deleted

Doxxing is not allowed on GoG. And yes, I am a Vampire fan :)

Also Exalted (although I haven't played in years).

All I have to say is that this has simply damaged my will to buy things from GOG. I'm still a big supporter of CDPJR and I'm not giving up on you yet, but if bending the knee to ResetEra types is going to be a trend it will cause me to withdraw entirely in the future.

The apology opened the floodgates. Now people on twitter are mad at GoG for drawing an anime mascot to promote their Japanese games sale. Saying that she is too sexualized or that drawing anime mascots is something evil gamergaters do. People are getting mad at a generic drawing of a woman to promote a sale. This is what apologizing to ResetEra and game journlists does you will never be pure enough for them. It is the main reason why everyone was upset when you apologized.

Polygon apparently just put out another hit piece on men that shows why people don't like them. I think most companies understand that if you actively insult the majority of your target demographic interested in your product, you won't last long. Imagine if I was writing for a website for make-up reviews and kept putting out articles stating: 'Why are women whiny and manipulative?' and then follow it up after the inevitable pushback with 'Why are women so angry? Toxic feminity exposed!' and 'Are makeup companies doing enough to cater to men?', 'Why makeup is sexist against men!' You would fully expect make-up companies to condemn and cut off ties to my website at that point, especially because the people listening to me wouldn't be the ones who are even interested in buying makeup. I'm not sure why insulting your customers is tolerated in gaming circles. Those are the sorts of people filling most game journalist positions these days, if you listen to them you will lose a large percentage of your customers. In fact publicly condemning them would more than likely cause a surge of new business.

On the upside, I like the mascot, it's very good art. I think apologizing for the tweet was a one-off mistake, there's no way an sjw organization would have let that go up.

The best GOG can do is to continuing doing what they do and working to improve their service while paying no attention to the outrage mob until they have learned to act rationally and not like spoiled children, just ignore them.

Their angry rants was amusing the first months but the rants have really worn out it's comedy by now.

Continuing from a different thread on the topic:

All right, hang on a minute. I don't know much about the guy, but from a very cursory examination watching one video of him debating he seems quite rational, and one of the first videos I saw was a hate mob against him pushing him out of a bar. You've made a lot of claims here that need some backing up. I'm not saying he has or hasn't done something, but on the surface it just looks like propaganda against him. I'll need about a week of sifting through everything to determine the truth, but you've given me something to look into.

However there is certainly some evidence of an attack by games journalists against gamers, just a couple of many I can easily find:


https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/the-death-of-the-gamers-and-the-women-who-killed-them/

and:

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php

Quoting this article: "These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had."

It's hard not to take that as an intentional attack on people who play games.

That said, it's also possible from what I've found that those articles may have been written in response to harassment of Anita Sarkeesian. I'm a little iffy on whether that's completely true, it's pretty convenient that all those websites were prepared to post full articles about it all at the same time in less than a day. It wouldn't surprise me if her harassment on Aug 27 wasn't manufactured so that they could attack gamers in general. I mean, I believe that she experienced harassment in a general sense, but the timing of that specifically is suspect.

However if the harassment was true, obviously that's unacceptable, nobody should be harassed or threatened. But why did the journalists not specifically target and denounce the specific harassers and instead focused on gamers in general? I suspect that would have gone over much better with everyone.

It's also a little muddled, because there was also some potential corruption of a games journalist around the same time. Neither side is looking completely innocent.

Clearly the solution so everyone can just move on, gamers stop harassing people and issuing death threats, games journalists stop attacking gamers and calling them mysogonists and using white male as a derogatory term, and it can all be over and we move on to a better future. Frankly this just seems like a common sense thing for both sides to do.

Honestly, I think that people should stop treating an apoligy as a synonim of guilt admission. If I say "sorry, that the world was so curel to you" or "I apologise for any inconvenience schedule change caused" that doesn't mean, that I take responcibility for the whole world or even for something that I had no choice to avoid.

GOGs apology should be treated as an empathetic jesture and nothing more. Scolding an online shop for trying to be polite and even more, exploiting it - that's not how civil people should behave. Also, a "pissing on a grave of Gaming Journalism" IS offensive to game journalist, regardless of it's truthfulness and any reference to any movements.

The GOG-chan, on the other hand is an ordinary masot, no diffferent from Wikipe-chan and others.

Don't listen to Vain, everything is connected to Nazis to him. His post is so completely filled with made up b.s., it isn't even funny. Milo Yiannopoulos is one of various journalists and commentators that weighed in on the "Gamers are Dead"/Gamergate situation and thought there was some validity to the lack of ethics in journalism. Milo took the side of Gamers comparing this situation to a number of other situations where "cultural warriors" were condemning males using the call of "patriarchy". To be perfectly honest, people listened to him because he made sense and seemed to be doing real investigative journalism. Apparently to some, revealing the truth amounts to harassment, if it's counter to their cause. I think anyone paying attention at the time on the side of Gamergate had it in the back of their mind that his support of Gamergate had the additional effect of also promoting his own conservative political agenda. He is well-spoken on the issue, and while his comments make a lot of sense as he was one of the few journalists to do actual research into the issues, most people questioned his real motivations.

As to his fall from fame, it has nothing to do with Nazis at all. These "cultural warriors" did everything they could to attack him because of Breitbart's support for Donald Trump as president and his connection to Steve Bannon. You know, Trump = Nazi because we say so.
But when that didn't work, they dug up some years old interview he made, stretched the context to portray him as a pedophile supporter and the uproar around it caused him to step down. That was his undoing. What he actually said, (and I don't necessarily support the sentiment, but it was his point to make) was that being a gay man in his teens, given how few teenagers are "out" in high school, many of his relationships were with older men by necessity. That these relationships were not necessarily abusive in nature, that he was fully aware of what was transpiring and had a choice and many of these men were good to him back.

Those certainly seem to be words in support for pedophilia especially among gay men and teenagers. But there is nuance there and he was talking about his own personal experience and not necessarily advocating for a law change. But it's a very hot topic. Of course I wouldn't be surprised if some of these same people want James Gunn re-hired because his pedo tweets are "just jokes" and "from the past".

As for the "Gamers are Dead" articles, it's amazing how some people want to portray 8 articles saying basically the same thing published the same day (13 I think in two days) as being a clear conspiracy theory that those journalists colluded. Even with the leaked forum logs where various journalists worked together to suppress the controversy by collectively banning the topic on all of their forums through deletion and censorship. I guess all those articles picked that day and the same topic and often the same words by pure chance...

(1) Somehow, if the Postal 2 devs fight a misplaced cultural crusade with the explicitly enlisted help of nazis, you seem to find that OK. Newsflash: all art is propaganda, and the most overt propaganda is not from a developer who gives you a black homosexual protagonist. It's from reactionary bumblers like the Paradise Lost DLC devs. They get to push their propaganda overtly and you just shrug, regurgitating whataboutism on people's asses. That's bigotry off the charts.

(2) Gamergate was explicitly opposed to letting the free market decide anything. Every game developer who considered social issues in his/her games and made products targeted at anyone besides the male hetero target group of the 1990s industry was branded with the fascist enemy concept "SJW", a traitor to be boycotted, smeared and defunded. Every journalist and critic who wrote about the larger meaning of those games was branded outcast, called no longer a fan of the beloved media that made every single one take up the shit job that they did. Shit pay, stupendous working hours and so much hate from "gamers" in your inbox because you gave a 9 to a game that "objectively deserved" a perfect 10.

You've been in that lunatic Battletech thread, you know how those imbecile arguments go. You can see in this thread who is outraged, and for what reason. Acting like the pious one, however many upvotes your bigotry may garner, doesn't fly. It looks pathetic.

Basic human empathy, a target group outside of the young white male hetero demographic, and time honored storytelling principles is what gamergate was fervently against.

And you folks are just now working on a compendium that explains in all facets WHY that is.

You're parrotting lies and you're making up your own on top.

(a) The articles published on and after August 28th were clearly a reaction to the threats Anita Sarkeesian received the day before. If people pointed at the newspapers from September 12, 2001 and cried "collusion" because they all condemned the poor terrorists, the argument would hold exactly as much water.
(b) The threats Sarkeesian received August 27th, which made her leave her house, made her parents leave theirs, and got the FBI involved, were the result of stochastic terrorism perpetrated from the movement later known as gamergate.
(c) Gamergate was banned as a topic from forums at first because of the organised harassment that formed in those threads (later demonstrated in a 400 page thread on the GOG forums). Even some pro-gamergate forum owners made that choice eventually, because they didn't want to be responsible or even legally liable for the effects of stochastic terrorism.
(d) The conversation from the journalists, mostly freelancers and non-journalists, on the Yiannopoulos-leaked bog-standard mailing list, was a laudable discussion of reporting ethics. The journalists evidently made VERY different choices afterwards, so nothing was "decided" on there anyway.
(e) Hardly any of the journalists on that mailing list were amongst the authors of the 13 articles you mention.
(f) Congratulations: Donald Trump is a fascist liar. You don't even fail to see that, literally no one fails to see that. You just ignore and deny it categorically. And that's how fascist doctrine works. “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” I wish you a good life, man, and I do hope you wake up one day.

When copying quotes from other threads, it's best to remove the numbers from the posts, as they will not be attributed to the correct people (post 20 in this thread comes from a different poster than post 20 in that other locked thread).

Just look at this stupidity. I'm sure the Gamers are Dead article telling developers that they don't need to make gamers for these "shit-wailing hyperconsumers", make them for women instead is all about "free market"? I sure all the called for "this character is sexist, remove it" is pro-free market. I'm sure VG247's boycott of Gog is pro-free market over that tweet.

This post was in a thread I made that was meant to comment specifically on the whole Gamer Gate controversy. So I'm copying it here to provide a jumping off point for people who just started to follow the subject.

ATTENTION!!!
If you just want to stir a shitstorm or just want to troll or be an a$$hole,
regardless of your stance on the subject mater, know that some people really just
want to discus the situation and exchange ideas.
Also, understand that the people at GOG have to think about running a company and
make sure they can pay there staff, so try not to hate on them for a really sticky
situation they stepped into by accident.

INTRO
Not a week ago there was the whole drama of GOG removing a Postal 2 GIF that showed
the Postal Dude pissing on a grave saying "Gaming Journalism, suicide 2014" which was
a reference to the Gamer Gate hashtag movement.

The gaming news site VG24/7 made a news post going all crazy on how GOG supports
Gamer Gate, minority abuse are sexist etc. which, off course they where not, as the
poster seam to not even know that the tombstone was referencing anything.

Honestly, GOG could most likely sew the site for unjustified slander.

This ended whit GOG twitter guy giving an apology and unfortunately confirming to the
narrative that GG was a abusive movement lead by bigots and racists.

"SO WHAT'S YOUR POINT?"
My point or rather goal is to spread some knowledge and educate people on what the
whole GG movement was and how it came to be, as while reading the forum thread
devoted to the twitter drama, I came by time and time again by people spreading lies
and misinformation and doing everything to shut up the people who really wanted to
learn something on the subject or share information.

It is also why i decided to make this thread as the twitter one has derailed a bit
from the main subject.

Some videos on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXV98zLej-A - A dissection of the GOG Postal twitter hullabaloo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot8KyHevwxY&t - that, plus a closer look on the GG event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEMdf8D0lfw - a more in depth video about GG from around the time it started.

"IF GG WASN'T ABOUT HARASSMENT WHY DIDN'T IT'S MEMBERS SAY SOMETHING?"
Because GG had no real members. It was just a hashtag movement that spawned pretty
much by accident. It had no leader, spokesperson or anything like that. Where gaming
journalists had there websites working overtime to spread misinformation and
fabricating "facts" to show how they are the abused and not the abusers.

"IF THE GAMING JOURNALIST WHERE SO BAD WHY DO THEY STILL HAVE THERE JOBS?"
No one took a stand against them. They had the biggest horn and blew it the loudest so
there "truth" was the one that stuck in peoples minds. Just like back in the day
everybody knew that reading comic books will rot your brain and playing D&D makes
you are a satanist.

Heck, not so long ago several gaming journalist like Arthur Chu from the Daily Beast
expressed his joy about the death of John Bain aka TotalBiscut and they experience NO
consequence from this.

Honestly, this reminds me of the Casey Heynes incident. Where a kid defended
himself from a bully and was put under house arrest for fighting back. Only after a
month of news coverage did the school dropped the charge.

"SO WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?"
Honestly? I just want to spread information and on the subject so people won't just
believe anything they hear.

Also I would like to make people finally realize that when someone is complaining on
these kind of subjects it's not because they are angsty man babies, but that they are
seriously annoyed and tired of being called a misogynistic harasser for not agreeing or
even being critical of gaming journalists. They are not infallible creatures and
should not be excluded from having there work criticized.

I'm stepping up to the fence ready to listen to your thoughts and conclusions.
Will you step to it too?

PS. No, I will not stop buying games on GOG. I really like there service as a digital
games shop :)

it is just to show that both "sides" where just as bad as each other. The best approach in all this mess is to ignore both sides of the arguments, make fun of the extremist on both sides, and just play the games you like to play

You're putting an awful lot of information out there.

(1) You will have to specifically define 'Nazi' in the way that you are using the word because I have my doubts that nazis helped develop any video games at all. I think I begin to see the problem. You say that games = art, art = propaganda, and there is no art that is not propaganda. You're in a position to go crazy from the start, all games don't have to be propaganda. Just as one easy example, Tetris doesn't have an agenda attached to it.

I would have nothing against a new game being made with a black homosexual protagonist. The opposition, mine included, comes from changing established games. I recently heard about a crazy woman changing the great Masterworks of art to blackwash them. That's the sort of thing I'm against. There's room for both the games that men enjoy, and ones that women enjoy, stop trying to tell men what they can and should enjoy. You don't have to destroy the types of games that men enjoy to make room for ones for women, just make both! Instead of taking away my scantily clad women, how about making other new games, in addition, that focus more on what women want?

(2) Well the job of journalists, at least traditionally, I think now most journalists are doing the opposite, but the ideal of journalism is to be completely objective, free of bias. If someone is clearly letting their subjective bias influence a score that's supposed to be as objective as possible, it's a problem.

I don't care what I look like to anyone, it's irrelevant to the conversation. Honestly I just want you and others like you to stop hating on white men and for everyone to be more civil.