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Make your complaints heard about bad games, says Dragon Age veteran Mark Darrah, but "your $70 doesn't buy you cruelty"
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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When you celebrate layoffs at a studio because the game that you don't like didn't do that well, you're crossing a line
No you don't? If you do a bad job and get fired for it, it's not crossing the line just consequences of doing bad job. Your circumstances aren't really relevant here, just own your mistakes and move on.
I don't think that those who are responsible for game being bad are the ones being laid off
Congrats on missing the entire point of what the guy is saying.
The people losing their jobs are not the ones making the decisions that created a (subjectively) bad product.
Thats fucked up dude. Those people lost their livelihood.
Maybe someone else will take that livelihood and make a better game.
They dropped the whole writing and editing teams. Do you think it was everyones fault in those teams?
Reading comprehension 30%
There's everything the other comments said but there is also an important distinction in "celebrating". I would argue that while layoffs as an event are a potentially logical outcome of a bad game, it is the act of celebrating and/or calling for those layoffs that is crossing the line.
Do players celebrate layoffs? Or do they just enjoy the schadenfreude when karma bites executives and managers who disrespect their customers?
Either way, yeah $70 for a game, especially for a bad one, buys me the right to complain.
Yeah, he agrees.
You don't have to like a game, and you don't have stay quiet if you have complaints, says Darrah. You're entitled to be angry, and you're entitled to express that anger. "If you are mad at that Ubisoft game, be mad at Ubisoft," he says. "Express your anger to Ubisoft or the studio that made the game. But you cross a line when you start being cruel about it."
Reading. It works.
Which contradicts no part of what I said. Critical thinking. It works.
Yes, that's what the word "agree" means.
This is an amazing conversation.
I bet you suck at darts.
It never effects executives or managers though. The whole problem with the current Western games industry is that the idiots who keep thinking up games nobody wants to play are the only ones who don't get fired when their idea flops.
Nobody is forcing you to work at Bioware.
I don't think anyone really celebrates layoffs at a studio because they didn't like a game they made.
I think it's mostly reserved for when Devs or CMs have come out of the woodwork to shit on their own potential audience. A response to overconfidence and disregard of the customer. Because there's definitely been some of that as of late.
Ofcause there's bound to be other opinions, but I think this is the overall gist of the current situation.
This is demonstrably not true. Definitely people cheering for Ubi's layoffs recently. Not about the execs, about the devs.
As the other guy says, literally two posts down the line.
I think, in Ubisofts case, people just want to see it burn at this point.
And that is both entirely unreasonably and the type of behavior Darrah is (legitimately) complaining about.
Nobody who works at Ubisoft is your enemy, and if you're so mad about it that not buying the games isn't enough and you feel like being a dick to the people losing their jobs online you're the bad guy in this scenario.
It's the internet. People will be dicks to others for no other reason than that they can.
And I really hope you aren't referring to "me" when you say "you". I've always voted with my wallet and for the most part, I try to be reasonable in my critique.
But this industry works like any other. And when a bad decisions made, the groundfloor workers are always the first to feel it. That's just the sad truth.
OK, but that's bad, right? We all agree that's bad.
More importantly, that's what Darrah is trying to say. And nobody wants to see themselves as the bad guy, so everybody is dancing around it.
And no, I didn't mean you specifically, I don't know who you are. I do include other people in this thread that have made their position explicit, though.
It's not good, no. More accountability at the top would be preferrable, I'd imagine.
You also have to take into account that many customers haven't felt treated very nicely over quite a long time now. There's definitely some pent-up feelings getting released as a result of people finally achieving functional boycotts.
I don't, in fact, have to take that into account. I'm not making excuses for people who like being dicks on the Internet. Choosing a scapegoat to lash out at makes this worse, not better.
I'm not making excuses. Just expressing how I understand it.
I get how bloodthirsty people can get and how little rationale thought comes with it.
The other comment contradicts your assumption
As I said, there's bound to be other opinions.