I think they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politics, and there will be plently of Blizzard apologists among older gamers. Western democracies are not very principled these days and people are easily bought. Either way I think gamers can't boycott to save their life.
Yep, frankly I'd guess part of the logic here is "Have you seen what EA gets away with? We'll be fine." The further removed the offense is from the purchase, the harder boycotts are to organize. And AAA game boycotts seem tricky to manage even for "this specific game is ripping off its players in these specific ways", so "this company did something shady around a tournament that casual players will never even hear about" is a pretty tough target. Plus, "don't buy" and "don't microtransact" are much easier targets than "don't play WoW/SCII/Hearthstone after you're already invested".
On the other hand, boycotts for any popular product don't tend to have their impact through actual lost income. There's already media focus on the story, and if a boycott influences devs, streamers, modders, etc. then it's not just a question of direct sales losses.
they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politic
The thing is that they are right, right now all of this mess is mildly entertaining to regular internet news and memes consumer crowd because it is novelty.
Twitter of course thrives on fresh scandalous information, especially if it involves big names, big words and gives an illusion of action and major influence - see?! I just reetwtted, I'm doing my part, I'm contributing to fight with great regime! Just go ahead go on streets,I'll tweet for you all!
However the problem is that 'likes' and 'retweets' are mostly meaningless and once novelty aura fades away nobody cares- Venezuela? it is still happening, Syria? still going, Libya? Yemen? what's this? Boo, boooring, man! What's is this all about, stop being such party pooper /s
Comments
I think they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politics, and there will be plently of Blizzard apologists among older gamers. Western democracies are not very principled these days and people are easily bought. Either way I think gamers can't boycott to save their life.
Yep, frankly I'd guess part of the logic here is "Have you seen what EA gets away with? We'll be fine." The further removed the offense is from the purchase, the harder boycotts are to organize. And AAA game boycotts seem tricky to manage even for "this specific game is ripping off its players in these specific ways", so "this company did something shady around a tournament that casual players will never even hear about" is a pretty tough target. Plus, "don't buy" and "don't microtransact" are much easier targets than "don't play WoW/SCII/Hearthstone after you're already invested".
On the other hand, boycotts for any popular product don't tend to have their impact through actual lost income. There's already media focus on the story, and if a boycott influences devs, streamers, modders, etc. then it's not just a question of direct sales losses.
The thing is that they are right, right now all of this mess is mildly entertaining to regular internet news and memes consumer crowd because it is novelty. Twitter of course thrives on fresh scandalous information, especially if it involves big names, big words and gives an illusion of action and major influence - see?! I just reetwtted, I'm doing my part, I'm contributing to fight with great regime! Just go ahead go on streets,I'll tweet for you all!
However the problem is that 'likes' and 'retweets' are mostly meaningless and once novelty aura fades away nobody cares- Venezuela? it is still happening, Syria? still going, Libya? Yemen? what's this? Boo, boooring, man! What's is this all about, stop being such party pooper /s