Game Developers to Gamers: "End the Hate"

Here is the link to the article.

So apparently, hundreds of game devs, spanning the indie and AAA industry including Rockstar North, Naughty Dog, Bungie, 343 Industries, Blizzard, and Epic to name a few, are getting fed up with the hate gamers are throwing around lately, so Andreas Zecher wrote a letter with the help of these devs as a plea for gamers to end the hate towards everyone, on both sides of the issue.

As an aside, even the biggest YouTube celebrity, gamer PewDiePie, has completely disabled his comments section over this bullshit that's been happening. Link here for that story.

What does everyone think about this? Apparently the devs are getting fed up with the hate flaring up around us. While it might not totally stop the haters, it's a good thing to see devs actually acknowledging the issue.

Those people aren't gamers. They are pathetic keyboard warriors who lost primary interest in games long ago.
That open letter won't calm anything down, it's only fuel for the fire. Let it die down instead.

Good for them I say. It's about time devs stood up for themselves like this. I understand not wanting to sink to the hater's level but I think enough is enough and it's high time they were called out on their bs.

While I am all for debate and sharing ones opinion, It does not validate threats and harassment no matter how much you disagree.

A good amount are behaving like childish, self-entitled, hysterical, pathetic, destructive, egotistical little morons that really ought to calm down and take a breather.

So, devs are damaged controlling and getting PR into heavy shift over discussions that touch on how rotten the gaming industry really is?

Women sleeping with random guys in the industry to get coverage, people call out the bullshit. All valid criticism is written off as misogynic and you get called "nerd" as an derogatory term. Hilarious!

Valid criticism would be going after Kotaku for their serious breach of ethics. From the drama, it seems the rage has been directed more at Quinn.

@SovietsUnited: It hasn't died down since it began. In fact, it's gotten worse over the years because nobody did anything. Sure, banning bad players from online games was a start, but now it's resorted to hacking people's personal information. And for what? Corrupting journalism? In an industry that hasn't had good journalism in a long time? People are blowing things out of proportion, and all you can say is let it simmer down on its own when things only get worse? That's not how it's gonna get better.

@kaealy: At least they're acknowledging the problem, while most gamers are content to think it'll simply "blow over" with time. Yeah, because things were this bad before and they blew over. It's not going to happen that way.

The internet breeds hyperbolic responses, especially as the world becomes more and more PC and people get tangible real world punishment for saying anything that anyone could possibly be offended by. It will only get worse and worse.

I mean, good luck to the folk sponsoring this but I think it will be about as successful as asking for world peace has been at actually achieving world peace. People actually die over that and they still do it. I can't imagine there will be more effort put into internet peace where the worst option is that someone gets their feelings hurt by random losers on Twitter.

For the more extreme stuff, legit crimes like stealing personal information or hacking someone's bank account should be treated like legit crimes. I still don't get why the government treats this stuff so lightly. You could rob someone of some bubble gum in real life and get a tougher sentence than someone who robs thousands of people of their life savings via the internet.

Seriously? You guys can't even end the hate in this very forum. Acknowledging the issue here and even presenting this story is comical if not ironic. The open letter isn't news however, it's been obvious for years and social media networks have made it worse....not just in games either but everywhere.

@mastermetal777 It gets worse because every news outlet is making clickbait headlines over every "scandal" rather than focusing on video games themselves, instead they want the reaction from susceptible people who don't know any better. It's not shocking, it's merely tasteless and cynical. I do not wish to talk further on the subject because I really couldn't care less about the whole fiasco, it's barely related to the core of gaming and you should let the two fires burn themselves out, because eventually they will

Its about god damn time somebody stood up to these whiny lil bastards.... I hope more developers speak up, and do something....

The only hate that should be justified is the on disc dlc, the milking of games (Street Fighter 4 has 2 billion alternate versions for petes sake), in game real micro transactions. Just bad behavior by devs, it's bull and deserves to talked about.

My personal hate, is there aren't any unlockables anymore in certain types of games. Know why? Because devs like to sell them as dlc now. That's pure dog$hit in my eyes. The best thing that gives you something to work for is unlocking new characters, new weapons ect. If they want to make dlc, they should make expansions, new online and offline modes ect. Just stuff that seems worth buying, not stuff that should be in the game as unlockables (like the good ol' days)

I think someone is confusing "gamers" with "jerks".

@Black_Knight_00

Pretty much the samething....

Guys do you really believe it's ok to vilify 70 million gamers because someone sent Anita mean tweets? Are you really agreeing with this? We're the problem? Look at what gaming journalists can get away with. Have you heard of this? No one else reported it. Death to the gamer, you are the problem. Over twitter threats? End the gamer identity? Gamer +? This is what everyone are so pissed off about. Complete failure of gaming journalism that fails to take any responsibility for their actions. First they ignored people, then they attacked people, now they've gotten in developers to try to make peace while spinning it that we can't stop harrassing women, anything to avoid responsibility. Can you think of any other medium that can get away with?

I'm intrigued by people's responses of "these people aren't real gamers" - are we now saying that these terrible misogynistic louts are automatically excluded from being real gamers, simply because of their archaic opinions?

I don't think the solution is that simple, since a lot of them *are* gamers. The sort of people who make rape jokes about women in the industry - or even those who honestly, truly can't see the elephant-sized problem with the industry's depiction of women - are also people who buy thirty games a year and worship at the altar of the Big Three. The gaming community is rotten to its core (oh, and gaming journalism is also corrupt, but that's a separate issue); we can't simply ignore or dismiss the people we don't agree with.

There is a silent majority. Blaming gamers at large for what a vocally abusive minority does is simply idiotic.

Don't know what type of person you are or with what type of people you play video games with. I've had fun with people I don't speak the same language with, someone with 30 years age difference , my sister, old friends, my online friends.

If you call them terrible people it's only because you have issues with your own life.

@Black_Knight_00

And the Majority being ignorant doesn't mean they get off the hook either... Whether its the minority or not its a big problem, its everybody's problem.

@Revan_911

What ?

Guys I beg you speak up against this. You can't let a dozen hipsters and their hipster twitter following (who have the lowest opinion on video games) decide if gamers are dead, what video games should be about, or if gaming journalism should actually be about video games (they think it should be about gender politics). Can you imagine the arrogance between these people.

All of these sides belong to the same group(owner) , the same that is behind Anita. To me this is why gaming journalism went to hell, these group of people. So I think we should do something

You said gamers = jerks and that's really mean spirited thing to say. If you don't enjoy video game communities you don't have to poison them with negativity.

@Revan_911

You're right and it probably not true..... But I'm not going to stop saying it.

Anyway why don't visit system wars and see what your precious community is like. :p

@Lulu_Lulu:

I'm sorry I said that, I keep seeing gamers being attacked on twitter for no reason at all by really, really mean people. I thought you were one of them I don't know why sorry I need a rest.

@Revan_911

Oh twitter.... Thats where all this stuff is happening ?

If someone is stupid enough to blame a whole community for what a minority within it does, I have no sympathy for them.

@Black_Knight_00

and for any other passtime, that would be fine, but for the this medium.... Nope !

It's not like this phenomena is unique to gaming. Anybody who makes their vocation social commentary whether it's a journalist or comedian has to deal with this kind of stuff Anita is experiencing. They're just usually smarter about insulating themselves from the backlash.

We could argue about how things should be, but any fool knows the internet is happy hour for frustrated, cock-blocked/menstruating cunts looking to displace the anger that builds up in their failure of a life onto the nearest public figure. If you're going to say things that you know will generate an emotional reaction, plan accordingly. Writing an open letter to the internet asking it to stop being the internet is a waste of time.

Then this:

Looks like the pot calling the kettle black. Do you really think gaming journalism thinks videogames should be about gender politics? I think some of the people in gaming journalism think gender should be part of discussing videogames, which I think is fair. But it's getting so much coverage, because people just have to comment on it. These issues generate a lot of traffic over and over again. You could blame gaming journalism for that and I'm not denying it's doing some questionable things, but that's only part of the problem. Ad revenue and traffic is the only thing these websites can rely on (since people are unwilling to pay for online content and because all the competition makes user loyalty a very fleeting thing) and so they focus on what generates the most traffic, and what generates the most traffic is ironically something a lot of gamers hate.

Journalism shouldn't have to worry about money. You can't be neutral and independent if traffic and ad revenues are what you have rely on. Problem is, pretty much all kinds of journalism have to rely on it to some extent. And advertising for gaming websites is often directly related to the subject, which means there's a greater risk at a conflict of interests. Gaming journalism can't really separate itself from its subject in that regard. I honestly think that part (not all) of the corruption people see is due to the fact that those people are unwilling to invest in more independent journalism and repeatedly give websites an incentive to publish these so-called 'PC ideologies'. People keep coming back to them. And since the PC people are ususally the target, it's safer to publish articles that support them. Those articles still generate traffic, while they also take away the risk that one of the targets might take whatever kind of action against the website in question (for making insufficiently supported accusations). A lot of people have unrealistic demands: they want their content completely free of charge, while also demanding that journalism be completely impartial. They also naively think that cold and factual journalism will somehow be more to their liking and will generate enough support to keep a sizeable website up. I doubt it will.

Again, it seems clear that videogame journalism is doing some questionable things, but as is so often the case, people refuse to look at themselves when criticising... This kind of crap will continue to take place as long as videogame journalism has to fully rely on videogame focused traffic and advertisement.

Exactly my thoughts. Political correctness has no place in gaming. Hate doesn't have a place either, but this is total bs

@mastermetal777: its justified and looked at the people its aimed at.

1. Pew die pie is a joke and its youtube aka irrelevant comments always been a staple of youtube an he has 30 MILLION subs
2. Anita Sarkeesian is a fucking fraud and idiots still probably giving her money fucking white knights
3. Hate speech, harassing, and trolling is what great about the internet lol
4. The list is founded on bull shit, is shit, and here is proof

Now lat the fapping commence!!!!!!

And there's the problem. Acceptance of the behavior always makes it worse, and that's exactly what you're doing: accepting terrible behavior because of it being a perceived norm instead of the reality.

One point: It seems Pew Die Pie didn't disable comments because of some kind of backlash, he just couldn't sift through them all.

When it comes to hate, especially on this website, it never ends. If a developer makes a comment about how he made his mistakes but plans to make amends: He will get hated on. If a gaming company admits they would like to do something different, but doing the same thing is what people want because it sells: They get hated on. If a youtuber, dedicated to making videos for the fan base that person grew upon for years, decides that the trolling and flaming has grown tiring and just wants it to end. So the comments are disabled. Result: More hate and witty comments and remarks because that's exactly what you do on the internet when you don't understand something you don't have!

Honestly, the comments section of this website on the news articles are one of the many shining examples you can point when someone wants an example as to why the gaming community is so bad. It's one of the reasons why I miss Feedbackula so much because it put lousy and utterly ridiculous people who make these comments in their places. As someone who has been around this website for eight years, it's grown sickening. What do I think? Try anything at this point even if the internet is a stubborn mule. Who knows? Maybe a good chunk of gamers or internet cave dwellers will actually grow up for once and actually appreciate what they have.

@mastermetal777: OK non troll response deserves a non troll answer:

Whether I join the bandwagon or not isn't the problem. The problem are the points I joked about that you chose to ignore b/c of my semi troll post :) Now I'm not going to rewrite stuff, but the gist of it is if you treat your community like idiots, expect the same. When the gaming community supports people like Fish who uses hate speech himself, write articles about how gamers are immature brats, and STILL support people (shout out to you Gamespot) like Sarkeesian well hello what does the industry expect? If you shoot me in my left foot and I shoot back, are you going to be the dumbass and ask me why I shot you? As one gamer put it, " You can't accuse people of perpetrating harassment and then participate in the same kind of targeted harassment and not expect people to get upset about it."