In the immortal words of Shaun (for the second time in my blog-writing experience), “I play video games… I PLAY video games”. That said, the production and behind-the-scenes insanity can be just as entertaining, rage-inducing, hilarious or somber as any great game.

So, without further ado, here’s 5 controversies and “controversies” I found particularly interesting:

1: Activision Blizzard’s “frat boy culture”.

I’ve made no secret of my deep-seated borderline erotic passion for mocking Bobby Kotick, now former Coca-Cola board executive and extremely soon-to-be former CEO of Activision Blizzard, the company behind Overwatch, World of Warcraft and…*checks notes* Spider-Man Friend or Foe!? Used to play it all the time with my brother… Hard to segue from that into the severity of the controversies, but I’ll try:

The company perpetuated a culture of sexism, sexual assault and protecting the abusers in the company, Kotick chief among them. The worst acts included groping, coercion, blackmail with nudes acquired from said coercion, crunch time (a horrible and unfortunately common practice in the gaming, animation and manga industries) and unequal pay between male and female workers.

Needless to say, I could make this whole list on just ActiBlizz shenanigans if I wanted to, but for now, let’s keep it to just two with-

2: “Buttgate”!

I only heard of this one through brief glimpses of trailers and online cultural osmosis at the time, but as I understand it, here’s what happened: A lot of promotional media for Overwatch pending it’s release just so happened to reveal the character Tracer packs what terminally online fetishists would refer to as “Whooty” (white booty).

Reactions to Tracer were largely divided into three camps: Those who started frothing at the mouth (and other organs).

Those who sparked discussion on sexualization of female characters in gaming.

And the anti-feminist YouTube skeptic crowd who claim feminists are the ones ruining games… Speaking of anti-feminists:

3: GamerGate!

This one’s too fascinating for me to recount in just a couple witty paragraphs. The saga of GamerGate is full of twists and turns.

Non-existent game reviews causing seething hatred. Cheating allegations. The transition of the atheist skeptic YouTube movement towards Anti-Feminist YouTube, which in turn lead to the rise of progressive leftist YouTube. The LITERAL Swat Team… And a 4Chan nutter made a game about assaulting one Anita Sarkeesian for the incredibly horrible crime against humanity of talking about games through a feminist critique on the internet!

Ian Danskin covers GamerGate in much more detail with his UC Merced Talk. Needless to say, this is an Oscar-bait biopic waiting to happen folks!

4: The Corrupted Blood Incident.

Of all these controversies, thank God this one doesn’t have a silly name!

Back when World of Warcraft was near it’s peak in popularity, there was a boss enemy with a virus ability that proved deadly to players… Try saying that three times fast!

While the virus couldn’t spread to players outside of combat with Hagfar the Fart-Sniffer or whoever it was, the devs forgot to extend that luxury to in-game pets of the player base!

So, the virus began to spread throughout the entire game, Blizzard were wracking their heads for solutions and player behavior towards the virus in this time turned out shockingly similar to the fresh hell that was 2020’s global pannini!

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The post Top 4 Controversies in Video Games first appeared on Get2Gaming.

For the uninitiated among you, Dead By Daylight is a popular third-person horror game featuring various modes and crossovers with famous horror franchises like Friday the 13th, Stranger Things, and the subject of today’s blog, Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The folks at Behaviour Interactive have removed Leatherface cosmetics from Dead by Daylight after years of complaints that black players have been harassed by Leatherface players. Specifically, one of the unlockable Leatherface masks is of him wearing the face of one of the black player character avatars, so needless to say, I’m sure the 4Chan crowd had a laugh with the mask’s similar aesthetic to blackface.

MiladyConfetti, a black Twitch streamer, was so perplexed at the sight of the mask, she initially thought it was a glitch for Sobek’s sake! Click here for a November 2021 video by streamer SistaKaren on the topic with multiple perspectives from other harassed players and content creators… Must be the one good Karen, I assume.

An official developer update via forum says the Leatherface mask will be removed in the next update, but anyone who purchased Leatherface will be compensated with in-game currency.

““I was harassed by players who knew I was a streamer particularly with the Blackface Leatherface cosmetic. I knew it was the players because after being harassed in the game, they would come to my stream and call me slurs and acknowledge that they were the killer.” – MiladyConfetti.

With all that in mind, do I think Behaviour Interactive did the right thing? In my humble opinion, YES… And no. Removing the cosmetic is all well and good, but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the wider issue of online harassment. Many online spaces aren’t good at cracking down on harassment reports, in part due to large user sizes. So, now is as good a time as any to plug my past article on Paidia, a sort of online community aimed at fighting online harassment by building an inclusive space for all… Except the Nazis, terfs, swerfs and other assorted erfs, of course.

As someone who’s also interested in topics around artistic license and auteurship, I’m also glad the Behaviour creator of the masks has come out advocating support for its removal due to its use in racist targeted hate campaigns.

Product Poems:

Oh Rustler, pool Hustler. What’s that? Thrustmaster stole my stripper name!?

How much clout could a Cloudpunk punk if a Cloudpunk could punk cloud.

Turtle Beach. We have many. Starcraft 2, mat for PC. The Game!

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The post Dead By Daylight REMOVES Leatherface Mask: Racism in Gaming first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Roses are red, I drink from a cup. PlayStation nonces? FBI, OPEN UP!

The former PlayStation Network VP, George Cacioppo, was filmed and caught allegedly trying to pay for sex from someone posing as a 15 year old boy. The events that lead to the video releasing were orchestrated by the YouTube channel People V. Preds. Their George Cacioppo video can be found here. Skip to about a minute in, since half the video is basically repeating the channel’s trailer verbatim.

The video claims George spoke with the “15 year old” decoy via Grindr, then exchanged pictures with him and gave his address to arrange for intercourse.

For all one of my (known) readers who knows who Hasan Piker is, the next paragraph is going to be my attempt at a text-based impression of him, as all my real-life impression attempts end up sounding like a stereotypical Jewish mum talking to Becky about the Keeping Up With the Kardashians at the hair salon:

“Ho-lee shit dewd!  IN A PS5 T-SHIRT! You know, because repping your own merch is top-priority when you’re trying to bone someone, I guess. Dewd recording this was accusing George of pedophilia, IN 4K, ON THE TIMELINE!” – Pasan Hiker: A Made-Up Person.

The folks at Sony confirmed the firing of George just yesterday according to the Cnet article where the firing was announced. I bring this up to say TAKE NOTE ACTIVISION BLIZZARD! If the folks at Sony can fire someone based on one (to my knowledge) alleged act of criminality, then Bobby “I Have A History of Sexual Assault Accusations” Kotick should’ve been out of the game long ago.

Even if these allegations are shown to be false later on, the fact the San Diego police didn’t immediately respond to the report (according to Cnet) is more than a little telling of how lax the police have been with crimes involving people with great financial power. Like, I’m not saying ACAB, but I think it’s safe to say SCAB at this point.

The folks at People V. Preds also talked to Kotaku, saying they released the video online because ‘The police don’t work with cyber groups like us’. If you’ll indulge me a little, this reminds me of a similar (though substantially less severe) version of this issue I’ve experienced, so sit down and strap in.

Once upon a time, an entire essay I wrote got randomly deleted from some inconceivable point in time between me going to sleep after pulling consecutive all-nighters and waking up the next day! Because I couldn’t prove that large chunks of the thing were deleted outside of my control, that specific part of my report was denied for ECs. Like, I know it sounds like a “dog ate my homework” situation, but you’ll just have to trust me on that one!

I bring it up because hey, the internet is becoming steadily more and more intertwined with life in general, maybe people shouldn’t be so quick to write off online groups or spaces as always being inferior to The Real Thing TM. Something TheStoryteller brought up was that online activism, while commonly maligned by slacktivism critics, is very much a legitimate form of activism in different contexts, especially regarding disabled people who may not be physically capable of independently rolling up to a protest march with a sign in-hand.

A briefly sincere call to action: The Storyteller is one of the best black British content creators out there and severely underrated. Outside of his media analysis videos and political video essays on racism and social issues, he has also announced plans for a Peckham-based food bank project. Find out more on his Free Huey project covered near the end of his video on mutual aid and charity. Free Huey plans to provide food, essential hygiene products and a selection of books by famous (and underrated) black figures. You can vote on what books get included if you donate to the initiative.

Product Poems and Voucher?

Capitalism: Pay sixty-four quid for fifty-quid card gift!

Fractured, but whole. This is mine. Fractured, but whole. Yours too tonight?

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The post PlayStation VP, Alleged Pedophile + New Voucher Codes! first appeared on Get2Gaming.

In the immortal words of Hank Hill: “Damnit Bobby”!

The Optional Cutscene: We have fuller breakdowns on Activision Blizzard‘s legal settlement, the lawsuit and related accusations to company members, but the seriousness of the controversies are so severe that I had to scroll through EIGHT LINKS of news stories on Google just to find the company website! To summarize the key points though: The workplace fostered a “frat boy” culture of casual sexual harassment of women, especially towards people of colour. One known instance resulted in a blackmailed employee taking her own life and the company has made a point of donating to anti-union companies to prevent effected employees from combating the corruption of Activision Blizzard’s heads, whom even partook in a “Cosby Suite“. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly an innocently unknowing homage for fans of The Cosby Show.

The Tutorial Report:

On November 16th, a Wallstreet Journal report claimed that Bobby Kotic, Activision CEO, was indeed, aware of the malpractice and misconduct allegations happening at the company. The report even went so far as to say Bobby Kotic himself mistreated female workers (and on a similar note, there was even an allegation of a death threat if Twitter discourse is to be believed… Which is to say, rarely, but when it’s right, it’s right on the money, unlike Konami).

As reported via Bloomberg article, Jim Ryan (boss at PlayStation) sent an email to employees shortly after the Wallstreet Journal report, wherein he expressed shock that Activision “has not done enough to address a deep-seated culture of discrimination and harassment”.

The report goes on to name-drop Call of Duty developer companies Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games as guilty studios partaking in the mistreatment of workers

“We outreached to Activision immediately after the article was published to express our deep concern and to ask how they plan to address the claims made in the article […] We do not believe their statements of response properly address the situation” – Jim Ryan

Considering how many fingers Activision has had in assorted pies of the gaming world before the controversy leaked, none too surprising the folks at PlayStation have a reason to condemn Activision, as the company helped in the development of many successful franchises. Said titles include Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, World of Warcraft and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. If you want to try any of these admittedly great games without supporting the company itself, then have a look round the Go2Games store.

And for the admittedly slim minority of you that think this is a case of “virtue signalling” or disingenuous “woke“-point scoring, then I point you to the one-two-combo of Hbomberguy videos on Woke Branding and Virtue Signalling. Which is to say “fair enough, companies are not your friend, 99.99% of the time they do stuff because it’s profitable first” (unless you’re Konami) while at the same time also acknowledging that signalling your agreement with a certain virtue does not mean the virtue itself is a bad one… And heck, to diversify things a little, maybe try Tara Mooknee’s Virtue vs Vice Signalling. I have it on good authority that her episodes are in fact written by a cow that may appear in the next video if you like and subscribe!

Inconvenient Glitches and Attempted Fixes:

A 2006 voicemail of Bobby Kotic threatening to have an employee killed was leaked.

The ABK Worker’s Alliance have announced plans for a walkout and demanded Bobby Kotic’s resignation, hell yeah comrades! Click here for more on the ABK’s goals.

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The post PlayStation Boss Condemns Activision and Bobby Kotic Email first appeared on Get2Gaming.