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dil, do games w 'I think we're in the fight of our lives': Fired Rockstar employees and IWGB are confident the GTA 6 developer will be held accountable for its alleged union busting

Gamdevs should get roylties based off contribution like a number so small for indie games its meaningless unless it does well, but for bringingg us longlasting moneymaking games like gta they should be making way more

thatKamGuy,

Absolutely; but you just know that Publishers will just push to outsource development to 3rd party “contractors” so that they won’t be eligible, or some other such bullshit.

CosmoNova,

I mean they can do that and quality assurance will struggle even more, making indie games look even better in comparison. Let publishers keep shooting themselves in the foot in their endless greed. It will only speed up the destructive cycle.

dil,

I pretty much only buy indie games these days, maybe one AAA a year and I used to buy multiple a month. Most stuff doesn’t feel unique enough, like I’m just repeating experiences with slightly different themes and controls.

mushroomman_toad,

That is already very very common

beetus,

Uhh, going to need to see some evidence of that. Literally never heard of non indie devs getting royalties or continued payments based off the success of the game.

Actually I’ll correct myself, rockstar is the only company I’ve heard of that does big internal payouts post launch. Most of Rockstars game launches have resulted in new houses for some of their teams.

Got any other examples to share?

Waraugh,

The person you were replying to was saying it’s already common to contract out devs, not that it’s common to pay royalties.

beetus,

Oops my mistake Thanks for the correction

Nibodhika,

Unfortunately for larger games individual devs don’t have that much control nor can have a mensurable impact. For example, I wrote a few lines of code for a large game, those lines will be executed every single time the game runs, but if they weren’t there no user would notice. I was told to write those lines, and it’s not something I personally wanted to add to the game, there was an issue, I was sent to fix it, I did. This is true for the vast majority of the game code, most devs are pointed to issues to fix or features to implement, they have some wiggle room in the how to do stuff, but the what to do has been approved by the boss of the manager of your manager’s manager, and unless there’s a good reason it won’t change.

Think about it this way, have you ever watched the credits from a AAA game? The vast majority (as in there are likely only a couple of persons who didn’t) of the people in that list contributed something to the game, either directly or indirectly, it’s hard to measure how much each contributed, a small but critical fix might be more important than a large but unused feature, how do you measure between the two?. Not to mention past employees who did stuff for a previous game that got re-used.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea, one that I would personally benefit from, but I think it’s just not feasible for large games. In short it’s impossible to be fair doing that, and people would get hurt because John from accounting got the same share that he did. And if you do it in any other way that’s not everyone gets the same share, you’re essentially playing favorites with the people whose job is to do the stuff you’ve ranked higher, even though the other person’s job is just as important.

BilSabab,

exactly - it is borderline impossible to manage on large scale projects with any semblance of coherence.

Prime,

That is true. However, you can still solve it and i have seen it work in practice: allow every employee to buy shares of the company. Fixed limit of shares per year of employment. Shares cannot be sold on the free market, they are bound to employment. Shares are kept after departure. Shares give dividends as usual.

So it is a partially worker owned company.

Nibodhika,

That’s an interesting approach, but eventually you’ll run out of shares to allow employees to buy, and you’ll have to dilute the ones you’ve already sold. You need to think that AAA studios have hundreds of people working there, and certain games have thousands of people working on related stuff that’s not directly the game but contributes, like engine, servers, social, etc.

Prime,

There is no problem with diluting. It’s not guaranteed amount passive income :) but if more people work there, you would usually also have higher gains to distribute. And old shares eventually disappear, they are not inheritable.

ms_lane,

But then how will they be able to afford the cut for Voice Actors!

BilSabab,

the problem is that companies will find a way to screw devs with that too. Imagine figuring out a solution to track every single bit of contribution to keep royalties as low as possible based on STATS BYATCH. it will literally turn into “your grass texture will bring you 0.00000000000000000000000001 cent off each sale” kind of fuck around.

JayFonduh, do games w 'I think we're in the fight of our lives': Fired Rockstar employees and IWGB are confident the GTA 6 developer will be held accountable for its alleged union busting

And here we go the first virtual scandal in GTA6! Surrender more of your time and opportunity to this conglomerate while both ironically criticizing and falling for false information for the sake of distraction!

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@pawb.social avatar

I was kinda wondering if this whole thing is even real or just PR to hype up GTA6.

They have done some pretty questionable advertising by manufacturing controversies in the past for previous GTA games.

JayFonduh,

All this foresight/spending/hype just for headlines to come all the way down to union busting? Believe me I’m all for a crack in the iceberg that is Rockstar. It’s looking more and more like a closed circus for billionaires to chortle at. Oh wait! That’s every circus! 😎😎😎

JayFonduh,

Yea advertising with children in those gory outfits was definitely a mistake on their part. But then people went and had to recreate it for themselves? so so unnecessary

Damarus,

It’s absolutely real.

BilSabab,

and then instead of GTA 6 we will get Manhunt 3 which will be the immersive sim with realistic murder mechanics and actual functioning organs inside each characters (including brain).

CosmoNova,

What are you implying? I just saw an interview of the fired workers striking outside the Rockstar buildings and the comments show nothing but support for them and call for a boycott of GTA 6. You can see similar recent comments under the official GTA 6 trailer on Youtube by the way. Drop in the bucket or not, but some people are actually pissed how the developers behind one of their favorite franchises get treated like dirt.

ICCrawler, do games w 'I think we're in the fight of our lives': Fired Rockstar employees and IWGB are confident the GTA 6 developer will be held accountable for its alleged union busting

It’d be cool if it were true, but I’m pressing X to doubt.

MourningDove, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post

Cool, so- everyone should boycott those games and send a message to any developer hiring shitfucks like this clown and his company.

HertzDentalBar, do games w To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub

I remember printing out guides from there back in the dialup period of my life.

demonsword, do games w To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub
@demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

I still have a few save state hacking guides floating there :)

AMillionMonkeys, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post
@AMillionMonkeys@lemmy.world avatar

Boy that screenshot from War Robots: Frontiers^tm^ sure looks intriguing. I’ll wishlist it.

/s

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Wow, it sure is a unique game experience! I’m ordering a deluxe account right now!!

tal, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post

An outright confession of what sure sounds like blatant astroturfing—a deceptive marketing campaign that’s meant to look like natural, spontaneous conversation—is probably not the sharpest move for any company that wants to attract or keep new clients.

The clients are just fine with it. This guy was off talking about it to market his company; publishers that he attracted did so because of what he was doing.

The users being astroturfed are the ones who aren’t going to like it.

What the client is going to be pissed about is that the guy mentioned their actual game while trying to promote their astroturfing company:

Still, Beresnev did what he could to put space between War Robots developer My.Games and Trap Plan, telling Kotaku the intent “was to experiment with a more organic way of promoting games on Reddit—without using bots or fake accounts—and to build a new case study we could use in the future,” and that mentioning the game and studio by name was a mistake.

“This was entirely our initiative and not commissioned or endorsed by My.Games in any way,” Beresnev said. “We understand this was a mistake and have since removed the case study. We sincerely apologize to My.Games and the War Robots: Frontiers team for the misunderstanding and any confusion it may have caused.”

www.trapplan.com/about-us

Trap Plan by The Numbers

We sell thousands of copies of games a month, collaborate with thousands of creators, work on all platforms from Reddit to TickTok

2023 Trap Plan Founded

$10M+ Sold Games

20+ Clients in 2024

jaybone,

How do you do this without having “fake accounts”? How do they define “fake accounts” here?

Agent_Karyo,

They are lying. A work account that's not labelled as such is a fake account.

tal, (edited )

I mean, I would imagine that they may well do that, but there are businesses that buy and sell social accounts. Like, the point is that a legitimate user accrues reputation. I mean, that’s an important element of how humans interact with each other — provide useful information, and I give your opinion more weight and stuff. Social media tends to try to leverage that too. But when someone doesn’t want their account any more for whatever reason, their reputation has value, and so it can be bought and sold.

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So they could develop their own “fake” accounts. Or they could just buy accounts from real, actual users, step into their skin and acquire their reputation. Or they could buy accounts from people who intentionally try to karma-farm — I imagine that that’s probably its own industry.

EDIT: Oh, sorry, maybe I misunderstood — you were quoting the astroturfing guy, using whatever his meaning was. I have no idea what he calls a “fake account”, and I don’t think that I’d consider him to be incredibly trustworthy in the first place. But he might mean that he doesn’t rely on an army of sockpuppet accounts to upvote his astroturfing, I suppose.

piranhaconda, do games w To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub

Fond memories of trying out every single glitch I could find for Pokemon Gens I and II. A lot were a load of crap, but there were a few good ones

My favorite was the Pokemon cloning glitch in Gen 2. If you did it right, you could get all 3 starters and force your rival to have the starter of your choosing. It took a couple hours to do though, because it requires saving right before you get your starter and then not saving again until you’re allowed to catch your first Pokemon. And then repeating the process.

Speculater, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

“I’m 39 and a single dad to three girls with special needs, but five years ago I quit my job and started pursuing my lifelong dream of being a game developer. This metroidvania styled RPG with roguelite elements is my dream come true. Here’s a short clip of the gameplay.”

Shitty 8-bit sprites jiggle on the screen

Reddit: OMG! I’m literally crying right now as I buy this. It’s so good!

SoleInvictus,

I see you too are familiar with Heart Forth Alicia.

tal, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post

The clear blend of cynicism and resignation in replies to the Reddit thread about the deleted Trap Plan post clearly illustrate how widely pervasive these practices are perceived to be.

I mean, back when professional game reviewing was more of a thing, game publishers used to do things like take said reviewers on outings and stuff to influence them, give them free copies, whatever. Marketers trying to subvert information flow isn’t something that suddenly showed up with social media.

bobgobbler,

Silly all of them lol

theoneandonlyeggboi, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post

This is a major reason why I never follow hype.

tal,

The marketer in the article — as with anyone else trying to do surreptitious marketing of this sort — is in the business of making hype that is hard to distinguish from buzz. If it were trivial to identify hype, he wouldn’t be in business.

explodicle,
@explodicle@sh.itjust.works avatar

Patient gamers always win

tal,

If there are enough people who wait until after a game has been out for some time to play it, there will be marketers targeting that group too.

They might promote the thing based on value or something other than what the latest flashy game crowd gets, but put enough wallets together and there’s an incentive for someone to go after them. The astroturfing guy’s shtick was that he was targeting individual communities with crafted material to try to appeal to them. PatientGamers is another community.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

NotToddHoward has entered the chat
NTH: Hello everyone, I just found out this old game, Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, it looks super cool!

sugar_in_your_tea,

All I want is a game that’s not a buggy mess.

bytesonbike,

You aren’t kidding. I played Kingdom Come Deliverance last year, when I learned about the second one. Was like wow.

Then read how they originally were courting the anti-woke crowd. Who later turned on them because the sequel has “woke” material.

Its great to not be a part of those GAMERS.

RememberTheApollo_, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post
@RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world avatar

r/gaming is shit. Bunch of sycophants all soft criticizing games like a review magazine afraid of offending the makers while talking about their playthrough. Go figure. Heaven help you if you have an actual opinion outside of the box, or don’t know some bit of terminology or lore about a game that is “common knowledge”.

theoneandonlyeggboi,

Don’t forget the lack of accountability among mods in reddit.

They can remove whatever they want, and we wouldn’t even know it was there. This alone causes people to self-censor.

brucethemoose,

That’s basically all large fandom/hobby subs now, in my experience.

And yeah, don’t forget the shallow memes or fear of arbitrary banning.

Pauce,

Yeah if they hit critical mass the quality drops significantly. I’ve bookmark a handful of my niche subs that haven’t hit that point yet but I saw it all the time over the years on there. Even something as straight forward as a liminal space, not as a term but there is a lot of writings on the topic, subreddit just turns into everybody posting pictures of there closets and and any old building.

87Six,

I was hated on Reddit for not hating the main character of Horizon Zero Dawn. God forbid someone enjoys a woman speaking.

vithigar,

I never understood the hate for Aloy. She was at worst bland with a pretty heavy helping of “I’m better at everything because I’m the main character”, but she’s hardly alone in that, and it doesn’t usually attract that much ire.

I really didn’t understand the complaints that she was unattractive or even outright ugly.

sugar_in_your_tea,

That fits pretty much every game where you control a main character. MCs rarely have a suitable explanation for why they’re so special beyond the rule of cool. Why can Gordon Freeman take out teams of special ops? Because he’s the MC. He’s a pretty bland character that doesn’t say anything, but he’s loved by millions.

krooklochurm,

Also Aloy was fucking hot.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Freckles AND a jawline? Unplayable.

Sturgist,
@Sturgist@lemmy.ca avatar

Second hand too busy to properly operate the controls eh?
I get it, I get it.

SippyCup,

She doesn’t have massive tits and dresses like you’d expect someone surviving in a robot dinosaur apocalypse to dress. So, not porn/isn’t sexy, therefore game bad.

It boggles my mind that people fucking care. It’s not like porn isn’t freely available on the Internet, and porn of those characters specifically isn’t easy to find. But if you’ve seen some of the criticism coming from that crowd about Ghost of Yotei it’ll make sense.

What’s sad is Yotei has plenty of faults they could criticize instead. But they can’t see past women as purely an object for sex so here we are.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

The degree to which people will idolize God of War’s Kratos and shit all over Horizon’s Aloy is crazy, given how these are functionally the same character.

I really didn’t understand the complaints that she was unattractive or even outright ugly.

She didn’t look like the silhouette on a truck’s mudflaps. So she’s hideous by default. But then nobody seems to qualify as “hot enough” anymore. Sidney Sweeny isn’t hot enough. Taylor Swift isn’t hot enough. Ciri from the Witcher isn’t hot enough. Freya Allan from the TV Show of the Witcher isn’t hot enough. Fucking Jessica Rabbit isn’t hot enough.

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

Pretty sure Horizon Forbidden Dawn was well liked, despite having a woman speaking, but Horizon Forbidden West was hated on for changing the design of her.

87Six,

They didn’t really change the design as much as she was just not a teenager anymore…

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

They changed her design to fit some arbitrary anti-beauty standard. I don’t find the change egregious, but it’s obvious why it was done.

87Six,

Yea, nah, she’s beautiful in forbidden west, idk what kind of unrealistic beauty standards you expect.

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t. I just recognise there’s a change and people didn’t like it. Nobody had issues with a woman being the main protagonist.

SippyCup,

I was banned from r/gaming for daring to go against that grain, and as I understand that is typical. It was about a game I liked too , just wished they had taken a few risks. I think it was Breakpoint. I had some very harsh things to say about the Ubisoft formula and how much better that game could have been if they had embraced the sneaky techie gameplay instead of the looter shooter bullshit they’d done instead. What’s funny to me is that shortly after release they updated the game to get rid of the looter shooter bullshit. So I clearly wasn’t alone.

RememberTheApollo_,
@RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world avatar

That sucks.

I left myself after being shouted down over criticizing a game for restricting player kits. The game was more fun without the restrictions, but fuck me for wanting more freedom in player classes.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Bunch of sycophants all soft criticizing games like a review magazine afraid of offending the makers while talking about their playthrough.

Almost as though its a heavily astroturfed community and many of the accounts are exactly this.

Heaven help you if you have an actual opinion outside of the box

That’s just social media in a nutshell. You’re either a loyal footsoldier or a radical insurgent. But you need to find your opposing faction and do battle with them. And then, if you get too confrontational, the Mods/Admins need to ban you for doing exactly what the site incentivizes.

DoucheBagMcSwag, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post

Oh no WHICH marketing company so I can’t avoid them?

Edit: marketing firm is TRAP PLAN and the game that used is services was War Robots: Frontiers

bytesonbike,

Assume all of the big ones.

Theres been a lot of positive GTA6 posts across a bunch of the internet, like how they’re “releasing it when theyre ready”.

Which is funny because a few days ago, they fired 30+ people who tried to unionize.

Korhaka,

Normally I wouldn’t care about GTA but now I will try to remember to point that out.

Lfrith,

Funniest was a comment I saw on reddit after the PR statement, saying looks like reddit overreacted and they are glad Rockstar set the record straight that the workers were fired for leaking information and not for anything related to unions. Typical redditors believing anything to get angry about.

It was over course downvoted, but the audacity of taking the position fully believing the PR release was hilarious that I wondered if it was a plant.

bobgobbler,

lol all of them

mrnarwall, do games w Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post

This confirms what I expected. I thought I was going crazy the first time I saw an ask reddit repost and I recognized all the top answers. Eventually they bots will outnumber the users and dead Internet theory will prevail

There are definitely pockets of reddit that don’t have their content flooded with bots, but they are the exception in today’s day and age. I especially enjoy the college football subreddit, as there still isn’t quite something similar on lemmy

krashmo,

Lemmy has those communities, they’re just small and not very active comparatively

Ashtear,

A lot of the sports subs’ better content is instant reaction. Harder to fake. The only participation I still have on reddit is a similar community for a large video game. It’s more like a chatroom than a message board. Small wonder I spend way more time talking on Discord than anywhere these days.

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