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After reading today EA's takes on AI and strategies about ~~boosting user monetization~~ promoting and exploitation of user's gambling addiction, I asked myself "How can someone defend those company agains boycotting and piracy?".
So here I am: is there somewhere a curated list of VG companies to absolutely avoid giving money too? If not, do you thing we should do it? It would be nice to have a list with arguments and sources in order to make more publicly relevant the ethical and strateical reasons behind piracy.
p.s.I think it's ok if you pirate things even without a moral stand behind, especially if you can't afford games and other media at all, but the arguments still apply
If it's publicly traded, just don't.
The one exception I have is id, but I also don't preorder, so if they fuck up the next Doom or Quake, I'll know before I buy anyway.
This, publicly trading means your company is now the product, games are just a way to make the stock price go up, so they need to sell gazillions and have the broadest possible audience.
This inevitably leads to flavour of the month design by committee garbage gameplay, enshittified business models like "live service", and writing catering to "global audiences" with cookie cutter quips and insufferable millennial "humour".
All that or whatever the fuck cod writers are mainlining alongside taurine and the tortured soul of Chris Benoit.