Because being nice and smiling is secret code for misogyny and racism. I mean... obviously. I guess we're now in the age of reverse marketing. Instead of thanking them for their purchase, the producer completes the transaction with the consumer by punching them in the face.

Care to explain the DRM thing with reliable sources? And no, Wikipedia, Polygon, and Kotaku are not reliable sources.

I did, here are some quotes I found interesting:

"The AAAs *are* supporting Gamergate, at least tacitly. They don't want the journos to gain any more influence (or to stop losing influence)"

"Investigation into AAA corruption would take boots on the ground that Gamergate doesn't have."

"So Gamergate has been pretty convenient for the AAAs. Gamergate is doing the dirty work of distracting, annoying, and quieting a chronic irritation for the AAAs, and the AAAs just have to sit back and keep quiet."

"Meanwhile, the AAAs are cutting off Kotaku and Polygon even as gamers stop paying attention to them."

I find this all really interesting. I think the writer is overestimating the influence of #gg but assuming it did succeed in ending polygon, kotaku, RPS, "social justice inclined" game sites it seems his theory is that AAA devs would be happy because then the major sites that would be left would be IGN, Gameinformer, PCGamer, the sites that they give big money to. To me, its an interesting theory of a side effect of a successful #gg.

Sorry my comment upset you
hahahaha, must have been the way you said it....

Great article. Sooo on target! Altho he gives them a little too much credit with regard to their grasp on the context in which they're playing. They are essentially just tools being used to serve the program he outlines. Albeit tools with enough nouse to take the money and run like f***ing crazy. And they are inadvertently, quite funny.

So, Sarky 'n Mac are switching tactix because? What? Neofemary is a sinking ship? - Rats leave 1st.

They finally realized pro-gamerg'ers are jaded to their provocations and they're trying a "new" angle, hoping to garner some "harassment"?

Just changing their shtick like any huckster does from time to time?

Maybe attract a few new rubes to the carnival?

New agenda handed down from Cthulu?

Hmm ... What else? Maybe trying to broaden their appeal to outraged church ladies? As the writer of the article points out, with their fanatic ideology, inevitably they and their collective hoard of misguided drones are, in their emotionally violent and irrational states of mind, akin to religious fundamentalists. And violence carried out by their ilk against the rest of us is inevitable. Fanaticism plus ideology always, always leads to bloodshed unless we stand up to it at some point.

Either way it is a sign of the shifting sands and rising undercurrents in the cultural zeitgeist (l know, but hey ...). And they're not shifting or rising in Sarky 'n Mac's favor. They are showing all the hallmarks of criminals who's animal cunning has alerted them to the fact that soon they'll be running scared! X^D

Well, in case you might want to know, feminists already began the bloodshed, they phisically assault anyone who dares question them during "slut walks" and there is a Canadian restaurant which madea pun with the word male (I think it was called Maleboufe) which had windows broken by feminists. The radical left is begining to harm people. Things are getting ugly with those cultists. In fact Sommers faced so much hostility from feminists on campus that they increased the security measures when she was present. Unlike Sarkeesian who decided to cancel her speech even though authorities stated there was no credibel threat. Oh and don't forget the bomb threath in GamerGate's meeting they even brought bomb detection dogs because the threats wer credible.

That was my Uplay experience in a nutshell.

Uplay, the failure of Ubi Soft. Now that I think of it, the only AAA companies which have shown certain pandering to SJWs are EA and Ubi Soft (And they rejected the hipster press anyway) It is no coicidence that those two companies are the most corrupt ones.

Riiight, must be tone policing... because there's no such thing as objectivity... /sarc

But, but... reality? So what does it matter if Vaina's post was factual when in context (due to past posts) his cred is shot to pieces in this thread? Context of dozens posts has more weight than a single post... oh sorry, that's being objective, so likely just a figment of my imagination.

I posted for one reason, damn the consequences. You guys acting disingenuous while blatantly appealing to objective facts implicitly as a defense. I guess objectivity is good when it's conveneinet to you. Otherwise REJECT it.

Comrade Orwell said it best: All animals are equal. Yeah, right...

It all depends on who and what you call major and minor. Its not that AAA devs want them specifically gone. Its that in a business environment, on-a-whim cultists like Leigh Alexander are wildcards that are difficult for them to predict. Their absurdity and lack of intellectual honesty means they cannot be reasonably planned for. And they want to plan for as much as possible. I'm being serious here.

@Paradox
Here's what pander means according to dictionary.com : ''a person who caters to or profits from the weaknesses or vices of others.''
There is a difference between producing content for your audience and pandering. On a gaming site or youtube channel, catering to gamers is not pandering. They are there to get gaming stuff and you're making gaming stuff. But when game journos proclaim to the world that their primary audience is dead and that they don't want gamers as their audience and then hides behind ''minorities'' and shames gamers by releasing the mainstream media on them, they are pandering to many things. They're pandering to mainstream media's death strokes, to radical left's cult like extremity etc etc.

I guess AAA devs would like sites like that out because they are hard to plan for, but I suspect (and this is me being cynical) that it would also be because it is in their interests to have only the mainstream sites that they can focus their advertising dollars on. Whatever the case, I think its all speculation. I don't think those sites are going anywhere.

Regarding the distinction between pandering and producing content for your audience, I honestly don't think the people who were offended by the gamasutra or kotaku articles where the audiences for those sites at all. I think most of them already hated those sites (although some people might not have realised that they weren't the target audience) and their audience was people like me who have known the stereotypical gamer is, if not dead, on her way out, but that's just my opinion. I have no problem with AAA devs catering to their audiences, my concern is more about gaming websites being corrupted by receiving (or not receiving) advertising dollars.

When the sites said "gamers don't have to be your audience" one thing was clear.

They were no long THEIRS.

So why not leave them alone?
if they want to make gaming articles for non-gamers and you're a gamer then the site is no longer for you, so leave it alone, if they manage to make a crust making gaming content for non-gamers good for them, I would think they might struggle and be forced to apologise before long though...

Or, wait, am I talking about a boycott and therefore advocating censorship again?

Life's so confusing...

How many times does it have to be said, a boycott that is specifically asking for a game to be removed from store shelves is censorship, but you seem too ignorant to get it.

You just make yourself out to be stupid or else a troll. Either way, it doesn't say much for your integrity...

So why is boycotting a game 'censorship' and boycotting a publication / website not?
Boycotting a website going to directly hurt its advertising revenue and therefore directly damage its ability to continue as a viable business and website / publication content is speech too...