Its about time someone held these corporations accountable.
For the peanut gallery: it’s not about the violence in games. It’s about not getting data tracked on every purchase. Just because someone bought a violent video game doesn’t mean they should be tracked and exposed to more guns just because the gun manufacturers want to sell a few more units.
It’s exposing the mentally ill to targeted marketing campaigns and pushing them down the extremism pipeline that meta has created.
“In terms of the Call of Duty publisher’s alleged responsibility, the lawsuits seek to connect the promotion of real-world weaponry to “vulnerable” young men who are "insecure about their masculinity, often bullied, eager to show strength and assert dominance.”
“The suits reportedly paint a detailed picture of Daniel Defense’s aggressive marketing, using Facebook and Instagram to “bombard” Ramos with material glorifying assault rifles after he downloaded a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game in November 2021.”
It’s targeted data stalking on the mentally unstable and pushing them to extremism.
There needs to be accountability and a stop to targeting people for the sake of profits.
There have been numerous studies debunking links between violent video games and violence. This is the 80’s Satanic Panic all over again with a different wrapper and target.
400 police failed them, not activision. Then they voted for the same leadership at the next election. It’s like everyone from the first responders onward just takes turns reacting to this shooting in head scratching ways.
I’m not complaining about violent video games like some Christian boomer. I’ve played them all my life and have no issues with realistic violence.
It’s the companies marketing them using data tracking and social media. Them getting directly connected to gun manufacturers through targeted ads is the issue. It’s exposing the mentality unstable to a barrage of targeted ads and pushing them down the crazy pipeline that social media has created.
Meta needs to be held accountable and if it takes M$ and gun manufacturers with them all the better.
Ah, I misunderstood the point you were making, I apologize for my assumptions.
Much as I hate ads (and especially targeted ads which involve datamining by corporations), I’m still not convinced this is something that can win in court, but I do see the distinction you are drawing.
They’re not intentionally targeting the mentally ill to sell them guns so they can perform crimes with them.
What’s happening is this mentally ill person was searching things, the algorithm caught on and sent them advertisements to persuade them to purchase more of the things he was looking at.
The algorithm doesn’t really care what it is as long as it qualifies in whatever marketing parameters they have.
Did the algorithm persuade or affect the person’s actions and promoted the crimes that they committed. Probably not. Do these predatory marketing firms have some kind of accountability? They probably do.
And I’m telling you that the algorithm isn’t causing this.
The underlying root cause of these things have nothing to do with marketing or any algorithm that any marketing firm employs.
The underlying issues are mental illness and a lack of mental health Care in America Not to mention the basically suggestions we have for gun control instead of laws.
Marketing firms cannot and should not be held accountable for people freely using the internet or any other service that also have mental illness
The relevant conundrum is that they should regardless take some kind of responsibility for this Even if they have no liability.
The fact that you are even talking about stuff like this even if it is out of ignorance and probably naivety is that you are detracting from the underlying issues causing these things to occur in the first place.
This whole thing is nothing more than a frivolous lawsuit specifically designed to make a little bit of profit from a settlement preying on the grief and torment of people who lost a child in that terrible shooting.
I was concerned about this business model from the onset and my worries have proven accurate! Buying the game while in early access would’ve given them more funding to work with instead of going with a free to play with cosmetic only purchases. I hope the affected developers are going to be okay in this layoff heavy year. 😭
Cosmetics are expensive too. I’m afraid a majority of players won’t pay those prices. If they offered some lower priced items they might have more consistent income.
That’s what I thought too…In addition, needing to buy a fake currency with real money before being able to buy a skin pack has a dark pattern vibe to it! They would’ve been better off making the skin packs cheaper (using real world money) and listing their game for a reasonable price during early access. However, their staff is paying the price for the leader’s poor decision and that honestly sucks!
Yeah this is bullshit. They wanted the IP’s and nothing more. Situations like this remind me of something that Marty O’Donnell said when that Bungie/Activision lawsuit happened. He said something along the lines of they have to own their IP’s because it’s the one thing a studio has that’s holds value.
Funny how they praise success these studios achieved before suddenly slamming the door shut and firing those people, but 343 has literally been fucking the corpse of Halo for 12 years now and you still funnel then millions of dollars to keep ruining everything.
I really hope these developers create new independent studios and if they ever get offered a big bag of money, they will remember what happened last time. Maybe they will be smart enough to create worker owned studios and not waste huge salaries on useless CEOs.
Don’t know if I would. Never had such an offer, never will.
I’m not very invested in the game/game studio culture but boiled down it gets to either a private owner or a board of directors deciding if it is the right moment to cash out.
The major share holder of a game studio, with a major success on its portfolio, already working on other projects, decided he wanted to move away from it as the day to day work had become too demanding and made his part of the studio available for purchase, in fact cashing out on a very large sum of money.
I really can’t see where that is “apples to oranges”, concerning the current debate on studios being bought out and shut down on the turn of a dime.
Are game studios some separate entity that exist exempt of the at work business logic or human nature? Studios are companies created to generate profit for its founders, that will most likely take the opportunity to cash out when presented.
By contrast, independent authors/creators are becoming a growing force to be respected - which is very good - but will such authors be immune to selling their work for a high offer their work if such opportunity presents itself? Hopefully, they will, but I won’t bet on it, neither for nor against.
If I ever run a successful company, I am never taking it public, and I hope that I will never accept a sum of money that more than doubles our assets.
I’ve worked in the startup world and seen too many companies fail in all but name when they receive investment money. It really sucks the soul out of a company.
I wish more people would create worker owned cooperatives. They might be more resilient and might even be more productive. Of cause the downside is that they don’t make one person very rich.
Right, because a healthy business consists of a sort of zombie corpse leech, not a symbiosis.
The little diner down the street where everyone has a good time every day? That’s not a healthy business.
It is very important that we twist the definition of every word to ensure people understand how bad capitalism is. Language and the ability to think is secondary to the great Revolution Take 25!
‘“You know, we’re a platform where you can play Grand Theft Auto but you can also play Palworld. Where you can play Call of Duty and can also play Pentiment. That doesn’t change,” she said.’ - yeah but now I can’t play HiFi Rush 2 :(
You see, our stock price goes up when we buy other companies and it goes up when we fire people. We’re doing both at the same time, so our stock price will go up double. This is a sustainable business model and not at all a very dead canary in a very deadly coal mine.
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