I honestly don’t know, but since he ended up in cyber security, I’m guessing it wasn’t games testing, but probably internal tooling. Orgs like Blizzard have a lot of non-gaming related tech, like websites, databases, etc.
I haven’t seen any disclosure about what his role was, just that he started as QA and ended up doing cyber security, both of which likely didn’t involve any coding.
Ross Scott is an absolute treasure, and I’m kinda sad that he has never made more than €63k euros in a given year. He deserves more for all the work he has put in.
I’m not European, so if you are, please do what you can to encourage your reps to support this.
Maybe. All I read is that he was QA. That can mean anything from game tester to someone who tests internal tooling. I haven’t seen an actual description of his role.
Hmm, never watched him. Looks like he has tens of millions of subs, which is probably why I’ve avoided him (I generally like smaller channels).
When he did security, he did social engineering.
Maybe I just have more industry insight, because when I think of cyber security, I think of people auditing computers (do you have the corporate spyware installed?), running automated pen test suites, etc. Most of it isn’t particularly technical, and most security audits I’ve been a part of (and we do them every year) are black box testing, meaning they don’t have the code. Even in the one or two audits we did that involved the code (needed a higher tier audit for government contracts), most of what they checked was just dependency versions, they didn’t look too closely at the actual code.
Outside of high profile security researchers, I see most cyber security jobs as the security guards of software dev, they make sure you keep the doors locked, but they don’t force you to use reinforced doors or whatever, they’re just there to tell you what the obvious weak points are.
then I’m lying by omission
Which pretty much everyone does. If someone doesn’t go into detail, it’s pretty safe to assume there’s nothing to brag about.
That said, even if you only mowed the grass at the White House, you’d pick up on a lot of stuff about politics. You’d notice who the regulars are, important peoples’ routines, etc, not to mention what you pick up on through random small talk with people there. There’s a reason spys target people like janitors and landscapers, they don’t realize how much they know so their guard is down. That’s social engineering 101.
The janitors at Blizzard know more about AAA software development than the average gamer. A QA would know even more since they have more direct access to the devs and designers.
Whether you’re telling the whole truth or not about your credentials is irrelevant if you can prove what you claim. That’s why I’d like to see PS and Ross talk, so it would be easier to tell what’s accurate from what’s BS.
C++ developer
Ah, ok. I assumed the other guy because was pretty public with his criticism of PS and has long hair.
I haven’t heard of that guy either, probably because I’m more into Rust than C++, and actually avoid C++ like the plague (I much prefer C).
But what’s his profit motive? He makes mediocre indie games and did some undefined work (probably publicity) at an indie publisher. I don’t see any material change to him financially whichever way the petition goes. He’s kinda popular, but far from a big influencer.
That argument doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.
fear of missing out on profits, if he ever gets his game out.
This doesn’t make much sense. The obligations only kick in once the game gets shut down, so either he makes so much that it doesn’t matter (can keep running the servers for a long time) or it doesn’t sell well and he just releases server binaries and cuts his losses. Even in the worst case (his misunderstanding), releasing server sources isn’t an issue for a failed game, and a small cost to pay for a very lucrative one.
I think he’s just an opinionated guy who sticks with his initial impression, even if it’s wrong, and will oppose anything that sounds inconvenient for game devs (what he sees himself as). That’s sadly really common, people seem to love jumping to conclusions and only really dig in if the easy assumption negatively impacts them.
all the creators that jumped on that particular wagon were dead silent on the initiative in the first place.
Exactly! But honestly, that should be expected because their entire job is to get views.
The only one I kinda like on this subject is Gamers Nexus, because they actually approach it like journalists instead of just reacting to headlines. They’ll interview companies and people to get both sides before making a hit piece. Even then, GN can rub me the wrong way when they pursue something too far.
never understood the appeal…
Same. I watch only a handful:
FlorryWorry - he’s the best at EU4 and goes deep into the mechanics; I’ve become a much better player from watching his videos
MTG draft streamers (NumotTheNummy, LSV, NicolaiBolas) - great at explaining plays and picks
Hikaru Nakamura - chess streamer, second in the world, good at explaining plays
Notice a pattern? I watch people who are better than me at a game so I can learn to be better myself. I don’t watch action game streamers, mostly strategy games.
I’ll occasionally watch YT videos when I either don’t have time to play a game, or I am stuck and need help getting through a section.
literally none of the games had been review-bombed.
I saw some “review bombing” on his game Heartbound. Long term reviews are 62% (mixed, 3000 reviews), and recent reviews are 8% (600+). When I checked a couple weeks ago when the whole thing was fresh, I swear the overall was positive.
To me, that’s review bombing. The game had been out for ~7 years, and nearly 25% of the total reviews are “recent” (many since the end of June).
So my take here is that he was worried that reaction would spread to the other studio, which I guess never materialized.
He filed a lawsuit
That’s really lame. Games should be allowed to use free expression, barring blatant slander.
Any consequences Pirate faces are all of his own doing
I disagree, but I don’t know much about him. I don’t think anyone deserves to be publicly lambasted unless they truly are a public menace like Trump. Tell people to avoid his content, sure, but his work at a game studio should absolutely be unrelated, provided he’s not given a platform for his unpopular views.
I’m pretty sure it’s in the US. I’m in Utah (pretty far western US) and ping times are like 10-15ms, which is consistent w/ a west coast server. I have a VPS in Germany, and pings are more like 100-150ms.
I’m not exactly sure how pings work w/ cloudflare, so maybe it’s hosted somewhere else, but I would imagine they’d get a cloudflare host near their VPS to minimize latency.
Yeah, that’s basically what I’m pushing back on. The internet community loves to jump on people and dig up random dirt when they do something unpopular, and a lot of that dirt is exaggerated if not completely fabricated. Look at the response to the Godot tweet about being “woke” for an example of that (which PS rightly defended Godot for).
He may be a POS, but I don’t think he deserves what he got. He deserves to be less popular, sure, but not much more than that.
You’re missing a step here. 3.5. He chooses not to use the items he has that would have restored his mana
That does change things a bit.
I’ve never played WoW and generally avoid MMOs, so I don’t know how everything works. I just assumed mana items are a time effect thing, so he would’ve needed to plan ahead. If they were already bailing, there’s no reason to use them on the way out.
and avoiding all the other evidence that’s out there you haven’t seen
Well yeah, I can’t know what I don’t know.
Those were the best examples provided to me, and they didn’t seem as bad as people made them out to be. I just have to assume the rest is more of the same.
I’m happy to look at more though. But honestly, I don’t know what you’d gain from that, I already don’t watch his content and support SKG. I guess I might repost some links for others to check out if they’re also confused by the backlash.
playing another MMO on stream
Someone else mentioned that here (today?), and that’s certainly enough for me to not want to watch his streams. I already avoid a lot of the popular streamers for being disrespectful to random opponents, and doing that to someone on your team is absolutely unacceptable.
I still don’t think that warrants the response he got, from calls for resignation to swatting.
Has to be right on everything and when it’s proven he isn’t, either doubles down or just simply denies being wrong.
That sounds like a lot of people here on Lemmy honestly, and I think that’s pretty common.
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.
I think this is the issue. He had a lot of fans and they were let down. I think the real issue is people looking up to random streamers/influencers. It’s not unique to YT/Twitch, but politicians and celebrities aa well.
I don’t like it. If you don’t like someone’s content, don’t watch it, and don’t burn the place down on your way out.
Yeah, I haven’t found a reason to care about PS beyond showing courtesy to people who went out of their way to provide receipts for their claims. I also haven’t seen enough to warrant ruining his life. That’s about as much effort as I care to spend here.
The bigger concern is what happens at the EU. Surely that’s where corporations are going to focus their energy, because it’s a lot easier to convince some bureaucrats than millions of gamers. Sure, some negative press helps, but the real impact is made by lobbyists.
Do you have specific examples of him making multiple accounts to amplify a message? If so, that would certainly change my opinion of him and would explain a lot of the unsubstantiated claims made here.
Yeah, and that’s what disappoints me the most. I think suck a conversation could be productive and really suss out where PirateSoftware is coming from. Maybe there’s more to it, but w/o that conversation, it just seems like he misread it and is doubling down relying on whatever meager credentials he has. That’s sad, because I’m sure he absorbed something useful in his years working w/ game devs.
helped spread the drama
And honestly, that makes me want to watch those other streamers less. I used to watch SomeOrdinaryGamers, but him repeatedly getting into YT drama (and claiming he didn’t like it) turned me off, and now he’s apparently back on that same trend. I’m sure those other YTers have decent takes, but I just really don’t like all that drama.
Ross’ petition should succeed because it’s a good petition, and that’s obvious from the text of the petition. It doesn’t need YTers to create a bunch of drama about it.
ross wasn’t at all vindictive in his video
Yeah, Ross is a stand-up dude. He made a big deal about not wanting to get into drama, but that he’d do whatever was necessary, and the result was a very reasonable rebuttal. I’d like to buy him a beverage of his choice, he seems awesome.
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.