this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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As the title suggests, over the last couple of days there's been an influx of doomer comments over the SKG petition. While it's fine to disagree, I'm finding it suspicious that there weren't comments like this posted a week or 2 ago

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[–] who@feddit.org 76 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I don't find the absence of criticism suspicious. The petition makes sense. It aims to solve a problem that affects many individuals and a significant part of human culture.

What I do find suspicious is the sudden emergence of criticism now that it looks like it might succeed. I smell astroturfing and media manipulation.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 33 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

This is exactly my point for the post, though your take is better worded

[–] duchess@feddit.org 12 points 22 hours ago

As the petition got more successful it became a bigger topic on here. Bigger topics draw more opinions.

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[–] MisterNeon@lemmy.world 148 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I haven't seen anyone here against it.

Ross got hit with some anonymous legal complaint so I wouldn't be surprised with astroturfing.

I'm also an American so I can't help.

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[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 8 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (7 children)

I’m not against the goal. But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.

I only heard about it once people on Lemmy started talking shit about this pirate guy. I hadn’t heard about him either. So it came on my radar as drama. And I ended up having a rough time sharing my point of view. People are really emotional about this intuitive. They take any criticism as an attack that could harm progress on signatures.

In the end the drama with this pirate dork ended up actually bringing positive attention that helped an otherwise flagging initiative for signatures.

I hope the initiative causes positive change.

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[–] stoly@lemmy.world 105 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Are people criticizing it? There is a certain critical mass that when something becomes popular enough a subset of the population will automatically oppose it.

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 66 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There's also a threshold where Industry Groups will start astroturfing. Especially when it comes to worker's rights or consumer's rights.

[–] a_jackal@pawb.social 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It seems like it's a bit too late now to start astroturfing this though

[–] Dultas@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

It's a fine line because if you do it too early you'll just add more attention to it. They probably predicted it would stall out.

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Not at all.

More attention means more people see it, so even if the percentage of complainers haven't changed, there are more people who know.

On top of that, there was criticism before. There's that streamer who was mocked relentlessly in comments and some defending him, there were articles about game developer lobby groups complaining that were posted here, etc.

[–] Korkki@lemmy.ml 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Does anyone else find it suspicious there wasn't any criticism on here about Stop Killing Games until after it hit 1.4M signatures?

Nobody here disagrees with any point of the petition. I signed it. Even if gaming companies were rushing to send shills to raid discussions they would have done it months ago and last places they would go astroturff for is this Kazakhstani anti-whaling forum. Especially when their target now is the Eu bureaucracy and MEPs. Where I might say they have not a bad chance of succeeding.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 9 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Kazakhstani

? Is lemmy.world hosted by Borat?

[–] Dremor@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I believe it is hosted in Germany. Not sure though.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Domain and IP resolve to California, but it's a cloudflare IP, so who knows where it actually is.

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[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’ve made some comments critical of how relentlessly PirateSoftware is being harassed and how annoying it is and how distracting from the actual movement it is.

Nothing wrong with the petition itself, and I haven’t noticed any negative astroturfing about it.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago (1 children)

PirateSoftware is being harassed for a whole lot more than just his SKG misinformation campaign.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

Perhaps, but the most I've seen are some tenuous "evidence" about him being a little selfish in WoW, not finishing games, or using his dad's influence to land a job at Blizzard. Neither of those are particularly bad, and certainly don't warrant the negative attention he got. It really seems like people are looking for dirt just because they don't like his position on SKG.

Then again, I didn't hear about him until he came out against it, and I saw he defended Godot, which is pretty rad. That's the extent of my knowledge about him, other than the handful of hit pieces against him people posted here once he got negative attention.

I support SKG and don't think PirateSoftware is a bad dude. I say just let him be, and don't watch his content if you don't like it.

[–] CTDummy@aussie.zone 24 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The SKG thing was just the latest L in the series he’s been collecting for a while now. Similar to his wow raid there was another MMO when his party wiped due to someone accidentally aggro’ing a mob. He did the usually “that was moronic, whoever did that is kicked from the raid, etc”. Then he reviews the footage showing it was him that aggro’d and completely 180s, saying the wipe wasn’t on him. As evidenced in his SKG video, guy is super happy saying nasty shit about people but cries toxicity when it’s reciprocated. Guy just can’t help himself. Has to be right on everything and when it’s proven he isn’t, either doubles down or just simply denies being wrong.

Even the wow roaching thing, it isn’t so much the raid but the demanding everyone listen to his side before talking over others when it’s their turn and then leaving before they can have there say and tripling down. I used to appreciate some of his content but given his pattern of behaviour, including bullying, the negative attention he’s gotten is pretty deserved.

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 12 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (4 children)

The WoW thing wasn’t about being selfish, it’s just one of a dozen or more incidents of him being a narcissistic bully who screws other people over and can’t take accountability for anything.

And nobody is giving him too much shit for simply being a nepo baby. The Blizzard thing is about him being a fraud who’s been caught repeatedly lying and misleading people about his credentials and work experience in order to appear like an expert. He uses his time at Blizzard like a magic wand to expel criticism, going so far as to misrepresent what he even did at Blizzard to appear like an authority when people criticize him.

The backlash against him has been well earned by bad behavior over a long period of time, most of which involves him treating other people poorly for his own benefit.

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[–] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 11 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The WoW things is the most well known, be he had a similar behavior in another game, Ashes of Creation i think. Doesn't take accountability for anything. Cannot say sorry.

There's also stuff coming out here cheated on his former wife. And then was a massive manipulative dick towards the person that he was cheating on with.

Or that all his previous credentials are fabricated. Like he doesn't like giving details what he's actually done in previous jobs. He'll just state that he works somewhere and then let you fill in the blank. Or passing off what someone else did at the job as his own.

In his own channel he purposely misrepresent the recent things about him. And coding Jesus actually put out a video showing that, when he tries to reach out immediately gets filtered and banned. But meanwhile Thor is telling people that all he had to do was try to reach out...

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Doesn’t take accountability for anything. Cannot say sorry.

Have you seen a popular streamer that does? If they do, it's more like "sorry you feel that way." To get a decent sized following, you need other people to see you as some kind of authority, and most authorities don't apologize, they do some amount of damage control and move on.

That's a big part of why I generally avoid popular streamers/youtubers. Most of my favorite YT channels have like 100-500k subs (and several well below 100k), and I only sub to a few w/ over 1M, and most of those are on the more humble end of the spectrum (e.g. Gamers Nexus). I don't jive well with wannabe authority figures, so I'm not surprised PirateSoftware didn't appeal to me. In fact, most of those talking head channels aren't interesting, I want facts, not opinions, and I do validate the more important facts.

Or that all his previous credentials are fabricated

Why would he? From what I gather (from a random wiki), his dad helped him get a QA job at Blizzard, and then he moved up the ranks to cybersecurity. I don't think anyone would lie about that, since those aren't "glamorous" jobs, but they are solid jobs. So my level in trust in what he says takes that into account, whatever he learned about the AAA gaming industry he learned by being present, not by being in any impactful role.

coding Jesus

That guy rubs me the wrong way too (assuming you're talking about Cr1TiKaL/penguinz0). I've gotten through maybe 2 min of one of his videos.

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[–] seralth@lemmy.world 10 points 22 hours ago (13 children)

Pirate has done a lot to earn hate over the years from stealing and manipulating a child back in second life to make a quick buck. Screwing over and generally being a major asshole in eve online that screwed a lot of people out of very real money.

Being a general twat, gaslighting and trying to get his community to harass people irl over the wow debacle.

Lying and giving objectively bad information over development and grifting on twitch.

He's done everything a twat really can do online short of actual physical harm.

People have grudges with him going back like 15 years. This is not his first rodeo.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 points 19 hours ago

Screwing over and generally being a major asshole in eve online that screwed a lot of people out of very real money.

Ok but... That's the correct way to play EVE online.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 11 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Why would they? Most people didn't know about the petition until a few weeks ago, and I think people are largely knee-jerk supporting their favorite streamer (in this case, PirateSoftware). I don't think there's a concerted effort here to kill it, just people coming out of the woodwork now that it got a lot of attention.

[–] descartador@lemmy.eco.br 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

This may have killed piratesoftwares career

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 hours ago (5 children)

Perhaps, which I think is really unfortunate. I think he misread or misunderstood what the petition was about, and doubled down instead of taking a step back.

But he's not going to be making a bunch of accounts on random message boards like Lemmy to try to kill it. The more reasonable argument is that some of his fans and other people who disagree w/ the petition are attacking it, not that he or the games industry cares enough to come here and spread FUD, I think regular people are dumb and emotional enough to do that for them.

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[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago. I'd assume most people who have criticism don't leave a comment because it'll get you massively downvoted and your inbox will be flooded with angry replies.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 21 hours ago (8 children)

What are the criticisms? Genuinely curious, have no idea what problems anyone might have with it, other than some quotes from the Ubisoft exec trying to act like implementing user run servers is borderline impossible

[–] Klear@sh.itjust.works 9 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

People don't have problems with SKG. They have problems with reading and/or comprehending its goals.

In my experience about half the posts about it (since the start) have some dummy saying it's unreasonable for devs to support games forever.

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[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago.

Not on this account...

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I can't see comments there, but I can see there are 16 comments. So yeah, probably.

To be fair, I only checked your posts, not your comments

[–] burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

what right do you have to stop me from killling your games?

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[–] 007ace@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I saw it posted on here much before it reached the threshold. I think that before then it was really just a few people running with it, now that it has gotten momentum, more people are sharing and we run in similar circles so it can appear to be overwhelming.

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[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 6 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

Lemmy is way too small and insignificant for Industry Plants to be posting on here about SKG, if that is what you are implying.

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 23 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Lol you are funny. Propaganda doesn't come here!

Industry shills will show up on a obscure message board that only a handful of people have ever seen. They are everywhere, they are here.

[–] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It's so stupid to think that small message boards are spared; small boards are where they infest with the most enthusiasm; you infiltrate a hundred small boards, one grows into the mainstream and now you have a socmed in your control.

[–] Airowird@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 19 hours ago

Not only that, you then link to that enthousiastic small board on the big one, as "unbiased source"

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 19 hours ago

People have opinions. No everyone disagreeing with one opinion or other is a paid actor.

I'm all for SKG. I signed it. And I haven't actually seen much criticism at all here. But if someone were to disagree I won't automatically think it's a paid actor, probably just a person with an opinion.

[–] Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago

Lemmy has 100k users and, more importantly, almost zero countermeasures against botting and influence ops. It would not be some huge undertaking to target this place.

[–] descartador@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 18 hours ago

The smaller a community is, the more influence you have. Propaganda here is much more effective than on Reddit

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