Games Journalism 2018: We're taking it back!

Hot Pink Vader or no sale.

Ow, true. But some are more enraging than others. Cosmetics-only is at the low end of my annoyance scale, pay-to-not-grind is grating, and “pay to have the tools to keep playing successfully” is wrath-inspiring. The revamped MTs in SWBF2 appear to be a lot less burdensome than what was in EA’s original vision.

Speaking of EA’s original vision…

Well, that’s one way to lie.
But if a 12.5% drop is all it takes to change the business model, it’s your move, gamers.

Meet Bullyhunters, an “organization” that was supposedly composed of an all-girl team hunting CS:GO harassers online. Between the very concept being dumb to one of the organizers having an online record of homophobia and misogyny, things went hilariously wrong.

Wow, that’s kind of a spectacularly misguided idea.

It’s all the weirder that the project’s public face ZombiUnicorn got caught at her own SJW game and the whole thing broke apart because she said things like “faggot” or “bitch” on stream six years ago. It’s crazy to me that someone can still be punished for saying a swear word years ago, but y’know, that’s not how things work anymore.

In her own words:

"There’s no excuse to what I did, but I had never said anything like that before, and I never said anything like that again afterwards.”

Which means, according to the way this goes, that she says those words all the time and will keep using them.

Whatever toxic culture there is in gaming, “initiatives” like this are part of it.

It’s an age-old story; kid loves computers, learns to hack, gets in over his head, makes powerful enemies.

There was a lot of shaddy shit going down.

That being said, I really hate people that hack multiplayer games. It really ruins it for the rest of us, and not just that particular game, but it poison the rest of the experience. It’s just not right.

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I’m sorry to hear about the deaths involved with t his but… the story sure does sound sympathetic to these criminals. Kids who steal a candy bar don’t even get that…

There’s an element of “boys will be boys” to it, certainly. It’s probably easier for folks to think of cyber crimes as more “victimless” because it’s all happening out there somewhere, all with bits and bytes.

It’s weird to me because we have kids starting a lifetime of crime at young ages for stealing a 50 cent candy bar, and they come from nothing, might not have a support system at all, and this kid has a supportive parent, a car, access to computers and… somehow he is portrayed as more sympathetic because he used a keyboard?

Yeah, pretty much. I think there’s an inherent bias that thinks the hackers are basically good and smart, just made a bad choice and can be rehabilitated. There’s no such bias in favor of the petty thief.

I think it’s a combination of things. Hacker kids are still seen as Mathew Broderick in WarGames. Generally nice boys that get too curious or passionate about their nerd hobby, and don’t really understand the consequences of their actions. Besides, they’re mostly hurting corporations that just absorb any damage. The fact that many of their crimes start from video gaming helps perpetuate the idea that they’re just harmless kids at heart.

It really doesn’t help that we have very high-profile kid hackers that went on to work for law enforcement and become white hats.

I get that, although with people hiding their trails, people telling them there will be consequences is… well these are kids in all scenarios. None of them fully understand there are consequences to their actions, but the way this article was written, it’s wholly sympathetic. It pushes that narrative that this is somehow a victim less crime and he really just got over his head, like everything happens to him not that he kept doing it. You’d think the writer was starstruck.

The parts that upsets me is that he screwed with Multiplayer. Anyone that does that is an asshole, no matter how smart or curious you are.

I am hearing from various friends there have been layoffs at Maxis yesterday. :(

Maxis is still around?