People are asses sometimes, but whenever these conversations come up, I wonder: What do you even want from us? How are random people on the internet supposed to hold random anonymous trolls on the internet “accountable?” You can call them asses, but so? What if they don’t care? They’re anonymous. You could get mods to ban them, but if it’s a free service they can always make another anonymous account. It’s even more confusing in the context of something like an online game as opposed to a forum. What are you supposed to do about someone being an ass when you’ve probably never seen them before and probably won’t see them again?
Some people probably know them in real life. Like, you might have a friend who’s like “Yeah this [slur] wouldn’t update her mod so i posted [hateful thing] on her insta”. You could talk to them. People listen to their in-group more than randoms online.
But then again, the worst sort of people probably mostly have the worst sort of friends, and reinforce their bad behavior.
I mean, call them asses. Maybe they don’t care, maybe they do, but we keep the problem relevant by being vocal against this kind of thing. To not do anything at all is to encourage trolls.
The prevailing wisdom for dealing with trolls in the past has been report, block, and move on. You never know if someone is going to thrive on that kind of conflict and a whole lot of motherfuckers love it.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong because honestly I don’t know. I’m just sad they’re running off people contributing to their community and mad that they’re sexually harassing people.
People are not assholes just because they’re anonymous. They’re assholes because they’re sociopaths. The Internet still is the refuge for isolation and escapism. I don’t think that will change, but maybe those people will be happier in the future.
This broad dynamic isn’t new and it isn’t unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It’s just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.
People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they’re going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.
And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they’re going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don’t like whatever it is that they’re getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.
And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, “Fine then - fuck you all. I’m done.”
And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It’s just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that’s likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that’s likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.
I don’t disagree with you but I feel that it is important to recognize and call out the misogyny element in this story. The gaming community has a pervasive sexism problem that’s normalized, and that part is unique in that it all comes from men.
I have only ever played three games online. The first was Final Fantasy XI, and I was part of a group/guild with nice people. It was fun!
The next was Team Fortress 2 because my husband wanted me to play with him. The vitriol and misogyny hurled at me over voice chat after two matches made me never play again.
The last was Destiny, and I turned off voice chat completely.
I don’t want to hammer on this really, because I think you mean well, but…
You’re not condemning the specific assholes who treated you poorly - you’re condemning “men” generally. Your point and your focus isn’t that they were assholes, but that they were men, as if that’s the actual problem - as if their failure isn’t being assholes, but simply being men.
I don’t know if that’s your actual view, but that is the way it comes across. And broadly, that view is part of the problem, since it alienates men who deserve no blame and diverts attention from those who do. And that’s exactly what I meant when I said that countering misogyny with misandry is a poor strategy.
I put wheels on my car which are a cheap copy of a very popular wheel because they were $500 not $2000 and I dont race. Every car meet someone has to comment that Im running “fakes” and try to give me a hard time about it. Yeah, Ive got a mortgage and a kid. Fuck off with your Supreme snapback ass hypebeast bullshit. I’m building the car I can afford.
People are toxic, even communities who preach peace and love as their doctrine have people who will whip out the moral-cock ruler and start shit over who is more peaceful and loving.
Fuck you for bringing sex into this. Fans should not harass volunteers as basic courtesy, the end. Most importantly because the modder wasn’t harassed for being a female but because her work, but you can’t get clicks unless you mobilise the culture war fanatics. American culture wars are pervasive and cancerous and we should strive not to emulate what goes on in that late stage capitalism hellhole.
Considering the woman being harassed explicitly stated that the harassment she received was mainly misogynistic in nature, no. It very much is relevant to the situation.
No shit sherlock, as opposed to what? Polite gender neutral harassment that is the norm? Do you think the damzel in distress trope does anything for the mod author? Do you think the idiots that harassed her would not harass an author of different sex or gender?
I’m an equal opportunity hater, I don’t discriminate. Of course, I’m not American so I understand that non discrimination is a hard to grasp concept overseas.
This is a weird and popular trope with various European countries that hold themselves above others. Somehow things like racism and bigotry are purely an American phenomenon, usually said alongside spewing some sort of bigoted vitriol like this guy.
Thing is, her identifying as a woman has 0 to do with the harassment. I get that clicks get food on the table, but it’s always the same BS disingenuous framing.
Well that felt unkind. The distinction between male and female is being made because the modder states men are sexually harassing her. There are other forms of harrassment listed, but it seems reasonable to make a distinction since there is a sexual nature to part of it.
Quite literally in the article, the first reddit link points to a female user disliking what the mod author did with Daegon. Again, bringing sex into this does nothing but generate clicks. There is an online community that always goes too far in the harassment of PEOPLE, as experienced by modders, devs, et al from all the ticks in the spectrum of sexuality since the dawn of social media. That’s it.
I don’t understand people who “demand” things from volunteers. Open source devs, modders, and still recently content creators are/were treated like public service workers, by some.
Imagine if we went around treating artists as if they were obligated to please each of us individually with their every piece? I’m very happy to see this attitude improve with streaming and youtube, where creators are more and more met with care and support when they have to step away for a bit or retire entirely.
It sadly seems like this modder was eventually putting in tremendous effort, in a vain attempt to please absolutely everyone using her mods. But that isn’t a good reason to work for free.
Any work I do for free, is something I do because I want to, but this modder explicitly says she did work she didn’t want to do in order to please fans. And I can’t help but ask, why? (I know why, but someone should have cared enough to show her she is allowed to just say no, and do whatever she prefers.)
The blurb about her doing music is how you’re SUPPOSED to feel doing something for fun. I’m happy that she found her way to something that makes her feel that way.
it doesnt even have to be a mod, just free. See what happened with AetherSX2(android ps2 emulator) and how a bunch of people kept pestering a dev till he basiclaly quit working on it on mobile because they ask for a lot for something that was literally free.
early access games are also notorious for being dogshite and left as such, or they’re fine but with obvious flaws which are never fixed because “bro it’s still in early access!”
It really does depend on the game, though. Going Medieval for instance has been in early access for almost three years, but it’s three years of active development. Just about every week brings some kind of update, whether it’s little coding and qol stuff, to full upgrades and new mechanics being added in. They’re almost done with their roadmap.
People do this with artists too. Especially the moment you offer anything in the way of free commissions for a specific community and such.
Many forums had gfx threads, where members who enjoy putting together banners and such would offer to make something for those who asked. A good friend of mine ran one in a certain game’s forum for a while and the absolute entitlement in which some of those people acted (in regards to speed and nitpicking about minor things) was disgusting. It was maybe 1 in 25 people but it soured the whole thing for her, understandably so. The moment you give people a little finger wrt their requests, one of those people will take the whole hand. The same likely applies to modding.
And I’m sure being a woman doing gaming stuff isn’t helping because there’s way too much sexism in gaming culture, even though there are also a lot of subcommunities that are super welcoming to everyone.
Good for her for making the right decision for her own wellbeing. Too many sad little fucks on the Internet who spend all their time harassing others. Pathetic existence.
When they say safer, are they referring to pirating the games? If it helps with that and they don’t need Denuvo or any of that stuff, then I guess it’s helpful. I have no clue if it helps though and I don’t even know where to look anymore to see if these games are pirated, my guess is they are?
They are pirated, what he means is what some community manager already said back when this was about Helldivers 2, made their job easier to ban people with playstation accounts.
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