Developers distance themselves from publisher Tripwire after boss says he's "proud" of Texas anti-abortion law

Notice that I dont support this law, and I am not religious, but I find it very troublesome that it has become possible to financially punish people expressing different political views on a public forum.

Polite expressions of non popular political views are crucial to the continuation of society. Not only they allow the introduction of new ideas to a country and prevent stagnation, but also serve as a pressure release valve that allows for different ideas to clash without violence.

If the moderate voices that express dissent politely are silenced, the trump style "scorched earth" communication style will be the only ones left. If all of those are silences, the only way to express dissent will be through violence.

The fact that he can express his views without fear of violence or economical punishment used to be a pillar of western society.

I personally believe that we are taking steps backwards and regressing to a time in which (for religious or political reasons) expressing certain ideas was off the table. It took several revolutions to establish a system in which political ideas were allowed to be expressed as long as they were not encouraging acts of violence. It was a good compromise to allow public discussion of new and difficult to accept ideas and at the same time protect minorities that could be subjected to violence. Now we risk loosing that.

It's not troubling; that's literally one of the great things about living in a free society. You get choice. You can express your opinion and if enough people agree you can pressure large companies into doing the right thing.

I get what you're trying to say and normally I would agree, but "polite" and "moderate" is not part of the far right's vocabulary. They are terrible people and should be challenged at every opportunity.

We can't punish Texas for such a barbaric, draconian, and oppressive law that might as well (for practical purposes) be an outright ban on abortion, but we can certainly punish people and companies that support it.

There's a time for being civil, and a time to fight using whatever means you have; abortion laws that take us back to the dark ages warrant the latter.

I support his right to express his opinion as much as the right for others to act according to their own opinions. The far right has such a problem with personal responsibility that they accept no consequence whatsoever, and everything is an attack on their rights. Maybe that's a consequence of a spoiled society, particularly from those who were raised and live without any real struggles.

Thinking that women have no human rights is not just a "different political view".

@mrbojangles25: Yes, but by treating other people as the enemy you are greatly increasing the chances of them being the enemy. I mean, notice how you speak, you are instantly classifying that person in a political spectrum while knowing nothing else about him.What chance do you have of discussing any other topics after that even if you cant agree on this one?

Also fighting with whatever means you have poses a greater risk to bring us back to the middle ages. What happen when this guys dont have space to speak about their political views any more, what is their other avenue for expressing dissent?

I mean there is a lot of people that disagree with abortion, they may not all support this law or how it is applied, but its not a minority or fringe view. Its a lot of people to keep in silence and that is a fragile container accumulating steam.

@rmpumper: There is a big difference between you have no rights, and I consider that inside you is a person already and you have to find a mid point between your right a theirs. I said this as a person that is also for abortion, but its not useless to try to understand the other person point of view.

@ghost_of_phobos: Those are a lot of assumption, from them being far right to them being spoiled. I dont know if that is the case, but it shouldnt be a starting point as it can lead to the wrong conclusion.

In regards to consequences, one has to wonder at which point the consequences become so heavy handed that they act as effectively as state sponsored limits to free speech.

What i mean is that it leads to fear of expressing your mind publicly, effectively suppressing public speech. Imagine a scientist making an experiment that leads to a socially undesirable conclusion and being unable to publish it due to fear of him or her loosing their jobs.

You may also have an economist unable to speak publicly in an academical setting about a book that argues for market solution to economical problems instead of a central planning solution.

What and who are you talking about?

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-09-06-developers-distance-themselves-from-publisher-tripwire-after-boss-says-hes-proud-draconian-texas-anti-abortion-law-allowed-to-stand#comments

Like I said, normally I would agree with you; civil discourse is a very important part of our society, the ability to debate peacefully even in the face of disagreement. As long as you are chill, we can debate socialism vs capitalism all day long or what have you.

But people have taken a very important right away from women--an act that, in doing so, more or less says "I don't think you are human, or equal to a man"--and that does make them, in this specific case, shitheads.

You shouldn't try to debate with these people because they can't be debated with. So you got to war with them.

Exactly.

I think this should be contextualized. If the debate is simply seen as womens right debate then it will always be seen as coercive and transgressive.

If its made from the point of understanding the fetus to be another human whose rights are also very much in the line, the problem changes.

In ancient rome, children were considered to be property, you would only become a person after you were 18. The state had not business telling you how to treat your children in any way, that was considered to be infringement of your rights. If the father wanted, he could kill his children or sell them to slavery. I say this to contextualize the situation. The debate changes quite a lot depending on when you consider a zygote to become a person and there is not scientific definition for that. All we can do is apply societal norms.

Many people, motivated mainly by religious believes, consider the human to commence existence at conception. This leads to a difference in views of abortion.

I dont personally subscribe to that view, but i also dont want to pretend that considering the human to commence existence at birth is based in hard science.

And I make this comments, not to advocate for abortion or this abortion law, both of which i disagree with, but to show that we are not dealing with an anti social person that is pushing irrational believes. Its simply a person that it is starting with a different axiom to analyze the problem and can only reach a very different conclusion from there.

The great divide that exists in the US and other Western countries is not due to people feeling afraid to express their minds; I would argue it exists because of the opposite, in fact.

At some point in your argument, though, you need to pick a point and argue against the opposite.

Doing as you are doing, saying we can all get along and both sides can get what they want, leads to stagnation.

You can't have fascist anti-choice fanatics and baby-killing devil-hippies both getting what they want.

You consider that the divide is due to excessive freedom of speech? I dont really agree but you can explain yourself if you want to.

but my problem is not only that i think lack of free speech leads to social violence, but more so that it limits the flow of ideas and shuts down important conversations.

I dont mean you should not try to put your opinion in to law and actively vote for representatives that do just that. I mean that you should argue against or ignore dissenting opinion, not punish people for having those opinions.

The assumption that those who support extreme anti abortion laws being connected with the far right isn't exactly a wild one.

One as to wonder if actual state sponsored limits to the freedom over our own body and the support of those decisions are more important then hypothetical state sponsored limits to free speech.

Societies self regulate like that, those who feel are right and have an inconvenient truth have to show courage an resilience. Like I said, I support his right to express his opinion but just as much as I support others from acting according to their own opinions. If we're going to equate everything to attacks on freedom of speech I don't see exactly why should I support his right but condemn others because it hurts him financially. This is a very present days line of thinking that I don't quite get, where everything stops being valid if money is involved.

@nirgal: Should have put that in the OP. But that is their right to dissent.

I support his right for expressing his opinion. I also support everyone giving him shit for it, because it's a shit opinion.

If you want to take away womens freedom, you don't deserve any respect. In fact, you deserve losing stuff, just like you think women should lose stuff. Pretty simple.

Is this guy in risk of losing his job because he has a shit opinion about abortions? Good. Womens rights are way more important than his job.

Edit: Just read the link you posted. It really warms my heart, and respect to Shipwright Studios just shot up immensely.

Not sure that expressing harmful opinions hurts society. If your opinion angers consumers and they don't want your product anymore. Good. That's freedom as well so I'm not sure why the OP is complaining about it.

I've put a lot of money into Tripwire. Killing Floor 1+2, omigod. Kinda sucks to hear about this though.

I honestly feel like situations like this have been around for a very long time, they're just getting more attention now because it generates clicks, and our society's toxic obsession with social media and vomiting's their opinion on everyone and everything. When I worked in healthcare back in 2008, I had to sign a social media contract barring me from expressing "firebrand" views on social media. Their reason being was that I was considered "the face of the organization" and expressing contradictory views of what my organization deemed inappropriate would damage the brand that they where trying to project.

When I transferred from working at a hospital to disability insurance claims and LOA, I had to sign another contract for the same reason. It's really quite common when you're in a position capable of making the company you work for look bad and loosing them money, and you would think that a CEO would be smart enough to know that. Alas, he wasn't, and now he has to step down form his position because projecting his opinion that he knows would piss people off over the internet was more important that his 7 figure salary. Is it fair? no, but most instances involving corporate profits aren't.

The big difference from my point of view, is that when I was offered a 63K a year salary +cheap benefits +profit sharing with the caveat that I can't post controversial opinions on Facebook and Twitter, I didn't hesitate because I don't care about social media. Where as John Gibson looked at his 15.1 million dollar income and thought "I should risk that to voice my opinion. My internet comment in the sea of internet comments could change the entire world as we know it..."

I've read that he stepped down, so that's good at least. Honestly none of this surprises me in the slightest, I remember a while back PCGamer published an article talking about all of the Christian metalcore bands in KF2's soundtrack and John posted a comment there. I made the mistake of glancing over his Facebook page and WOW, talk about a crazy religious right wing nut job.

@rmiller365: It's absolutely been around for a long time. It's what at will employment explicitly allows for.

That's their freedom to remove a member that they feel might damage the reputation of a company. If you want to express extremist views (for example an unpopular backwards 3rd world law in this case) you have every right to do so. No one is stopping you from expressing your 1st amendment right in this instance.

However, your employer also has every right to fire you for it as they don't want to be associated with that dumb shit. Certainly you wouldn't deny them their legal rights as yours were not denied.....right?

Companies have been doing this for decades. Welcome to America.

Whether it be not taking responsibility for their free speech, responsible gun ownership (who the hell would be against background checks), against masks, and against vaccines the right has proven they are pretty bad at personal responsibility .

I think the left has a hard time understanding that the pro-life crowd sees the pro-choice crowd as being just as bad as the left sees the pro life crowd.

Pro choice argues the other side is anti woman's rights by not allowing abortions. But at the same time their own beliefs are based on the idea that the baby in the womb does not count as a person or human with their own body or rights.

Pro life argues the other side is anti child anti baby. That they are allowing the murder of persons not able to speak or defend themselves. They see the fetus in the womb as a baby or a human that also should have its own rights.

There is a reason this argument has been going on for so long, nobody can agree on when the baby counts as a person or human life. You have some who believe it's at contraception and on the flip side you have those who believe it doesn't count as a human untill they are completely out the womb and disconnected.

I feel most people are some where in the middle. In the 4-6 month range I think most people would frown on killing it.

6 weeks is pretty early, it's a heart beat bill basically. Pro life people will love this. Pro choice people will hate it.

Explain this shit-post. Show me how these corporations using their legal rights is uncivilized.

Wouldn't you be the uncivilized one since you are against laws in this instance?

Should at will employment be dropped in the US?

Damn so the conservatives ITT have even less ground to stand on than they already did.

Shame. Was interested in buying Maneater DLC but will personally no longer support this company.

In Texas 90% of abortions are after 6 weeks, so that's most abortions. Thats a near total ban. Most Americans are against this. Also you have to look at the whole bounty component, which is bonkers.

Why Texas’s Abortion Law May Go Too Far For Most Americans | FiveThirtyEight

A modern form of political repression, closing in on Communist China conditions. Arbitrarily set lines presented as facts and the one and only truth. Anyone who disagrees is an evil person.

Indeed. And it's within our rights to publicly shame fools with such terrible, destructive political views. If that turns into financial punishment so be it. Good riddance.

I've always found it interesting how the left uses "pro life" as anti woman's rights while ignoring that roughly over 40% of woman in the US are pro life.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx

@girlusocrazy: right, I'm just pointing it out that alot of woman will support this bill

@sargentd: Or how it's anti women, but not pro rights of the unborn, which come into effect at some point eventually.

@palasta: yup, that's the argument. They recognize the rights of the woman but not the rights of the child. They just call it a clump of cells to make themselves feel better about it. I'm pro choice, but I don't play that game. Its killing human life, it's your offspring.

However, Id rather people who refuse to take care of their offspring just not have them and kill them off.

100% agree with you.

That is exactly what the Texas Taliban abortion law is all about.

#DeportAbbott to Afghanistan where he belongs.

This wasn't done by the government. The person chose to leave, and if it was pressure it was pressure from a private Corporation.

Are you against the free market? You sound like the communist right now.

You mean opinions. People are allowed to have those. Corporations are allowed to have them too, and fire or pressure someone out if they deem his/her views are harmful to that corporation.

Welcome to America. It's been this way for a long time.

Everyone is allowed to have this opinion. I'm sorry that far right views are less popular and disliked.

It's not a child. Facts first.

Well it's a fact depending on the time of abortion.

The US allows for freedom of speech and with no retaliation from the government (that is the general premise). It does not guarantee your freedom of speech to be free from retaliation from citizens or private entities. I am free to voice my opinion and others are also free to voice their opinion contrary to mine. Companies are free to take actions on a employee's opinion especially when it negatively affects the company. Too often the a violation of free speech is called upon because of social or economic consequences when the very act or conflict exist because of the same freedom that is claimed as being undercut.

I am not a big fan of unbridled freedom of speech, but that is another topic.

true. i got nda with sony and big m. active ones.

i dont post crap/ stuff related to nda.

am not that stupid

The goto excuse that allows the "social media public" and the media to bully individuals into submission when they step out of line.

A german games magazine titles, "Tripwire CEO supports restrictions of women rights".

F*king Hypocrits. In Germany abortion is generally illegal!

Correct, a Corporation has every right to defend their public image in USA. Welcome to USA. Far right lunacy typically isn't good for business.

You're starting to understand our laws.

Next you'll be surprised abortion is a right, which is why this is such a huge legal issue.

I think we agree this is how it "IS", just unsure on whether or not this is how it "should" be.

If dissenting voices never speak up, for fear of losing a job etc, the rest of society just becomes an echo chamber. Not exactly helpful.

I don't feel sorry for anyone who says that women should have no control or autonomy over their own bodies.