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When Games Media Forgets The Whole Abuse Thing (The Jimquisition) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-29 14:35:06
Imported:
2022-01

Content

When Ubisoft's horrific history of abuse was exposed last year, it stunned me how quickly games media moved on when it came time to review the latest Assassin's Creed guff.   

Some argue game reviews and coverage of game releases are no place for reminders that said games are published by monsters. I argue they absolutely are, and that it's ridiculous how quickly some of us want to forget.

Files

When Games Media Forgets The Whole Abuse Thing (The Jimquisition)

http://www.thejimporium.com http://www.patreon.com/jimquisition http://www.twitch.tv/jimsterling When Ubisoft's horrific history of abuse was exposed last year, it stunned me how quickly games media moved on when it came time to review the latest Assassin's Creed guff. Some argue game reviews and coverage of game releases are no place for reminders that said games are published by monsters. I argue they absolutely are, and that it's ridiculous how quickly some of us want to forget. #Activision #Ubisoft #BobbyKotick #CallOfDuty #FarCry #AssassinsCreed #Abuse #Controversy #Reviews #JimSterling #Jimquisition #Games #Game #Gaming #Videogame __ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimsterling Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jimsterling0 Bandcamp of the Sax Dragon - https://carlcatron.bandcamp.com Nathan Hanover - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-8L7n7l11PJM6FFcI6Ju8A

Comments

Benedict Holland

I don't understand how this isn't news. Not game journalism news on gamer websites but NYT, WaPo, BBC, Le Monde, and other huge international outlets. These are multi billion dollar companies with tens of thousands of employees across dozens of counties with rampant sexual abuse. This would be like the entire world relying on the Vatican news or just small Catholic news websites for the clergy sexual abuse coverage. It warrants more.

Fermin Ayucar

But, but, but... corporations are my friends! They provide me with product so I can consume product! Please, just talk about the product I am going to consume so I can consume it without a hint of ethical concern that might get in the way of me enjoying consuming the product. Consume. Also corporate CEOs that are worth billions, they are just like me. Product. Consume. Product.

Pete Spicer

It’s also not as if these large corporations can hide behind the “separate the art from the artist” defence because so many people have to come together to make their games that the culture permeates across all of them, rather than a few individuals whose behaviour could be argued to be “the artist”.

Matthew Foweraker

Please Jim, keep doing this right up until the point it starts to actually make you unwell. Then stop.

Luna

Recently (within the past couple months) it's become clear that Paizo Publishing, one of the bigger tabletop RPG publishers, has been abusing its workers in much the same ways that Activision-Blizzard and Ubisoft have. Not to the same extreme (that we know of; I remember you saying a year ago, several years ago, that the allegations we knew of at the time were just the beginning), but there's still abuse, there's still poor salaries and people struggling to live. The conditions at Paizo's office were so bad that people were struggling to breathe because the carpets weren't vacuumed. Ever. Over the past couple weeks, they've made statements on their blog about how they're sorry for being monsters (of course they don't phrase it that way) and how they'll be sending out a survey and hiring an outside firm to investigate (with no mention of addressing wages). These statements are curiously missing any mention of accountability for the management that created these conditions. The parallels to Activision-Blizzard, Ubisoft, Rockstar (just the name tells you the company is toxic), Riot, Quantic Dream, and so on are stunning. There are even the folks in the comments defending Paizo, talking about how excited they are for the next releases, and so on. It seems that *every* games industry, not just video games, is rotten to the core.

Anonymous

Thanks for everything you do, Steph. Thank you for your sacrifices with having burned the bridges with game companies and highlighting absuive behaviors by them, both against their workers and us consumers. My tastes and addictive and exploitable tendencies line up pretty well with everyone on the podcast, so I typically don't buy any games until they've gotten your seal of approval. Again, thank you for everything you do.

Perpetual Noob

Pulling the hat over your head bit had me laughing though. Like, I understand that nothing about this video is funny but that bit gave me much needed giggle. Thank you for everything you do Steph. 🙂

Harry Moore

You know, if you started printing reviews again you could add "ethics of production" into your review scores as a big factor thus dragging the metacritic score down even slightly for unethical developers/publishers. Might even get other reviewers to join in

Anonymous

In the comments of his piece calling for Bobby Kotick's resignation, the editor-in-chief at Polygon explains why they will keep covering their games. https://www.polygon.com/22785788/bobby-kotick-resign-activision-blizzard-controversy-allegations I think what I'd like to see from these compagnies isn't a full boycott but maybe something like a banner at the top of Activision (or Ubisoft, Riot, etc.) stories that says "Activision is currently under investigation for abuses" with a link to an article covering that. It doesn't need to be mentioned in the story itself, but add a function on the site that if an article gets tagged "Activision" then the banner appears.

Dr. Judge, Private Eye
>>72726130

A lot of people look at things like the Civil Rights movement in America and how it began to pick up incredible steam with effective boycotting of segregated businesses, but that misses two key things of trying to start doing that in 2021: 1) they were organized and co-ordinated. And just look at the old "CoD 2 boycott" steam group all playing CoD 2 the week of the game's release to see how that usually goes on the Internet. 2) more importantly: the businesses being boycotted were largely small, locally owned businesses that existed on the razor's edge of profitability. Things like diners, restaurants, parks, and public transportation. A "boycott" of a multi-billion dollar international company is, simply, impossible. It's like when you look at a company like WWE: no matter how sleazy or shitty their practices are, their audience doesn't even need to grow. They can just do business with various foreign interests and rake in record profits. This isn't to say what James Stephanie Sterling is doing is useless or pointless, quite the contrary: the language these sociopaths speak is PR and good press. And heaping bad press on them WILL eventually have an impact on the people who have to deal with bullshit and still feel shame. They won't WANT to do business with places like Activision, and you can even see that NOW with how places are distancing from them while still cozying up to Ubisoft. Boycotting Ubisoft isn't going to do anything, but stuff like this to keep their abuses in the light certainly IS.

Ben

So are you planning to do a “top ten” list this year? Cause I’d be down for a “top ten shittiest company” list of some kind…

Trevor Bond

Heya, Sterling! Finances stabilized, I'm back and glad to see you're still rocking the boats that need to be tipped!

Crissa Kentavr

'The launch of [game x] was stained by ongoing scandal...' Scandal sells everywhere else, why not games journalism?