As the title suggests, over the last couple of days there’s been an influx of doomer comments over the SKG petition. While it’s fine to disagree, I’m finding it suspicious that there weren’t comments like this posted a week or 2 ago

  • alessandro@lemmy.ca
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    1 hour ago

    One year ago, right at the beginning of the petition, PirateSoftware came out misreading the initiative by suggesting the idea the petition was about forcing indie developer to host their server, at their expense, forever and other stupid idea on this line. A fabricated these narrative to act as the typical popular youtubers that say endlessly: “this is st0pid, they are st0pid”. The fabricated narrative confused other popular YouTubers with mixed feelings; and there was very little support. This assured PirateSoftware the first place on the youtube rankings when you search for “stop killing games”, plus had lot of kids brainwashed into thinking " this is st0pid". This kind of criticism never went away completely, the were partially silenced by the very recent roaring as people understood correctly what it was actually about. As SKG keep hitting its milestone the angered roar did lowered, so now you can ear again the “this is st0pid” team

    • Luffy@lemmy.ml
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      1 hour ago

      You can swear on the Internet. The same way I can say that I want to spray pepper spray on your private parts. And you can then cry about me because I said the big bad stupid word, so I have to una1iv3 myself.

  • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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    60 minutes ago

    Another bot paranoia…

    Not every people that disagree with the norm is a bot. The petition got more popular recently, even some news outlet that has nothing to do with games started talking about it in my country in the last week, so has a high chance of a bunch of people that didn’t read much about started to comment with their “protect the billionaires” reaction.

  • ZeroOne@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Well certain EU politicians support SKG, so yeah it’s making a lot of corpos uncomfy

  • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Welcome to the age of bots.

    Enjoy your perpetual unavoidable and even undetectable bias and opinion influencing astroturfing.

    Paid for by whoever doesn’t want the things that you want, to influence the people around you to bite at each other’s throats and work against their own interests.

  • Red_October@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I think suspicious is the wrong word. Suspicious seems to suggest doubt or a lack of certainty, but the criticism is pretty predictable. Industry forces could afford to ignore it when it looked impossible to get the signatures, but now that the signatures are in the bag they’re having to take a different tactic.

    SOME of the criticism is certainly genuine and exactly what it appears to be at face value, but it was inevitable that those doubts would be artificially boosted now.

  • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I’m not against the goal. But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.

    I only heard about it once people on Lemmy started talking shit about this pirate guy. I hadn’t heard about him either. So it came on my radar as drama. And I ended up having a rough time sharing my point of view. People are really emotional about this intuitive. They take any criticism as an attack that could harm progress on signatures.

    In the end the drama with this pirate dork ended up actually bringing positive attention that helped an otherwise flagging initiative for signatures.

    I hope the initiative causes positive change.

    • Pheta@fedia.io
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      5 hours ago

      But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.

      Could you elaborate on this, beyond the one sentence? The rest of your comment makes it clear that you weren’t aware, and still aren’t about much of what was going on with SKG. Given that you don’t have a clear understanding of what the timeline of SKG was, that does leave room for doubt that you understand the initiative. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, so please explain what you meant.

      I hope the initiative causes positive change.

      We all do.

  • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Because it’s about to affect big money so they sic their bots on it to shape public opinion and stomp it, like everything else.

  • mriswith@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Not at all.

    More attention means more people see it, so even if the percentage of complainers haven’t changed, there are more people who know.

    On top of that, there was criticism before. There’s that streamer who was mocked relentlessly in comments and some defending him, there were articles about game developer lobby groups complaining that were posted here, etc.

  • who@feddit.org
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    12 hours ago

    I don’t find the absence of criticism suspicious. The petition makes sense. It aims to solve a problem that affects many individuals and a significant part of human culture.

    What I do find suspicious is the sudden emergence of criticism now that it looks like it might succeed. I smell astroturfing and media manipulation.

  • Mister Neon@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I haven’t seen anyone here against it.

    Ross got hit with some anonymous legal complaint so I wouldn’t be surprised with astroturfing.

    I’m also an American so I can’t help.

    • dinckel@lemmy.world
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      13 minutes ago

      The entire complaint was based on nothing too. They claimed he’s orchestrating some crazy financial scheme, and getting paid 6 digits from it, when he’s not only doing it for free, but can’t even participate in the initiative to begin with

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    11 hours ago

    Why would they? Most people didn’t know about the petition until a few weeks ago, and I think people are largely knee-jerk supporting their favorite streamer (in this case, PirateSoftware). I don’t think there’s a concerted effort here to kill it, just people coming out of the woodwork now that it got a lot of attention.

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Are people criticizing it? There is a certain critical mass that when something becomes popular enough a subset of the population will automatically oppose it.

    • hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      There’s also a threshold where Industry Groups will start astroturfing. Especially when it comes to worker’s rights or consumer’s rights.

        • Dultas@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          It’s a fine line because if you do it too early you’ll just add more attention to it. They probably predicted it would stall out.

  • 4am@lemmy.zip
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    13 hours ago

    I’ve made some comments critical of how relentlessly PirateSoftware is being harassed and how annoying it is and how distracting from the actual movement it is.

    Nothing wrong with the petition itself, and I haven’t noticed any negative astroturfing about it.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        11 hours ago

        Perhaps, but the most I’ve seen are some tenuous “evidence” about him being a little selfish in WoW, not finishing games, or using his dad’s influence to land a job at Blizzard. Neither of those are particularly bad, and certainly don’t warrant the negative attention he got. It really seems like people are looking for dirt just because they don’t like his position on SKG.

        Then again, I didn’t hear about him until he came out against it, and I saw he defended Godot, which is pretty rad. That’s the extent of my knowledge about him, other than the handful of hit pieces against him people posted here once he got negative attention.

        I support SKG and don’t think PirateSoftware is a bad dude. I say just let him be, and don’t watch his content if you don’t like it.

        • CTDummy@aussie.zone
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          11 hours ago

          The SKG thing was just the latest L in the series he’s been collecting for a while now. Similar to his wow raid there was another MMO when his party wiped due to someone accidentally aggro’ing a mob. He did the usually “that was moronic, whoever did that is kicked from the raid, etc”. Then he reviews the footage showing it was him that aggro’d and completely 180s, saying the wipe wasn’t on him. As evidenced in his SKG video, guy is super happy saying nasty shit about people but cries toxicity when it’s reciprocated. Guy just can’t help himself. Has to be right on everything and when it’s proven he isn’t, either doubles down or just simply denies being wrong.

          Even the wow roaching thing, it isn’t so much the raid but the demanding everyone listen to his side before talking over others when it’s their turn and then leaving before they can have there say and tripling down. I used to appreciate some of his content but given his pattern of behaviour, including bullying, the negative attention he’s gotten is pretty deserved.

        • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          The WoW thing wasn’t about being selfish, it’s just one of a dozen or more incidents of him being a narcissistic bully who screws other people over and can’t take accountability for anything.

          And nobody is giving him too much shit for simply being a nepo baby. The Blizzard thing is about him being a fraud who’s been caught repeatedly lying and misleading people about his credentials and work experience in order to appear like an expert. He uses his time at Blizzard like a magic wand to expel criticism, going so far as to misrepresent what he even did at Blizzard to appear like an authority when people criticize him.

          The backlash against him has been well earned by bad behavior over a long period of time, most of which involves him treating other people poorly for his own benefit.

        • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          The WoW things is the most well known, be he had a similar behavior in another game, Ashes of Creation i think. Doesn’t take accountability for anything. Cannot say sorry.

          There’s also stuff coming out here cheated on his former wife. And then was a massive manipulative dick towards the person that he was cheating on with.

          Or that all his previous credentials are fabricated. Like he doesn’t like giving details what he’s actually done in previous jobs. He’ll just state that he works somewhere and then let you fill in the blank. Or passing off what someone else did at the job as his own.

          In his own channel he purposely misrepresent the recent things about him. And coding Jesus actually put out a video showing that, when he tries to reach out immediately gets filtered and banned. But meanwhile Thor is telling people that all he had to do was try to reach out…

        • seralth@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          Pirate has done a lot to earn hate over the years from stealing and manipulating a child back in second life to make a quick buck. Screwing over and generally being a major asshole in eve online that screwed a lot of people out of very real money.

          Being a general twat, gaslighting and trying to get his community to harass people irl over the wow debacle.

          Lying and giving objectively bad information over development and grifting on twitch.

          He’s done everything a twat really can do online short of actual physical harm.

          People have grudges with him going back like 15 years. This is not his first rodeo.

          • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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            8 hours ago

            Screwing over and generally being a major asshole in eve online that screwed a lot of people out of very real money.

            Ok but… That’s the correct way to play EVE online.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            11 hours ago

            Really? From the 5-10 min of his videos that I watched over the last 2 weeks when trying to figure out why people dislike him, I didn’t see any of that nonsense. That’s really too bad if true, because he seemed like a pretty level-headed guy who was a pretty laid-back gamer (no yelling or other form of aggression, which is unfortunately common among streamers). I watched some clips of:

            • take on Godot - defended Godot despite some missteps and (IMO) correctly pointed out that their PR person probably got overrun after a somewhat controversial comment that was apparently intended to be a joke (the “woke” post)
            • take on SKG - got a little unhinged in his follow-up video, but I hear there were swatting attempts after the first, so I understand the frustration
            • an “infamous” clip of WoW where he allegedly left his teammate to die (but he was clearly following other orders to run)

            That’s about it. He didn’t seem like a toxic person who routinely trolls and screws people in games, just kind of your average, run-of-the-mill streamer who’s a little low-key but still out there to create content to get people to watch.

            Then again, he could totally be the jerk you make him out to be. It’s really hard to tell what’s a legitimate explanation of things and what’s people looking for a reason to slander him because they don’t like his take on SKG. The couple of articles I read seemed to mostly be the latter, but they also didn’t mention most of what you did here. So idk, I guess I haven’t made up my mind about him, but honestly, I don’t think it’s really worth digging into because I’m not into his content anyway.

            • Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              8 hours ago

              From the 5-10 min of his videos

              There’s the problem: you won’t get evidence of a murder if you ask the murderer for it.
              He streams a lot, so the things he says or does are spread out, especially if you’re only looking for noticeably damning stuff like the rim job related rant against SKG.

              His confidence and speechcraft makes him very good at steering conversations by lying or deflecting, as long as you trust what he says.

              Good places to start looking may be his conversation with Dr. K or Ross’ “The end of Stop Killing Games” on Youtube, both are hosted by level headed people;
              I can only assume you haven’t seen the latter, because at the very least it makes it very apparent why people dislike him.

  • Korkki@lemmy.ml
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    15 hours ago

    Does anyone else find it suspicious there wasn’t any criticism on here about Stop Killing Games until after it hit 1.4M signatures?

    Nobody here disagrees with any point of the petition. I signed it. Even if gaming companies were rushing to send shills to raid discussions they would have done it months ago and last places they would go astroturff for is this Kazakhstani anti-whaling forum. Especially when their target now is the Eu bureaucracy and MEPs. Where I might say they have not a bad chance of succeeding.

  • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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    14 hours ago

    I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago. I’d assume most people who have criticism don’t leave a comment because it’ll get you massively downvoted and your inbox will be flooded with angry replies.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 hours ago

      What are the criticisms? Genuinely curious, have no idea what problems anyone might have with it, other than some quotes from the Ubisoft exec trying to act like implementing user run servers is borderline impossible

      • Klear@sh.itjust.works
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        7 hours ago

        People don’t have problems with SKG. They have problems with reading and/or comprehending its goals.

        In my experience about half the posts about it (since the start) have some dummy saying it’s unreasonable for devs to support games forever.

      • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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        5 hours ago

        I don’t understand why there’s such a hyperfocus on petitions. The only thing being attempted is signing petitions in various countries. Every country has declined to do anything and the last hope is the EU parliament which is being treated like some all or nothing final bet. Why just petitions?

        Why not directly put pressure on some of the worst offenders like Ubisoft? Lots of people are saying they’re not buying another Ubisoft game again. Cool! Start an official boycott. People who cant sign the EU petition can sign a boycott promise. It wouldn’t be binding or anything but it could create more solidarity around not purchasing their next big release. Companies care about their bottom line.

        You know the hate campaign against piratesoftware? Why not do that to the official Ubisoft account instead? They’re the company that is actually causing the problem. You might not like piratesoftware but he’s not the enemy. He hasn’t killed any of his own games. He didn’t make the decision to shut down the Crew. The offical Ubisoft account shouldn’t get to post a single thing without pressure from the movement. Critical memes should be made about the company and shared on social media. The CEO shouldn’t get to speak to an audience without being booed. Companies cave to negative PR all the time.

        These things can be done in addition to the petitions. Personally, I don’t think any petitions are going to bring about the change people are looking for. Governments rarely listen to them and the EU isn’t much better. There are just 10 citizens initiatives that have passed and all their responses have been pretty lack luster. Even if the EU enacts the exact laws people are hoping for, what about everywhere else? The idea seems to be that other countries will get trickle down consumer protections. Americans are pushing Europeans to petition the EU parliament to make law changes hoping it will cause American companies to change how they sell products to Americans. It’s just such an odd strategy to me. Again, it can be done, but there’s no reason more direct action can’t be taken in tandem with the petition.

        I get lots of downvotes and angry replies for this take which I’m not sure why. I can only assume people don’t like hearing that petitions are largely useless.

        • Dremor@lemmy.worldM
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          3 hours ago

          Even if mostly useless, not doing anything is even more useless. At least that petition shows support for changes, which may influence some executive to rethink what they think is acceptable from their userbase.

          • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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            2 hours ago

            not doing anything is even more useless.

            I agree. I also think if you’re not European, you’ve not done anything. There wasn’t even a petition made in the US so Americans haven’t done a single thing, yet are the most vocal about it. That’s the part that confuses me.