened at youtube, and over night the "we can't possibly find and delete it all" suddenly changed. And yes, it was about child porn with youtube. I'm still curious what triggered that one, too. Obviously youtube was better equipped, but it wasn't visa and mastercard that went after youtube, and they certainly weren't given the same grace. You'd think that more grace would be given to pornhub than youtube, given youtube's better equipment to handle it.
